in-between-sound-and-silence

Not very far into the future, I shall be setting out to live out the 32nd year of my life. My other age-conscious friends, who employ intellectual acrobatics to fight their age, would insist that they are turning 31. Not me. I am not so easily seduced by the fiction/romance of mathematics. In its stead, I think growing old has it merits of which I shall speak of at some other opportune, ripe-enough, moment.

In that future, of being 32, I have decided I want the following:

Boxing gear (Sandbag + Gloves) / 4 GB RAM for my PowerBook G4

Latest 3G iPhone / Champagne with Starwberries

Not necessarily in that order.

I have been getting a lot of flak for being vocal about my desire for an iPhone. I have been called fake and pretensions. Someone even asked me whether somewhere in my family tree there is a yuppie-puppy punjabi from Karol Bagh. I do not blame them, at least, out rightly. I shall just not let them touch my iPhone. As of now, I carry a Noika, the cheapest of their models. Expensive phones do not amuse me. But, heck, people, it's an iPhone. Apple. Mac... those who don't understand that sentiment, I am sorry, but even 'beauty will not be able to your souls'.

Such specific detailed listing of my desires/wishes, I do not recall being able to accomplish earlier. My refrain in those moments of deep questioning was 'I don't know. I really don't know'.

But I know now. And what still, I can justify every of the wishes listed.

Is it, I wonder, a severe case of Nicotine deficiency? Is the lack of it clearing my system towards higher austere destinations or is it (the lack) surreptitiously taking over my system making me into an iPhone carrying, Kidrock listening, The Secret reading (and worse still believing in it, is the universe at large conspiring for me to have that iphone) person.

Or. Or. Or …

Anyone - with half an ounce of grey cells and a sense of humour - who has seen the ‘Dark Temptation: Irresistible as Chocolate’ Axe advert will call it anything but ‘indecent, repulsive, and obscene’. This is how MIB has categorized it and urges the advertisers “to refrain from airing the said advertisement”.  

The narrative sequence of the advert, bordering between surrealistic and science fiction, is not too complicated. A man, getting dressed, spray himself, generously, with the Axe deodrant, Dark Temptation, and on his way out he transforms into a ‘Chocolate boy’. And, well, women want to, hmm…, eat him up because he’s made of chocolate. While walking the road, he sweetly offers a bit of his ‘chocolate’ nose to women eating ice-cream as flavouring (was this the repulsive bit?). Visiting another sick woman-friend, he wiggles his ‘chocolate’ hand to amuse her. It does bring out a darn’ good smile on her face. My favourite bit of the advert is when traveling in a bus, a woman, nonchalantly bites into his bottom for a piece of his, well, ‘chocolate’ bottom. Sweet! (On second thoughts, was this the vulgar and indecent bit?)

I am not too keen on chocolate. I do not think I would flutter, if man smelling of chocolate is passing by. I like sweat and grime. I do. I watched the advert, over and over again, to figure what the ‘indecent, repulsive, and vulgar’ bits. On the third viewing, the advert was outright hilarious and anything but sexual.

The ‘chocolate’ man seems like as if he is high on LSD. The smirk is permanent and suggests some serious damage to important parts of the brain. The smile, the eyes, the walk, the look do not drive the women; they just want the chocolate. The man seems to incidental to the whole situation. 

I would admit, it is a slightly over-the-top advert but it catches one’s attention and, I reckon, does what it is supposed to do, convince men that if they use this deodorant strange women would want to bite into their bottoms. Is that the message? It did not work on me. I do not fancy either chocolate or ‘chocolate’ men. I will not want my man to smell of chocolate. It’s like having a deodorant which smells like Pepperoni Pizza. I know, I know … for the chocolate lovers, this is a deeming comparison but I do not know any better. What chocolate does to you, Pepperoni does for me. 

Ah, well …. 

And, is biting into the bottom really that ‘vulgar or obscene’? I think not. 

There could be very serious, sexual implications of biting into bottoms but that is not what this advert projects. 

The kind of bottom-biting this advert professes is that of the Sunday-afternoon-lazing-around nursing-hangover-semi-naked-but-not-sexed-out-loving-in-between-zodiac-reading-munching-into-the-lover’s-bottom. 

It is actually kinda’ quite cute. Maybe I will take to chocolates, finally.

