I'm Back--and this is a Song, to YOU...to top it all off :D

Sittin' in the car, puttin' our faces to the A/C,
I know i don't like the music, but your glitterin' eyes are all i see,
Twiddlin' our thumbs, wrestlin' time on the radio,
Some day i'm going to torture you, playing trance on our patio.

Oh, what would i have done, if i didn't see that pinkness flash,
Oh what would i have done, if i didn't feel that softness,
Oh what would i do, my lil baby!

Sitting close by somewhere on Carter Road,
I never felt this way before, perhaps its just one more step to a pretty abode,
Looking at each other, sometimes with just a tear,
Our lil' house with just us both, is closer than you think, oh yes it's near.

Oh, what would i have done, if i didn't see that pinkness flash,
Oh what would i have done, if i didn't feel that softness,
Oh what would i do, my lil baby!

Cheesy as it may seem my skills on this song,
I know i want you, and for that i long.
Thanks for being my baby, i know nobody else can,
Nobody would fit this well, just like yin-yan'.

The short story i'm delighted someone else didn't write for me!

------------------------------------------------HELLGEIST----------------------------------------------------

And the gates of Hell slowly creaked open. The dark rust was mellow and hued in a rather foreboding shade of vermillion. It appeared as if every particle of the rust was an entire coat of crystallized blood—latent and frozen, waiting to flow again.

The wind this side of this addled impasse reeked of flesh, freshly lacerated from seas of bodies, with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Hell’s own Son, Lucifer, performed this massive orgy of surgical masturbation as mounds and mounds of offal offerings piled on the craggy hills and inside the craters.

The skies were emblazoned with logos and insignias of the various sects and tribes of Hell, the deranged amber and the coal-black clouds showered a monstrous kaleidoscope around the grounds. However, it was where Lucifer stood, right atop a hillock of severed heads—towering above his kingdom—where a family of dervishes were incinerating around him, as if they were creating a portal…

And that they were…

Subhash woke up with a fright. The isotonic salts in the sweat were creating a foul odour around his armpits; his powder-blue shirt was already soiled after days of misuse. Of course, there was also the constancy of the punches and kicks that the shirt and his fraying beige trousers took on a daily basis. Subhash Dawda was a freak, and in Wilson’s College—they made sure you paid of it. His patchy chemotherapy-suffering hair, the horn-rimmed wooden glasses, the severe bout of acne, his kwashiorkor-esque stomach and of course—the fits, everything contributed to his image of resident freak.

The fits were most interesting and piquing, they could occur anytime of the day. When they did, all hell would break loose. The normally placid and docile demeanour of this misunderstood boy—would transform demonically. He attained unnatural amounts of energy and lose all control over sanity. His violence could not be leashed and he had been reported several times to have lifted entire benches and hurled them at fellow classmates. The class which he had seen come and pass for a small aeon by now. He repeatedly failed to clear his third year of arts—eight years in a row.

Of course, mostly—he was quite the deer. And that is when students who had felt aggrieved took their chances, and made sure they inflicted maximum pain on him. He never retorted or complained. But bore the brunt of his uncontrollable madness with the grim silence of a bag of bones.

It was never clear why a reputed college such as Wilson, with all its 175 years of grandeur and Victorian magnificence in both stature and appearance—had never even mentioned of rusticating such a queer case.

Subhash Dawda was Wilson College’s best kept secret. The moment you passed through the narrow gate after being screened by the security guards, you knew of the draconian code of conduct. The freak does not exist. For if he does, you do not.

He lived in the southern most room of the Mackichan Hall, the hostel, with all fives rooms next to him—permanently vacant. Nobody knew and nobody questioned. The rule of silence was golden, and it lingered in the atmosphere like an ever-swinging guillotine on everyone’s necks. The moment you took a wrong step—the swish of massive blade would decapitate you before you could say mistake.

Today however, he was in an extremely restless mood. The nightmares had begun to cause an avalanche of palpitation and feeling of an Unnamed Evil, lurking behind the shadows, perhaps within his own shadow.

He couldn’t remember when the dreams had begun to take shape in his mind. It was always the same. But recently, they had begun to develop a certain polychromatic realness to them, as the chasm between dream and hallucination had slowly passed. His greatest fear being witness to the horrid acts of what he believed was the Devil himself.

How he figured in the scheme of things was a question even he could not answer.

