Knicq

Little things, and the Bollywood flavor.
knicq posted in Jalali Baba, Knicqisms on January 16th, 2007

There is something about writing that escapes me. It is not the something whose happening was the lament of an earlier post. It is the somehing that refuses to happen. In all probability it is the act of writing itself, but there is always the possibility of it being the subject matter, sentence construction, vocabulary, or plain and simple the very will to indulge in the act. At this point of time however, I am quite sure that this is not a post about my writing conundrum (Or conundri if you will - its a new word that I have learnt, and I am still in the process of getting to know the other members of the family well).

The unfotunate part is that I am not really sure what this post is to be about. I have time. I have the spanking new laptop. I do not have internet, and I do not have anything worthwhile to do. These are what you might call ideal conditions for writing up a post to be updated later. The thing with ideal conditions is that they are often imaginary, little more than wishful thinking by some overly intelligent people with over-active imaginations; on those rare occasions where ideal conditions are actual and real they are almost always impossible to exploit. A catch-22 situation if there were ever one.

If you find shortcomings in the above argument, you have little to congratulate yourself about. If you find the previous statment to be rude, you have little, if any, by way of consolation coming your way. Little, it seems, is big today, or is at least something we are big on today. Little is big, and big is little; just as long is a short word and short is one that is long - the underlying premise in the latter comparison being ofcourse that these are the two words we have set out to compare in terms of their length or lack thereof. If you figure that the latter half of the previous sentence was completely and utterly unnecessary, you have little to appreciate your figuring acumen for. Little, as I said, is big today; so you had better get used to it.

The problem with sitting by yourself doing nothing is that it brings back those little memories you thought you had consigned to the far corners of your brain. There isn’t an awful lot that is wrong with the little memories, its just that little memories feed on big ones, and big is little today so we are ignoring the big memories, and they being big and bossy refuse to be ignored. There is precious little, however, that they can do about being ignored, whether or not they consent to being ignored. Ignoring, by its very definition, is an act that seeks to undermine the opinion and the will of the ignored.

There is this little memory of the family in that blue Mazda 808 going for a trip to Oman. The Mazda 808 is another little memory - the family’s first car I can recollect from my childhood. Apparently Walid sahib had had a Datsun sports and some other cars before the 808, but I can only recall the 808. It was a nifty little thing, with a top speed of just 120kms/hr. Or maybe it was 120 miles/hr. Who knows? Its a little memory. A little memory of a little blue car from when I was little.

There’s this other little memory from those days, when I was able to make my way through the blanket-tunnels. You know what the blanket tunnels are, don’t you? Those are tunnels you crawl into and out of. They must have had very large blankets back then. I have tried crawling into blanket-tunnels of late, but I keep coming out of the walls of the tunnel - either that or the whole tunnel just collapses on me.

I asked JB if he had ever crawled in and out of a blanket tunnel, and he said he had. I asked him if he had tried doing it again, since he is someone who seldom refrains from trying anything that can even remotely be called an adventure. I have a doubt that he actually tries his hand at only those which can be only remotely called an adventure. I am quite sure he does not try those adventures because he has an adventerous spirit. Most of what he does try can only remotely be called an adventure. (Am I repeating myself? Not really, I am emphasizing.) Most of what JB does try can only be called madness.

If you are an eight year old, and you don the superman costume, and jump off of the second floor of your house with the intent of getting people to gasp: “Its a plane!”, “Its a something else”, “NO! Its super-JB!!!”; can you really be credited with having an adventerous spirit? Madness is a more apt adjective that springs to mind. There is JB-ness, but its a more refined madness, and hence more dangerous. JB developed JB-ness in his later years, as he got to spend more and more time with himself. Madness is little when compared with JB-ness.

I digress. So, I asked JB, if he had tried crawling into and out of a blanket tunnel of late, and he gave me a look. JB does not give looks. He just launches into verbal tirades when he is cornered into working with beings of lesser intellect - that “beings-of-lesser-intellect” is an all encompassing term is a little fact which is a given in JB-land. So, JB gave me a look, and I knew better than to push my luck pursuing the subject.

What goes around comes around. Its a little cliche. Its a hard little fact too though. I sent something around years ago, and then I sent something else around some years later, and as if that were not enough I sent something else on the way a few years later. Well, what do you know? The “something”, and the first and the second “something else” got together somewhere along the way; sort of ran into each other or something.

Maybe, the something was humming a tune to herself, minding her own business in a cafe’, and the first something esle happened to be sitting at the next table minding her own business, and she recognized the tune from her childhood, and so she turned around with tears in her eyes and started singing the tune along with something. Something was startled, and surprised, and taken aback; but she kept on humming her tune. They both got up form their tables, humming the same tune, all the while looking at each other and with tears welling up in their eyes. Then, they stood next to each other, and completed the tune. Silence. Tears. More tears. Instant hugs! Plenty of kissing.

The next thing one knew they had formed a duo, and were going about singing the tune in the whole wide world; which is where the second something else must have heard them, while he was toiling under the sun next to their hotel, or dropping a passenger off at their concert, or coming in to attend a high profile meeting in one of the hotels he owned - complete with white pointed shoes, and dark sunglasses in the night. He must have stood there, tears streaming down his tanned face (if he were toiling under the sun), or welling up in his bloodshot eyes (if he were a cabbie doing double shifts to buy medicine for his ailing foster mother), or sneaking from behind the sunglasses (if he were the hotel magnate who owned all the hotels on Earth and then some on Mars as well). More silnce. More tears. More instant hugs! More plenty of kissing!

Who cares how they got together. Its a minor detail. One of those littles, we will choose to ignore. They did get together, and they came back separately in a jeep, on a motorbike, and on a horse-back/helicopter (depending on whether the second something else were a labourer or a a hotel magnate), and crashed through the three glass-walls of my empire, beat up my over-enthusiastic to be beaten-up goons, and sent me around. Oh, and a chorus kept humming the darned tune all along. I think it were the servants doing it - the traitors!

I do not mind. Its my turn to go around, and then come around.

There’s just a little thing missing. A tune to keep humming.

Perhaps I should do an Anu Malik on them. Minor infringement on non-existant copyright. What say you?