Juggernaut

Mumbai ,my beautiful Mumbai.



What is happening to you?



It's true , I've tried to romance you,

and failed.

I've waltzed in Matunga,

pranced with the wada pavs,

danced in dadar

caroused through kandivli

wassailed in virar ...

but you weren't impressed.



So I've Ceased and stopped all my attempts romance you.





But oh mumbai, what terrible tragedy has befallen upon you !



(sidebar)

A true juggernaut ,this world does not stop , but cruelly continues.



At a time of tragedy you wonder at the world's capacity for continuing..



It has happened to all of us. Hasn't it ?



Whenever we lost our near and dear ones , we expected the planet to cease
its spinning so that we could all float away from all the pain.

We expected silence, respect, the needs of the heart to be fulfilled , but
found that the world does not care, that it moves ahead.

People die, people are born again, the sun rises and sets, the stars come
out and play, and the world moves on.



When tragedy strikes , you mourn alone, while the world continues to turn,
for tragedy is already old news.



Hate, fear and intolerance are the only true crimes in this world.



You say, 'Now the healing can begin'



but there is no healing...



Just a short pause before the next horror, the next tragedy.



Until the hate ends.



(Hope for hope's sake,

for hope makes one strong,

so hope that...)

Mumbai , a perfect microcosm of the world , of all its chaos and glory , its
beauty and savage indifference , is therefore too a juggernaut in her own
sense.

Mumbai is far more resilient than what all the fear mongers in the world
have come to imagine.

She will swallow up everything: Fear, grief, insanity...and yes even hate,
the infinite vastness of the hate that fear mongers have harbored in their
hearts.



(A message to all fear mongers...)

Don't embody hatred.

It can only give you pyrrhic victories .





(A message to the rest of us...)

Be strong.



Be a juggernaut.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sun, 30 Nov 2008 07:38 UTC
Message-id: 703014910S35

Hurt

I spend hours and days
planning in ways
to hurt you
the way you hurt me...

Is this not True Love?

To think that I am not going to think of you anymore is still thinking of you...
Let me then try not to think that I'm not going to think of you.

It's futile. So I've given up.


A dangerous creature of beauty ,you are
perhaps with a coal-tar heart
for I've never seen it in love
except perhaps with itself


All the pain that I feel now stems from non acceptance,
Non acceptance of the fact that you don't really love me,
And that all this is just a game for you.
For You feed on the power
got from making people fall in love with you.

And then pushing them away.

How many more
have met the same fate before ?
In your defense ,
I expect a steely cold silence.

It's pathetic, now that I see it,
but I've spent more than my fair share of time obsessing on all the things
you have done to wrong me ,
and all the things I want to do
to get back at you.

I've prepared

Hot words & cold shoulders,
tepid indifference,
deafening silences,
sharp stinging barbs and rebukes honed to a deadly precision,

Just waiting for your next mistake.

I spend hours making imaginary arguments
where you admit defeat
and beg forgiveness,
and in one moment drunk on the high of victory ,
I deny it.

It feels so GOOD ,
but SO Wrong.

Why do we want to hurt the people we love the most ?
Is it because only they have the power to hurt us too ?

But in my heart of hearts I know the day will never come when I'll hurt you.I cannot.
I'm weak , I admit.
I've failed .
That too I admit.

But that's not what you want.
I know.
I know what you want.
But the moment I give in, I lose everything, and more importantly I lose myself.

Which I cannot let happen.


It was practically raining disappointments on the night I lied to you.

What a wonderful imagery the above sentence has.
"It was practically raining disappointments"...I stole this line from someone much more talented than me.
I told him I would...

One of these days , eventually you have to give me what I want. (I stole this line from him too. Yes I'm a hack and a faker)
No?
If not , I'll take my heart somewhere else(but not this line)



It was practically raining disappointments on the night I lied to you,
And I was getting drenched in falsehood
waiting to get struck by lightning


but you knew it & I knew it,
That It was finally over
What was left was an artifice of civility

Now

Only an artifice remains.

To think that I am not going to think of you anymore is still thinking of you .
I know.
I constantly wrestle with my thoughts.

But now, I'll suffer in silence.


And when we meet ,which I'm sure we will
All that was said will be there still
I'll let it pass and hold my tongue
And you will think that I've moved on. (I stole this from "White Flag", Dido. Yes I'm a liar and a thief too)


p.s. This is the last time I'll be writing to you.
I promise.(cross my heart and hope to die)

Hey ! Who moved my Cheese ?

