Fin

The first time I saw you sit there, in our coffee shop.

I thought twice about turning on my heel and running away.

All nerves when I walked up-to you.

Time and time over again you have heard that you are all that I need.

You look at me and I know that maybe that's not what you think is worth.

Now walking away is the hardest thing to do.

Bought you a rose without a flower, thinking that you'd smile.

Time and time over again you have heard that you are all that I need.

You look at me and I know that maybe that's not what you think is worth.

We were gonna kiss, but damn all the alcohol that night.

Something that I know you can't ever forget.

Time and time over again you have heard that you are all that I need.

You look at me and I know that maybe that's not what you think is worth.

The second time, we sat on sand and faced the sea.

It was just us, even the world could see.

Give it a chance, you know what we were.

Time and time over again you have heard that you are all that I need.

You look at me and I know that maybe that's not what you think is worth.

The night at a hotel room, things changed since then.

You're all that I need, so you've heard.

You look at me and I know that maybe that's not what you think is worth.

The Mental Kind

Me and her were making sounds like never before.

That's when I heard the familiar sound of the key in the door.

She looked at me, I looked at her.

She said could be my boyfriend, I'm not really sure.

Well, out of the bed I lunged for my shoes.

Jumped out the window in my birthday suit.

I never thought I could run that fast.

One step behind, I heard a gun blast.

I almost encountered, the mental kind.

I pray to God, please don't let a full moon shine.

Tonight I'll be grateful if you save my life.

Good thing I have an understanding girl as a future wife.

When I got home the house was totally dark

Til old Jimboo started to bark.

The lights came on and the door was open.

She stood there staring, I stood there hopin'

She's heard a million stories from me

There wasn't a single one she never believed.

I said but baby, this time I'm telling the truth

Look at me, I'm living proof.

I almost encountered, the mental kind.

Three little yellow men tried to read my mind.

Oh yeah, when they discovered I was thinking of you

You won't believe what they decided to do

Well, they took away my Nike and my clothes.

Painted little red circles from my head to my toes

Sprayed something horrible, like cheap perfume.

Then they left me on Earth and headed back to the Moon.

She must have bought it 'cause she let me in

I'm standing there naked with a foolish grin.

She said wait here and left me there in the hall

Between the guilt and the cold it grew really small.

When she came back she had a suitcase in her hand

In the other was this tall young, good looking man

She said, look who I picked up while bouncing on the stars

He said hello my name is Siddharth, I'm from the planet Mars.

I encountered, the mental kind.

They only happen, when the sun won't bloody shine.

Never Again

"When lost in a jungle, follow the streetlights."

That's easy.

What do you do when the girl you love won't talk to you more than a 'friend'?

It hurts a lot to go from telling the girl - "I'm not going to take you for granted, not when I know you mustered every bit of courage in you to tell me you like me." to - "Hi. Do you remember me?"

It hurts even more to have her reply an hour later saying - "k".

Fuck, no.

You did NOT just do that.

Its New Years.

I can't seem to remember the last time I spent my New Years eve without alcohol and a girl to kiss at 12.

Not like that's what I lived my life for(OK, maybe a little), but sitting on the road and watching your friends get drunk and dropping the SAME guys home.

FUN! Not.

I wake up next morning, I don't have a hangover.

That's new.

I check my phone.

New Year wishes.

I'm looking for her name.

No texts from her.

I re-read our conversation.

'Feeding a guy who's not you. Fun, yes.'

I don't know what a knife to the chest feels like but if it feels as hurtful as this and falling off a speeding bike, damn, it felt like a knife to the chest.

Moving on..

What do you move to?

Where do you go?

What do you tell her?

You tell her you're sorry.

You won't do it again.

But, you will.

You tell her to meet you, it'll be OK.

But, she won't.

"Lets have lunch?" I send her a text.

I hear the familiar buzzing of my phone two hours later "No."

Well, at-least someone had a fun night, I think to myself.

I know she didn't.

Irrespective of the fact that I sound like a self-assured asshole, its not that.

When you know someone this well, when you've spent every moment after you've met them thinking of them, even subliminally, you just know..

I try telling her so many things.

I sugar-coat my 'sorries'.

They just won't work.

'Move on' she says.

'You and me aren't meant to be' she taunts(?).

What?

That's absurd.

Of course we are meant to be.

Not 10 years from now (maybe not).

But for now, we are.

The 6 months we spent together is proof.

Every time you lie to me and tell me "you're gorgeous, Ben" even though I know I look like a mess is proof.

Every time you tell me "I'd rather have a chai at some tapri with you, Ben" even though I know you should be sitting on a couch in a coffee shop is proof.

Every time you tell me "I love how you hold me and rub the knuckles on my hand, Ben" is proof.

Every time you fight with me at night but wake up knowing that I'm going to want to be with you and you're going to want to be with me is proof.

