Visit Us. And Eat Too.

I hate socializing. I hate meeting family friends. I dont hate them, but its the visits that i hate. I hate replying to their very stupid questions in an alright?-is-your-hunger-quenched-now? manner. I hate it all.

Every time I go home, I have to attend at least one of those very stupid social gatherings or the friendly visit-us-and-eat-too things at various family friends’ before my parents are convinced beyond doubt that I get extremely bored -just sitting there-. Here’s what happens:

When we’re still at our place, ready to leave, I give it a shot. One last shot. I try.

“Mom, I’ll get bored. Please! Let me stay here. I’ll eat something.”

“No. They were asking about you. They are very eager to meet you.”

I acquiesce unhappily. I don’t know a single family having a guy-kid of my age. Even a chick of my age would do. But no! Kids having jobs or kids studying basic polynomials. Where’s the –between- gone? So I know that I would have no one to talk, with remote normalcy, with. It so happens that if the friends of my family haven’t seen or met me for more than half a year, they ask me this:

“Arrey! Look at you. You’ve grown so big! The last time I met you, you were (gesticulating with their hands, suspending the palms at knee-level) this small.”

Fuck! I was that small when I three. But they don’t get that. Somehow, I was just two feet high before six months. We enter their house. We sit on those sofas. We drink the served water. The uncle tries to show that he WAS looking forward to meet me. Like this:

“So, holidays, huh?”

“(I don the best smile ever.) Yeah!”

“When are you going back?”

“Blah (blah’s the date.).”

“Hm. (turning to my dad.) The stock market has gone insane! Hasn’t it?”

This is what I was brought along with, for. This is usually the intensity of their eagerness. Did they just want to know when my college reopened? For the remaining of the –very exciting- visit, I do nothing but watch TV along with the still-polynomial-learning kid who finds really horrible jokes funny. And then there’s the cell. I message a few. Hi!-Wassups. No replies.

This goes on. I feel jaded. And it’s only after we come back that my mom agrees with me. And I get to avoid the next social visit that’s there. Barring the food, everything sucks. But as the vacation bells toll again (next time), the reality hits me with such lacerating ferocity that it becomes difficult to keep my cool. The QED is there no more. I realize I’ll have to attend several visits again to prove it to my parents that I –get bored- there.

The friends of my Dad and Mom might probably have concluded that since half a year has gone by since they last saw me; I might not be a three year old anymore. And so it becomes utterly important for them to meet me. Very eager they become.

Of Mosh-pits, Chicks, and Maiden.

“With great bad-ass behavior comes great confidence.”
- Analogous to that dialogue from Spiderman.

“FUCK Bush.”
- Vocalist, Cyanide Serenity.

“This is what happens when you FUCK with nature. Or, let me put it in simpler but more graphic terms; This is what not to do when a bird shits on you.”
- Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden, before starting Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

“The greatest spiritual leader a nation ever saw was a music concert.”

“Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!”
- One of the many requests for an encore at the concert.

Words fail. The sheer awesomeness of it. Its Brobdingnagian appeal. Amplified.

But I can try. The only way to describe it is the DB- way.

1. DBT : Death By Train : Try traveling more than 24 hours in a train. 6 hours of which were spent in a general compartment. With people around you, digging their nose-holes wildly, see if you can survive the torture.

2. DBC : Death By Chocolate : The ice-cream which costed us a bomb. Here's how its made: A thick layer of vanilla at the bottom. A thicker layer of chocolate brownie on top of it. Then comes the hot chocolate. Lots of it. Lots. And lastly, a huge layer of nuts. And we ordered three. One for each of us. Tyrant proved himself worthy of his name and finished all of his DBC. Slash and I couldn't.

3. DBP : Death By Pit : The CRI winners covered Lamb Of God. That's when all the moshing started. Crazy shit! And to an alien eye, it may look/sound very enigmatic. But to one participating in the mosh-pit, the mere idea of crashing into someone else itself is intoxicating.

4. DBM : Death By Maiden : Two hours of Iron Maiden! I can finally start a -done- list with IM's name checked off it. Less than 50 meters away! That's where they were! Plain -Fuck!-!

5. DBR : Death By Rickshaws : Fuck them! All of them! Assholes! They fucked us badly. The rickshaw-walas.

This is it. This is how it was. How it went. Awesome! And i didnt even miss a single practical class. The Tyrant missed three though. I want to list out a few points worth remembering. Here:

1. The Tyrant's business card. A joker. And the guy at the entrance gates who laughed when I informed him that what he happened to see accidentally in the Tyrant's wallet was not any ordinary joker of a cards-deck but a business card.

2. The general compartment.

3. The grandness of the ISKCON Temple.

4. Corner House. Not all of us were able to complete the DBC. But the first bite of it is totally unforgettable. The look of it! DBC. Respect!

5. Mosh Pit. Easily, the best thing (after Maiden, ofc) that happened there. Then. I regret not moshing for whatever time I might not have been present in the pit for whatever reasons possible. But the time I spent in there gave me a high unachievable by anything. Bliss!

