Yours Whimsically – Part 14: All for an experience

If anybody asks me about my outlook towards life (not that anybody would care, though), I say it is a constant search for new experiences. It is akin to catching a butterfly. You see it and approach closer to grab it. Ultimately, all you are left with is a smear of the color, until you wash it off. Spiritual people try gaining new experiences, new highs by meditation; some even try weed and other hallucinogens. Normal men and women try different things – art, music, books, travel; some even try weed and other hallucinogens.

Since I have decided not to continue in academia and/or research, a certificate from participating in a scientific conference does little to better my profile, or so I believe. However, my search for new experiences (and some peer pressure) resulted in my friend and I travelling all the way to Gujarat. This gave me a chance to see vikas as well and I jumped in.

Let’s get the boring bit out of the way. The conference was a good learning experience. I had never attended one before, apart from those which happen in our institute where the main incentive is food. I felt I was able to appreciate this conference, on ecology, better. There were a few eminent speakers. Food was good too, except that a south Indian like me found it blasphemous to eat sweet sambar! However, a trip to the Lakshmi Vilas Palace, where parts of Grand Masti were filmed, remained unfulfilled on the wish list.

Events took an interesting turn towards the end when we decided to return by train. Given that the journey was over thirty hours, we made a sensible enough decision of booking 3AC tickets, for which we were waitlisted. Having received no confirmation even on the day previous to the journey, we tried our luck booking ‘Tatkal’ tickets. And we failed. On the day of the journey, we tried again for tickets in the ‘Sleeper’ class for a train which was, technically, the next day. Only, we were waitlisted – even on Tatkal bookings. It was in this situation that we decided to tour Champaner, where Lagaan was shot. (The roads are good, I must say.) All through the journey, we were anxiously checking the app to see if either of the bookings – 3AC and Sleeper – was confirmed.

Luck seemed to be on our side, with us climbing ranks in the waiting list. Not for long. We ran out of luck just when our names were listed 1 and 2 on the 3AC waiting list. The sleeper was hopeless as well, with us listed near 20. I wondered if we had woken up on the right side of the bed that day.

It was a leap of faith that evening when we decided to check-out of the hotel. The train stopped for less than 10 minutes at the station. We would get atleast one seat in the AC coach, surely? If not, we would ‘plead’ with the TTE to make some arrangement. We could play the 'helpless student' card, having a thirty-plus hour journey on the cards. Sadly, none of it worked. However, the TTE suggested that we could board the sleeper coach, provided we paid a penalty. Having very less time to weigh our decision, we emptied our wallets and boarded the train, with two pieces of luggage each. 

Aboard the sleeper coach, for the first time in recent memory, I was at the receiving end of judgmental looks! ‘Look at these people. How brazenly they step into the coach with such luggage even when they have no tickets. There is so much wrong with this generation’ those looks said. Some even went to the extent of saying it aloud. People were reluctant to even allow us space for the heavy luggage, while we decided to spend the journey standing by the toilets. I almost lost faith in humanity!

The toilets stank, their stench wafting into our faces everytime one of the passengers opened the door. The shoulders ached from the weight of the bags. If this was the condition at the beginning of the journey, what would our plight be at the end of thirty-odd hours? Besides, there was little or no money left with either of us. Could we sustain ourselves? Would we sleep in turns? Would we be able to sleep at all? Panic seemed to be overtaking the thought process by the minute. Yet, there was a part of the brain which kept happily recording these events, knowing it would make a story worth sharing. 

Forty-five minutes into this journey, I already felt my mental resources being sapped. It seemed less of a train journey and more like a Bigg Boss task. That was when luck embraced us. A message on my friend’s phone said our ‘Tatkal’ tickets were confirmed. The next station was ten minutes away. We decided to get down at the station and wait to board the train when it passed through. A messenger from above (I saw a halo around his head) in the form of a TTE advised us to return to the station from where we had booked our journey, to prevent losing our seats. We received a jolt when the ATM at the station was out of cash. After rummaging through the bag, my friend found just enough money to buy us return tickets.

When we finally boarded our train back to college, there was nobody to look down upon us. More so because we had both upper berths and most of the other passengers were fast asleep! We walked with pride - and relief - to claim what was rightfully ours. It was now our turn to judge people who came in as passengers on an unreserved ticket. The toilets were bad here too, though we didn’t have to face the brunt every other minute. I spent the greater part of the journey sleeping, thinking of how to put this story across.

Just when the story seemed to be heading towards a happy ending, our train, in all likelihood, ran over a person on the track. There’s nothing to confirm this story apart from circumstantial screams from onlookers and the fact that my friend saw something very close to the track, from the window.

It is not my intention to end this piece on such a shocking note. However, that’s how this ‘search for experience’ ended.

