Has been a long time since May 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That was a time when we felt like abandons. As if nobody wanted our votes. Like we didn't matter. Every political party was after Muslim votes. We were taken for granted. Rather we weren't required at all.
Fast forward to 2017. The scion of Nehru Gandhi family is visiting all the temples. Worshipping all our Gods. Wearing Janeu (sacred thread over his coat). Has all of sudden become a Bhakt of Lord Shiva. Secularism has become a bane for these political parties. Nobody is now talking about their secular credentials but showing off their Hindu genealogy.
How else do you want achchhe din to come? Kudos to Modi - Shah for the feat.
As per opinion polls, the tally of Congress is improving day by day and that of the BJP is dwindling. In the run up to elections, the Congress may better its graph further and it won't be surprising if any miracle happens on the D day.
The loss in Gujarat, even a tough fight, will make it compulsory for BJP to find a solution to the Ram Temple issue. So we win no matter which side the camel sits.

One arbitrary feeling.

I marvel at your memory. Mine is so bad, it never forgets you even for a moment...

A phoney affair

It all happened on the phone, hence a phoney affair. Pun intended.I consider my generation to be the luckiest one. We got to live in several ages in one lifetime. Some of you may want to disagree and hence, not to attract a lot of criticism from the very first, I would like to say, at least I did. Not that I am afraid of criticism but I want to be read, like I want to be loved. I strongly feel that there would have been no Salman Rushdie, no Taslima Nasreen but for the criticism, and fatwas. Nah, I am not comparing myself with them, nor am I going to write anything very controversial, but still.Let's get back to work. I have tried to understand the life in my own ways and love has always been a tool. Being a romantic dreamer that I am, I wonder, if there can be a better tool. It was love which made me see the changes in the world. From a slow moving snail mail to email to gmail chat, from the landline to the mobile phone. All have come handy in my love exploits, rather it was love which made me familiar, rather somewhat adept, with most of the technical advancements in the world around me. Otherwise, I would have been more technically challenged.Now about this phoney affair. It didn't start with some arbitrary call and me hitting the right chord with the caller and then moving along. I knew the person and we became close with some accident of destiny, over which no one had any control. And we started talking, talking for long hours, talking on the mobile phone. I would like to call the affair phoney because it was on phone that it bloomed, and there it wilted. No one but the phone knew that something was cooking up between the two of us and it was the first to know that it was all over. It stands witness to the love that was there, the frequent and long call durations from both sides and the SMSes. Witness to the SMSes that used to be long once from both the sides, and then started gettig shorter from the other side, and my replies getting longer as if to clutch and revive her dipping interest in me, and then shrinking in size from my side too, as if yielding to the painful truth that she loved me no more. Witness to the calls which used to be frequent and long initially to my calls, that were put on waiting and were never replied to.It is not that we didn't use to meet in the physical world. We used to meet but at work places only, surrounded by people. And in those meetings, we did professional talk only. Our persoal talks were limited to the mobile phones, late in the night and through the day. We used to spend so much time together, on phone, that we didn't spend with our friends or family members in the physical world. We used to eat, drink, sleep and watch movies together, on the phone. Like we had become inseparable, on the phone.And let me tell you the sad truth of this phoney affair. My love had shifted from the person I loved to the person I talked to. Don't get confused. They were not two different persons. They were one and the same but I had the feelings only for the person I talked to on the phone. I had started talking to her because I loved her but later I felt that I used to and wanted to meet her because I talked to her. Because she was the embodiment, the personification of the person I talked to and I loved.This might sound weird and insane. I too understood this fact only when we parted. I used to miss the person I talked to more than the real person. I longed to talk to her on phone and she didn't. I could meet her even after parting with a straight face like nothing had ever existed between us and I had no complaints against her. I have complaints, but against the person I used to talk to on the phone and not against her embodiment. Because I would not wait for her at some odd place or our meeting place but would sit, holding my mobile phone in my hand waiing for her to call. Whenever it would ring, I would think she had called.Friends, I believe mine is not the only case of my kind in this world. I am sure that there are many like me who are having a phoney affair. People running short of time think they are compensating it with the help of technology. But try to see the damage and disorder it is causing.I would also like to add one more line. One of my previous woman bosses used to say that my face was very transparent and it could not keep secrets. Few days back, a previous colleague who is on my gmail chat said, "Your status message says everything about you."I would only like to say in the end, don't let technology become your face.

PS: This was written on August 20, 2008 but could not be published due to some reasons, then.

Quit smoking!!!