6. Chicks! Hot. Hot. Very very hot! With piercings here and there, a few looked super-sexy. And the fact that all of them listened to metal amplified their sexiness. Laurren Harris was hot too.

7. Iron Maiden. All hail Maiden.

8. Andhra Style Family Restaurant. Saved us from possible death by starvation. Hogged like dogs.

Tyrant, Slash. Any additions?

Body's still aching from moshing incessantly. Kaan abhi bhi baj rahe hai. But I give no fuck. I saw Maiden perform live. That's one off the list. Slayer should come. Lamb Of God too. Many.

Early Morning Blues.

Waking up early is, by far, one of the hardest things I've done. I just cant. The ringing alarm, the knocks on the door, the ring-tone in my cell; everything merges with the dream and a less pleasant dream replaces it. A new story starts being told.

I'm sleeping. The alarm in my computer/cell has been ordered to start its ordeal at 6:00 AM. And it just cant wait.

1. I'm dreaming about races of flying dolls and talking motorcycles at a nuclear war. A big one. A Triumph is just about to chop a Barbie's head off when suddenly another Barbie pops into the picture. But instead of rescuing its comrade, it starts singing. It doesnt stop. Somehow, in an era of talking motorcycles and really deadly flying dolls, Lynyrd Skynyrd is still liked. The Triumph stares in wonder as the newcomer continues singing Sweet Home Alabama (alarm-song). The song gets louder by every second. Suddenly, the motorcycles and the dolls are replaced by a big man. A monster. Twenty storeys tall. Someone is still singing the song and the big bad guy is not pleased. Irritated, he starts searching the streets frantically for the mystery source of the song. At the end of the road, he finds a house. He peeps in through one of the windows (He's big. He can easily do this.) and sees a guy with a goatee having a tape-recorder in his hand. The source. Determined, he charges at the guy with a sword.

That's when I wake up.

2. I put off the alarm and sit on my bed trying to remember why I wanted to wake up so early. Its cold. I start shivering. This stage is the worst.

You now remember the reason for waking up so early. So you know its utterly necessary to stay awake and do what made you see sunrise. But then, there's the bed.

I give one look at the bed. Its one mammoth pizza. Too big for even several dehydrated hungry obese men, lost in the Sahara desert for over a month to finish off. And I'm one of them. So I sleep off. Again.

3. But this time, the dreams dont have any of the dolls or motorcycles. Not even the giant. Instead, the thought of not accomplishing the task I had so enthusiastically set the alarm for and so irritatedly woken up for nags the mind. Its not the deep sleep that I wanted. But the superficial-subconscious one haunted by dreamy images of some random guy ordering me to get up and get going who my mind very adamantly ignores.

Dream time is much slower than real time. An hour goes by. And its 7:00 AM. I wake up again as the random guy wins.

This is how it is. The three stages. Seldom have i been able to wake up early. On a few days, when I have, to study, I have dozed off while doing so. Being nocturnal is so much fun. And then there's Chandrama. Who wants to study when others dream about bikes? God bless the -that someone- who introduced snooze. "I tried."

ARGH!!

Anger. I'm angry. I want to break some glass. I want to slap someone. I want to tear up entire books.

I feel like... :

1. Throwing my cell out of the window.

2. Clicking the power button repeatedly. It'll make the system crash.

3. Smashing my cube into pieces.

4. Burning. Anything.

5. Kicking the dustbin outside my room.

6. Ignoring gtalk-pests. Or maybe just throwing a really acidic fuck-off along their way.

7. Shouting.

I have other things on my mind too. But my brain's in just too chaotic a state to sort them out. Wish i had vampire teeth. Aaaarrrgghh!!!

Bored.

Cant really pass my time nowadays. Its difficult. Waking up late doesnt help. With no one around, its hard for my mind to stay at ease. I'm not even watching movies, which is what I should be doing. I cleaned my room. Now its looking a lot cleaner. The cobwebs are still up there though. Their time will come. Soon enough. But the cleaning thing kept me occupied for just an hour. And after that, I was back to living a purposeless life. Which is why I decided to start a new sitcom. So I started Frasier. But soon I realized that I only had the first five episodes of season one and the last three of season four. So long Frasier. Supernatural it was then.

Supernatural is about two brothers. Something kills their mom when they are very young. The dad swears vengeance and gives his sons combat training, teaches them how to melt silver and make bullets (vampires, get it?), so that the three of them can find the thing that killed the lady. And one day suddenly the dad goes missing. So the two brothers set out to find their dad, solving “ghost” mysteries on their way. But the best thing about the series is the elder brother Dean. Reasons:

1.He owns a muscle. A '67 Chevy Impala. The sight's a killer. Shiny black. And the thump-thump of the engine is no less charming and mesmerizing than Karen Carpenter of the Carpenters.

2.He likes metal. He has a cassette player in his car. And a big box of cassettes of artists like Black Sabbath, Metallica, Motorhead.

3.He likes girls. So he's definitely not gay. He ogles at chics, especially when they are hot.

