It’s been a long time since I wrote. I haven’t been laying off the drinks; rather the contrary. I’ve been gnawing on some private grief.

Been reading some wildlife stuff – Kenneth Anderson, Jim Corbett. Then I took up Marquez – Autumn of the Patriarch. If you haven’t read Marquez (or Dostoevsky), you haven’t read fiction. There are great books that others have written – lots and lots, but you can’t find two better authors - these two guys are geniuses. They define fiction. I think neither wrote natively in English, but if you haven’t read either, you’ve missed life. Of course, if you don’t read as a habit, you have seen better things than I have!

I’ve been wondering about deodorant, and air-travel, and DVD’s, and corporate salaries – and such stuff that make up the core of modern life. I was also reading about some experiments that seem to indicate that the speed of light may not be as constant as we thought. I read about India looking for scientists – except that salaries of scientists is too low, even in comparison to call center employees. Who’ll wonder about the sun and stars, while someone needs to know her credit balance!

In the line of my work, I’m faced by people who will give up all good work that they’ve done because another guy pays some more. I seem to be faced by an entire generation that lives by the pay cheque.

I used to earn about 3000 rupees a month when I started earning. (At that time a small refrigerator used to cost 8000 rupees – just to give you an idea of the purchasing power of the rupee). And I was only worried whether my algorithm had any corner conditions that I had not foreseen. Today guys join companies at more than 10 times that salary, while fridges cost the same, and they seem to feel that their pay cheque determines their sense of self-respect.

I remember sitting under the benevolent winter sun of Kanpur hearing someone talk about the twist of time-space that accommodates gravity. And I am surprised that graduates that join my company today even acquiesce to be taught C++ - a common programming language.

I see, quite clearly, that I have lost the act. By having become quietly, a citizen of this corporate arena – that trains people to suspend thought, and do as the manual says, in order that the author of the manual notch another corporate achievement; that we all think of how to make the profit number that someone, in a dull state of greed, made up. How small have I become while the sun shines as strongly as it used to, and the moon is as smooth. It’s just that I’m too used to AC and nights are reserved for phosphorescent monitors.

I think Pink Floyd were right… we saw the truth when young, and now we deceive ourselves with delusions, born of the coupling between greed and MBAs.

all this talk of iit's and stuff makes me nervous. will i die without having taken my share of it's everlasting charm? was it particularly special to have spent time at an iit, rather than anywhere else in the world. for god's sake, there are books being written about iit's - one of the my office-mates wanted to know if i write as well.

it's all so peculiar. i remember my stay at iit very well. there are flashes of memory, like a photo album, which i can browse through. i remember counselling, when i saw a couple walking the summer flower laden paths of IIT/K, holding hands. i had never seen a couple holding hands in public. i was with my father, and i was embarrased for his sake. i also remember the intensity of heat in kanpur; my fascination with heat, which i wrote of in some other entry, probably dates from those days.

i remember reaching kanpur - a raw teenager - and being ragged to tears almost every day. i remember hiding in the sports grounds. i have not known deeper misery than i experienced in those days. there was a sunday afternoon i remember measuring the length of my hostel wing with a 25 paise coin. i remember that coin being kicked out of my tired hands half way through the wing - deliberately - and starting again. i remember feeling that this must have been how jews must have felt when they'd just been carted over to the concentration camps.

i remember getting through ragging, and receiving a late night march from residents of hall2 with buckets of water. i remember my seniors encouraging me to feel enthusiastic about this, and i remember feeling entirely bored with the proceedings.

i remember a lot. i won't tell you all - for fear that i'll lose my potential book royalty to my gentle reader. but really because i don't think my life at iit was really anything special. i would have had as much fun, if i'd studied at XXX Engg College. fun is a function of will.

i also remember spending drunken evenings with folks who passed out of other colleges, and whose faces, redolent with memories, were more evocative than any i know. it's clear that these iitan's are just setting themselves up for royalties! believe me...

i was in Delhi recently. went with my folks and returned alone. lonely travel pushes the writer's pen, or keyboard, if you will.

i went by train. 2-tier AC. it was uneventful and boring. somehow train travel is incomplete if you travel in an AC coach. it has this dessicated feel. you see India passing by through tinted windows. sometimes if you look really hard, you can convince yourself you're really seeing a video stream, and the train never moved.

on the way back i took a flight. the usual exercise in self-induced silence. i wonder which is more boring - AC trains or flights. they both have their points.

Delhi was pretty. i'm always amazed by the trees that line the roads. and the flowers you sometimes see on the narrow strips between the main road and the service lanes.

Delhi was pretty and ugly. if you go over the flyovers, you see black plastics tanks arrayed over the roofs of pale yellow blockish buildings, going on for ever. but Delhi has something going for it. it's the kind of place you'll see a massive building for something like "Continuing Care for Cancer Patients", sounding like a place where they take care of the terminal cases. it's a city where money has done things that make you proud - monumentally proud, i guess.

i reached the domestic airport in Delhi early for my flight. it was early afternoon and i decided not to step into the crowded terminal right away. outside it was hot, over 40 degrees. there was a mild breeze - the kind that feels so dry that sometimes you wonder if you hear it crackling. the heat dries up your outer skin, and you almost feel psychedelically focussed on the process of putting foot in front of foot and going where ever you are. i have always been amazed at the kind of bareness and minimalism that such weather brings out. it's just your thoughts and the heat outside.

somehow, it's in that heat, in the bleakness of the hot searing urban landscape, that i really see the sensuousness of India. it's in that heat that i feel the pulse of a primitive instinct, and somehow feel that i share it with the men and women who lived in these plains for hundreds of years.

this is the India that i know as mine.

around December we (i.e. my family and i) went on a trip to a tourist spot - to Aurangabad. the idea was to do the fashionable sites of Ajanta and Ellora.

there was a lot of medieval history on the way. all that i had read about the Mughals, in musty books, seemed to melt away while standing in sight of Aurangzeb's grave. that's the marvel of ruins.

and we went over the hills of Ajanta and Ellora - through dark caves, chiselled, shattered, carved, chipped away generations ago by a people blinded (or illumined) by a belief. and a desperate need to live and do beyond the immediate.

while i browsed the dim interiors for just the right photographs to grace these pages with, the irony of my quest never really hit me until much later. most tourists reach this place on their own quests (except for the many young who were being dragged by their parents or wards). but why do people go to places like these? were they, like me, just looking for a way to vacate their minds of a humdrum job and life. or were they, like the original sculptors and painters of these hills, looking for something beyond the immediate? indeed, was the quest of the original painters and sculptors more important than mine?

in general, am i wasting my time living through modern day life - stuck like guilt to the perennial schedule of my job, and other appurtenances of modern life? or were they wasting their time cutting into volcanic rock amidst deep forests, seeking to leave a trace of passion in the Deccan plateau? or am i asking silly rhetorical questions, just to amuse my gentle reader?

i'll never know...

it's Holi. up at my office they had arranged a Holi bash. there was colour on demand, a very large music generator, heavy bass music, and water was being pumped up out of a water tanker through a series of showers.
this was in our parking lot. while driving out of the lot, just outside the gate, i saw four or five young men. their bodies were covered with some kind of white dust - they had probably been white washing something. each of them was dusting their body with some rags. probably on their way home...

there was that Holi and this.