Because I have decided to post a lot more in the 'friends-only' section.
If you're interested, get an account. If you're already an LJ-er, log on and add me on after asking me.

'This is our last embrace
Must I dream and always see your face
Why can’t we overcome this wall?
Well, maybe it’s just because I didn’t know you at all'

-Jeff Buckley.

Fifteen minutes ago, I was just cleaning up my hard disk and came across an innocuous text file tucked away in a folder titled 'Posts'. Pleasantly surprised, I opened the file and set my eyes upon a list I had compiled on pretty much the day I left my hostel room for good. As I sifted through the document, I became more and more depressed. My memory of a few of these names had slowly faded away and I found myself really freaked out until my mind performed a quickfire reboot operation before it retrieved a few sepia-tinted packets of information from an obscure corner that was until recently the hub of all my emotive activity. Recognition slowly dawned and the brain started the numbing process of associating mental images with names. Of course, it didn't help that I had watched 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' just a few days earlier. Anyway, I wish I could write just a wee bit more and much more coherently, but the Sandman has his own devious ways of catching up with you. I'm uploading the list and shall deliberate on this tomorrow at leisure.


Beginning of Document

The H wing Roll of Honor:

196 Avin Sareeth Pais (Blobbo) Mangalore, KA
197 Mukund Sridhar (Mukka) Bangalore, KA
198 Sunil Ganesh Pai (Pi) Manipal, KA
199 Ganesh Natarajan (Ganja) Bangalore, KA
200 Ajay Eipe Mathew Elanjickal (Mathew) Chalakkudy, KL
201 Bhushan Desai (Bhoosh) Amravati, MH
202 Sambata Venkata Vijeth Sagar (Vijeth) Dammam, KSA
203 Rishabh Goel (Rishabh) Muzaffarnagar, UA
204 Harendra T Kumar (Harry) Kanpur, UP
205 Anurag Tiwari (Tiwari) Moudaha, UP
206 Sraavan Reddy (Reddy) Tirupati, AP
207 V. Parthasaradhi Rao (VP) Kakinada, AP
208 Manu Venugopal (Manu) Kozhikode, KL
209 Empty.

Notable Guests:

189 Azhar Ahmed (Baba) Bangalore, KA
215 Tushar Telang (Mekdya) Brahmapuri, MH
219 Anupam Dikhit (Dikhit) Lucknow, UP
234 Sajith Shetty (Shetty) Mangalore, KA
246 Sanket Dange (Dinjo) Udgir, MH
165 Angshu Chatterjee (Angshu) Durgapur, WB
Avin Kajekar Mangalore, KA

And so another generation passes and gives way for the next; few know the ways of the new, but one thing is for sure: this college is losing its sense of history and is losing it fast. There could be no better time to get out of this place. Trust me.

End of Document

I honestly wish the last few lines weren't true, but it doesn't look I could care any less for now.

Tell me something about yourself.

Erm...Here goes.

I like being happy.

I like hanging around and talking to my friends, doing little nothings that really don't enrich my life too much. I don't mind, though. It makes me happy nonetheless.

Ah, friends. I really don't have too many very good ones, but I make up for that with my extremely large acquaintance list which I upgrade every now and then to friend-level in order to sporadically furnish my spartan life.

I like to read, and I like writing too. I really don't get to do much of both, but indulging in them occasionally does kick me.

I watch movies. I don't mind watching any kind as long as they don't involve massive fireballs, quasi-kissing and extended periods of bad double entendre.
But I do particularly enjoy movies and serials that take me back to the good times of my childhood. Not that I'm particularly doing badly for myself, but those times were 'gooder', if you know what I mean.

I listen to a lot of music, so much so that I can probably split my life into different musical phases and relate them to their behavioral counterparts. You probably think I'm kidding. How I wish I could express myself better. Never mind.

At some point in my life, I used to draw and sketch as well, probably relics of some deviant gene inherited from my ex-artist mom. I don't sketch or draw too much now, and that makes me wistful when I think about it. I'm going to rein in that gene someday, though, and that little feller knows it.

As for my short term goals, I want to tour Europe. I'd like to visit the Uffizi and the Musee D'Orsay, and drive down the Cote D' Azur in a rented Renault. I want visit a sauna in Helsinki and watch the Big Ben strike twelve noisy gongs at noon. If it does, that is. I still don't know.