P.S: I don’t seem to run out of adventures. Just when life was getting back to normalcy, there’s a rat in the room. I tried playing Bond to drive it away from wherever it’s hiding. I don’t know if I’ve been successful. 

Yours Whimsically - Part 13: An exercise in character building

Woah! Have I started writing about personality development? Not at all. I detest those self-help books: “How to make friends and influence people”, “7 Habits of highly effective people”, “The Secret” and the like. Quite a few of those are best-sellers, no doubt. You see them everywhere – from the roadside second-hand bookstore to the overpriced bookshop at airports. If you cannot teach yourself to be successful, no other book can. At least, that’s what I believe. I will not sermonize on character building. What do I know of it? So, do not let the title mislead you.

I belong to a Kannada-speaking Brahmin family from Bengaluru. No. I do not speak English in the exaggerated, stereotypical ‘Madrasi’ accent portrayed in Bollywood movies. However, there are other aspects of the South Indian stereotype I adhere to: I relish my sambar/rasam – rice and curd – rice meals. Because I am from Karnataka (“Kaveri is ours!”), I relish ragi mudde as well. I savor my filter coffee. Call me elitist for all I care, I appreciate Carnatic classical music. I delight in reading The Hindu and – very pertinent to this article – I enjoy watching Test cricket.

Among the people I closely interact, I have seen only a few who take delight in watching a Test match. ‘Who plays and who watches a game spread over five days when you have ODIs and T20s?’ they ask. Off-late, specially India have been playing a lot of cricket and all of it in the subcontinent. So, the result was known even before the match started. An Indian loss was an upset. That wasn’t good advertisement for the five-day game, I agree. However, now that India are travelling to South Africa, the game is bound to be engrossing. So, why wouldn’t one watch? At least for the next one-and-a-half to two years, the Indian cricket calendar looks interesting with a lot of ‘away’ series, though the result might not be to the liking of a die-hard Indian supporter.

I strongly feel we need to build up a case for Test cricket. The longer version of the game fails to be merely between bat and ball. It is played more on the minds of the players than on the greens. There is immense planning involved in setting up a batsman for a dismissal, say by placing a short-leg and constantly bouncing him for a few deliveries before rapping him on the pads or yorking him. You continue to persist in a certain line of attack until you get a dismissal. You foil the batsman’s game plan by standing up to the stumps and curtail his movement, frustrating him. There is a sense of beauty in Ravi Ashwin’s off-spinners to the left handers, with a couple of slips and a silly mid-off in position, before he unleashes a carrom ball. While ODIs and T20s are heavily skewed in favor of batsmen and brute force (with judicious amounts of skill), I find Tests more evenly balanced. It relies much more on skill than the other two. 

I look at Test cricket as an exercise in character building, offering invaluable life lessons. You cannot win a Test by having just one proverbial good day in office. It is the cumulative effort over five days which ultimately bears fruit. That said, the match can swing from one team to the other over sessions. You cannot win the war by disregarding the battles, can you? More importantly, there is always a chance of reviving your fortunes, only if you believe in yourself. The 2001 Eden Gardens Test between India and Australia is perhaps the greatest example of this. More importantly, that five full days of cricket can end in a draw is itself an illustration of the fact that our actions do not always lead to tangible results. Isn’t this in line with the philosophy of the Gita where Krishna asks Arjuna to do his work, irrespective of what the result is going to be?

A player like Dravid had immense mental reserves to draw from while he batted session after session, facing hostile bowling attacks, earning him the sobriquet ‘The Wall’. Not only do you need to concentrate on every delivery, you also need to push yourself physically in not-always-friendly conditions.  Very often, you bat patiently for that one loose delivery every now and then, tiring out the bowlers, before you gain momentum. It is a real treat to watch a batsman defend himself, putting a price on his wicket against an aggressive opposition. It is a classic case of who blinks first. Though clichéd, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This is a luxury limited overs cricket does not offer.  

In this recently concluded Test against South Africa, there was another character on display by A B de Villiers. An explosive batsman in the shorter formats, A B played a subdued innings, quite unlike himself, waiting for the conditions to get better. In fact, his innings of trying to stonewall the Indian bowling in a valiant attempt to save the test on their last tour of India is still fresh in memory. It is this adaptability and temperament as a player which makes A B indispensable to the team.

Despite so much on offer in five full days of Test cricket, there is clamor to reduce it to four days – for purely commercial and monetary reasons. In that case, a lot of games would end up in draws despite there being a strong possibility of a result. It takes lot more grit and character to bat on a fifth day wicket, saving the Test, than in any four-day game. It is unfortunate that travelling teams are not competitive enough anymore. But then, that doesn’t take away from the charm of a Test match. This series, where the Indian bowlers have risen to the occasion might just be early signs of revival of quality Test cricket (I am being hopeful). There is no need to tweak the format.