 Rr. reckons that most of my crisis are manufactured. He pays no attention to my long, ramblings when I call him to update about the latest crisis I am going through. Not surprisingly, I got the same cold shoulder when I called him in between his preoccupied with early-afternoon-Sunday-things hour (read: reading columns, grinning, and saying it to himself or me, when I am on the other side of the phone, I would have done it 500 times better). He hummed. I have a feeling when I was venting out, he actually clipped his nails, maybe even painted them pink, who knows? 

The crisis – to get the obvious out of the way – it is not difficult, actually it has been quite easy, for me to be a non-smoker. 

I know, at the most superficial level, it does not seem like one, but, hear me out.  

Well, as is well known, I gave up smoking. It has been five days. I celebrated my last cigarette. I was ready with dignified resilience to welcome the pains of quitting smoking; the irritability, the sweaty palms, the urge to eat three kgs of chocolate, the need to dismember someone’s body parts, and the stomach crams. With arms wide open, I was ready for the temptations to throng. In this suffering, I was convinced lay my redemption. I would become a better person. I was actually hoping for a halo around the head.

I had my last, celebratory, cigarette an hour back.

In preparation, I made exotic Rose tea sprinkled with Jasmine leaves, I worked on the lighting in the room, I spent precious minutes contemplating the music to play at the significant moment, I fluffed the cushion I intended to rest my back on, and kept the book I am reading at the moment, a Philip Roth, at a hand’s distance. Also, the ashtray. I wanted the moment to be perfect. The celebrations divine.

As I sat on a wide, circular chair, a prized possession of mine, and lit the last of the cigarettes I would ever smoke, or so I hope, I reached out neither to the books, teas, or the music I had carefully laid. In its stead, each puff of that cigarette took me on a rollercoaster ride through the last 13 years, the time I have been a smoker.

I started smoking when I was 19 not to look cool but to stay awake at night, believe it or not, to read. It was only a year later when I joined JNU that I started smoking publicly in canteens with sweetened  cups of tea and later, Beer, and then Rum, mostly. In the last 13 years, I have had lovers but never a non-smoker. Now when I reflect, I think, was it destiny or there is an unsaid law of attraction between smokers. Did I, during this time, repel non-smokers? Will non-smokers now feel irresistible pull towards me? Was my Prince Charming, I wonder now, a non-smoker who trotted away when he spotted the smoke or was it the stale smell?

I am confident about my decision not to be a smoker. I have my reasons, health being the least of the concerns. However, I have not metamorphosed into a berating, you-are-killing-yourself-and-everyone-else-around-you, you-smell-stale, non-smoker. So rest in peace all the smokers out there, do not fret; I am still on your side, conceptually.

For me, the world was - and maybe still is though the boundaries have got a bit blurred - divided into people who read and those who do not, and people who smoke and those who do not. The closest of my friends are voracious readers and heavy smokers. It is not my fault that I made the obvious connection between cerebral activity and dense smoke. As mentioned earlier, I have never had a single non-smoker lover.

Will I now take a smoker as a lover?

Roberto Bolano in ‘The Savage Detectives’ profiles the desperate writer and reader. This literature, the desperate one, is “… of resentment, full of sharp instruments and lynched messiahs’.

A desperate writer is one who is impressed by his/her cleverness. So enamored, not always arrogantly or confidently, is the writer with his/her own emotions and devices that these form crucial elements of the plot, narrative, and climax in all their narratives. The writing is clever, indeed. However, the sole purpose of writing as such is to express an emotion (usually the same one) to evoke reactions. It is excessively self-indulgent. It does not challenge to take either the form or the idea to its limits. It pleases itself with what it can do exclusively for the writer. The world of writing as a technique, as meditations, as mediations does not exist as possibilities for writers as such. They live (and write) in insulated worlds.

I know enough about desperate writers because until not very long time back, I was one of them. It is still very easy, out of habit, to let the desperation reveal itself. However, in the last few years, I have cemented friendships with those who are writers but not of the desperate kinds. They have read my long, unyielding, passages patiently only to tell I am affecting everything a bit too much. It took time but I have started to see their point of view. Thanks.

Rr., you are not a pompous ass just a bloody fine critic. If you reviewed all the books after reading them, let me tell you, you wouldn’t have many friends!

I re-wrote the desperate piece of last night. The comments were helpful.