Southern solstice

The six fix

Pondi changed everything. Not that I’ve been there, but the fact remains that even before I have, the place changed. Well it has been aging for a while as with all things, the evolutionary transformation for this beached French baguette has somehow ended in the minor distraction of a name change. Whichever way you sing it, the name still has a cherry ring to it. Besides, all this business about names and the insipid task of getting people to recognize a new one and left me to conclude our education systems and the other ones who go about calling old things new names, are controlled by supposedly sentient beings. Old people with enough grey for the mind not to matter or put more eloquently, the only grey matter about a portion of the head is some sad remnants of what could have been healthy hair.

Time is speeding up, studies say it, a documentary, and without any lucid certainty on which one, some smart guy, maybe Harvard, Stanford or MIT, mentioned something about a dimension shift. With most animated movies becoming 3D, I can only fathom what will happen to the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. Without-a-doubt, this year seemed stranger than the last one which as the general course of nature, was stranger than its predecessor. This, added to the fact my usual synthetic sojourn was over and the new organic phase of my life had begun the grand scheme of things was always a monumentous beer monitored task of choosing between mountains or beaches. When it comes to the beaches, salt is a whole other issue. From the general multitudes, there are those who always associate beach and sea, sea and sand, sand and beach, beach and sun, sun and surf, beach and babe, babe and bikini, or the easier one is babe and boob, and somehow in the strange boggle of these wordy companions, salt and beach make sense.

Now it may have been sometime about when I was six. I did try to find out a specific cause as to the syndrome, a few other friends (most of who are stuck with an occulant head of conspiracy theories) and I seemed to be experiencing. My head still had some breathing room, the quicker alternative was a back door, the chemicals never found that stairwell. Assuming the older generation didn’t seem to have it, maybe they (and this implication could point to God or the government, both who hold equal power that we have given them) altered our DNA through vaccination. But somehow around the age of six is when most of my childhood seemed to happen. Most of it or just parts, fractions, and boy, did I hate them in school, they looked fun, but then how in the world could you compare that to being a fighter pilot in a deadly mission to the land of some fantasy hero, He-Man, Giant-Robo and Fireball X rolled up with some mattresses, umbrellas for leavers and some funny eyewear under the bed.

Bombay, the crazy land I lived in had beaches and back in the 80’s there were beaches that are now controlled by the government. There were beaches I went to when I was two that weren’t there when I was four, I don’t remember what the story was, if fact I don’t think anyone bothered to tell me why. In our short stint of transitions through existence, six is the one of the first age of transitions, where innocence is lost, I on the flipside feel that innocence is lost when innocence is learnt, or spelt, whichever comes first. Although now the thought does seem ridiculous, even more so than whether the chicken crossed the road or the very stupid answer we have concocted explaining why we are here. The first time I remember wondering why anything was here, I was six and the(left/rite) __________ cache in my head decided to label that ‘The Incident of sun-burned beach-plane experience’. Now, although I try, somehow the first five years are what pictures and people tell me. I know I went to nursery, the unreal polaroids are supposed proof, but the flurry of the past few years has blotted out the how, what and why of things I did in preschool. Being the oldest grandson of the family for the paternal side and the somewhere around the middle grand-pain-in-the-ass on the maternal side, my first life changing, out of a movie experience came a decade before my first hallucination. Growing up every sound was strange, but straight out of a comic-book-sun a yellow single engine Cessna fell out of the sky. I knew there were army beaches around, some of my people were in the forces and planes guns and uniforms always meant an adventure. Come to think of it everything was an adventure. But that Sunday afternoon, the beach decided to really mess with the family’s head. After chasing the plane with a piece of driftwood, suddenly the plane started gunning for me. This seemed like it could be a ‘That’s all folks moment, all with the pig voice or rabbit tune, whichever, my mind was swirling in a randomness of strangely mature thoughts, and after all the pondering in those seconds I still wasn’t sure if the guy in the plane was my uncle and maybe he was just trying to say hi. My dad on the other hand was convinced that the guy was swooping in on the beach babes. The more perplexing realization was, we were the only ones on the beach. In-between all this and me trying to get towards the sea, some familiar hands grab me up and shove me on the sand, face first, with the screaming propeller and wind grazing my back, man, at school the next day and the few weeks after I was a real solider with a fuckin’ kick-ass war story. As always there was some stupidity and in a reaction of absolute panic, my cousin sister ran off the beach and onto the gravel road where no horny, pilot in training or drunk aviator could scare the bajebeers out of her. Feeling happy and safe in her sandy swimsuit around 50 or so meters down the very pleasantly baked road, she realized she no longer had the crazy fear and she calmed herself with gasps slowly realizing the soles of her feet seemed to have left her a few meters after she started. Three warriors returned that day. Mel, although she out-wailed the plane did that day, she did run away the fastest, my cousin brother ‘pottu’ pronounced ‘pot’ ‘to’, who after growing his first few facial hairs told me never to call him by that shitty name again, and me, the little commander.