Subhash trudged across Laburnum Road and entered his room as surreptitiously as possible. He grabbed his pillow and covered his sweaty head with it, the blazing sun outside granted no favours as the room boiled up, in a slow and simmering rise of temperature; almost brewing him and all his energy.

Hours passed by, and the sun finally set on the Marine Drive, the temperature slowly reducing, and the fatigue and mental exhaustion coupled up to induce a troubled yet long bout of sleep, as Subhash slowly sunk back into his land of nightmares…

The dervishes began to swing into a full-bodied cyclone, potent and cataclysmic, as it swirled the mass of flesh, bone and sinew around the highest hillock of heads. Upon which Lucifer sat; his massive horns pricked up like the ears of a deer under threat, his obsidian-black blazer billowing like a mini-cloud, the human eyes on his shoes began to rotate and shimmy in their shoe-sockets.

Every minion and demon from the vast confines of Hell’s underbelly and beyond had come to witness and partake this humongous inquisition. The chasm of life and death—one sealed by the aeon-long activity of Heaven, rupturing within the hours of the most brutal and insidious mass sacrifice, the three worlds had ever witnessed.

One by one, each minion brought forth scythe and scimitar, rapier and broadsword—as they awaited the message from within the crimson-red cyclone, and whence it came—a volcano of stale blood and degraded muscle spewed from every body, as steel and nerve clashed. Every cell of the undead, vanquished and pulverized under the onslaught of suicidal bliss. Time had halted and the carnage lay in pornographic detail for the Dark Lord himself to view and verify. His entire grotto of the grotesque—lay in suspended animation. Like an aerial maelstrom of gore.

And like a message from the Lord Himself, an electric blue ray surged forward from a nice gap in the ocean of smoky clouds and struck the centre of Lucifer’s massive and ghastly face. It pierced through him, and brought forth a pain so great, that Hell itself was dislodged from its pseudo-celestial abode, as it swung out of orbit, crashing in a wide arc—directly into the heart of Earth…

Subhash sprang from his sleep, his breathing forced and disjointed, he gasped for air, as if his lungs had been punctured. He got up in a spark, and looked around him—the entire building was in ruins, burning in an inexplicable fire. He jumped from his bed and he surveyed the environment around him, every single building was burning, the college as well. He could only see a wall that remained on the far side of Wilson, next to the basketball court, where the Hall was…there was something strange about it. All four walls of the Hall were seemingly intact, which he saw has he crossed the road, the tar almost lava-like because of the heat.

His breathing began to normalize and he paced quickly into the college and stood before the door of the Hall. His heartbeat quickened up like that of a rabbit as his veins went into overdrive mode, blood gushing through every one of them in streamlined precision.

He finally mustered the courage and pushed the door opened….the entire Hall lay in a pool of blue and amber flames, but they did not harm him. He strode in silently, waiting for the inevitable…and as he swung his head to where the stage once used to be, he saw a large beast. Man-beast.

Horns, blazer, shoes, everything was as vivid as his dream. However, what he noticed last was most disturbing. Those violet eyes of the Devil, gleaming as if a torch lay inside both of them—directly pierced through Subhash’s own skull.

His mind stopped working. His heart stopped beating. And at once. The world was a slush of blackness. Pure unadulterated blackness.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What do you think Professor?” said the man in the labcoat, the insignia on the white cotton said OCERN. “I think the subject is highly unstable, but the readings on the meter are oscillating to perfection—just the way it was mentioned in the Latin scripture.”

“Indeed, Mortimer, the oscillations are harmonizing perfectly and the subject’s hallucinatory activities are slowly and steadily reaching conclusive evidence to our tests,” said another one to the Professor.

“I see, what is the status on the Celestial Protoplasmic Portal?” asked the Professor.

“On track, Professor, once the hallucinatory activity is stored into the mainframe, we can commence using the subject as soon as we can stop the upload of the video stream of his college life.”

“Very well, Mortimer, I wish to see it happen as soon as possible, if the scriptures have held true to this moment, I see no reason why we at the Occultist Arm of CERN cannot synchronize the Lifestream between Heaven, Hell and Earth. This subject’s uplink has been verified with that off what we believe could be Hell, Professor…”

“Beautiful,” the Professor sighed. “Stop the upload at once and I wish to see the subject go into the phase 3 as soon as possible, I want to see Hell before that bastard up there comes here…”

Malhar-ed

“Eh, chut! Frisk that bastard!”

