I'm here at TGIF, Bangalore with three colleagues whose connect with me has made them friends. I'm in the place called hip and cool, and as i enter here for the second time (the first was over a month ago) I decide its overhyped. But then most places in this city are. Still, it wins over most other so-called metros.

And so we sit, on those US style seats, so they say. Feels like any other chair. There are expatriate men and women, the gorgeous beauties sitting to the right among the two rows of seats, the wannabe beauty queens straight out of bunking classes and looking around for fun, flirting with their eyes, the middle aged ones - don't know who named them that, for are they gonna be presumed dead at 60 or 70? and here comes the waiter, hat on his head, dressed as a cowboy, but pity there's no horse for them to ride - they may well do with mares. And then the girls with straight-out-of gym looking escorts, or rather boyfriends, who sit with obsequious looks while their partner flirts and sends surreptitious looks to the hunk sitting across the bar. The college girls have their companions too - thin as rods, with jeans size 20 slipping off their waists and greased hair, long or pulled back for that impression, jerky at every reaction and desperate to please. And there are those middle agers - just nostalgic about the time they could flit in and out as they liked without having to ward off calls from bosses and family - demands that bog them down. There are some couples too, trying to understand, to look deeper, through words and eyes.

But are all are here to enjoy or to escape. More of the latter is seems going by the lack of families. Why isn't this a family place - coz it's not for kids or parents or spouses. It's to leave them back in time and enjoy with other people. Bored of nagging bosses, bragging colleagues, that college coach or teacher immortalised in Pink Floyd's "We dont need no education", that behaviour they have to put on at office and before their wives, that nature they have to fake.....

And then there are we. Four people, dressed casually, here to just enjoy, and ya also to escape. The AC is on at a temperature that would freeze the place if empty of its food-devouring and booze guzzling customers - now its chilling, and we look forward to getting our screwdrivers, and iced teas and beers. Its beating the cold, not the heat. We do the latter every day at work. We like music that makes sense, which has lyrics that fly u to the place it was written for, that we can connect to. We read books that provoke, which we can't devour like we do the steak but ruminate. We like movies that have some direction and script, not the midsummer madness that is dished out to unsuspecting, and the uninitiated general audience. We don't like to judge - atleast we try not to. We play around with conventional thinking - and levitate our imagination. We abhor blind acceptance of anything, and we dare to question the basis of reason.

Our drinks arrive. So will the food, in sometime. We like it devoid of religion, of culture or creed. We like to have fun. And our definition might be different from convention - if there is any, and we don't care a dime's worth. Two are tipsy, one of them is plainly acting just for the heck of it.

And so we eat, and we drink. And we talk about us, the degradation of politics, of the 'cool' culture and the ridiculous things it makes its followers do, the sanctimonous show all around, music, food, movies......and wonder how a guy who was in London for a year could accept its accent to end up with something thats truly a hotchpotch. We see other people around and we do comment. We like expressing opinions, but not judge. There's a difference, and we realise it.

I see my friends now as i drink, each one a character, but not unique - there are many of them out there, for people hardly remain true to themselves, subconsciously or otherwise adhering to some code, some thought which morphs some part of them into robots. I look around through the blue screen of smoke, through to the one sitting diagonally. Always in a full sleeved shirt and a clipped accent that belongs to neither India nor the land of the Queen (this is the one-year-in Britain). He acts formal, and is hanging like a spider, not sure what to do, how to be, coz his thinking actions are locked, frozen into a reverie dictated by convention.

Time for the food. It's a treat to the senses. Laughter all around, some are shouting to be heard over the inexplicable disco number, a clear crash from the earlier notes, now perhaps being belted out by some tipsy-as-liquid DJ. The cigarette smoke swirls, and curls and disappears. I feel light without levitating. I feel good.

We live among hypocrites and paradoxes. And yet you can be what you want to be, unsullied by custom, rituals, trends, religion or culture. You just have to desire to choose what you are, and what you want to accept. Atleast when you are sombre. Just be.