My long term goals involve the book I'm going to write sometime in the future. Notice the phrase 'Long Term'. What it basically means is that I'm a wussy who can't really afford to take time off from life right now and wait for the big idea to strike. Still, hope lingers. Other significant plans include teaching schoolchildren English and the social sciences and setting up my own chain of used book stores.

You probably want to know why you'd want to hire me. Huh. I profess ignorance.
You could try me out, though.
I'm actually a nice guy. You might even enjoy going out for a drink with me on a windy evening when everybody's gone and we have nothing else to do.


You probably think all of this was besides the point. I really haven't figured out what the point is. For the moment, I'd like to think it's happiness.

Alright then, if you guys can make me happy, there's nothing like it. I'll try my best to make you guys happy too. Happy about me, your wives, and the world around you.
God promise.

One of India's last remaining institutions, one's right to one's freedom of speech, is being threatened. And the target, fellow IIM-ers. Shocking.


Please visit the following links to get the full story. If you're moved enough after reading, please do make sure to disseminate this information to as many people in the mass media as possible, if you do have any contacts.

www.gauravsabnis.blogspot.com
www.youthcurry.blogspot.com
www.sepiamutiny.com
www.indiauncut.com
www.aadisht.net

Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis, we are with you.
Try suing my pants off, fraudster. I dare you.

Around this time of the year, jobless youth dispersed all over our dear city feel invigorated with a fresh sense of purpose and direction in life and after this great jnanodaya, gradually abandon their usual hangouts: the employment exchange, the local youth congress office and the neighborhood video rental store-cum cable service provider. Temporarily free of such mundane trivialities like the source of cash for the next quart or the next excursion to their favorite live band in Majestic, they take it upon their young and restless shoulders to be the guardians of our state's cultural heritage. Yup, we're talking about the spate of ugly shamianas and scaffoldings that choke neat playgrounds every year under the guise of the annual Dussehra/Ganesha Habba/Rajyotsava/Ityadi 'celebrations'. The Tragedy of the Commons, anyone?

Stage I of the great mission involves a hectic door-to-door fund collection campaign that proceeds with an efficiency that would put organised crime families to shame. Sigh. If only such energy and enthusiasm were channelled into more productive ventures like cleaning storm water drains or assassinating the whole Deve Gowda brood. Stage II is the most important: finding a big name 'orchestra' (gasp!) and hiring them before the other Sahakara Mitra Mandali (roughly translated as the Co-operative Friends' Union (sic)) does. These orchestras share much in common with teenage rock bands: cheap instruments, cheaper costumes and an appalling lack of talent. Usually equipped with a charming male-female vocalist duo that take turns in croaking out latest 'hit' songs and indulging a lusty captive audience in fluffy small talk about the lives of Karnataka's rich and famous. Eeyuck.

These orchestras constitute what are in Microeconomic theory known as Public Externalities. Costing virtually nothing for the source provider to emit them into the environment, these orchestras and nasty drum ensembles imperil the lifestyles of a massive populace that shares no interest in them whatsoever. Other significant examples include all forms of pollution known to mankind.

Living in an apartment complex with a ringside view of the neighboring playfield, our windows come right in the firing range of these aural attackers. Shutting them doesn't seem to help. They seem blessed with Superman-level transmissive powers that allow them to disseminate into every nook and cranny of the little apartment. After successfully drowning out Brubeck's 'Take Five' in waves of highly destructive interference, I can't take it anymore. Somebody ought to take all these 'Friends' Unions' and shove them right up our benign Annavru's ass. Or wait, I actually like Annavru; make that Ananth Kumar or any one of Deve Gowda's many sons. I walk into the living room and turn on VH1 and step right into the grand, sweeping, hip-postured, swollen lip-pouting guitar roar in the intro to Aerosmith's 'Angel' and smile to myself. Bring it on, muthafuckas, I got Steve Tyler on my side now. *snicker*

Here's a list of a few new entrants into ye olde bookshelfe:

( Read more... )

Recent reading has been truly satisfying, starting off with an excellent translated version of Saradindu Bandopadhyay's Byomkesh Bakshi stories in one single paperback volume. Repeated promptings by tandavdancer induced a cursory detour into Alan Moore's From Hell, a daunting 580 page graphic magnum opus. Which then promptly became an obsession, Moore's hypnotic power refusing to let me take my eyes off my screen for 6 continuous hours, as I delved deeper and deeper into the murky miasma of Victorian England. Two chapters in particular (Nos. 4 and 14) reinforced my belief that Moore sometimes writes with a sort of divine (or Demoniacal, if you will have it that way) possession, almost assisted by paranormal genius in putting together seemingly random bits of disconnected trivia and thoughts into one thundering tour-de-force of a finisher, all within the space of a few tens of pages. Whew, talk about power.

