Category: miniPosts

The Balcony Story

The house that I grew up in Delhi, we have this fairly large balcony. Fairly large by Mumbai standards. Smallish by Delhi. But there was a balcony. And that meant that I grew up with this habit of waking up and going to the balcony to stretch and breathe in the “fresh” air. I did it every day for like 30 years at the subconscious level that it became second nature! 

When I moved to Mumbai, I was lucky to have started living in Nahar. That meant that I had a 2-feet wide thing for a balcony. Of course that was a luxury in Mumbai and I loved it! I was there for close to three years. The habit that I grew up with stayed on. 
Then the move to Bandra happened – the worse house I’ve ever lived in. If you are reading this, the house could have the best location ever but do NOT live in an old, crumbling house. So in Bandra house, leave alone a balcony, I did not even have a window. And I hated it. 
I was there for a year or so and then I ran back to open spaces that Ghatkopar had. This house, where I was for two years had a balcony as well. Though it was designed more like a room without a wall, it still gave the feeling of being in a balcony. And that meant I was back to my habit that I had grown up with. And then bad times started hitting. Moved to a small house without a balcony. And now, in Andheri, of course, there’s no balcony.
The point of this mile-long prologue?
That, today when I woke up, I for some reason yearned to have this ability to walk around in a balcony and stretch and breathe in. Still better I would love to have a beach that I could just step in. Or a large expanse that I can step out in and soak in the infinite and breathe in the fresh air that is up there close to the mountains! 
I dont know what brought this feeling back to the surface. But it bubbled up somehow. And it is strong and powerful. To a point that I can distinctly feel it. And it was strong and powerful. To a point that I am ready to kill for it. You know, like, really! 
Maybe someday. 
Till then, over and out! 

Day 35 of Lockdown

Day 35 of the lockdown.

Day 41 otherwise.
Hello, world!

The dark clouds that shrouded me yesterday? They seem to have dispelled! Yay to that! 
So, as I get about my day, I am listening to this concert by Shantanu Moitra where he is talking about his journey through the Himalayas and his lessons there. Each piece of music has been composed by his time there. I am thinking, it is SUCH a great idea. I mean as an individual, he took it upon himself to go discover himself. At places that are tough to live. Especially if you are not from there. And while he did that, he heard stories from people, got inspired by their simplicity, and then came back to create music. And then of course, he shared it with whoever he could. Via concerts etc. And I have to tell you, it IS BRILLIANT. Do listen to it. Thanks, JS for sharing it with me.

I think that is what keeps me sane. Inspiring stories from people that do things that are unexpected. As someone said, “koshish karne wale ki kabhi haar nahi hoti“

On the same note, I think this lockdown is a brilliant opportunity to think and discover and identify what inspires you. And what inspires me is the ability to help others figure what they want!

And here’s an offer. In case you would want to use me as a bouncing board to crack what is it that you want to chase, I am happy to volunteer. Drop me an email with answers to these three questions…

  • 1. If you had all the money what would you do? 
  • 2. What was your favorite thing to do as a kid? 
  • 3. Who do your friends compare you to?
So that’s about it! Let whoop some ass! 

Previous posts in the lockdown series are – Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 19, 30, 32, 34

Day 3, Self Quarantine

Today’s day 3 of my self-isolation, imposed on by the government because there are people who do not know how to take precautions. Well, issues of living in a democracy, which otherwise is not a bad place to be at. I mean I’d rather be in a democracy than a dictatorship. At least I have some semblance of rights.

Yeah, rights.

The very rights that have made you jailed in your own house.

Anyhow. So, when I decided that I will lock myself in (ok, I did not decide – I did not have the free will – the government made me), I decided that I would try and write a book about my experiences with seclusion. But of course like all the other grandiose plans, this one had its share of challenges. And three days in it, I can see the writing on the wall – “the experiences of someone forced to stay indoors” is not happening. Not because I dont have the time for it – I have all the time in the world now. Just that I dont see a new insight or anything interesting to record. Even if I were to make this a memoir or something, right now, not sure who would be interested in reading that I now log-in every morsel of food I eat or the chunks of time I spend? Apart from today. Actually third day is the worst. The first day you are all gung-ho about shit you’d do to change your life and all that. By second day you are feeling great. But on the third day, you realised that all the effort you put in was futile. To a point that you give up. Today was the third day and thus everything that I did in the first two days went for a toss!