This is what really happened, a remaking of the past, a reconstruction of the things that live on within us as they might have happened once upon a time. suppose someone says, whar really happened. Then say that once there were people who built cities in the valley of the Indus, large teeming cities with broad straight streets intersecting at ninety degrees, like a well-made grid. There are certain things that have appeared out of the drifting sands to speak cryptically about these people. There is a statue of a sophisticated gentleman with contemplating inward-looking eyes. There is a figurine of a dancing girl, hips carelessly and confidently thrown forward, hand on waist, ready to break impulsively into movement. There are thousands of lines of beautiful indecipherable writings on clay seals; on one of these seals Pashupati sits in meditation, the supreme yogi, the Lord of the animals, the wild king of the forest who holds the universe together with his dance. There is a figure of a bull, dewlapped and powerful, repeated endlessly on these seals. There are toys, the thousands of clay animals and carts like the ones we see on country roads today. There are great baths now empty; the wind shifts dust endlessly from the desert.

Where did this richness go? Is it true that a tribe riding chariots appeared out of the western passes, filled with the uncouth energy of the steppes, worshipping a rain-god soon to be called Destroyer of cities? Were there massacres and raids and despair? Or did the river change course and leave the long streets empty and silent? Or did the cities just grow old, very very old, and collapse in on themselves like a stand of dying trees? Nobody knows, but we do know that Shiva still meditates endlessly among the awestruck animals, that the legends of the chariot-riding Aryans speak of old dark-skinned Asuras who impared knowledge of secret sciences to chosen students, that brave adventurers fell in love with the daughters of their enemies, the ones from before, the ones who worshipped old gods, that the sounds of the languages of the south seem to fit the strokes of that indecipherable writing, that Urvashi and Menaka, and other apsaras of Indra’s heaven dance in ancient rhythms, hands curving in old, old gestures that hold oceans of meaning, that bulls stride pulsating with strength across landscapes imagined and invented eons later, that thousands bathe and then sit in meditation every morning in Bombay and Calcutta and Madras and Delhi, calmly observing their breath, gathering energy.
What really happened? Suppose somebody says, what really happened? Say that Kala walks among us, in all our cities and villages and fields, awaiting his chance, patient, unnoticed and always triumphant; when he wins finally, only names are lost, only names drift away, dry and hollow, to break up and mingle with sand, but something else is left that lives, that meditates and dances and walks. Say that the wheel turns. But say that there are things that even Kala cannot touch.

The Aryans moved west and south, clearing forests for their cattle, and Indra the thunder-god, became Indra the Destroyer of Cities. But, though cities are often destroyed, sometimes they do not vanish, sometimes they become invisible and invade the heards and minds of the destroyers, who then live forever changed.

So the newcomers and the old ones collided and metamorphosed into a thing wholly new and unutterably old, fell into new orbits around new centres of gravity. In this anomie, the ones newly in power quickly created a perception that promised order, flung at the world that oldest and most fundamental of definitive statements: I and you, us and them, what I am and what I am not, white and black. More importantly, there was another perception or rather another experience of some kind of truth, being born in lonely forest meditations, in the mathematical and musical rhythms of great sacrifices, or perhaps in the heightened awareness of the hunt, this: the universe is one, there is a unity that is the boundless mother of this world and not this, and this great harmony, this oneness, this Brahman, burst into being as differentiation, is visible only by becoming non-unity, so that – are you ready? Here it comes – unity is diversity, diversity is unity. And this diversity, every part of it, is sacred, because it is one-the sky and the fields, the summer and the rains, life is feeding on life, the birds and the animals, each a part of some web: ‘everything is the eater and the eaten.’

So, it seemed, people must be different, and a story was told: when Purusha, the primeval human. Was dismembered in a great sacrifice; from his head were born the Brahmins, the scholars; from his arms, the kshatriyas, the warriors; from his thighs, the vaishyas, the farmers; from his feet, the sudras, the labourers; and each had a different role in Leela, the great cosmic play, afrom each, it might be said, according to his ability and to each, atleast in principle, according to his need, a convinient way for the uppers to make use of the lowers.

So the Brahmins made sacrifices and wrote hymns and the kshatriyas fought wars, and the vaishyas and the sudras went about their tilling and laboring. Huge herds were seen in the fields, and cities of wood were built, shining cities with gardens and lovers and good houses. The years passed, then centuries, and the words of the ancient seers, those discoveries made in solitude were compiled in the Vedas in the shape of formulae, of verse that reveals little to the uninitiated but nevertheless stirs the heart, because of the power of the goddess Vac-speech-is immeasurable; it was she who brought forth both the seen and the unseen from potentiality; the external from the immanent. The Vedas show little, but tell much, and should always be taken with a nice pinch of salt.

