In High Spirits

Its been roughly eighty hours since I came out of the ICU. (Actually, its equally arcane to me as it is to you, when will I run out of those splendid metaphors to denote that place!) And, it was a hortatory epiphany that I just had, it was perfectly reasonable how was I estranged to this facet for so long, and it was an overwhelming feeling...to know that, Life Is Beautiful. I am spending more than ten hours outside my abode, each day. Homesickness, anyone? Well, I am, but this appetite of schmaltz is pacified now and then from the then wonderous and now infinitely manipulated invention of Alexander Graham Bell. But what cant possibly be recreated in drastically antonymic surroundings, is my almighty place. Yes, that's what it is. I am place-sick. Hey, suggest me a better name for this emotion.

I have been roaming around the roads, filling my lungs up with plumes and plumes of nitrous dioxide, sulphur dioxide and the gloomy gang, not to exclude the insolent SPMs, and the same old feeling of being 'the one' himself, the one on the road, where the road is nothing more mundane than your kitchen garden and you have the landmower! There is nothing more confounding than being sidelined and its even more so, when you have the horses. And if you thought that, I was already writing my epitaph, if I have such an idea about driving, another frivolous being bent on temerity, well here I am not alone! And this assembles a competitive cabal of 'riders', for whom the glory is in burning rubber, however pointless the trip is, its the ultimate zealotry to emerge out of the fading bedlam of smoke and steel!

Well, its veritably a matter of life and death that I don't often get my hands on any of our vehicles. As mostly, I am not on the driver's seat, I am promenading into the urban jungle. Worshipping hedonism, returning to gluttony, regaining my spendthrift choler. To my utter delight, you'll find this place where all the snobs and wannabes of the resplendently discussed rat race gather, called a 'mall'. One is coming up in every outskirts of any group of houses. Understandably, this is a self-centric view on my part. On the leeward side, there are parents flexing facial muscles on the prospects of profligacy their wards can have around them rightly at their doorstep. Then the evenings are more about checking out the new store or movie than a match of cricket. Take it, or leave it, Consumerism is here to stay, legally, commercially, filling up the coffers of the government.

Some other things that are here to stay, are my spirits, and those of our intoxicated country. I was watching this interesting debate on television last night. On the watchdogs of everything that goes around, even a bee biting the arse of a minister is a headline, the assiduous news channels, this time what was the cynosure of their ever shifting attention was the banning of liquor in India. With their sensically-impaired reporters who are half the time performing some Japanese folk dance, pressing the earphone, checking the mic, strafing left and right and so does their ardent dance partner, the hapless cameraman. In all the performance, the interviewee cant help but maintain a silly expression on his face, staring listlessly in the lens. With their equipment (the cameraman is a part of it, mind you) , correspondents were posted at bars and on the streets of Delhi and Mumbai, trying to impress and collect a public opinion. The views were largely contradicting to the usual sensibilities I share with my teetotaller group. Although most of us handle the issue with the characteristic intellectual look on our highly deceitful faces, and utter that, "It's all a matter of personal choice, this generation is responsible enough to handle such an issue." (In Set: My Drink)

But the doubt killed the dog (hee-haw) just there. How do we trust people? Does this developing country run by seniles is ever going to be forbearing towards the bastion of this almost ostracised component of the society, the neo-teenage group, the 20s people? Will we ever be perceived more than a creed of harebrained fanatics, just high on hormones? This debatable segment of verdant parvenus is never respected by the society, largely, in their choices, the solemnity of their decisions, even when they are financially independent, but prudence is always compromised for age. True, there are the black sheeps, who are so successfully advertising the wanton youth of India, but the typcasting is infuriating.