You must have noticed this peculiar trait about human beings. (of course not
you !)

If humans find something they can do that doesn't work, they do it again.

And again...



And again...



And again...



ad infinitum



Eminent psychologist and behaviorist B. F. Skinner once had a
group of students who had done a lot of research with rats and mazes. And
somebody asked them one day "What is the real difference between a rat and a
human being?"

Now, behaviorists not being terribly observant, decided that they needed to
experiment to find out. They built a huge maze that was scaled up for a
human. They took a control group of rats and taught them to run a small maze
for cheese. And they took the humans and taught them to run the large maze
for five-dollar bills. They didn't notice any really significant difference.
There were small variations in the data and at the 95% probability level
they discovered some significant difference in the number of trials to
criterion or something. The humans were able to learn to run the maze
somewhat better, a little bit quicker, than the rats.



The really interesting statistics came up when they did the extinguishing
part.

They removed the five-dollar bills and the cheese and after a certain number
of trials the rats stopped running the

maze....

However, the humans never stopped!... They are still there!

... They break into the labs at night.



This probably explains why we are never completely cured of our addictions,
or why we

never let go of our obsessions, or why I listen to the same few songs on my
iPod even though I have 20 GB and more of (cough 'pirated and illegal'
cough) songs,

or why I write the same things over and over again !



Sadly without even realizing it !



It is not history that repeats.

But It is we,

who are condemned to repeat our mistakes.



So

Tell me when you get bored of me.

I'll try to change.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:26 UTC
Message-id: 701397235S169

It's futile to even try...

To think that I am not going to think of you anymore is still thinking of
you .

Let me then try not to think that I'm not going to think of you.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:06 UTC
Message-id: 701395120S169

We Wish You a

20th November 1984.

20th November 2008.



A lot of things have changed.

In 1984 , it was a cool Tuesday evening in a small local nursing home,

where my reluctant arrival was announced by an ear-shattering scream .

That was mom.

Not me.

I didn't cry much on that day.

I was merely reserving my strength claims mom,

for I was a cranky colicky baby that would cry every night for more than a
year.

The nurses told mom that she had delivered a beautiful baby boy

(mom's words , not mine) who was as fair as snow and just the right weight.



(It took about five years to get rid of that unnatural fairness. But now I'm
as tan as any Indian can be !)



Oh ! And look how cute his little shamey is !

(again , mom's words , not mine)



MOM ! I'm 25 now ! It's not funny anymore !



In 2008, I call mom early in the morning.

She tells me about her day.

I listen to her patiently.

She has to go attend someone's wedding.

I listen to her patiently.

The maid is quitting as she's getting married in three days.

I listen to her patiently.



Yes mother

Yes mother

Yes mother



And almost as an afterthought , she wishes me.



I say thank you.



I know later today she'll go to her favorite temple and pray for me.



Thank you again .



I don't call dad. I know he's busy.

He's in Mumbai attending a company seminar.



I don't think he'll remember unless mom reminds him...

ATLEAST A HUNDRED TIMES !



It's okay dad...It's not that important.

I don't mind.



I recall a birthday I once went to , where the birthday girl asked me ...

"So !You're the Only child aren't you ? You must be a completely spoilt
brat !"



"Hmm...(I add these Hmm's to appear smart)

"I always tell my parents how they lost their chance to spoil their only
son !" I tell her

"Now I tell them that they're too late because he's too old to be spoilt !"



Birthdays have always been tepid affairs at home.

At the age of ten , it was decided that I was too old for my birthday, so it
would not be celebrated anymore.

In fact on my tenth birthday , we kept a candle in a place filled with
uncooked rice and I blew it out , and that was it.



So instead, every year we'd have an alternative routine to confirm the
solemnity and specialness of the occasion.

On my birthday, I'd wake up early and then mom would take me to a temple
and make me pray. Later she would prepare a sweet dish and practically force
feed it to me.(I hate almost all sweet dishes, except home- made kaju barfi)



That was how my birthdays went. That's how they still go now.

No parties, no cakes, no gifts.

No regrets either.



But now my parents regret their decision. They want to celebrate my
birthday.

They want to throw a party , invite people and etc etc.

Of course , now it's my turn to expressly forbid such a farce.



Today on the ship, I kept my birthday a secret from all other ship staff.

I worked an extra hour on deck , securing all the lifebuoys to their
receptacles as we were expecting to bear the brunt of Tropical Storm Anika
and Tropical Storm Bernard who are trying to sandwich the ship in between
them.