This day in the train has been like a blur, as I landed in Delhi from a flight from Chennai, a city that had been my home for the last ten months or so, and which I have left for the time being to set up base in Bangalore, after a hiatus at my home in Varanasi. That stay could have been longer, but for my belief that boredom would set within a few days. There was little to do, and it is going to be very hot in the day and evenings. I would miss the serene and calming breeze of Chennai that was always cool, even when the sun baked the tar on the roads and turned mud into dust. The climate otherwise was horrible, with the heat seeping into your skin and making you feel like a heated copper wire.

As I lay down on my hotel bed today, my eyes refused to close. Images of people at ACJ, the good times I had spent with them, came back to haunt me, to torment me with the pain of solitude. It’s a realization that takes time and is felt, like a stab in the chest, once u are alone. Images of the people come floating to my mind and I am unable to get rid of them. Not that I want to – I liked certain people a lot, for some the feelings were more than just friendship, which does not imply any romantic implications, but can be said to be sort of deep friends. Some adjectives need to be found, some words need to discovered to truly describe what I feel now. Its not exactly sadness, its not just nostalgia, it is something else. It is something that rakes your brain. It torments, but its sweet. As Wet Wet Wet said, if I never see u again, it will hurt so sweetly. It really does – this apparent dichotomy.

The train rumbles on, like a drunk man trudging to his destination. The AC First coupe has three other people other than me, and they are happily talking about some shopping they are going to do in Allahabad. They are going to some place exciting, they are rich, and two of them seem to be in love. For them this is a new journey, something to look forward to. At the outset when I see them, I want to change my coupe, as I thought that the empty berth in the next coupe would be more conducive company for my solitude. But then I think that probably, I am taking myself deeper into myself – leading me to being too full of myself, and less of others, and this would be unintended selfishness.

The rhapsodically chatting voices have been would have been my company in my mind and then the emptiness would settle in chillingly, and I would have found no respite at all. I would have tried to but would have not found a way out. So in the end I think I did the right thing by staying put in this coupe.

The AC gets colder, as the ignorant attendant forgets to reduce the cooling after the initial surge required. I ring the bell for him to arrive. Instead a man carrying dinner comes in and looks quizzically, factoring in the environment, and the four young people who stare at him as if he is a wonder of the world. “aap ne dinner mangwaya tha?” “Nahi”, I replied, realizing he has answered the call of the bell, and assumed that dinner would be the demand made of him. He had come prepared, perhaps expecting a commendation. But dinner was the farthest from my mind, occupied as it was, and I told him to lower the cooling and bring a bottle of mineral water.
The other three were pretty excited about Allahabad. I almost felt like asking them what was going on. The colour of the décor inside the coupe was red, with the seats being an attempt to look sophisticated, and failing at it. The floor was red, as was the ceiling, and the seats too, with flowery designs. It was sort of crazy, and I pity the imagination of the person who designed this. It seems to be a legacy of the décor in Indian palaces, which is either golden or red. The red seemed to echo, to accentuate, the atmosphere of excitement and reverie, which was broken by my sad thoughts, in mindspaces that did not cross each other.

“Gimme that diary,” shrieked one of the girls, jolting me for a second. The two girls were fighting over a diary that obviously contained scandalous information or jottings by one of them. The guy was nonchalantly switching on his laptop, which was also a Compaq. The guy and one of the girls climbed to the upper berth and switched on a potboiler, and all was quiet, like a lull after the storm.

The more beautiful of the girls fell asleep early, saying that they had to get up early the next day. The time was past one, and she appeared justified but for the fact that the attendant would surely come to awaken them to a new day. Anyways, off she went to somnolence and I continued to listen to RHCP and type this blog.

Its morning now and the three of them are panicking. One of the girls can’t find her slippers and Allahabad seems to be around the corner. In their charged minds, they are flinging the bed sheets and blankets everywhere, and finally to relief, both theirs and mine, they manage to find the little bastard in a corner below the her lower berth.

They depart, leaving a whiff of perfume tinged with elements of Adam and Eve, and in walks a pot bellied, five and a half footer, with a drooping moustache and the uniform of a TT. “hello, I am the chief ticket inspector here.” I take the offered hand, and he continues, “Arre, idhar to sab khali ho jata hai, aap hi reh gaye hain. Kahan jana hai?”