Pardon the expletives, but what I speak—is merely what I heard at the supposed Holy Grail of Mumbai college festivals, Malhar. The security department has always been infamous, but this year—the vitriol was more concentrated, almost in a manner as if they were trying to be rude. And in turn, follow the long heritage of obnoxiousness ala mode.

I myself have organized two festivals and almost became a vice chairperson of one—and I have a chronic potty-mouth—but never have I ever dared to abuse a participant or visitor to a fest. Hospitality is key, and unfortunately, Malhar’s generation of obloquy-happy sycophants seems to be watching too much C.S.I to really care.

My own personal experiences this year—despite representing Wilson’s as Assistant-Contingent-Leader--have been rather flattering. While being frisked (ermm…molested, fondled with, my dignity still weeps :( ) I retrieved my pen-drive to show the rather homosexually-attuned volunteer who goes like:

“What is this? Is it explosive?”

“Oh hell yeah, blows big holes and works best in empty skulls, wanna try?”

He kept quiet. Probably the big Neanderthal needed a week to process all that information (But it didn’t stop him from dismantling my friend’s innocuous umbrella afterwards, to check for nitroglycerine or C4 or something)

Speaking of a Neanderthal culture, even the fabled demigods from the events department are even better! They’re not nearly as rude, but the rather orgasmic affinity to following procedure and rules is omnipresent.

Following the rather uncalled for pull-out of my team for a Shadow Theatre, I had to grab four classmates and be ready with a shitty impromptu adlib crass-drama that included me parading around as the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood—albeit one with an umbrella shoved up his rear acting as last-minute tail (It even bloomed in all its glory when Robin Hood—don’t ask where he came from—kills me!).

But that’s not what’s funny.

Apparently the guys at Indian Performing Arts (under whom Shadow Theatre fell) had written about a requirement of 2-3 accompanists.

One for sound.

One for light.

One for stage setup.

Sounds alright, logically correct. But dude—I have no sound, I have no lighting fuss, and I definitely don’t need an accompanist to shove the umbrella behind. So I didn’t get them, and they wouldn’t register me unless I got some. Why did I need the bloody accompanists? After arguing with C-3PO (volunteer), Frankenstein (OG), I finally hoped that I’d get an Angel of Mercy (OC). Alas! ALAS! She happened to be King Kong herself.

To explain this tiny problem of mine, she argued, AND argued with me for 25 minutes!

“You should have let me know about this a week ago!”

“Rules are rules! Can’t break them,”

“Ok, go, perform but I’ll give u minus 5!”

“Nobody should break rules, we made the rules for a reason.”

After half laughing through the random verbal-fencing, she finally agreed to let me in—sans minus points—but I’ll still have to get anyone’s ID card to act as if they were accompanists, but they wouldn’t have to be technically there.

The icing on the cake is more definitely the brilliant prizes given to you if you happen to be one of those Literary Arts junkies. My friends won 2^nd prize in the graphic novel making and Evil quiz (don’t ask!).

Guess what they got?

A beautiful black Tata Indicom mug, a gorgeous Tata Indicom XXL t-shirt and an ABSOLUTELY LOVABLE, SHINY BLUE GARFIELD BOOK! WOW! Ofcourse they got a few vouchers like 500 off on a Chiragh Din shirt (Ha! The damn shirts started at 1500 there!) or 500 off on La Senza…hehehehehe, 500 more and you have ONE WHOLE BRA!! Most of these vouchers were expiring the span of a few days, we even had a 5 0 bucks off on some obscure brand!

Of course Malhar wasn’t entirely bad, the LA OC is an absolutely commendable young lady with brilliant event management skills, and I’m not being sarcastic. She showed great common sense and even let my participants register for their finals without a CL/ACL being physically present.

But the rest of them, yawn, typical—crass, overzealous and idiotic.

I heard a fleeting comment in a conversation with a volunteer who claimed this was the third year running where they were seeing a drop in footfalls. The veracity of the facts are obviously not in the public or rather present at all for verification.

But that's not surprised me at all, especially with Umang delivering the ultimate act of petulance by keeping the dates of their eliminations with the finals of Malhar. Umang is fast catching up, the amount of media coverage they’re garnering and with a whopping 97 colleges participating this year—give them 3 years time. If the rudeboys and gals at Malhar don’t go for either:

A. Anger management

B. Event Management

C. Common Sense Classes

D. Creativity and Lateral thinking (They even have a quiz for that; you get a Jockey Vest for winning it!)

E. All of the above

Then very soon, we won’t see no rage around Mahapalika Marg anymore come 15^th August.

