Monthly Archives: October 2008

Tremulousness

I had a dream. I had a dream of settling down with the man of my life having a career in music by the time I was 29 years of age. I dreamt of earning enough to live happily with him enjoying the little pleasures of life. I dreamt of learning something new; like a language – Vinokur is an expert in Spanish; a new art like photography – Vinokur is a professional photographer; the history of art – Vinokur is also an expert on this.

As is widely known, that dream has crashed. I’m going to turn 29 in a week’s time. And my life couldn’t have been more worrying. I guess it’s easy to push you down when you are already dead.

Vinokur is showing signs and symptoms of Parkinsonism. He is loosing his expressiveness on his face. He is have akathesia and tremors. His posture and gait are also suggesting the onset. It’s probably drug induced as he’s on antipsychotic medications which induced such a syndrome. His psychopharmacologist is aware of it and trying to workout a away to at least minimize the damages.

That leaves me with my pipe-dream flushed down the toilet.

(PS: Just to make sure that no one misunderstands me. I love Vinokur!)

Rock on for Humanity

Yesterday, I was glad to get out of my apartment to go for the Rock On for humanity concerty. How could I, you might ponder, with my money situation. Well, Shoonyas’ band member Tim got me and E-boi passes. I was almost depressed without having an avenue to go out and enjoy myself until I got a very late call from Tim informing me about the passes. And I am glad that I went.

It was a fabulous night. I mean, the stage and the setting was international class. The sound quality might not have been up with the best that you could get, but the rest was superb. Who’s who of Bollywood was there. But I wasn’t for that. I wanted to watch just three bands. Them Clones, Avial and Parikrama. I missed the first hour and hence, I didn’t get to see Them Clones play. But Avial and Parikrama were very good. The Raghu Dixit project was also good with Raghu playing a wonderful sounding acoustic guitar.

I got tired of all the bull-shit going on stage with Zayed Khan, Shaan and the rest of the bollywood superstars and I didn’t stick long enough to watch Shankar Ehsaan Lloy play. Besides, I missed Farhan and the gang do the Rock On version. Apart from Zayed Khan, Saif looked dumb. Shabana Azmi has uncharacteristically outperformed by Javed Akhtar because she chose to over-talk.

The point was that I had fun. I had fun at shouting ‘We want Yuvraj Singh’ when Preity got on stage and ‘I DON’T miss you so much, because it hurts’ when Saif started playing the guitar! Jodi was there with his fiance and so was his overspoken loudmouthed friend. We all had good fun!

I got back home and spent some time being happy with Vinokur. Just for one day, my miserable life had given way to something to cheer about. Next up is the gig on the 5th!

I cried in the middle of the night

Yesterday night, I woke up after a bad dream. I was still sleepy and I cried for a few seconds and went back to sleep. The dream deserves a mention as it’s only one amongst the many nightmares that I have been having. Most are related to my life, poverty, failure in exams and generalized ‘loserhood’.

I had just woken up and I saw my cousin standing next to my bed. Like how I used to do back in Mumbai in my apartment, I had gone to sleep wearing nothing. I got up and and started talking to him. Although he was not acting weird at my nudity, I was getting uncomfortable. As I was in a new room in the new house that my parents had moved into, I was not aware as to where my clothes were. I tried to cut the conversation but my cousin was not interested.

Soon, another cousin came in. And then an aunt came in. All were more or less interested in a gently probing as to why I was not earning and why I had not passed my exams yet. I wished to not be talking to them anymore but I had no escape routes. My sister came into my room and I asked her to give me something to wear so that I could be more comfortable. She nodded and went out.

In a few more minutes, the room was almost full of most of my aunts and uncles and cousins who tried to not leave any possible stone unturned in my miserable life path. Then, my father came shoving the other around him and was surprised to see me naked. He started acting weird and asking me why I was naked. I said I didn’t know where my clothes were and that I had asked for help. He started shouting at me saying that I was as useless as I always has been…

I woke up to realize that my nightmare almost parallelled the ones that Vinokur had. The nudity, the helplessness – it was as if we had merged into one mind which was churning up the same dream in different versions of the same movie. I cried for a few seconds hoping to fall back to sleep again. I slept only to have more of such dreams.

Shoonyas – the lifeline

These days, I dream about a lot of stuff. In the nightmares, I mostly end up with me on the ‘loser’ side technically. In the other pleasant dreams, either gigs or cricket is involved and I have a happy time in there. Coincidentally, I have a better time in the evenings and night thanks to the easing down of the relentless heat. Perhaps, the noisy kids in the building with the ‘phatakas’ are a reason as well.

These days, the worst days are when something or the other reminds me that I’m in the financial dipshit-situation of my life. And the most recent ones are between Noise Market Vs. the music instrument shop from where we bought some gear for the recording and live performances. We were supposed to pay on EMIs after the money from the record label would come. Since the record-fucking-label is not showing any intent of this, the shop is asking us to pay up. I get the calls and SMSes from the shop personnnel. These things freak me up!

What we plan to do is that since 3 us in Noise Market are members of ‘Shoonyas’, the money that comes from Shoonyas gigs will be used up for this. Shoonyas has suddenly become the lifeline for us. Coincidentally, I have a gig on the 5th of November at ‘Not Just Jazz by the Bay’ at Marine Drive. That will give us the money for the next month’s payments. Despite this gig being on the day of the exam (the exams start on the 3rd of November) I’m happy.