Attention was then dutifully diverted to Moore's Watchmen. Four hours of suppressed smiles, chuckles and quiet moments of awed appreciation followed. Comparisons were naturally made with his earlier V for Vendetta, and after much mental wrestling, V for Vendetta took the winner's belt. Of course, From Hell was above all this. *quiet giggle*. My comic-thirsty self now cast its roving eye on an assorted collection of old Indrajal comics downloaded off the LAN just a few hours before I departed from my room for 10 days of R & R. After curdling some Wambesi blood and kicking some butt in Jaigarh, I logged off comixworld for a while and focused attention on my massive backlog of books.

I then waded into the Indian Journeys compilation with gusto, only to realise it had been callously edited by Senor Moraes (if he actually edited it, that is. For chrissakes, there's not much of it visible). Brilliant takes on the Great Indian Bazaar by the likes of Amit Chaudhuri, Allen Ginsberg, Vijay Nambisan, William Dalrymple and RK Narayan, among other worthies, very nastily share stepping space with some pedestrian mongrel-piss peddled by the likes of Abraham Verghese, Khushwant Singh (whose essay on Phoolan Devi reeks with the stink of his you-know-what for her) and non-entities like Anees Jung and Seeme Qasim who don't deserve any space in this volume at all. Hmm, still, quantity preserved quality for the most part and made the purchase well worth its while.

Pico Iyer's Falling Off the Map, however, more than made up for the lameness of some of the writing in the previous book by serving up delicious dollops on some of the world's loneliest (check his foreword on the definition of the word 'lonely') places. North Korea is brilliant and quixotically funny; he then grabs a hammer and couple of nails and proceeds to drive them into exactly the right spots to nail the Argentinian psyche. His essay on Paraguay is the only damp spot on an otherwise superb collection of travel-prose. Dibs on this book, anyone?

Noble Term-2 Resolution:
The Book backlog shall somehow be cut down, aided in the main by some bits of strategic before-crashing reading in the wee hours. At around 30 pages a day, I can somehow hope to finish 3 books a month, assuming the average book clocks in at 300 pages. Come PPTs or assignments or readings for the next day, literature cannot wait. And that's that.

You know, there are times when the words just fail to clear the distance between the throat and the mouth. Comic book pencillers usually add an *ulp* to make such occasions more comprehensible. Yeah, it just happened to me a few seconds back. Uh huh.

I have exactly 28 hours to go before I get my ass quartered and hung out to dry like so much ham that came from a pig that simply couldnt match balance sheets for nuts. And our man calls me, screams 'bastard' into my ears around a gazillion times and forces me to read something that takes me back fifteen years into the magic of childhood and suburbia.

Doesn't help that I've been watching too many episodes of The Wonder Years on the trot. And the plaintive small-town voice of Bob Seger go 'We've got tonight' as the insects chirp away outside my room in the darkness, breaking the silence of the night? That too. Ah, the joys of Classic Rock in the wee hours of the morning.

Thanks, dude. For everything.

At 18:45 Hours today, I met Panini.
She will be my best friend and philosopher for the better part of the next two years.
We are in love already.

Panini's complexion is that of blackest Africa, and she looks as minimalist as one of Howard Roark's creations. Her face lights up with a radiant glow as I touch her at the right spots. She feels like soft satin as she purrs, noiselessly almost, and reciprocates faster than I can feel her up. Still, my hands are all over her, as I experience the thrills of sensory stimulus and response.

Hopefully, she will be the beginning and end of all my knowledge and reason in the time to come.
Together, we plan to explore the deepest and remotest nooks of time and space.
Ahh. Panini.

Whew.
Now that the week that-was-designed-to-kill-me-but-actually-didn't-succeed is over and through with, I have that one asset Adam Smith didn't really give two hoots about: Time.

