PILLOW TALKS OF POLITICS

PILLOW TALKS OF POLITICS (23rd April, 2014)

Most of us have been cribbing about a strong alternative for Congress for the past few years. So many scams, such bloody price hikes and such a laid back country. Okay, so we need an alternative. We have the second biggest party in the country i.e. BJP. But no, they are rightist, non-secular and fraught with infighting. Then somehow, BJP comes up with a better ideology under a new leader and this should have been enough. They seem like the perfect wakeup call for Congress to make changes in what they have been doing till date. Still NO. Because they have a Hindu Fascist as their frontrunner. How can we have that in a Hindu nation? Admittedly, most of the voters are Hindus but we are so secular that we love it when others run over our religious beliefs. Haven't we been allowing that for ages? Though let's not have an educated person like me become a pro-Hindu, non-secular bigot. I am educated and therefore I am supposed to allow space for other faiths and maybe forget the fact that I have one too as and when it is deemed politically correct. Okay, I accept. Moving on, so we have this BJP PM candidate but we don’t want him because well, he did something that wasn't politically right and the elitists amongst us don't approve of him because oh well, we have things easier and all we do is sit in our air-conditioned offices and in our drawing rooms and speak the RIGHT things and he doesn't fit the bill there. So let's not have this person as our leader because we definitely don't care about the fact that he has probably created the biggest wave of togetherness and political awareness in the nation ever and we sure as hell do not want to concern ourselves with the need for development of the less fortunate masses though they constitute the major part of this nation. Let’s just discount what they need because they are completely uneducated and will sell their votes for anything. A poor guy who is dying of hunger or a person who has not had a decent meal in his life selling their votes for biryani is still wrong. They should rather die but not be so stupid as to vote for a non-secular leader. Bloody Biryani Voters! So we have discounted CONGRESS and BJP. What do we have left? We have the actual LEFT. And we all know what they are capable of. So what we have effectively done is exposed ourselves to a third front. A third front of regional parties; a weakling of a government susceptible to every disease and incapable of anything substantial. Or NOTA which will never be an answer because let’s face it, how has shooting blanks ever helped anything? So basically yes we are a nation facing the biggest question ever probably, a question dwarfing the Kashmir Plebiscite by miles but we are confused as hell. So what do we do? Think about it. Inform yourself. Yes there maybe people who are parroting but how did parroting suddenly become so wrong? At least there is a dialogue; at least there is awareness. How did suddenly all the parrots and Modi followers become the less informed, less educated and the less intellectual ones and the anti-BJP ones have received all the gifts of Solomon's wisdom? The trend in the arguments on all forums being that of righteous, angry and abusive psycho-babbles and rants from the self-proclaimed more informed ones. The ones claiming you-don’t-know-half-the-things-I-know-and-what-you-don’t-know-makes-you-unworthy-of-arguing-with-me, I urge you to come out of your whispering and covert pillow talks of politics and speak up instead of hiding behind the parroted rants about riots and genocide or other such things. Please understand that a voter’s motive behind casting a vote cannot be uniform and therefore give a bloody thought to why the uneducated masses are voting how they do. 

This all is just a thought albeit almost bordering on Hinduism, almost supporting Modi, almost saying that we don’t have any other option. But after all, what do I know? I am just an uninformed parrot who should be forbidden from voting.

Goodnight...

I start out from the nape of her neck.
A light blow of air first and then a slight brush of lips.
Then I caress her hair, breathing the musk she wears.
Then I move on to the cheek, her goosebumps start to speak.
Small kisses all over the skin, like timestamps they linger.
Then the nose and the ears get attention and the teeth also come to play.
Then I move on to the eyes and the forehead and by now she doesn't know whether she is alive or dead. She tries to grab me but I am not Him, I am a mere substitute.
As he had instructed, I move to the lips finally, slowly.
The cleft between the cheek and the lips gets the first and biggest show of affection. Goosebumps outside and butterflies inside both vying for the attention of her heartbeat, increasing her body's heat. Then I move on to those lips, they are quivering and trembling. They try to make contact but I don't, not yet. The tongue is restless and tries to reach out. Finally, I give in.
I give those lips what I have promised.
The light airy ones, the deep passionate ones, the ones with laughter in them, the hard press ones, the tongue ones, the ones which take her to her happy place.
The kisses.
She stirs sensing his presence.
She wakes up and realises its me.
She misses him and reminisces the real thing.
I have done my part well I believe. Let her beating heart and her searching eyes be my witness.
I see love in her eyes.
He knew exactly what she likes and he taught me well.
I had seen love in his eyes.
Someday, I shall witness this make belief when it turns to reality. I pray.
-Her Pillow

P.S.- he bribed me to do all of this but I did it for free because I knew how lovely she is.

