A Bowl of Elusive

A friend of mine just forwarded a video of the song “Radha Kaise Na Jale” from the movie ’Lagaan’ and as I was listening to it, I was transported back in time when I had first heard this song. I remember they used to run the trailer of the movie between programs on the Zee Channel and I loved it. It was one of the first movies that I had been really excited about and I remember this because my grandfather had commented on my excitement. Ah, songs and the memories they bring with it. As of today, memories are all I have left of my family members. For each one of them, there are memories associated with certain songs. And I thought, why not write about the various songs that hold significance in my life in the form of memories they evoke, be it about my family members or certain moments in my life. My father was the OG music aficionado in the family. He had a Philips 2-in-1 music system and he would buy cassette tapes of his favorite albums. Kumar Sanu, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle & U...

I know I have been missing in action for a while and that's because I was dealing with some personal crap. For the four or five people who read the shit that I write, I am back with the fourth installment to the Eric and Angela story. And for those who are joining just now, here's the link to Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 . Go play catch up before you read this. Or not. I can't tell you what to do.  *** Eric lay awake in his bed, reminiscing the events of that fateful night that he spent with Angela at that hotel. Had he been “just seeking sex”, he could have chalked that night as a win and moved on to the next conquest, but this guy wanted more, he wanted her heart and that’s why the following day felt more like a win than the night before. She was leaving, feeling dirty and repentant about their night together and Eric had broken down. Eric knew he had at least some claim to Angela’s heart when she decided to stay when he promised to keep it platonic.   Moreover...

This is the third chapter of the Angela & Eric series. Here are the links to Part 1 & Part 2 . Read on to find what happened next. It had been two whole days since Eric and Angela spent that night together at his place. Eric had not seen her yet. They had been texting on and off, keeping the conversation light and avoiding the discussion of kisses and temptations as much as possible. Every now and then, Angela would drop in a term of endearment and make Eric feel lovelorn. Eric was half tempted to call out Angela for all the ‘mixed signals’ but he did not want to dig a hole for himself.  On the third day, it was cloudy in the morning and by the time afternoon came, it started drizzling. Eric texted Angela asking her if she wanted to get wet in the rain. Enticing as the idea was, Angela opted out on account of her tender health lately. She suggested they have dinner together if the rain stopped. Not one to let an opportunity pass, Eric commented that unless she wanted to ea...

This is the second part of the “Eric & Angela” series. Click here for Part 1 . A million thoughts ran through his head when Eric drove six odd kilometers to meet Angela. She had mentioned that the café they were meeting at was pretty close to where she lived, she preferred to walk. That is why she had chosen it for their first meeting. He had seen her pictures and he had heard her voice and they had talked to their heart's content but the two had not met yet. This was the fateful day, Eric thought to himself. The voice in his head often became a pompous news anchor and started narrating his own life to him when Eric got nervous.  “Eric being the neurotic son-of-a-bitch that he is, doesn’t want to be late for the first date. As Angela has reminded him thrice now, it isn’t a date. However, he is excited and has butterflies in his stomach, more than he had ever had before. In his excitement, Eric is trying to imagine what Angela looks like when he should be concentrating on the ro...

Have you ever wondered what is the point to all this? I am talking about life. Why do we live? What do we live for? Someone who had met me a decade ago would be surprised at my asking these questions. I believed in indulgent excesses and living for the decadent pleasures of life. By that, I mean food mostly. I had a small family, including my grandparents and uncle and I never gave death a thought. Then in the last decade, I lost all of them. I made some serious mistakes in life, hurt people in the process and here I am, at thirty years old, alone, regretful and as per the latest reports, diabetic. So, I am asking myself, what am I living for? All these years, I had something to look forward to, but now it is all gone. I have these feelings that I feel like sharing with people, but when I call them, words fail me. You see I am unable to express the extent of the loneliness I feel or the all-consuming pointlessness of life in general. Lately, I have been doing a little bit of cost-benef...

I remember all of us sitting in the dining hall at our place in Sambalpur. I wasn’t more than five years old at the time. My grandfather was seated in his usual wooden recliner, with my grandmother by his side in a matching chair, while my father sat at the dining table peeling mangoes for everyone to eat. I was on the floor fiddling with some toy of some kind while my father was entertaining his parents with anecdotes from his time in the armed forces. After a while, the conversation shifted to me and how I was such a big responsibility, especially since my father was raising me alone. My father looked at me with pride and announced that I’d become “a doctor or an engineer” when I grow up.  My father’s plan was to be hands-on with my upbringing and to a large extent he was. But it was short-lived, as just five years later, he died of kidney failure and I came under my grandparents’ care. They were good people and their style of parenting involved giving me a wider berth to grow cr...

Just when you think you know yourself, just when you feel like you’ve seen and felt it all, that nothing could surprise you, something comes up and it changes the whole dynamic. Describing Eric as a cynic would be the understatement of the century. He was a caustic, bitter, and sarcastic thirty-year-old going about his life like a clumsy fool, tripping on the various hurdles that life’s journey threw at him. In his three decades on this planet, Eric had seen various facets of the drama that life offered – death, grief, love, heartbreak; you name it, he had seen it. Eric was someone who had very rigid notions about the world, which he believed to be absolute truths because they were based on his real-life experiences. But as I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, some things just change the game. Angela wasn’t a stranger. Eric had known her for over a year, having connected with her through a dating site. She was someone who’d fascinated our protagonist right from the beginning...