Every time you promise you'll quit smoking just so that I will is proof.

Every time you bother having a conversation with my father and having a conversation on Webcam with me with my parents around is proof.

Every time you worry about if I've eaten is proof.

I know I haven't been a third of what you've been to me, but I know that I learn from my mistakes and make sure I don't repeat them.

Something I promised you when we got together to become us.

And you know that's been adhered to...

"This is so weird! This is not us! This is not what we signed up for. This is not what we got together for.

As far as I can remember, we got together to be with each other.

Because we could understand each other better than anyone else on the face of this earth.

Now-a-days, when I talk to my friends/best-friends, itís weird. They cannot understand me. Not because Iíve changed. Because they just donít know me as well as you do."

About You And Me

It was never about what I did for me.

To make me a better person.

To study better.

To fight with my parents less.

To be nicer to people.

To get an attitude adjustment.

To get better health.

To get to know your friends.

It was always about you.

I bet a new girl in my life will hold the promise of something better in my life, but I know it's not going to be good enough, because I know how much I like you.

You know how weird it is to hug you and not be able to hold you like you're mine?

I can't even get to start acting like we aren't together.

I know you get annoyed by it, but somehow, I can't hold myself responsible for that and you can't blame me.

You can't expect me to forget us.

And this doesn't have anything to do with the outings.

I want to tell you so fucking much more!

You living in denial about how fucking brilliant we are and can be or stopping me from saying it or paying no heed to it is not going to make it any less true.

We are brilliant.

I don't want you to get so annoyed that you start hating us.

I can't have that, because then you'll be gone.

And I know you'll be just as miserable if we don't have whatever little we have of each other in the others lives.

We can be together.

You know it.

Loosen That Noose

Tied my end through a knot, hung me against the wall.
You stared at me.

Picked me up and threw me about, trampled me under your feet.
Then you shoved me under your bed.

Hiding me under a pillow as your door opened and your mom walked in and yelled off her head.

You bang it shut, holding me in your sweaty palms.

Making some final checks, you throw me around the blades.

Next thing I know, my stomach is stretched inside out, pulling against both my ends, makes me want to completely rip out.

I wonder if I should hold on and give you the solace you think you deserve or just snap under this tension giving you another chance to learn.

Their Love Isn't Enough

A few hours back I got about to reading one of my friends blogs. There was this quote she had mentioned on a left column.

The quote talked about what the author hadn’t learned in school and what they would never teach. About learning to cope up with falling in love and falling out of it.

That got me wondering, is that something that could be taught by someone? You fall in love, you think you’re doing everything right and that is what you want, even if it has to mean you have to fight with your best-friend who has already experienced that situation and knows better than to let you go through that. You overlook it because love does that to you, makes you feel like you could ride a raindrop or be/are a superhero who has everything going right for them. Even Batman couldn’t cope up with the loss of his parents, even Spiderman didn’t know how to cope up with Mary Jane slutting around. What then?

When you’re falling out of love and you’re hurting more than you’ve ever felt in your life, maybe more than you ever will, who teaches you how to cope up with that? Every word that your best friends utters in references to that with the sole intention of comforting you still doesn’t seem enough to believe that they understand exactly what you’re going through. You think what you experience is un-paralleled in this and every parallel universe you know of. What then?

Some people could have got out of a 3 year relationship and find it perfectly fine to find a new college and ‘fall in love with someone else’. There are some who will get out of a 2 year relationship and want to murder the other person. Then there are those who will get out of a 1 and a half year relationship, want to move onto someone else but want to murder the ex nevertheless.

Fresh out of a relationship gone bad, we all have our ways of coping up with the aftermath of the break-up by how you feel about it. You could hate the persons guts and not want to be with anyone else after that because then you know you’ve truly been taken care of, cared & loved quite royally. No-other person who enters into your now shattered life will be able to take that persons place, nothing they say could prove or make you wanna think otherwise. It’s scary really, because sometimes, if you let another person in and give them a chance, it could amaze you and make you feel like you were living under a rock all this while, so I’ve been told.

Maybe one day I’ll have that someone too, maybe I won’t have to put in too much effort into finding her, maybe she will happen 10 relationships down the line, maybe she’s sitting next to me, maybe she’s the one playing on my head right now. Maybe.

Your Smile Is A Drug

I remember as a kid, I used to play with my dad’s VCR cassettes all the time. He had spent the better half of his college years recording whatever he could onto these tiffin box size devices and then there was me spending the better half of my childhood pulling the black ribbon out of the box.

Sometimes however when I wasn’t too hyper and actually managed to shove the cassette in the player and got it on, I would sit a foot away from the screen and just immerse in all that it had to give me. The retro times, the good life, the love years. All of that.

Your Smile Is A Drug by Patrick Park were one of the songs I had heard over and over again while growing up. I listened to it through junior college. I never really deciphered the song. I guess I didn’t smoke too much pot then. It never hit me. It never made sense to me.