Them and Us

Booze is a boy

The boy, leech

One can drink, one can choose.

His Bar is a brothel

Her brothers, beaters

Hey pretty sister, its goodbye to booze.

Her Pub is a fornicator

The street a whore

Count on the fuzz, they know you are loose

Flies dress a colour

Perverts chant a name

Trust the Heroic headline, a lusty muse

Speak forward and backward

Walk right and wrong

Burn Shanti, Parvati is gone

Beards and carnal lockups

Watching depraved songs

Them is Us, sound the death horn.

Inside the Outdoors....Finally!

Nothing beats working the outdoors! I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to swim in a lake, stare at the stars, climb rocks, canoe into sunsets and walk the wilderness. The family of instructors who worked the program are the most adrenaline powered beings I’ve encountered. Artists, climbers, snake catchers, adventurers, peace makers and explorers. From working peace games in the Middle East to crazy cycle expeditions, every person had bizarre story. The stranger ones were tales of experiences almost as old as me. Here work was an experience! After years of indecision, confusion and constant inconsistency, I finally found what was looking for me.

Every morning was a mystery waiting to unfold. I missed nothing of the past. Instead of my crowded train I trekked to work. Instead of a boss, I worked with a crazy team of beautiful individuals. No cubicles, no office smells, no chair! The sun kept time as we worked wherever we wanted to. One day at big tree the next at the lakeside. Every other night we transported a generation of Harry potters into magic land spinning lights at the lake. And along with the stars and multiple circles of light, a magical glow radiated from every kid.

When it comes to responsibilities I usually escape with finesse. But this time around, I realized the responsibility I had undertaken when the kids looked at me with fear creeping out through their ears. The path was two feet too close to a bloody edge. I could plummet but worse still, so could they. After cuts, cries and several bruised egos, we all walked down stronger people. Ten days into making leaders of kids I looked back at the unmistakable energy that guided me to this transfiguration. Boy to man and the death of assumptions.

Big Bada Boom

I could feel a calling in my bones, a goddess was summoning me and everywhere i wandered the trees talked of a journey to parvati. Although the ' chalo parvati' was a common utterance, for a me it held great significance. finally after all the years of talking about it, i made my journey to the source. with almost no money, I embarked on a pilgrimage to pay my respect to the mountains. Conversing with eleves, faires and other magical beings, I realised how far I was from everything that defined civilization. I was free of that incessent traveller talk , free of the pretence, free from the shackles of the city and most importantly, free from me!
it was only when i ran out of money ( or rather the money ran out on me) that I knew how little I actually needed and how much life dealt me. Apples and pears for when i was hungry, clear water from the white river, and the mountain bounty for that big Boom. Even now the cry BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM echos throgh my head. Never had it sounded so holy, so powerful, so arcane, and each time we called shiva, the chant bonded us , like tribesmen of a different civilization. Last night, I dreamt of the mountains , with a blue flame summit, and instead of climbing the rugged outsides, the way to the peak was a climb from the inside.