I wonder if the course has actually been compressed to inculcate a sense of rudimentary time management in students; life here seems akin to an endless time trial with 'Kaal' (yes, he of the nebulous presence and ghoulish voice) from the TV version of the Mahabharatha breathing down your back 24/7. Talking about Time Management, hapless engineers like me find the phrase an obvious oxymoron. For four years, time was generally a peaceful, friendly commodity that only ran short at 8 in the morning and was otherwise extremely stretchable at all sundry hours and occasions.

In fact, part of the 'Oh-Fuck-Am I actually an Engineer now?!!' feeling that accompanies graduation can be attributed to the immense time an engineering student has on his hands. Engineering saps a student so dry that even as mundane a ritual as dragging on a cigarette becomes a lackadaisical taunt on the face of the Time Gods. Even shaves that should typically take a few minutes on one of those handy triple blades stretch on and metamorphose into lengthy self-appraisal sessions, when one silently looks straight into the mirror and muses about life, the universe and everything as every single tuft of facial hair that dared to poke its way through is slowly put to the sword.
Ahh, engineering. A stupid story.

Talking about shaves, it's about time I got one myself. This Sunday in G Base, it's going to an engineering shave for moi. Tra-la-la.

By the way,
The Albums of the Week:

1. Marty Friedman-Dragon's Kiss, Scenes, True Obsessions
2. Blackmore's Night-Under a Violet Moon
3. Janne Warman-Beyond Abilities

I cannot believe this.
One of my classmates from Kolkata actually said this during a freewheeling class discussion on the American healthcare sector: 'We all know that whites in America are much smarter than the Blacks (sic) and that Blacks (sic) are a dumb and inferior race'.
Do I now go ahead and say that Bongs are...?
Nyaaah.

I'm finally reading the Bob and Bobette series starring the eponymous Dutch kiddo-sleuth duo, after 8 long years.
Wooh. An eternity.
All hail IIMB Bookrack.

In an hour, I shall be classily sipping shots of Smirnoff laced with Tropicana and waiting for The Effect.
I'm going to peer down smugly at future I-Bankers with the sly knowledge and confidence that I'm going to be one myself.
Once The Effect takes over, I shall proceed to socialise, network and make friends with people I never even knew existed.
In the process, many of my female batchmates shall receive strong pheromones that tell them: I'm ready.
I shall also let loose and flit with gay abandon, like the social butterfly that I am,and make the most of a weekend that my busy lifestyle affords me stingily.
And I shall dance happily ever after. Well, till 5 AM, at least.

Aw Pshaw.
American Psycho Redux, anyone?

I think I'll restrict myself to a neat shot and go back to playing good music on the college radio station.
DJing has never been so pleasurable.

There's nothing like playing Tsepak at one in the morning. Phew.

1. Keane- Bend or break
2. Stone Temple Pilots- Plush
3. Heather Nova- We can work it out
4. Midnight Oil- Beds are Burning
5. Junoon- Meri Awaaz Suno

Round and round they play,
Making me go hey hey hey,
Stringing images that only I can see,
Giving me more and more reason to be.

Sometimes I feel like screaming.

I really have no idea what to post on, but I'm smacking my lips in the knowledge that I can now post whatever I want, whenever I want to. The pleasure of 24-hour internet room service, so to speak. I have no desire to make this post really memorable or momentous just because it's the first ever post from my room at IIMB, purely becuase I feel this new phase of my life shouldn't have too much of an effect on the way I write or drastically change my motives for writing itself. Though it is definitely going to affect the way I think, and I'm waiting eagerly for that bit.

One thing I've noticed after finally logging on to the net (after an eternity) and accessing the blogs that I usually visit has been that there seems to be this huge explosion of activity that has erupted out of nowhere in my blogspace. I know that people do visit my blogging ring and leave comments sometime, but this new development is kinda psyching. I mean, 28 comments on a post is almost sidin-level (I consider him to be the benchmark for blog popularity, at least comments-wise) and I hope this spate of new readers (or old readers who've chosen to make themselves conspicuous) doesn't steer us away from our path of writing purely for ourselves and writing because we want to and writing whenever we feel like it.