But later , to my surprise , everyone had found out.

My company , in order to make me , one of its tiny insignificant employees ,
feel like he's a part of the larger family , had (in accordance with the
company's spiritual & holistic advisor) warmly sent a computer generated
email sending its best regards , along with the name of the company general
manager and the company motto as its signature.

(Besides a Job, we offer a Career & Commitment)



Suddenly , with the cat out of the bag, everyone was wishing me .

Clint sang a heavily accented 'Happy Birthday To You' , to which I said
that I'd rather have Marilyn Monroe sing it.

Nobody...well almost nobody got the joke.



Now , I'm being a bit childish , but I'm entitled to be a bit childish
today.



SO here's my email id



shipoff.c6xb2@globeemail.com



Hey ! It's not too late.



I'll pretend like I'm still waiting.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00 UTC
Message-id: 700774702S183

Mercy

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore
only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its
fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its
attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect
mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that
all others stem from it.



I suffer from a deep tumult in my conscience when I see animals suffer.

It is my destiny that takes me towards animals.Perhaps it is my calling.

Even out at sea ,I'm forced by my conscience to help them.



To me, kindness towards animals is the guage of human goodness.If you don't
like animals, I don't like you.If you are unkind to animals , I will hate
you .

If you are intentionally cruel to animals, I just might lose control over
myself, and act with utter disregard to all and any consequences !



After seeing two whale carcasses in the span of two weeks, I didn't know
what to make of it.

Was it an ill omen , a sign of things to come in the near future ?

There was an unfortunate sparrow stuck onboard.

It had come on board somehow and before it realized , it was too far away
from land and unable to return. It would try to get inside the accomodation.
It would repeatedly butt itself into the huge window panes of the Navigation
Bridge testing relentlessly to find out ways in which it could breach the
hermetically sealed accomodation. When tired , it would sit on the railings
in front of the bridge windows and stare at me.It's stare was cold , direct
and accusatory, asking for its pound of flesh for some vague transgression
that I did not commit.



"I'm sorry I killed her" was all I could say. When I couldn't forgive
myself, how could I ask forgiveness from someone else ?



To assuage my conscience I tried to feed it with bread crumbs and nuts and
grams and pulses and rice. There was always a cup of fresh water waiting for
it .But the sparrow would not have any of it. It did not want food or
water.(or rather ,it did not want the food that I offered)But it would
continue butting it's tiny body against the glass panes with relentless
fervour. And it would continue its accusatory staring.



So much so that, I finally acquiesed and opened the starboad bridge wing
door wide open and waited for it.

A few minutes later we were drenched by the sudden rain squalls that struck
the ship.

Without realizing my memories wandered to the events of my last ship...

I had the good fortune of joining my last ship in my own hometown of
mangalore.

As the ship departed we found that we had a stowaway onboard.



A crow had boarded and was refusing to fly away. Perhaps he too was seduced
by the prospect of seeing the rest of the world ,like I once was.



Like all the seamen in the world, the crow would soon be disillusioned.



Can disillusionment be the first step to enlightenment ?



When you ask yourself

"Is that all there is ?" ,

recognize
that this is the first step over the ledge of self delusion. The dark
precipice that you stare at down below from this ledge is the unknowningness
of reality. So get a good bungee cord and strap yourself tightly and take
the dive.Let the bungee cord do the rest !



A man should visit reality infrequently and briefly, lest he lose the
delicate equlibrium over his sanity.



So for whatever reasons the crow had boarded on the ship , it too had found
itself trapped , too far away from land and going nowhere .The crow, my only
fellow mate from my town found it hard to survive on the ship.



Which leads us to the basic question about viewpoints, namely, in other
words What is a ship ?

To a crow , a ship is a barren steel island in
the middle of nowhere, which is going nowhere, with nothing to eat and
drink, and with no escape.

It drank water whenever it rained and soon it ate whenever we humans felt
like feeding it.

It developed a strong bond with the chief mate's wife who was kind enough to
feed it once a day with bread crumbs and pieces of chapatis.

The bond was so strong that the crow promptly returned to the ship as we
were departing Australia, eventhough it had a good chance of survival ashore
than at sea.



Things took a turn to worse when it was decided by the powers that be (i.e
the owners of the ship and the charterers) that we were to go to Korea
.Korea in December is as cold as it is hot in Australia (in December)

The crow spent many miserable days and nights without the mercy of the chief
mate's wife, on whom it had placed its entire reserve of trust, so much so
that it would appear beside her at her beckoning, because it was too cold
for her to venture out. I tried to feed it but without avail as the crow
would fly away and the bread crumbs and chapatis I kept would become soggy
and eventually be washed away.