I shall run off to see Parikrama go ballistic at Umang now, instead of watching a bunch of amateurs strum some wannabe cover-pop at the aptly named Am-Night. I used to be obsessed with getting an admission into Xavier’s and organizing Malhar at one point of time. Having seen the brilliance, tch tch, I’d rather be at Wilsons…

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A STUDENT OF NM COLLEGE OR HAVE NO LINKS WITH THE UMANG COMMITTEE NOR ARE THEY PAYING ME. I HAVE MORE FRIENDS IN XAVIERS THAN I DO IN NM. THESE ARE JUST A FEW HONEST POINTS OF VIEW ON PROCEEDINGS AT THE SUPPOSED KING OF THEM ALL. NO VOLUNTEERS/OGs/OCs/VCPs/CPs WERE HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS ARTICLE.

RANT OVER. THANK YOU.

Suspended Animation

The globule lays suspended—cold and cuddled,

The cranium cries out in an orchestrated mumble.

Like freezing drafts wafting through time,

All thoughts go down, akin to dead bodies flowing in the Rhine.

The hands of time seal my fate,

Incensed—my life-stream inundates in itself,

A sense of death, morbidity and ending,

For the clockworks play hopscotch, with demon in tow.

As the receptors flow, ebb and lash,

The feet tremble, in a gyre of emotions,

Churned like a grinding stone,

Extracting all pulchritude and gaiety.

The life-stream yearns for emancipation,

A seeping-through of phoenix-feathers.

Hail the mighty Lord up above and yonder,

For I see the embers.

Learning Spanish with Ankit Desai...tales of multifarious vocabulary issues of children today!!

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

hey dude u know a few spanish words

Anky says:

yes

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

bol

Anky says:

what do you want to know?

Anky says:

i know quite a bit

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

any random words, which can be used for normal language

Anky says:

hola

Anky says:

como estas-->>how are you

Anky says:

que pasa--->>wassup

Anky says:

kien eres--->>who are you

Anky says:

kien es subbie-->>who is subbie?

Anky says:

hijo de puta-->>SOB

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

hehehehehe

Anky says:

cabron--->>bastard

Anky says:

joder-->>fuck it

Anky says:

aur kya chahiye

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

keep going, the simple stuff

Anky says:

arey mai samaj sakta hoon

Anky says:

lekin

Anky says:

i dont know how 2 type most of it out

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

say anything

Anky says:

hablas ingles? do you speak eng

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

a few more, 2-3 more shud do, after that done

Anky says:

no hablo castellano. I dont speak spanish

Anky says:

necessito ir. I need to go

Anky says:

quiero ir. i want to go

Anky says:

necessito is with anything to do with I need to..

Anky says:

and queiro is I WANT TO

Anky says:

you can put any word after that

Anky says:

queiro joder means i want to fuck

Subbie the Acidtounged 【ツ】 says:

oh ok

Anky says:

donde = where

Anky says:

if u want to ask a person where hes from u say

Anky says:

de donde?

Anky says:

i am subbie= yo soy subbie

Anky says:

eres = you are

The Junior College Jamboree

Pseudo-graduation from my tenth grade was ostensibly one of my most sought after goals in life, after a whirlwind tenth standard where I battled my abominable transition from Dubai’s IGCSE to the humbler, more embryonic SSC—all this coupled with Gujurati as a subject ( I am one—but never formally learnt how to write it) and the deplorable Math—a fairly competent seventy-two percent was what I had to contend with.

It did price me out of the Holy Grail—the assiduously dandy South Mumbai glam capital colleges, however, I wasn’t ending up in a shady ghetto either—so hope was not lost.

MMK College in Bandra was where I had cruised in through the first list, and that was where I was staying—the other lists hadn’t been to kind on me.

The first day in itself was a stimulus to what lay in the dark, dank and myriad pathways of my pocket-sized college—the very feeling of walking to that classroom, packed to the rafters like a can of sardines—somehow—somewhere—it seemed that this feeling is not alien, nor was it euphoric, it was deeply recollective like a bad déjà vu.

It felt exactly like school. Ditto same.