Well maybe I will start tomorrow all over again. You know, like a reset? Day 1. It’s always Day 1.

Until tomorrow!

The Sleepy Syndrome

Yesterday I had to stay up to finish a thing I was working on. And it was tough. No, not the thing that I was working on. But staying up.

So tough that I roamed around like a zombie in the house.

I have this friend who’s shacking up with me for a few days. And since this is a Mumbai house, he’s using the hall as his bedroom. The guy told me that I sort of scared him with all the feet that I was dragging along the entire night.

I just could not stay up. Despite my earnest efforts.

And it sucks. Suck so bad that I am blogging about it.

Thing is I have always taken pride in my ability to get by with little sleep or food or other such worldly comforts. I do need a lot of safai, water, and access to a clean loo. But lately, since I’ve got on the sleep-more bandwagon and have become that boring old man that sleeps at 10 and wakes up at 5, I am used to spending 7-8 hours on the bed. What I do there is anyone’s guess but I do try and be on the bed for that long.

Now, yesterday, when I had this important submission, I was initially unfazed. After all, I haven’t needed a lot of sleep. I thought it would be a cakewalk. And to make matters easy, I loaded my ref with Diet Coke, Diet Chiwda, Diet Air and Diet BS. Who could stop me?

Well, myself!

Thanks to my old age, I just could not focus on the task at hand. I would doze off even while I was walking around. I was bouncing off the walls. Literally. I drank I don’t know how much water and I don’t know how much I peed but I do know that by the end of it, I was so sick and tired of all the visits to the loo that I parked myself outside. And while I was parked there, I dozed off as well.

Thankfully, the work I was doing was a writing gig. And I remembered that if you are a writer, you do not let the piece make you its muse. Rather you make it your bitch and belt it out when you feel like. So, I decided that even though all odds are stacked against it. And I promised myself that I would not sleep unless I do it!

Just that my body clock and age had decided that they would make it tough for me.

However, I persisted and finished the piece. The lesson I took away from that is that as I age, health has started to become an increasingly important component. Thankfully I am a little stable in the head (I think) and thus I have been able to survive. Need to do a lot more work on my physical fitness. Will make 2020 about fitness. And that means food and working out. Things that I have traditionally ignored.

Will work on starting now! Wait and watch!

About 12 hours after I caught some sleep, I am still reeling from the effects of not sleeping. Even this piece is not the best that I’ve written. I HAVE to fix things! 

Feels like home!

As I write this, it’s 7:18 AM and I am at Starbucks Powai outlet. There is yellow lights, the smell of freshly crushed coffee, AC at 22 (I guess) and not another soul here. Except for the Baristas, of course. And for all that it’s worth, it feels like home. Really. More home than the place I live at. Or the place I lived at for years in Delhi. They were right when they said they would create the third place that people would keep coming back to. I keep coming back to it.

I don’t live close to this one anymore and thus I don’t really come here often. I go to a different one. And even though I am there literally every day, I still don’t call it home. This one, the one at Powai gives me that feeling that a home is supposed to – safety, warmth, belongingness and other such things. The funny bit is that this place is not very comfortable and is always crowded with rich kids and fancy people. I can’t stretch my legs. I can’t lie down. I can’t wear comfortable clothes. But despite all those things, this place, ladies and gents, feels like home.

Thanks for reading.


Oh, as I write this, the only thing swirling in my head is that I must hate my current place so much that I find comfort in a strange land and with strange people. May be. Any shrinks reading this? 

The Daily Grind – 2714 – 260718

If there are days that I’d say are weird, today would take the cake.
I had a good time while working.
I had arguments over petty things.
I said no for the first time and it came to bite me back in the ass.
I was told that I cant keep my people happy.
I saw a silver lining in the otherwise cloudy, vague kind of life am living. And the kind of work am doing.

There were good things. And there were bad.
There were expected thing. And there were unexpected surprises.

I need to not have days like today.

I promise myself.

Thats it for the day. More tomorrow.