Life is good; you’ll always experience it all. What you’re feeling is what I’m feeling, except that maybe I’d embrace it and you wouldn’t. How could what this man sang ever so soulfully and full of emotion mean anything to my almost wasted life?

It hit me. As hard as someone trying to break ice into smaller pieces for their drink. I made her laugh not because I wanted to act funny in front of her, not because I wanted her to know that I had a sense of humor. But secretly I wanted to see her smile. The smile she has on her face after she's done laughing.

I'd do anything to see her smile. Anything. Even if it meant letting her go to another guy.

Da Vinci (Italian)

Da Vinci

Da Vinci is an Italian restaurant that I got to visit last Saturday. It is cradled just off Pali Hill in one of the many by-lanes that run into the slums. Da Vinci stands out in the day with its black painted walls and in the night by its massive neon-sign.

Entering this restaurant gives you a very warm feeling with a well done setting. The ambience is set right with the dim yellow lights all around and all the furniture, including the tables and chairs (benches) being carved out of wood. Each table comfortably seats up-to 4 people only and so only the bar area looks like it could accommodate a larger group. The attendants are very friendly and hospitable. However, their fake ‘Italian’ accent and their incapability of helping you pick out dishes are quite turning off.

The menu at Da Vinci is an even bigger bomb and somehow the attendants seem nicer now. Da Vinci is more expensive than Café Basilico also off Pali Hill. Being an ardent aficionado of Italian food, paying insane prices for something more expensive than one of the finest Italian restaurants in Mumbai, you tend to expect a lot from Da Vinci.

Starting off with the Chicken Bitki and Pan Tossed Paprika Mushrooms, you don’t have to wait too long to be disappointed. The Chicken Bitki comes with 5 pieces and a dip. The dip is of tomato base & has dried onion peels in them. Together they taste quite good, but are too less in quantity. The Pan Tossed Paprika Mushrooms seem to be some thick mushroom gravy tossed onto garlic bread. Though the dish is quite tasty and melts in your mouth that is something you really won’t be remembering when you have washed it down with all the pepper water that you taste from your Roasted Garlic And Sundried Tomato Soup. You might as well have filled a packet of Knorr Tomato Soup in a bottle and brought it along.
The savior however here is the Grilled Chicken With Mushroom Sauce that tastes like they had flown in a chef just to cook that dish. The chicken pieces are substantial and very well cooked. They have the right balance with the mashed potatoes and the mushroom sauce that was well done. They overdid with the extra vegetables on the plate, but you can overlook it for the simple fact that you’re finally getting something worth eating.

Make sure you get a large rum instead of a small to survive this ordeal and it almost costs as much as the 30ml anyway. Basically you won’t be missing out on anything if you give this place a miss.

Delhi Belly

Having grown up watching more of HBO & Star Movies than any other Indian channel airing Hindi films, tends to give you distaste to all the films that Bollywood churns out like a factory. You could watch any genre of films from the Western world and they would be worth watching. It’s not about the style the film is shot in or that it offers something new, but it’s the entire package that it comes in that makes it an experience. Bollywood films for the last 50 years have been unable to do just that. Once in a blue moon there is a new director who tries something different and usually gets shot down. A recent example of this would be the Aamir Khan starrer Dhobi Ghat. The different technique, the pace of the story and the flow of the entire film wasn’t really a treat. A bunch of camera happy teenager’s with a star cast of that caliber and a budget that high could have pulled it off. However, the new Aamir Khan produced Delhi Belly is otherwise.

Moving on from the slapstick comedies such as Golmaal, Welcome, Mujhse Shaadi Karoge, Bhool Bhulaiya, Ready, comes Delhi Belly. It is the advent of new intellectual directors who know that there is a audience who can understand what real comedy is about.

Delhi Belly revolves around 3 friends who live together and the twists and turns that they endure and go through because of mostly adrenaline pumped decisions. Somewhere based along the lines of The Hangover, it has a very easy to understand script which is paced well enough to not really need you to be Sherlock to understand what’s going on and what the repercussions of each of these three’s actions are. Adding to their poor judgments of the situation are Imran Khan’s & Vir Das’ girlfriends who bring on very funny episodes to the film. The excessive foul language in the film coupled with scenes that should make you want to look away makes it an even more interesting watch. You somehow tend to not mind the excessive bruises, unnecessary shootings, and God alone knows how many toilet scenes, it will make you just want to laugh with your eyes wide open so that you don’t miss anything!

The fact that the actors play these roles so naturally just adds to the good taste of the film. It isn’t something you may want to watch with your parents but most definitely something you can enjoy with your friends, especially in theatres that don’t censor the cuss words. It is a must watch and it is a must that you don’t buy a tub of pop-corn because you’ll be bouncing about in your seats laughing quite literally – your asses off.