Where was the emancipation? The maturity? The rock-n-rollin’ kamikaze pseudo-intellectual jholawhallas that the fabled tales of yore have so overtly glorified throughout the annals of time.

Was this the institution that was going to induce a metamorphosis of the very endoskeleton of the personality that I was going to be? Chances were slim—but like every experience—this would leave its indelible mark on me as well.

Before I had walked into those hallowed classrooms, I wasn’t as self-assured in a situation where I had responsibility shoved down on my narrow shoulders—in college things changed within days; I was immediately thrust into a class-representative (CR) election for which I notched up a rather rich and rousing speech (promising a plethora of things I knew I’d never be able to organize, from Counter Striker to Rink Football to what-nots)—my class bought the kibosh and I was CR.

What seemed like a golden seat with powers bestowed on you rivaling that of your teachers, it took little time to know that a ringmaster and a CR have very similar job profiles.

Instruction 1—the class is psychotically imbalanced and hormonally dysfunctional, oneirodynia is a common ailment amongst them.

Instruction 2—In your CR meet, you were shown a mirage that you are a pseudo-teacher, but in truth—you are merely a titular Xerox-copy-churning entity and if you try and wrestle some discipline into the classroom, they will conspire against you like third-grade infants, charting reports of misbehavior to higher authority.

In short—you are wearing the modern Crown of Thorns, albeit one with two kilograms of pure RDX dangling from either side…it takes great skill to master this crown and still not get hurt in the process—it takes a mythical and difficult skill—diplomacy.

And not only that, this crazy political-minefield cum classroom teaches so much more if you don’t want to fizzle and get immolated in the glory of your own idiocy, the various sects, classes and tribes of ‘studentfolk’ that hound your terrain, everyone has their demands, everyone a different manner of handling, if you want to be everyone’s apple—chances are your will mangle, twist and wrangle with your inner beliefs, principles and fundas—flexibility, something very few go through during their earlier years, the ability to be malleable in a multi-faceted environment, once you deal with this heterogeneity of people, and in a world that is only an amalgamation of your classroom—seeping through in fluid motion can only be useful.

As college passed on, and days grew into months, a new breed of excitement surfaced in the form of college festivals, Malhar, Umang, Kaleidoscope and other various names were being bandied about, the whole smorgasbord of enchanted sounding fiestas filled with merrymaking beyond the wildest dreams of the starved beast in the small college seeking jocularity, mirth and ‘chicks’ beyond the capabilities of their own confines.

But then again—like college itself—college festivals have a dour affinity for turning out to be overrated, overtly complex and rather lackluster and monosyllabic events for which people come from the corners of Mumbai and stand in lines, getting verbally abused and shoved around by the obloquy-happy security, after which you get inside, looking around for events and events so unprofessionally planned out that if you’re planning to take part or watch a lot of things—better hire a PA and buy a PDA, otherwise handling your timetables inside these fests is nigh on impossible.

Or maybe I just lack college-fest-o-mania, the ability to assimilate yourself into the masked revelry and the FBI-esque detail given to strict conduct.

Contrary to belief, where studying levels drop in college, mine’s—ironically skyrocketed, for the first time in my life (I, the guy who picked his books a day before the exam)—suddenly chalked out schedules for studying and intrinsically got high on his skyscraper-esque marks—it was behavior for which chubby, Lokhandwala-based acquaintances of mine’s giggled, and guys labeled me a nerd, fairy, geek and various other things unsuitable in print.

But the constant public eye as the luminary, in the pantheon of the college’s top ten students—it was infectious as well as addictive, much like intoxication, and that is where I reckon shades of arrogance, pomposity and the feeling of being higher than most your colleagues crawled into the nooks and crannies of my cranium.

Or was it that they were just a bunch of worthless crabs, seeking to pull me back into that abyss of counterproductive youthful behavior—I think it was me being too good.

College I must say changed me into a much fierier person, a lot of adjectives that go today with my persona and aura were forged inside that very institution, my world-famous-in-India vitriolic sense of humor, the razor-sharp wit, the sheer mental segregation of people whom I must be with and whom I must not—an almost culturally racist sense, the ability to lead anyone and everyone (albeit not fully convincingly), the friendly, and ineluctable ability to make people laugh (99% of the time by poking fun at various third parties).

I’d be lying if I claimed I had a gala time in college, but it wasn’t all bad I must say, and a lot of facets to whom Subhash Gopal Dawda is—is just because of college.