The sobriety of boredom.
If only the 'Contract' chappies would speed up with making up their minds on whether they should hire me. Redundancy back home with only a staple of wheat breads, green tea, Kurkure and Kim Kardashian's escapades is not too reassuring. Not to mention being totally wasted on nothing in particular. And this has been the status-quo for about 2 months now. Damn Bad Karma. Maybe a Shathru-Samhara Puja or an Amethyst ring would make amends. :(So, yes, I'm back to blogging. Intend to continue doing so. Spreading general banality, non-joie de vivre etcetera, if my miniscule reading junta would remember (Paulose went and found himself another owner; but I do NOT miss him). Just that I've decided to make it less writey-writey and more blogey-blogey. It is easier to write thus.
Speaking of which, 'follows is a piece of banality that's supposed to co-erce people to take me in as a writer in their agencies. Not that I have found mucho success yet. It is a bunch of nonsense, really.
So go read. Retch. Imagine a kick on my derriere. Go back to whatever you were doing before.
**On why I am here
I wanted to conduct the Royal Philharmonic at Stuttgart. Have the players play Beethoven’s Seventh. A friend of mine convinced me that the whole idea seemed slipshod since the overture, he stated comprehensively, did not commence to the tune of “a kick in the bottom” by the famous Ougaudougan band ‘The Politically Correct Extra Terrestrial’.
That was the beginning and the end of my musical career. I did cut a record though, during the time when I was sunk deep in manic depression following the Philharmonic debacle. It was a big hit in the YMCA circles, as it is. ‘Jesus is not a wanker’, was the most sung single of the record for some strange reason.
Shit happens, they say.
And then, like a jolt from nowhere, I decided that I should paint a fresco on the ceiling of the Sixteen Chapel.
The Sixteen Chapel, situated on the 16th Main of the 16th Cross of Solah-halli, was thus named for reasons lost to posterity. The popular opinion among the believers was that it was concieved in the mind of the local parish Sixteentus The Sixteenth, when he had an epiphany on a particularly humid afternoon as he was about to bite into his 16th Salami Sandwich of the day.
The epiphany came so strong that he dropped on his knees to the ground ( taking ample care as to put away the half-bitten sandwich on to a table) whence it was revealed to him that Jawaharlal Nehru was actually a cross-dresser and liked Barbie Dolls and that sometimes he, inadvertantly, would go to Cabinet meetings wearing Barbie’s clothes. Such an episode in a high-profile government meeting with the Chinese Honchos, the parish realised, led to the Indo-China War.
How this revelation led to the construction of the Sixteenth Chapel is, of course, not explained, but hundreds of Kafka Scholars and an Indian Cricket Analyst are still feverishly working on unravelling the mystery. For the record, when asked on what they thought of the legend surrounding the Chapel’s name, all (including the analyst, having been driven mad by the Kafkaites) they replied was the laconic- “Kafkaesque!”.
The Analyst, when he had joined the research team, did try to reason that the name was thus because of all the ‘Sixteens’ associated with the chapel. His stupor lasted for, probably, less than an hour before the Kafkaiites devoured his congenital intelligence- hook, line and sinker and washed it down with Lemon-soda (salted).
I digress. So there I went to paint a fresco. I even had a title in mind- ‘ The agony and ecstacy of a flea flitting over a blob of cowdung’. I decided to use fresh cowdung as a binder over the plaster of the ceiling before I went around painting my art. This was to highlight the tough times a benign irritation like a flea has to go through, as a metaphor to the human condition. I had dreamt that the critics would applaud my sensitive potrayal of individuals as opposed to the society, and a chap or two remark on how the painting reminded him of Dialectical Materialism and a Sidhu-ism.
No sooner had I started daubing the ceiling wall than a priest walked in and told me that the whole idea stunk real bad. “Why, may I ask?”, I askingly asked. “Hear, my child”, he said, “the first parish to run the chapel, a direct descendant of Sixteentus The Sixteenth (them priests are not supposed to marry. Immaculate Conception, maybe.) had died of cowdung-poisoning. Some treacherous well-wisher had mixed dung in the priest’s meal (“adds to the flavour”, the well-wisher had later said in his defense) and the good Father was history.”
Creativity is not appreciated in its time, they say. And with this episode, my painting aspirations went down like a Lead Zepplin.
I, moved on.
And then.
I happened to meet a scouting agent during a Jazz concert and he told me that I would become the next big thing (don’t even think about male appendages, please; it is not naaice) after Himesh Reshamiyya on the box-office. Yes, he was drunk like a guppy, but what is a small behavioural quirk against a solid foresight, I say. Movies, I decided then, was where my calling was.
I called up the same agent the next day to see if he had any work in store for me. As it transpired, my expectations were spot-on when he offered me the most coveted role for any fresher in Bollywood- I was to play Hritik Roshan’s ear in a scene where HR’s ear (Hritik Roshan. In these times of the Reshamiyya chappie, you just can’t abbreviate, can you?) is seen overhearing a conversation between a psychic dog and a snail on dope.
So far so good, eh, you think? Notsofarsogood. Nopsy, Nahin, uh-uh. The director of the magnum-opus decided to can the scene when he realised that Hritik’s character was born-deaf and that they had already shot the scenes in which his handicap had been established. “How can Hritik hear a conversation all of a sudden”, he said. Oh sure, as if miracles don’t happen. He did get to direct, didn’t he?
Back to square one, as a geometrical loser once said. I spent sleepless nights pondering over the next big step, leap, spring, gallop and where the hell is a Thesaurus when you need one.
“Oh, I know. I could write”, declared yet another epiphany, yesterday afternoon at 3’o clock. **
p.s: There is a sale going on in Landmark here in B'lore. Some interesting books being doled out at Third World rates, if you didn't know already.
p.p.s: Yet another Onam alone. To like souls, A very happy Onam to y'all. Do tell me of Sadyas I can mooch off somewhere in Bangalore.
p.p.p.s: The Balaji feller's deal never came through. He got another hike on his soap-writing job. He, just so you know, is Paulose' new owner and pampers him no end. I do NOT miss Paulose.
p.p.p.p.s: Oh, and I finally graduated.
posted by thebanalsprite @ 4:35 AM
2 Comments:
Very naaicee....
Enjoyed the subtle melodrama of the intricaately constructed prose, designed at stupefying the unsuspecting reader!!
Nice alliterations and crazier thoughts....
Welcome back....boy...
Er ... um ... well .. welcome back! :D
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