bangalore the rock city

can't wait to go to bangalore tomorrow for the aerosmith concert. they r finally OLD enough to come to india. actually, there's a list of bands i'm waiting to grow older, so that they'd start touring india - red hot chilli peppers, audioslave, metallica, megadeth, slayer, type O negative, U2 and more. can't think of more right now. and bangalore is the right place to attend a concert. the place rocks. bombay, in comparison with bangalore, sucks when it comes to rock music. there are some farts who love rock, but the true rock fans are down there in bangalore. styx and purple haze...i wish there was one pub like them in bombay.

Getting high at Rock Bottom

the other day, we - me and me office people - went to Rock Bottom. it was so low in the quality of music, i could call it Pits. for a change it had space, as compared with other discs in bombay. however, the music sucked like a toothless ho, like most other discs in bombay! in the midst of this perfect chaos, i was alone, wondering, when would this wriggling, a form of dancing bombayites have perfected in the overcrowded discs, end. while my collegues found some li'l space to do the twist, i tried to give beer a little more attention than i normally do. i don't remember doing this before. You know, like calling fosters Mr. Fosters and stuff. I'd never enjoyed Mr. Fosters company like i did that day. meanwhile, there was this guy, panting from his vigorous dancing on the floor, who dashes to my couch and slumps next to me. and every now and then he'd crouch forward and stare at my T-shirt. 'eh, hullo, it's my T not a mirror', i wanted to tell him. but my thoughts were punctuated by ricky, who yells, 'hey, ash, why is he staring at your dick?'

huh?!

i quickly grabbed Mr. fosters, and, don't remember which song it was, dashed to the floor. Rock Bottom. it was over at 3. we headed to ricky's place after that and the journey offered me the much-needed dose of metal. Black Sabath.

on your birthday you shall die...only on bombay roads!

wednesday morning, few hours past midnight, driving in their silver honda city, the Karias ram into a street light pole and die on the spot. the couple was celebrating 23-year-old Mrs. Karia's birthday and after dinner, was returning home to malad. 'had they fastened their seat belts, they would have not died'. this is what they wrote in the newpapers and this is what the police said. however, no one speaks of why the accident occured.

well, so it was that the couple was driving back home along with two other friends in the honda city. Mr. Karia was driving a little above 100 kmph, when the car zipped over a deep pot hole on the road. the chain of the steering wheel snapped and Mr. Karia lost control. The front portion of the car was totally smashed. The other two friends escaped with minor injuries.

bombay roads. every day i see it and i feel it calls for death every instant. and our civic authorities are not bothered about our lives, as long as they are making enough money from the taxes that we pay.

forget great roads, all i'd love to see are roads with no potholes. wonder if i'll live to see it ever.

i'm on a road to kill

a few evenings ago, it was 1979. smashing pumkins' hit from early 90s. timeless classic. overall, in a good mood, i travelled homewards. thoughts soon flooded into my dizzzy head and in a brief while i was floating in the midst of anguish and humour. i saw freedom as the only answer to it. to all (do i hear your thoughts, as you are reading this: "what is he talking about"?) ok i was dizzy in the head, so bear with me. but there was on thing clear: my freedom. but from what? maybe from the corroded roads of bombay; from the infrastructural handicap of our country; from the disillusioned, greedy, uneducated, bullying politicians. they affect my life everyday. while our country's economy is growing rapidly, with equal rapidity our infrastructure's falling apart...and then, i suddenly woke up from my thoughts to my rickshawala's daring act: he almost got himself, his rick and me crushed between 2 ricks and a car on the left and 4 cars on the right. soon, my thoughts shifted from the political babus to the bihari ones, riding the autos. both these babus are equally disgusting. they follow no rules; they are not trustworthy...not worthy of anything at all; both chew paan and those who don't, chew on indian citizen's money...the political babus make promises every year of bettering the roads and leave them with few more potholes. what makes it worst are the babus from bihar, who unleash their menace on these road-to-kill roads.
zigzagging, i reached the gates of my home, most importantly in one piece and for that moment, my freedom from the rick was good enough for me.

total recall

all of a sudden, i was back in 1991 last evening. couldn't believe my eyes, staring into an equally bewildered pair of eyes. "ash!" "subodh!" "ash is that you?" "subodh, you?"...wow, it was one of my best friends emerging from the pages of an old book. and like good old friends do when they meet after 16 years, we went to booze. it was the first time we boozed together. the last time we met, we were chai drinkers.

old stories and memories surfaced, and it was then that i realised i used have so much fun those days. not that i have given up having fun, it's just that those days we would enjoy moments which qualifies as insignificant today.

writing songs for a new girl in the area; having chai in tapris, talking about why education makes no sense; exchanging music (in cassettes); tearing jeans; writing a new song for a newer girl in town...and life was beautiful. it's been a while since i've done any of these! sigh!

NFS

Was on my way home last night and the rickshaw driver was a classified jerk. He followed no traffic or safety rules. For him it was NFS. It all began as we got stuck at the amboli church signal and he was like fuming: "this place is always bad; always traffic jam." I, as usual, put on my ear plugs and my journey began with Headless Children (WASP).
Soon the signal turned green and the rickshaw driver blind, or at least that's what it seemed to me. At first, I thought he'd be out of road rage in the first few seconds, but as Blackie started screaming the chorus, this pilot was jetting right behind a biker. He was a cm or 2 away from attaching his rick to the bike, when the biker moved back. "Aaram se," said I sternly. And to my surprise, this dude looks into one of the many rear view mirrors (the purpose of which i have not been able to find till date) and gives me a big grin. I had a 3D question mark hovering over my head post that smile. Then it was another bike, followed by an Innova; then a Civic...and that smile reflected on the mirror each time he nearly missed killing me (or both). By the time I'd reached home, I had thoroughly not enjoyed headless children, better, where the streets have no name, stay on these roads, scar tissue, rock in the usa, riding with the king, life is a highway, naughty by nature, miracle, sweet dreams are made of these, kosmokrator, near to the divine, king of pain, aisha and i can see clearly now.
but in in the end all was forgotten when my tastebuds went on a rollercoaster ride with some homemade squids!