Pardon my repeated digression, but this paragraph outlines the sketchy
realationship between reality and denouement. In real life , unlike fiction
, we are repeatedly subjected to what I call "Crappy Denouement", or to put
it more elegantly an "Unsatisfactory Denouement".The most satisfactory
denouement that occurs in real life is death, for we see nothing beyond it.
Apart from that one can agree that in most other cases , life is one long
series of Crappy Denouements .



The preceding paragraph was just a setup, to prepare you for the harshness
of reality.



One fine day, in the middle of the sea, on the way to Korea , the rain had
let up and I could no longer find the crow onboard.

If you as a reader demand explanations that would satisfy your sense of
curiosity or give you a sense of closure , then I'd be forced to guess that
the crow died in the storm that broke out on the previous night or even lie
to make you happy that the crow had found an island where it could live and
now lives there happily with a new found mate.But the truth is that I DON'T
KNOW.



That , my dear reader is Crappy denouement.Welcome to reality !



I must again issue another declaration that the preceding paragraph was a
subterfuge , it was another setup , to prepare you for the harsh mundanity
of reality.



All the bread crumbs I had left for the sparrow and the cup of water I had
positioned so carefully was left untouched. The heavy rainsqualls washed
away all the soggy bread crumbs .And as for the sparrow itself, I could not
find it again.



It was Crappy Denouement
all over again.



An old Indian Jataka story goes something like this...


Once upon a time, a man saw a sage , an old and wizened rishi trying to save
a scorpion from drowning in the river. The sage would try to cup the
drowning scorpion with his hands and save it , but the scorpion would sting
him and begin drowning again.

This went on for a while and finally the exasperated man said

"Arre oh wise rishi ! Can't you see the futility of your actions ?

Don't you know that it is in the scorpion's nature to sting anyone, even if
that person is trying to save its life ?"



To that the wise old rishi replied

"O wise man !Though you have determined the true nature of the scorpion you
have failed to take notice that it is in my nature to save the scorpion !"



Thus , our actions stem from our nature, and perhaps that was what prompted
me once again to take action.



I found a half dead blue finch leaning weakly on the starboard liferaft.

It did not fly away when it saw me approach.

I gently took the bird in my cupped hand and warmed its tiny body. It did
not protest as I took it inside and gave it a drop of water. The bird would
not survive the night. I kept some bread crumbs and pulses and a dead
dragonfly next to it. I placed a large bowl of water and it took another sip
of water.

I made a soft little nest with a few rags and placed it in a warm and dry
area.

I left it there so that it could die in peace.

Thus , I did what my nature dictated.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:33 UTC
Message-id: 399523531S204

Law of Communication

Law of communication.

Communication is only possible between equals.



This is an over-simplification .

More precisely, this proposed "law" would read:



Adequate communication flows freely between equals.

Communication between non-equals is warped and

distorted by Domination and Submission rituals

perpetuating communication jam and a Game Without End.



Am I getting through you now ?

Fountain of Youth

I've always believed that

'Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind , it doesn't
matter'.

Age , like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the mind of the person.
Age is not related to time in the strictest sense just as beauty is not
related to symmetry (in the strictest sense).



Just a month ago ,we were loading propane and butane in Bandar Imam
Khomeini, in Iran. The port of BIK is deep inside , at the end of river
Mashrar .The entry to this river is very tricky and it requires intimate
knowledge of the tidal variations and its general geography .(bathymetry to
be precise)

Pilots , in the maritime sense are specialists who can pilot the vessel
safely through these tricky places. They are locals and ex-masters who have
thorough knowledge of local weather patterns and conditions and are
rigorously tested at a regular basis.



After an uneventful loading we set out to Fujairah to receive bunkers and
then head towards the discharge port.

During the outer pilotage ,I was on watch .

The river passage is a long one , taking up to five hours. So after the
un-berthing stations I wore my uniform and rushed up to the Navigating
Bridge to keep my watch.

The pilot , I noticed was very old. Classic silver haired mane , an Iranian
hawk like nose, a stooping back and an unflappable air of dignity around
him.



During pilotage , the Navigating Officer's main duty is to provide a link
between the Master and the Pilot and the Helmsman and track and monitor the
vessel and see that overall safety is not compromised.



Now , the pilot wanted to speak to me."Cadet ! " He tried to call me.

