What to do?

What to do, people, I am not getting time to blog only? Oh, the last post was written in a semi-conscious state...though it does have some amount of sense in it...though a lot of background is required to figure it out...see if you can guage the mood, neways...give it a nice and slow read, and then let me know if you could make any sense of it...
I wrote a radio play, and I'll put it up here soon, just give me a couple of days. In other news, my life has just reached the deepest levels of frustration, or summat of that sort...basically, I just cant wait to get out of this piece of shit college, where there are more rules than there are people...oh wait a minute, thats a bad simile...considering there are only a hundred and fifty odd people...a vast majority of whom only remotely resemble humans, while the rest seem more like creations of a man drunk on bad beer...
moving on, I am in the process of converting the world into diehard Catcher in the Rye fans...after Shraddha and Prashant, its your turn now...ill write more about it in a little while...till then...
adios amigos

When the rust fills your fingers, you ain’t gonna write no more…

Sitting on the banks of a misfortunous lager beer, wondering if the next one will come to pass. Wondering if the next junction box, can hold up my bladder, filled to the brim that it is, upto the point of no return. I'm counting down to extinction, jumping at the first chance to say goodbye, to all the leaves of the forest, shivering in the slightest wind. It ain’t nice to see them shiver, it depresses me just a bit…it must be easy to leave the band, but that’s coz I play bass…and while you’re at it, remember to really stink up the vocals, coz when the rust fills your fingers, you ain’t gonna write no more…and do remember to wipe the crap behind you, coz here at the university, we believe in cleaning up after ourselves. It ain’t gonna be easy to jump off the moving train. To stop the train, pull the chain, and a hefty fine awaits those do it for fun. Speaking of fun, have you heard of the Messiah? He needs to tighten his purse strings a little bit, or before he knows it, POOF! He’ll turn into a duck, and that’ll be all that’s left of him. Complete annihilation is the keyword, and jumping off the cliff is the first step. Or maybe its just Dolce Vita, which gives you the chance to land in a pitful of quicksand, while you grapple with the slimy enemy, you just keep sinking lower and lower until there is no more of you, him, her, it, or anything.

Tin Fish

Author- Sudeep Chakravarti

Publ. Penguin India, 2005

Price Rs. 250

The first line of this at-once funny, touching, thought-provoking, and gripping story is, “So, there we were, Fish, Porridge, PT Shoe, and I, Brandy. We were brothers without barriers, friends until death.” Tin Fish follows the lives of four buggers in a boarding school, The Ajmer College. (A disclaimer: this is not a boarding school story on the lines of Enid Blyton, and is not to be confused with her books…old Enid never wrote about confused adolescents, gora chicks (to say nothing of their boobs), and the political situation in her times…) Sudeep Chakravarti is a good sculptor of characters (note: there is no heaps of praise for his character sculpting, just a passing mention), cloaking each one of them with enough idiosyncrasies to write a film with Paresh Rawal playing ten roles. His style appeals to me a lot, ‘coz he continuously digresses from one incident to another. To quote Holden Caulfield, (‘Catcher in the Rye’, by J.D.Salinger…pretty much my all-time favourite book), “Oh sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don’t like them to stick too much to the point. I don’t know…” One moment, Barun, a.k.a. Brandy, is telling you of the journey from Calcutta railway station to home, and suddenly takes a disorienting jump to a narration of the trek to Kashi he went with, with his friends. Another disorienting jump later, Brandy’s telling you about the Prime Minister of India, who believed that drinking his own “purified liquid” (read piss) was the way to a healthy life.

In the beginning, debutante Sudeep Chakravarti seems to be trying hard to find his groove, which continuously avoids him, atleast through the first hundred-odd pages. This leaves the reader with the feeling of I-think-this-is-going-somewhere-but-right-now-I-am-as-clueless-as-the-author-himself. Luckily for both author and reader, the missing groove is found sufficiently early on in the book, and then its all cool-breeze, ya?

Chakravarti takes you through all the characters’ feelings through the eyes of Brandy…be it Tin Fish’s relationship with his father, a gay chap smooching Porridge, their hopes and aspirations for the future, or Brandy’s love…Chakravarti creates a lovely space, albeit with its faults…but then, what is perfect? Inspite of is faults, Tin Fish definitely deserves a read…maybe two?