Ordinarily, I don't mind people visiting and reading my blogs at all. In fact, I'm a regular and very satisfied lurker at many blogs I don't comment on purely because I'm too awestruck by the quality of writing or by the blogger himself. But that's another issue. However, I'd rather prefer it if you were to add a small footnote that identifies you, not because I particularly care a lot about who you are, but because I'd appreciate having a handle to hang on to you by and replying to your thread, so that it doesn't get lost in the welter of anonymous comments that have had me feeling puzzled.

Anyway, for tandavdancer, here's a comprehensive list of my latest LAN-mining jaunt:

1. Grateful Dead- Greatest Hits
2. Eric Johnson- Ah Via Musicom
3. Eric Johnson- Venus Isle
4. Steely Dan- Can't buy a thrill
5. Steely Dan- Pretzel Logic
6. Steely Dan- The Royal Scam
7. Alice in Chains- Facelift
8. Weather Report- Greatest Hits,
among others. Of course, there's tons of stuff which I haven't downloaded because I'm waiting for my lappy. And I haven't even started mining the LAN for movies.

And yup, the complete Sandman, as a matter of passing.

Salivate and die, puny mortals.

I hate Blossoms these days. Gone are the days when a visit to Blossoms meant a few hours of leisurely browsing through lanes and lanes of musty second-hand books waiting to be bought at throw-away prices. Sigh. Those were the days when I actually used to bring back mounds of good books from every Blossoms trip. Now I find that my meagre allowance can't afford more than two books at a time. And that too when there isn't a movie to be seen in the PVR morning slum-show or a play to be watched at Ranga Shankara. That's the trouble with this whole globalisation-competition-and-consequent-expansion thingie, I guess. I remember the cozy little nook Mayi Gowda used to inhabit in Brigade Gardens on Church Street before he moved into his new er...what shall I call it...complex?

Blossoms now occupies three full floors of a large building, again on Church Street, and resembles Landmark every passing day. Landmark to me represents the ultimate in Bookshop Capitalism: ignorant customers, even-more-ignorant salespeople, a total disregard for decent pricing, and Air Conditioning. Still, it becomes a very nice place if you know what you're looking for and have the money (or the coupons) to buy them. Landmark also has an awesome catalog, whcih is something the small shops can't emulate without going bankrupt, but that's still okay. (I'm also biased because Derek O'Brien, of all people, has been engaged to conduct the Landmark Quiz this August). Blossoms, however, seems to have embarked upon a fiendish strategy of discreetly reducing the number of second-hand books in its catalog and predominantly selling new editions at miniscule discounts. Like I can't figure it out. The next time, I'm going to ask the riffraff at the counter to remove the 'House Of Used Books' tag from the main signboard.

I always greet enterprises that expand with a little trepidation. The feeling's the same all over the world; every now and then, one hears of the local bookshop fighting battles in vain to stop the advent of Barnes and Noble into its neighborhood. Nora Ephron even made a film about it. Yes, You've Got Mail. Expansion usually signifies the immediate loss of that personal element and the addition of newer staff, most of whom are not knowledgable (to be politically correct) and highly illiterate (to be accurate) when it comes to books and...most other things. In fact, Mayi seems to have abandoned his shop entirely, leaving the counter solely in the hands of a few choice thugs who don't think twice before uttering sacrilegeous and peremptory lines like 'I'm only offering 50 rupees for this book. Take it or leave it', like I was some drug pusher or something. His support stuff, the people who actually fish out books from long-forgotten vaults and the like, are actually an army of gossipy girls who seems like derelicts from the local Salvation Army centre. Here's a conversation sample with two of them:

Juvenile Help (JH): (chatting with another JH. I'm translating from Kannada now.) Hey, you haven't shown me the picture of your latest boyfriend.
JH 2: Why should I? (looks wickedly)
JH 1: Do you go to Cubbon Park in the evenings? (wicked-er)
JH 2: Aw, Shucks (blushes)

[I now feel the need to butt in, if only to avail their services.]

M: Can you get me an authorised biography of Che Guevara? Second-hand, please.
JH 1: (Continues talking to JH 2) So how often do you change boyfriends?
M: Er, Excuse me.
JH 1: (finally turns to me and gives me a Are-you-kidding me?? look) Who you said?

[A few people have this outrageous habit of replying in English, no matter how bad or broken, even when spoken to in chaste Kannada. She is one of them.]