Encounter with Ashwatthaman

This is in 2010. I was camping in rishikesh
Six of us
Whole week, rafting and trekking
In the jungle.. Tents by the Ganga river.
White sand beach and just huge landscapes.
Beautiful by day and dead as a cemetery in the night.
We used to be very tired by the night. So huddling up by the bonfire and exchanging ghost stories was the routine.
One particularly dark night, we got into extra scary ghost stories
The campsite manager also joined us and started telling about dead walkers in the night nd stuff like that.
So he was telling about Ashwatthama. The character from Mahabharata.
He was the son of dronacharya.
He had a huge diamond sticking out of his skull since birth. He was said to be immortal.
In the battle of mahabharata, he was wounded, cursed and kept on bleeding from the diamond.
Since he could not die and the diamond wound could bot be healed, all he could do was keep wiping the blood.
This meant he needed fresh clothes continuously.
To wipe the blood. The diamond was a god gift to him. The diamond was a part of his body. So the camp guy told us this story. He said since the battle place kurukshetra was fought in that part of the country, ashwatthama used to roam those region. Asking tourists for clothes. To wipe the blood. I was almost shitting myself when I heard it but dismissed it as a myth. Kahan mahabharata se bhoot Ayega.
Right! So we then went to our tents.
I saw a few missed calls from my then gf.
Super hyper and angry messages.
And since there was a range issue there, only way I could talk to her was by climbing a bit higher on the hill behind us.
The downside of being a good and committed Bf (read: pussywhipped) is that u don't think twice in such situations.
I just got out of my tent. Arpit was on the other bed.. I started walking up the hill for network.
Called her and she was talking. Guilt trip scene happening.
I, being the scared rabbit I am, finally realised that I am all alone on the hill there.
Ab fatna chalu hua. I started looking around. Literally dying of fear. Tried telling this to her and she got angrier. No escape. I was looking on the river side and some distance away I saw some red round pulsating light. Small light kinda.
I thought it must be some small animal coz it was moving and bobbing. I thought its d eye..and the campfire must be reflecting off the orbs.
Didn't bother about it much and started looking all around to see some floating demons and shit.
Nthng happened for a while but then I heard some noises.
From the campsite
Utensils...some other tearing noise.
Finally gathered the courage to tell my gf to just fuck off and I disconnected the call.
Then for some stupid reason, instead of going back, I stood there listening for the noises
Again some noises.
I cud see a shadow walking thru the tents. I thought it was one of us. As usual, I whistled.
Worst mistake of my life.
Whatever it was or whoever it was started running. More like fast walking.
Meri chaar inch tak fati. Started shouting.
That shadow became visible to me just for a moment before it crossed the river
Cudnt tell if it was an old or young guy.. Nor if it was a man or woman.. Or big or small. Just a drawing-like indefinite humanesque form. But there were two things I noticed for sure. It had draped a white sadhu like cloth. And there was a red glow on the head. It just looked at me once before going over the river. Didn't see the eyes but I knew it looked at me. By then everyone had reached. Half an hour we kept looking everywhere. But nothing. Discussed every possibility
But no conclusion. I was too scared to tell them about the red glow and all. So we finally decided to go off to sleep. Arpit nd I went back to our tent.. Its the last tent.. I told him the entire thing on the way there.
About how I saw the red glow and the clothes. We reached our tent nd started the lantern. Now here is the kicker. We spoke for some time nd started dozing. Lantern band kela ani zopayla laglo. I leaned forward to pull my chaadar to me. And then I realised something wasn't right.
Only half of the chaadar was there! Someone had brutally ripped off the bottom half of that laundry clean, white chaadar. Gela na majhi chaadar gheun.. While Arpit was right here in the tent. HE EXISTS! Needless to say I didn't sleep the remaining few minutes till dawn and had escaped that place by getting on the first bus available.
Aaj ke liye bas Itna hi. Koi sawaal honge toh krupaya kabhi na puche.

Death

"I don't believe the picture of Death painted in our minds by myths and legends. I would like to believe that Death is a suave looking, suited up person. He greets us with a smile and is just someone who offers us a change of lifestyle. For some of us, He offers that vacation we have been craving for years..for some He offers the chance to get away from the toxicity of people around us.. maybe some of us are satisfied with life here. And I am sure its not at all a bad experience on the other side. I am sure that somewhere there my father is sitting in a sugar cane field with his father, without a care in the world, sharing the finest tobacco, discussing the current politics and getting amused by my feeble attempts at living a better life. I am sure he is waiting for me there to point out my mistakes in that sly manner I now miss dearly. I am sure there is a beautiful world out there. I know I will greet Death with a smile whenever my time comes because I will be definitely buying what He is selling."