“Banaras”

“Achi jagah hai,” he says with the air of a judge pronouncing a verdict.

I make no reply. “aap kya karte hain?” he asks while happily stretching his legs on the berth which he treated as his bed at home.

“patrakar hoon”

“arre kahan? Aap log bahut acha kaam kar rahe hain – yeh sab corruption ko aap hi khatam kar sakte hain,” he said, morphing my fraternity from journalists to policemen and the judiciary, both put together.

“yeah right,” I said, not particularly eager to continue the conversation.

“to kahan hain aap?” he persisted, now lying sideways with the blanket on top of him. He kept picking his ears and teeth.

“Reuters – ek news agency hai”

“news centre? Bahut achha!” he exclaimed. He obviously heard it wrong and has a high opinion of news centres whatever they might be.

“kafi garmi hai bahar,” he said letting out a sigh of relief for the AC, its chill starting to bite. He was however very happy with it. “acha mujhe sona hai, thodi der ke liye break,” he said with a contended smile, smug under the covers. “bilkul,” I said, hoping to finally getting rid of his barrage of comments and questions.

“banaras mein garmi kaisi hai?”

I felt like asking him to shut up. “Abhi to wahin jana hai. Pata chal jayega,” I said. this seemed to have a chastening effect on him and he said “Acha phir milte hain.” I had no desire for that, and pored into my book.

As the coolie took out luggage from the coupe, and i was about to close the door, the TT woke up with a start, and asked "are Banaras aa gaya kya??"

"Haan", i said in the affirmative.

"are yahin to utarna hai mujhe bhai" and he hastily threw away the covers, managed a successful search for his specs by rummaging through the rubble of blankets, and mineral water bottles, and got up, taking a long strech, like a tired old dog. Before he could continue, I was out of the cabin.

The night’s sleep was comfortable, and the wide berths are the only advantage that AC 1st has over its less fancied compatriots like the 2 and 3 tiers. I didn’t feel like getting up yet and the book was stirring in its portrayal of the underworld and the multiple narratives, all of which kept me glued for sometime. I then fell asleep I don’t know when. I dreamt of a man running amok amidst a horde of policemen at his heels, a woman throwing a tantrum at the platform, me sitting in the Delhi airport in January…apparently unconnected events jostling for space in my mind.

I reach home, sweet home finally where my mother is the sole inhabitant for the time being as my Dad and brother are both out of town. The house seems empty, the various rooms’ walls apparently leaping at me, and seeking to devour me of my loneliness. I miss my friends at ACJ, and also the local guys, who are all out working their asses off in some of the Indian multinationals. Its time to catch up with some sleep, and get used to life without ACJ.

I must be fair here – the last blog written eons back has transgressed, as it did not bring forth the other side of the coin. So here it is, sans any embellishments, spiced up with tales of the people who made it what it is.

In this hallowed building we stood, unsure of our future, but hopeful that it would be better than most Indians have to suffer – we hope to be suitably employed, as end products of a transition that transcended a cacophony of boundaries of class, sex and nationality, the dissonance getting dissolved in the acceptance of the self by the other, and that of the other by the self.

That was how we started out – with a hope and a feeling of trepidation as well for those who left secure, smug jobs and launched themselves into what could be a cyclone, careening into multiple directions unsure and unconfident, or a river, smoothly gliding to the objective, which was nebulously defined in our minds.

It would be safe to say that we ended up somewhere in between. We went through a whirlpool, rapids and quiet scenic wanderings to reach where we are today. Classes in the morning was like bombardment of ideas and facts, some which we chose to accept and reject, and some which we lost, as for example the Radhakrishnan class, which bored me to hell and at the same time sparked off a protest against incomprehension. It managed to ignite a curiosity of philosophy which is not undimmed.

Then there were the afternoon classes, as we struggled to control our eyelids from snapping shut, it was a race against time as the longer the class, the greater the chance of us fading blissfully into somnolence, irrespective of the fact that the teacher would be watching. We did get caught – I know about myself and two other equally distinguished comrades – who slept in the grammer class after a losing battle between our desire to stay awake and the drooping eyelids, determined to close.