M: Che Guevara. Cchay Gyooo-vaara. (I suitably Indianise the enunciation to help matters a bit.)
JH 2: Ah. That book can be found on the ground floor. Motorbike book.
M: That would be 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. That's a new book, so I can't possibly get a second-hand edition, right?
JH 1: (With a look of celebration) Right.
M: Ok, I'm looking for his biography.
JH 1: (to JH 2, in the manner of certain speech-recognition software) Bayograpy. Does that mean first floor?
JH 2: Yes, Bayograppy on first floor. Go up, take a right to the last rack and ask the girl there for help (washes off hands summarily in a bureaucratic fashion).

I'm frustrated now. I can't possibly tolerate another of these destitute monkeys. I mean, rehabilitation of unemployed women is good for society and all that, but there surely are better avenues, like waiting tables or operating sewing machines at garment-export units. Bah. I slowly walk up to the Indian Writing section and search for Kiran Nagarkar's Ravan and Eddie , a book that's eluded me for the past year. I pull up a chair and decide that I'm putting up a fair fight this time; I'm going to find myself the book even if it takes sifting through all of the three huge racks. Half an hour passes; I'm still unsuccessful. Suddenly, I catch a glimpse of a very familiar name in a remote corner of the bottom-most rack. I triumphantly pull out Amit Chaudhuri's A New World and stifle a loud celebratory war-cry. With this, my Chaudhuri catalog is complete. They've been foolish enough to price it at a hundred bucks, which is exactly the amount of money in my wallet. Guess the parking attendant will take some convincing as to how I can't pay him his two bucks now, but that's okay. Hyuk.

I happily saunter over to Premier next to experience the unmatched feeling of buying books for free, courtesy the KQA. Four hundred smackeroos worth.

Peace Da Machi.


Recent Books/Movies/Plays/Gang Rapes/Custodial Deaths:

* Chinua Achebe-Things Fall Apart
* William Dalrymple-City of Djinns
* Amit Chaudhuri-A Strange and Sublime address and other stories
* Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason-The Rule of Four
* Christopher Nolan-Batman Begins (At PVR)
* Unknown Criminal-Mr and Mrs. Smith
* Girish Karnad-A Heap of Broken Images (At Ranga Shankara)

New Acquisitions from the Blossoms-Premier Expedition:

* Julian Barnes- Cross Channel
* Amit Chaudhuri- A New World
* Amitav Ghosh- The Glass Palace

June 5
Written at The Marigold, Gangtok

5:10 AM

There she is: Kanchendzhonga, her golden summit uncrowned and still obscured by clouds, towering above her neighbours, making them look like puny hills. She weaves her own spellbinding magic, a magic so powerful that it makes me immobile and rooted where I stand. I insult her by gazing at her through the cheap binoculars I've hastily borrowed from the Bengali kid from the family that stays next door. It's the best I can do; and I keep on staring until the weather gods decide to end the vision by dispatching their favorite handymen: thick, dark clouds that serve as a poignant reminder as to how fickle life in the mountains can be. Sigh. I have a long day ahead.

Later.

It's eight in the morning and our driver still hasn't shown up. A short walk to the travel agent follows, who informs us that he's on the lookout for the other passengers who will share our Jeep. Uh Huh. Our fellow travelers arrive soon; horror of horrors, a Punjabi family that inexplicably converses in Bangla and a Bihari newlywed couple who're all over each other. I quickly make for the front seat and wait apprehensively for the driver to start.

The journey begins well; I ransack the driver's dashboard compartment and fish out some Nepali folk music that's actually very pleasant. My fellow NITKians nod in approval; this is some good music. The Bihari doesn't think so, and murmurs noises of dissent to Seal, trying unsuccessfully to find a fellow comrade-at-arms. After fifteen minutes, the Bihari in him cannot bear it any longer and he surreptitiously passes on a tape across the car. It changes many hands across the Punjabi family and finally lands up with me. I turn the tape over and almost pass out: In bold, red letters printed across the cover, I see a semi-naked Priyanka Chopra and the titles blaring out Aitraaz.I quietly ease the tape and bury it beneath the others presumably waiting in line to be played.