In the past few days

  • I have been keeping my mobile phone switched off for long periods so that there will be fewer distractions to me while I’m studying. That really is helpful as I won’t get any disturbing calls from anyone and I don’t have to explain to whomever I would have had to talk to why I’m not doing better.
  • That, in turn, led me to feeling even better. Hermit-hood works for depression. Technically, it shouldn’t. But I suppose I don’t trust anyone to be gentle with me and leave me feeling good/okay after a conversation. Vinokur is the only one really. Only one.
  • I’ve been cooking more stuff. I made more vegetable dishes using cabbage, beans, carrot, onions and tomato over the past 5 days or so. I usually have them with rice and curd. Along with that I have had great tuna sandwiches, oat meals, french toasts and various varieties of eggs. This also has meant that I have not been having instant noodles for about 6 days now.
  • Mentally, I’m in a much better state for the exams after starting to eat well. Feeling a lot better and rising in confidence. My study sessions somehow have become more pleasant and there seems to be a distinct purpose with which I’m covering my portions.
  • Whenever I feel rather weird (this happens especially in the afternoons and sometimes in late nights), I resort to watching some movies on the tube. I watched ‘The Birds’ and ‘Psycho’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ during such periods. They rate 4.5, 4.5 and 3.5 in my ratings.
  • There was an internet outtage in the last couple of days and that’s the reason that I haven’t been blogging.

Amidst the chaos

The title was meant to be related to what’s happening to our dear Raj Thackeray sahaab and the violence and the tension his arrests have caused to our bustling metropolis by the side of the Arabian sea. Ironically, it also reflects what’s happening inside me. I mean despite realizing as to what’s going wrong, it’s getting hard to fight off the demons you know.

There are a few things that make me feel good. One of those is that wonderful dish of scrambled eggs that I made for lunch yesterday. You know when you have troubled sleep the duo of Paul Newmann and Robert Redford could do a good job of entertaining you in the dead of the morning with their movie ‘The Sting’. But the really powerful thing is some time spent with Vinokur. Especially when he just had his haircut/beard trim. It coincided with mine too. I don’t have evidence of what happened in Mumbai but I do to what happened at the Big Apple. Here it is, in a pictorial demonstration.



Ah, how coy and cute can someone get! I’d advise you all to stop looking at the pictures and to work out a way out of the envy/jealousy that’s creeping in. I have my Vinokur!

What I did yesterday

After getting out of the rut, I did the following.

  • I went out and shopped for some vegetables and I cooked some dish with beans, onions and tomato. I felt really good to get back to cooking something to eat.
  • I got a couriered package from one of the readers of the blog (who I think will prefer not to be mentioned here) which had four cans of tuna and one package of oat meal. Thank you! Really, I mean it.
  • I watched ‘Shoot On Sight’ on a cheap early morning show at a multiplex nearby. I thought that the movie was good (3/5 on my rating) with a couple of very hot older men to ogle at – Naseeruddin Shah and Brian Cox. The plot was just okay and the story was kinda overdone I felt. I was impressed with the Mr. Shah’s accent though.
  • I had a ‘regular’ conversation with Vinokur after about a couple of weeks. By ‘regular’ I mean one where I felt I needn’t hang-up immediately to not make him feel bad about how I felt.

I hope to get back to blog-trotting sometime when I get bored of my studies. That would make me happy. Anhedonia simply didn’t work.

(What really got me out of the rut was ‘Body of Lies’, the movie. I saw that over the weekend. I loved the movie. 3.5/5. Really fast and a crafty plot and stuff. I was a little dismayed at the physical appearance of Crowe – someone who should have matured into something much more handsome. Leo, gee… is good!)

The mistakes that I made

First of all, I finally feel a little better and am happy. A lot of self-loathing happened, a lot of loss of self-esteem grew in. I think I have found the reason why I felt so bad. A month back, I got a lot of negativity on this very blog which did me in. Whatever the intent that was, I got a lot of ‘You are a jerk, an ass! You don’t know what to do in your life. And you simply are a coward an shy away from responsibilities’ crap.

I fell for it. I was already weak with all that was happening with me. Poverty, exams, lack of progress with my music and the lack of a ‘definitive’ physical future in the relationship with Vinokur etc. Weirdly enough, I fell even lower. I started searching and letting out demons within me. I denied myself of all entertainment and fun and tried to study.

That led to another abyss. For some reason or the other, I decided to break out of it and watched a couple of movies in the theater. That along with some other movies that I watched on the tube made me realize what it was like to be free of my anhedonic state.

I realize now that I am the best person to decide what is right and what’s wrong. I have been stupid enough to ride on other people’s points of view to supercede mine. That was stupid. That was weak. That was insanely inane. But now that I realized all this, I’m feeling better. I’m going to do the things that make me happy from now on. Enough of planning! You will fuck your future if you don’t even let yourself be in a state to think straight.

What…

What do you do when you realize that you had suddenly dissolved into the earth and need to resurrect yourself without anybody’s help… when all you wanted was to be with someone at a place and there suddenly is no place… what do you do when you dream about being there and wake up thinking that you gotta book tickets to this place… what do you do when you don’t feel like not talking to anyone… not even on this blog?