I corrected him that I was the third mate and not the cadet. But since he
had a feeble and grated voice as a result of years of smoking , I leaned in
towards him to hear him better.

With a flash of affection in his face , he stroked my chin !

Taken aback by his untoward gesture , I jerked back.

The awkwardness that had transpired in between us was over in moment and
the pilot regained his composure, (and I regained mine) and then with great
effort and a louder voice started talking to me. First he asked me my age,
then my experience as a navigating officer.I replied that I was 24. And this
was my second ship as a third mate, but I had done six ships so far .

Then , as is if he was talking to his grandchild , he started to
patronizingly advise me about the dangers of going to Somalia or the risks
of bedding loose women in different ports !

Hah !



Old Age was never a man's problem. Amitabh Bacchan got voted the sexiest
Indian superstar alive well in his sixties. Wrinkles may make a women old,
but on a man's face they add character. Women drool over the salt pepper
look of grey and black hair. Hey !, Hugh Hefner has five girlfriends at
eighty !



But what about being too young ?

Ah ! Now there's a problem.

Young age is a bane to all men. It declares to the world their immaturity &
inexperience.

Young age is Pure kryptonite to any young superman's psyche !



"How old are you ?" is the first question every port official asks me,
perhaps wondering if I'm ready to handle the enormous responsibilities of
being a navigating officer of a ship. After all the responsibility of the
ship staff's lives and their safety is placed on the third officer (at least
during his watch)



It's the combination of my ever breaking out skin and a rail thin body that
further enhances the illusion of youthful immaturity.

I know how to tackle this situation too. I comb my hair differently. Its
slicked all the way back ,like the hair of an Italian mobster. My ugly mug
sports constant 5'o'clock shadow.(which takes 2 days to grow !), and maybe
I'll take up smoking , so that my voice gets hoary and I can add a few
wrinkles on my face.

Hah ! Even I'm not that stupid enough to start smoking !



But I'm lucky.

My looks go after my dad's.

I'm going to age normally, unlike my mom !

My mom does not look 46.(ok ok . she is 47)

She is often mistaken for my elder sister.(who does not exist)



Mom is ageless. When she tells people she has a son, they assume he's still
at school. But disbelief hits hard when she reveals that her son is 24 years
old and a seasoned (salted?) sailor.

For comic effect , she makes me stand beside her when she is introducing me
to others.



Picture this.

I'm 5'9'' tall.

She's 5'2'' tall.



The sheer ridiculousness of the striking visual contrast of sizes makes jaws
drop and sputter inanities.



I recently met someone else who's ageless. Her problem is that she looks so
young that people don't realize that she's a surgeon...people don't treat
her with the seriousness that is usually reserved for a surgeon.(I must
admit that even I don't !)

Of course , I realized that she was indeed a rare find.

She too has somehow managed to tap into the fountain of eternal youth in
these days of global warming and pollution and inflated stress.

So , I hatched a plan to make her meet my mom. I just wanted to see the
chemistry between two people who are so similar yet so widely different.

Once they met , they hit it off exceedingly well. It was because although
they are very different , they share many common traits , which I believe is
their secret to agelessness.

Their secrets are (I think) :

A strict diet of healthy food.(both are vegetarians and very picky about the
food they eat),religious adherence to a personalized exercise routine, a
zest for life, an extremely positive outlook , strong sense of identity and
future goals, a large and varied social circle and the ability to find
happiness within oneself.



I know my mom's other secret.

She is afraid to die. Apart from bats it's the only other fear she has.

So she lives every day like she never has lived before. So absorbed in what
she does that nothing else matters... that nothing else exists.





So let this be a reminder to all you pill poppers, wrinkle
skin-cream users ,all you Botox addicts, chemical peelers and collagen and
silicone implanters: Age is not real. Your body doesn't get corrupted by
Time. It gets corrupted by cell division error and free radicals. In the
same manner, your mind/soul doesn't age. It gets corrupted with 'intellect',
'philosophies', and 'education'. As we know, cell division error, aided by
free radicals, accumulates errors throughout the body as time passes. A
person of 80 obviously has more errors than that of 40. His tissues start to
fail, making his organs fail, then entire organ systems collapse, until life
is snuffed out.



Remember this inevitability. We all begin to die from the moment we are
born. Some do it faster than others. All we can do is enjoy our lives.



And I've always believed that 'Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you
don't mind , it doesn't matter'.

And I don't mind at all !


Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless;
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:27 UTC
Message-id: 397344450