The Bihari will have none of it. 'Kyon, play karo na, yeh Nepali mujik ko hum log kaise sun sakte hain?' I panic. Though I'm warmly dressed, I've sadly forgotten to pack a few wads of cotton. The threat of listening to Aitraaz looms nearer, until I realize there's no escape. I reluctantly slide it into the deck and experience the most horrific aural assault in the past few years. When we stop for our first break at this village called Rongli, I stagger out, nauseated and sick, after having shaken my head every which way to avoid the sudden shrieks and the weird 'Ooh Aah, Let me Touch you Baby', which puzzlingly appeared thrice in a male, female and the now obligatory remix version. The roads weren't that great either; I'm on the hunt for a barf bag. Seal experiences a brainwave and comes back laden with a pile of Laungs . Apparently, constantly munching on them relieves one of altitude sickness. Thank God for home remedies. Break over, I occupy the back seat only to realize that there isn't enough legroom for someone half my size, making me huddle in a weird Houdini-like contortionist's pose. If this isn't enough, the Punjabi passes on a tape to the driver who plays it without any second thoughts. Crash!Boom!Bang!. The bone-jarring intro to 'Dhoom Machale' shocks my brain out of its skull. I steel myself for a testy journey.

Th four-wheel drive eats up the many hairpins and blind turns without any semblance of fuss; our Nepali driver is amazingly competent and never seems to use the brake, preferring to stick to solely the accelerator to speed up or slow down. While we engineers marvel at his dexterity, the Punjabi starts shitting bricks for no reason at all. Holding the jeep's side hand-grips like a kid that clutches stubbornly onto its Mother's Pallu, he starts muttering incoherently about things like 'danger' and our collective precious lives. His wife is visibly red-faced and even his kids cringe in embarassment. Turns out Pappa isn't such a hero after all. Our man is not bothered; for the remainder of the trip, he's in his own world, mumbling 'Jai Mata Di' aloud every few seconds.

Meanwhile, 'Dhoom' having been duly endured and packed, I settle down to enjoy my drive. The deciduous trees of the lower heights have slowly given way to the conifers, which envelope the steep slopes in waves. Soon, the conifer line dies down and is replaced by hardy shrubbery and rocky outcrops, a tell-tale sign of rapidly-increasing altitude. We are passing through one of India's most spectacular and other-worldly landscapes, comparable in its barren splendor to only the Greater Himalayas in Ladakh and Kashmir. An hour later, having passed by the camps of many of the army's elite mountain brigades and the very unique 'Babaji ka Mandir', we reach Lake Tsomgo (pronounced Tchongu), at an altitude of 13,500 feet.

Tsomgo introduces one to a newer sense of scale. I'm made to feel bitingly aware of how puny I actually am, as I stand dwarfed, cradled on all four sides by towering peaks that are made to look even larger by their reflections in the crystal clear waters of this remote mountain lake. The wind suddenly starts to howl out of nowhere, speaking incomprehensible nothings in sibilant whispers. We zip up our jackets right to the top and pull on monkey caps and start tottering all around the place in the bitter cold. I stroll about to a Tibetan shop selling artifacts and curios and buy myself a serene image of the Maitreya Buddha, an almost totemic symbol of Tibetan culture, making a mental note to hang it near my table when I'd move into my hostel room at the end of the month.

We then chance upon a snowbank that seems to have been fashioned into a neat slide after being trod upon throughout the afternoon by the endless streams of the Bengali Undivided Family. At Last. We play in the snow like frenzied schoolkids seeing something new for the first time ever (which is erm...actually true) and make a huge ruckus pelting each other with snowballs before our driver beckons to us. After gazing long and hard at the lake and the surroundings and unsuccessfully searching for The Truth, rumored by many to be floating around here and there in the mountains, waiting to be discovered by idle young men, we are ready to hit the road again.

Our return journey is amazing; I guess most return journeys are, what with that sense of achievement safely ensconced in your heart and a feeling of relief and satisfaction at a journey almost sucessfully completed. We are serenaded into the Sikkimese sunset by a cassette containing Nepali Rock Ballads that our driver pulls out of nowhere. I'm really impressed; the tape contains some superb hooks, chord progressions and melodies, and every song is punctuated and underlined in the middle by an excellent and skilled guitar solo. The four of us start singing along heartily with the chorus, unmindful of the withering glances our fellow passengers shoot at us.
After all, two can play the Antakshari game. *wicked grin*