In the days of e-mail, WhatsApp and instant gratification on social media, a Test match is like the romantic idea of a hand-written letter. Let Test cricket be. 

Yours Whimsically - Part 12: 2017: A Retrospect

At a loss for ideas, I sit before the laptop thinking of what I should write. ‘This is not new’ I tell myself. I have always oscillated between periods of high output (in terms of quantity, if not always quality!) and writer’s block. The first couple of times I was hit by such a block, I didn’t know how to react. Now, I greet it like an old friend or an uninvited guest. I am happy to meet it because I know it will only do me good at the end of it. I draw comfort from the fact that it won’t stay forever.

This time, however, I decided to try out a different strategy. I would just write. Maybe once I am get rid of all the garbage, all the rust, ideas and words would flow freely. I thought of this as a process similar to the therapy of ‘talking out’. It helps unclutter thoughts, I’ve heard. In fact, sometimes, when I seem to be heading nowhere, I have seen that just writing down my thoughts on a sheet of paper or my journal, as and when they arise helps me organize myself better. I wanted to see if it would help with my writing too. So here I am.

I’ve decided I would write about the year that went by. That should be easiest – not much of a strain on the already-strained creative reserves. 2017 has left me with a lot of experiences, memories. It has given me much food for thought. However, I will write about the one thing that I did over the last one year with utmost sincerity – watching movies. If my count is right, I have watched no less than fifteen movies in the theatres last year, along with quite a few on the laptop, thanks to Amazon Prime.

‘Kehte hai ki agar kisi ko sachche dil se chaho toh puri kayanat usey tumse milane ki koshish main lag jaati hai’.

Into the final year of my college life, I have next-to-nothing in terms of coursework. Looking out for ways to utilize the time available, one fine day, I sat down to look at the Wiki page with the list of Bollywood movies releasing in 2017. I noted down the names of movies I would love to watch – predominantly based on the star cast: If the movie had SRK, Nawaz or Vidya, I had to watch it. Then, there was SLB’s visual treat ‘Padmavati’. Also, Amitabh’s ‘102 Not Out’ seemed interesting from the title. ‘Lipstick Under my Burkha’ seemed bold. Akshay Kumar’s ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’s trailer was funny. It seemed like Bollywood had slated the release of these movies that year because I had a lot of time to spare. What’s more? There is a two-screen cinema hall – no less than a multiplex, in my opinion – very close to our campus, with tickets priced Rs. 80. Mr. Modi’s demonetization had opened the market for mobile wallets and they came up with amazing offers (cashbacks, mainly) to attract users (I am not sure if this is the achche din which was promised, though!). The universe did seem to be conspiring. Dutifully, I stuck the note with the titles on my study table – to serve as a constant reminder of my goals.

The first half of the year, when I still had to deal with coursework, resulted in me watching only three movies. The year began with ‘Raees’. It was double the fun because of SRK and Nawaz. Wisdom, in hindsight, says it was a regrettable decision. In fact, Wisdom had said so in foresight as well! However, low priced tickets didn’t pinch us hard. The other movie in the first half was ‘Begum Jaan’. That didn’t go down well either. The final movie was ‘Baahubali 2’. I don’t regret that, despite the movie being bad, because the essence of that plan was the company than the movie itself. However, I was faced with doubts. Had the universe conspired to foil my plans?

‘Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost’.

In the second half, a few friends and I watched a movie almost every other weekend. It became so regular an affair that we created a WhatsApp group titled, unimaginatively, ‘Movie Club’, where we shared trailers of prospective movies. At one point of time, I almost expected Book My Show to call me up on a Friday to ask if I needed tickets for the movie that weekend!

Funnily, among the seven of us on that group, it has only been me who has been to all movies; others missing out on one or the other, due to some reason. We watched ‘Mom’, ‘Jagga Jasoos’, ‘Bareilly ki Barfi’. We even watched ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’ (and wished he hadn’t) as well as ‘Babumoshai Bandookbaaz’ and ‘Shubh Mangal Savdhan’. We aren’t intolerant. We watch movies of all kinds. Towards the end of the year, ‘Tumhari Sulu’ and ‘Qarib Qarib Singlle’ impressed us, while ‘Newton’ was perhaps the only thought provoking movie (and hence, rightly made the official entry to the Oscars). Sadly, ‘Padmavati’ couldn’t release in 2017. (Now, that’s intolerance for you.)

Into the final semester now, I am yet to sit down to make a similar list of must watch movies. Atleast the line-up for January seems clear – ‘Mukkabaaz’, ‘Padmaavat’ and ‘Padman’.

Back home, I will miss this freedom to watch movies and regret them if required, without feeling the pinch. Perhaps, one of the very few things I will be missing. Or so I would like to convince myself.

P.S: Don’t tell anyone. I watched ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ as well! Shh!