4.He has used aliases like Dr. James Hettfield and John Bonham while interrogating people.

The need for a car/bike accentuated itself after this. And couple to that, a really long walk to the market and back to the hostel. I'm fed up of having to watch people buzz past me in shining black Avengers. Sometimes, if I'm unlucky, I get to see a Bullet too. I'm fed up of all the bargaining I've to do with the rickshaw walas. They tell me it'll cost me 40 bucks to get to the main market and I reply with an air of knowingness that I always pay 30 and that I know. With smugness written all over me, I climb into the rickshaw. Anyway, a bike's like a distant dream. I've left hopes. Cant even own 10 bhps and I keep reading magazines featuring bikes having 100. Bummer.

Did a fifth-time of The Matrix yesterday. Cannot get bored of it. Ever.

Its boring here. Wont ramble much. I'm not making sense. I wasnt even sure what I was writing on. I could have seen an episode in the time i spent writing this. Damn. Supernatural's calling me it seems. Gotta go.

Opeth.

Opeth's coming to India. Its a yay-thing. I check the net and I come to know of it on facebook. It seems that the IIT-M people somehow managed to convince them to step in India. Awesome. Kudos to all. I'm all happy-happy and jumping from one spot to another with joy. So I'm asked. And I explain. Its then that my joy bubble bursts. I'm told then that we'll be having our exams from the 27th, two days after the concert. Argh!

It happens everytime. We were studying for our exams when a million other people were headbanging to Mustaine's riffs. And so was the case when Iron Maiden had come here. Still. We can still think of a way but that would imply jeopardizing our internal marks. And we're a bunch who dont perform well even without any potential interruptions. So the thought of working hard in the few hours that we'll have after returning has improbable written all over it.

Murphy ruined my life.

It was a quote I read somewhere. It read :

“The greatest spiritual leader a nation ever saw was a music concert.”

So true. I've never been to a big concert before but have attended one or two small launchpad-type events. But what I've felt there is incomparable. Hundreds of like-minded people around. With half of them having a goatee and half of the other half being chics and the rest being idiots without a goatee and long hair. A few on stage. And almost all of the people below swaying in synchro or headbanging if the number being played is metal. With the exception of a few who dont get the whole point but still decide to bring their girlfriends to a rock concert and stand at the back, at the food stalls, happily gorging away on popcorn. The atmosphere is simply electric. And I can only imagine the kind of ambiance at a big concert.

But my life's a misery. Some concert comes my way and the exams suddenly turn possessive and they're all you-are-mine-and-no-one-else's. I've heard Maiden too is coming here sometime in mid-feb. But I have little hopes. There are chances Thorat (our acad-dean) might come to know about it and keep something as stupid as a pre-registration on the day of the concert. Murphy still haunts.

“If anything can go wrong, it will.”
-Murphy.

Rise and Fall of The Goatee.

Home’s always a place of horrible realizations and contradictions (of a huge order) with the place you usually hang out at or stay in. Not once have my adventures and experiments with hair (it aint as gross as it sounds) been looked at with anything more than a long glance full of disgust. At home, of course.

I’m here in my hostel. I’ve a long goatee and high hopes of growing it longer. Till a point when I have to get it braided. Noble intentions. I prefer not to comb my hair. That’s the way I like it. And no one tells me anything. I wake up in the morning, brush my teeth and rush off to the college without actually thinking how I look. Once in two or three weeks do I get to hear a small compliment about my goatee from the ilk of guys who don’t even don a goatee. But I know it looks good. And even if it doesn’t, I like it. It’s all about personal satisfaction I keep telling people. Being a metalhead, i feel like growing my hair long. Till-shoulders long. So I start growing my hair. I never comb. But then, I’ve never done so after my ninth grade. Its college, I tell myself.

But.

The day then arrives when I have to board the train which will transport me to Gujarat. It gradually builds up, the thought. Of having to hear all the chidings. But I keep my cool. The moment of my welcome is accompanied by exclamations of disgust. Getting to hear nothing but criticism every minute, my determination drops from a very high “I’m so gonna grow this” to a mere “should I cut it off?”. Even the mirrors seem to pass acrid remarks at my goatee. On the contrary, I hear praises from the mirrors in my hostel. Honest. But the mirrors at my place suck. Depressed by all the criticism, I succumb to the evil force. Like those stupid white robots that appear out of nowhere when Darth Vader summons them, the scissors and the razor appear out of nowhere and stare at me with an evil smile. Where’s the force that was supposed to be with me? Yoda doesn’t come to the rescue. Clack-clack, and bam! My goatee’s gone. Sob-sob follows. Now all of a sudden I realize I look stupid with long hair without a goatee on my face. And the barber shop suddenly looks visually appealing. Clack-clack and I’m close to looking like an army school drop-out.

That’s about it. After all the misadventures, when I return to the college, the hostel mirrors look at me in disgust because they are fond of goatees and I don’t have one anymore. They join the club which the mirrors at my home are members of too. Sad. This continues for a week or so till I get inspired to grow a goatee again and the cycle continues.

May the force be with me. From now on.