PS: Technically, this should NOT count as a post. Anything less than 500 300 is not a post. But I had to hit publish before I slept. I remain committed to 1000 words on average a day till the end of the year. Lets see. 

Back!

So I am bak from Dubai and thus, back to the grind. This means that I am back to work. There is that one post that I need to make where I’d probably summarise my Dubai stint. Yeah. Ok. No one wants to read musings of a random old man about his time in a hotel. But then, when I write, I am not writing for the junta party. You know?

Anyhow. So I am back. Its time to get up on that treadmill and go start running. Literally and figuratively. Watch this space. 

Meri Jung – Anil Kapoor

If you are an Anil Kapoor fan, you would have seen Meri Jung. The plot is pretty simple. A happy home gets broken because a hotshot lawyer considers winning a case more important that serving justice. The son of the broken home grows up and vows to take sides of the honest and poor and may be take revenge on the hotshot lawyer. As a story ought to have, the two lawyers do eventually get into a tiff and the battle becomes personal.

The how, what, where and why are the part of the narrative and the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you have to see it to experience the awesomeness.

Source: Wikipedia

I would have seen the movie a million times while growing up. And the movie had such profound impact on me that I wanted to become a lawyer (at other times, while growing up, I had wanted to become a detective, a policeman, a cricketer and a few other things). Like Arun Verma, I wanted to be able to play some sort of music that only my family knows of (like an anthem that only my family has access to). Like Arun Verma, I wanted to be the overnight success (from the looks of it, the only way I would ever have any real money is if some miracle happens and I get successful, overnight!). Like Arun Verma, I wanted a girlfriend that secretly loved me and when professed, she’s fall in my arms and vow to never leave me again.

There are just too many memories of the movie that the day I can afford a home theater thing at my place, I will buy a DVD. And watch the movie till I am successful ;P

Oh, and here is a question for you. Which other movie did Anil Kapoor play Arun Verma in? Get this right and I’d send you a copy of my book, The Nidhi Kapoor Story. Serious. Shipping in India only though 🙂

Untitled. Mar 10.

Today, is Mar 10. It’s 1:29 AM. Although the last blog post happened just over a week ago, it feels like forever. I just had to post something. Even if it was an inane post that had three lines and three tags. OCD. They say. No?

Now it’s Mar 10. 1:41 AM. Took me 12 minutes to come up with this 12-word post. Writer’s block?

The Publish Button

The Publish button

You know the funny bit about blogging? Even today, ten years since I started writing a blog, more than 1300 published posts, everytime I push the Publish button, I have my guts in my throat. I get butterflies. I get scared. I am in jitters.

What if I’ve made typos? What if someone ridicules it? What if an prospective employer / bride reads this and rejects me? What if this? What if that?

The Publish Button is my greatest fear. I am not scared of darkness, heights, lurking monsters in blind alleys, public speaking, approaching a member of the opposite gender, dentists, (or any of these other top ten fears of humans). But I am scared of the Publish button. Very scared.

And like all fears, once I do it, once I am over it, it transforms from fear into freedom. From scare into thrill. The fear is gone. The button is like that teleport switch that helps me hit escape velocity and go in the orbit. On one side is a lot of ridicule and the other side is pure exhilaration of having created something. Of seeing things out there. And trust me, there is no larger satisfaction than creating something. Something out of thin air. That’s what writing is about. Pulling strands out of thin air and weaving them in a coherent story!

No wonder I love writing. No wonder I am addicted. To the fear of Publish button and the relief that comes when I have pressed it.

Balam Pichkari

It was that kind of the day. The day when you were unwell and you did not know what to do to cheer you up. The day when you’ve tried looking at pictures from good old times when you dint give a fuck to days like today. The day when talking to your special someone actually makes the day tougher than what it has been. 

And then somehow from somewhere you hear faint traces of a song playing. A song that you know you’ve heard somewhere. Was it at a Rahul Vaidya show at your last event? Or was it playing on FM? You know that song is the answer to every tough question that the day has asked you.

What song was it? Oh yes, unbelievably, its Balam Pichkari!

Not kidding. Put on the headphones and hear it. And see all your sorrows just leave your skin. And see yourself dancing to it like no one’s watching. And you dance like mad, so mad that even you yourself cant imagine yourself to have that kind of energy.

That!