i don't...

The first lines of warning from Fight Club:

If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned - Tyler.


‘Writing is a great habit. It brings discipline in thoughts, precision in words and clarity in ideas.’ Dindu told me this when I last had a conversation with him. I was amazed at the concept and happy at this realization which happened to his otherwise lazy arse, a little while after he started writing seriously.

My conversations with Dindu are never without arguments, simply because our points of view do not match. He believes in God and I don’t. He thinks ‘A’ and I think ‘Z’. He is SRK fan and I think he sucks. He doesn’t believe in taking bath, but I can’t do a single day without taking bath - and similar such small things where I am on the North Pole and he is stuck up somewhere at the 75 degrees of latitude down in the southern hemisphere. But it is good that we never misunderstood our differences in opinion as animosity. ‘Life goes on’ - we quip after we are done with all abusing and shouting out special character words on each other, where usually our arguments end. Next time, though, same argumentative cycle gets repeated.

This time the topic was the old ‘ghisa pitaa’, monotonous, stereotype, most discussed subject which haunts the-twenty-something’s heavily – marriage. You never intend to end up discussing something gross like that, but then at one moment you might be discussing the chaos at Terminal 5 of Heathrow airport and suddenly there will be nothing to talk about and at that very moment someone will ask ‘So! When are you getting married?’

Dindu: Dae! I heard inflation is going to 7%. Is that good or bad for me?

Strange! Tambi interested in inflation?!?

Me: Of course bad man, unless you are a ruthless hedge fund manager who sits in the-top-floor-river-facing-cabin at HSBC branch for investment banking. Inflation of 7% means an invisible hand is eating away the value of money which you have kept in your savings account. If you have 100k Rs in your savings account right now, they will be worth 93k Rs after one year given you don’t get any interest on your savings. So you need to save the value of your money by investing it into some investment instruments like Stocks, bonds or fixed deposits.

Dindu: Hmm… So! When are you getting married?

I hope you can imagine the level of frustration a person might have had here. I was religiously explaining inflation to him and even an iota of his brain wasn't interested in that. What happens when red hot iron is super-cooled with dry ice? It gets pissed off, big time!!! Apparently all the inflation chat was just a precursor to this.

Me: What the f*** happened suddenly!!!

Dindu: I might be getting married to a girl soon.

Me: Good for you man that it’s a ‘girl’ and not a ‘boy’. You will do well.

Dindu: Dae B******. No kidding. When are you getting married?

Didn’t he get the message with ‘What the f***!!!’? Patience… Take a deep breath… Count till five… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5…

Me: Cough… Cough… whenever I get the guts to say ‘I do’.

Dindu: Why do people get married man?

Me: You should tell me that a**h****! You are the one who is getting into it.

Dindu: I don’t know man. I am getting into it because all my cousins are done with it. My parents are now forcing me to get into it.

Me: That’s good enough a reason tambi! They do it; I do it - simple valid reason. My Mama asks me to brush my teeth, I do. My Pop asks me to have hairline in the left side of the head inside of in the middle, I do. Who the hell am I? Wake up man! I have told you so many times already that people have different reason of doing what they do. So you need to find your own.
Dindu: Macha! I have been thinking a lot about this from past few weeks. I have also written my thoughts about it in my journal. What I have concluded is that, marriage is not a law of nature. It is just an institution established by human species in early times of its evolution. What I can imagine is – as human population grew and disorder prevailed in society, some scholarly people introduced this concept, which is nothing greater than the concept of ‘currency notes’.

Me: Yeah, if you say so. Basically it helped people to identify who is whose father/mother and which one is which one’s child. Basic law of nature is – every species struggles to keep itself alive. Darwin! But you need to remember that we no longer follow nature’s code. We are the most intelligent species. We follow social code now which is smarter than natural laws. So better be realistic.

Dindu: True. We might have been able to outsmart nature in some ways, but we will never be able to overpower it. And I am not only talking about the nature outside of us, I am talking about our very own nature. The nature, that makes us feel our emotions - happiness, anger and pain… that nature.

Me: Are you trying to say that there is still some natural reason left which can justify people getting married?

Dindu: Yes da! There has to be some fundamental law. Otherwise why would a man get attracted towards a woman and vice versa?

Me: But how will you explain men getting attracted to men and women getting married to women though not enough instances in India till now.

Dindu: That’s not natural man. That’s bloody gay thing. That’s psychological disorder man. Even science has proved it.

Me: Ha ha ha… Crap! What exactly are you trying to say man? Where the f*** is this conversation headed?

Dindu: I am not trying to make any scholarly hypothesis here boss. I just want to understand a few things before I get laid.

Me: You don't have to be married to get laid. Understand like what?

Dindu: I want to understand why parents love their children, even among animals?

Me: Snake eats its own eggs. Cats and Lions – they eat their own infants.

Dindu: Ok da…!!! Most of the animals! But what makes us humans to love our child even when it is disabled and cannot speak and walk? Why do saints preach that we should be compassionate towards criminals and diseased? Why does a person fall in love, get married and then one day get divorced?

Me: Answer to last question might be because we are driven by our needs and when needs are satisfied we no longer care about the objects which we earlier used to satisfy those needs. I don’t know about the first two.

Dindu: But then there are people who stay married for whole of their lives.

Me: Come on man! Life is not algebra where two plus two is always four. It’s complex. You make mistakes, you learn, you move on. You make choices. Nothing is forever here. May be your first marriage won’t be successful. Try second. If that fails, try third. What’s the big deal in that? There is still polygamy in many cultures. You never stay with your first mobile phone forever, do you? As technology advances and your mobile-phone doesn’t change with it, you change it! You upgrade.

Dindu: What the f*** man. This is not a joke.

Me: I am not laughing a**h***. First of all it was you who turned this conversation from inflation to marriage. And now you don’t know what you really wanted to discuss. What the f*** man.

Dindu: Why the f*** are you so arrogant man?

Me: Look who is saying this!

Dindu: F*** this. Life goes on.

Me: C’est la vie.

So I log-off and tune into this new song to which I have got addicted to. Mad World by Gary Jules which says:

I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad;
the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..