Comrades – this term might have struck you like a puff of hot air in the face – this campus resonated with the speeches of forgotten communists and neo-socialists, with illogical stirrings and romantic visions, but enough of that - I have written about that in the last note. An ubiquitous presence of conspiracy fuels their thinking and they do appear to be paranoid. But how much were we affected, how much did we internalize? I can’t answer that, but for me, it was reckless and brazen attempt at indoctrination, but still we managed to stay sane, and reek of logic and reality, than romantic visions achieved through subjugation of entire populations.

The central question of course, is whether we emerged as better writers. Now again there is an ambiguity, a tug of war between people who think writing is what reporters do, and those who value the pristine joy of putting imagination into words, of creating structures according to will, of putting life into swathes of ink. This place valued the latter, and rightly so, as it is a talent to write well. Writing is a science as well, of course, which allows the mediocre to rise above himself, to take himself to a different level of proficiency, without any particular talent, armed only with an abiding interest in writing. But for the talented, it might not always be fun – it might appear too easy, and abridged of challenges, unless the right stimulus is provided. I must say that here, it was a balance – the talented had their day as did hardworking people who improved remarkably, their past no longer a shadow on their present. This was the main achievement of this place. It gave space to the talented, maybe not enough, but close to sufficient, and to the rest who were powered more by their will than any inborn fecundity. The bunch here contained eclectic flavours, like an orchard in full bloom, it was there for all to see.

Grammar was a hot topic. We first were bored before we entered the class, and then we realized that we don’t know enough. We thought we were all good writers, and then we saw there was some distance to cover, some potholes to transcend. We did that, through the first and the second terms, through various assignments. Not each of them was worthy of exercising minds, or rake our idea producing region of the brain, but some were, and those gave me joy, and a sense of achievement.

I learnt equally from my classmates as from the faculty. From a collection that was kaleidoscopic with exotic elements thrown in here and there, the inputs were staggering. Finally did we change, and so in what ways, in our thinking or our actions, or processes...what? That is something that ACJians can answer themselves.

It is another day in the library whose books stare at me from tall shelves, as if seeking to devour me. Yet another stream of commie ideals have been bombarded on us sitting ducks like a kamikaze attack. We are ducks to the establishment here, and sit unwillingly, bound by the autocratic regime that seeks to create brain washed clones of stalin or lenin or whoever -lin was a commie. I am appalled at the brazen attempts at indoctrination, which would make proud none else than Stalin himself.

Throughout my stay here, the common unwavering thread stretching through all the lectures has been the ideology of the guest speakers.All leftists, the likes of whom have long gone by changing stance to the centre or right or n- numbers of the hyphenated types, for example, center-right and all of that. But here is the torch of anti-establishment and anti-reforms still burning bright among the so-called intellectuals, who cannot comprehend that leftists are a spent force all over the world, except in Latin America which botched up on capitalist policies. These propagators of leftist ideals are making unacceptably forceful attempts on us to toe the line. They want to squeeze out freedom of thought,like a python's grasp of its prey, and waiting for us to say "I acede". That is their sign of victory. Unfortunately for them, they have miserably failed to take us remotely close to that desperate existence.

To me, journalism represents freedom in its pristine form. Unliike usual 8-8 jobs which mutate human beings into insipid, unthinking robots showing blind obsequiousness for its master, journalism not just allows but expects us to think freely. I can study and interpret the world around me based on my own observations and inclinations. I am of course expected to be tolerant and accepting of the various realities that can exist of the same situation, so brilliantly depicted in Kurosawa's Roshomon, and report truth as seen by us and them , which may well be at loggerheads with my own interpretation of the same. There is no room for imposition of my views on others, through forced indoctrination.

The marking system, so nakedly displayed on all notice boards, clearly depict the archaic mindset of the commies, yet again, which is intrinsically oppossed to rational thinking. There is a sort of minimum that everybody gets irrespective of whether he was blissfully sleeping in his flat when the class was on. Where the importance of good writing is haphazardly and emphasised, almost splattered, across lectures only to be given a short shift while marking. You get recognised for conning material. It is also a reward for obsequiousness, which is an affront to any theory of rationality. As someone wrote on the marksheets, we are like guinea pigs in a lab called ACJ, which is among the last vestiges left of communist ideals, and caught in a cage of insidious propaganda through all directions. The distribution of the Che Guevara calendar was a vindication of that.