It has been more than eight months since I stubbed the butt of my last cigarette and hence, I have never touched a cigarette. My decision to quit smoking coincided with the birthday of a friend. Though she had nothing to do with me quitting smoking, but that’s how I remember the day I quit smoking and also the day she was born.
Like every morning, I woke up on September 29 and went downstairs from my room to have my daily share of smoke. It was a Saturday and my weekly off and I had no cash with me. But I had been so regular, buying cigarette from the shop below my house that I didn’t feel that the shopkeeper would refuse me a cigarette just because I didn’t have money at one instance. I went to the shop; the shop was being manned by the shopkeeper’s son. I asked for a cigarette and was given a Navy Cut. I put it between my lips and was about to lit it. I told the man that I would pay later as I wasn’t carrying change. To be honest, I had no money at the moment. The shopkeeper’s son protested, “You shouldn’t have taken the cigarette if you didn’t have the cash.” I told him to take back the cigarette t which he replied that I had put it between my lips. So keep quiet, I will give you your money later, I told him sternly and left the shop.
I felt insulted. I went to my room and lit the cigarette and as I breathed the puffs deeper and longer, I felt humiliated too. Humiliated, because of a cigarette worth Rs 3.50! Why can’t I bridle my desire to smoke? Why do I have to go every morning to have a cigarette before starting the day? What does it offer me? Smoke, insult and susceptibility to diseases. By the time, I pulled the last puff deeper and deeper, I had decided. This was the last cigarette I was smoking. And thus I quit smoking.
The desire to quit smoking had always been there but the will was lacking. And the will had been weakened by my own perceptions over the time. Every time I would decide to quit smoking I used to yield to the temptation of breathing one last puff which never turned out to be the last one. And I had concluded that the cigarette was my Mehbooba (beloved). A mehbooba whom whenever I wanted pressed between my lips. A beloved who never protested, nor ever indulged in any kind of histrionics. Both of us were singeing ourselves to burn the other and both of us were deriving pleasure from the fire.
Perceptions! They keep changing. There had been a time when I used to think that she was the girl I could not live without. She went away. And still I survived.
Initially, when she had left me, I found a ready companion in cigarettes. There had come a time when I used to smoke as many as three packs of cigarettes. I would light one before kick starting my bike while going to office. I would stop on the way and light another and finally, after reaching the officer I would smoke. That was how I had recoiled to smoking cigarettes in the aftermath of that relationship. That was not the first relationship I had been in nor the last but one thing, I can say for sure is that that was the relationship in which I had invested maximum emotional energy, so much so, that I feel emotionally bankrupt in relationships and friendships I have been in after that.
I had picked up the habit of smoking when I was at BHU. It was surely not under peer pressure as not any of my friends smoked. It might have been to show off. What had started as a fad had turned into an addiction by the time I joined IIMC at Delhi. However, I had been successful in keeping the count of cigarettes I smoked very low till I got into job. And then…

Wardrobe Malfunction!

I don’t remember when, why and how did I pick up the habit of putting up trousers low but one thing that I remember is that it had been too early to be influenced by the fashion bug as it had not come in vogue when I was at school, and yes, the habit is that old for sure.
My low pants have always attracted sarcastic remarks from friends and relatives but hard skinned as I am, I did not change the way I wear my pants over the years. Even a woman I love(d) very much used to tease me for the way I used to wear my jeans, for they invariably hanged low from the waist and were oversize. Poor outfits were turn-offs for her and the way I dressed looked poor to her. I didn’t change and she dumped me. Well, I don’t mean she dumped me just because of my poor dressing sense; there must have been other reasons too. Let me not bore you once again with all those stuff.
Let me make it clear at the outset that my poor dressing sense doesn’t mean that I wear dirty or cheap cloths. They are almost always branded and always clean. The problem is with the way I put them on.
Let us come to the main story. My sister, brother-in-law and two niece had come to visit me in Delhi and one day, I went with them for shopping. I had to buy some cloths for sister and niece and we headed for Sarojini Nagar maket. The moment I ventured out of the house, my 12-year-old niece passed jeers at me. “Mama, why have you put on your jeans so low. It is not looking good at all and you are not looking like a reporter at all.”
I argued with her and made her understand that I am not known by the way I dress. I am a reporter and I am not made to make style statement, but to make statements, as is famously said of journalists.
We reached SN Market and my brother-in-law and nieces parted ways from me and my sister to move around the market on their own. My sister and I entered into a sari shop and asked the salesman to show us saris. The first question the salesman asked was what was your range. As my sister had come to visit me for the first time after I had got a job, I wanted to pamper her. I replied show us the stuff without bothering about the price.
The salesman started showing saris but he was not showing good stuff and the price of the stuff he was showing was less than Rs 2500. None of us liked the stuff he showed in about an hour, I looked around the shop and asked him to show a sari that was on display.
I had to ask him four times after which he showed the sari and both me and my sister liked the sari at first glance. I made the payment of Rs 4500 for the sari after a little bargaining through my debit card. Once I made the payment for the saris, the salesman started showing me saris that were more beautiful and higher on price range. To my surprise, he showed us more saris in the next 15 minutes than he had showed in the first one hour. I scoffed at him that had he shown all these suff earlier I would not have had to waste so much time and I would have bought at least one sari he showed later at one glance. It did not strike me then that it was because of my poor dressing that he miscalculated my budget.
It was fuzzy by the time we were through and decided to go to Dilli Haat as it was nearby and no visit to Delhi is considered complete without visiting the place. I had also been there with the girl I love(d) several times and I love to visit that place still whenever I get an opportunity.
We reached there and after eating some chaat-waat , we were loitering around in the haat. When my sister and niece were looking at some artifacts in a stall, I was standing a little away. A woman came to me and asked the price of some stuff on display. As I moved a few steps without replying and my niece and brother-in-law started laughing at me (my dressing sense) once again, the woman understood the error she had made and said sorry. I swallowed the humiliation as my folks made fun of me.
And then we decided to leave. As we headed towards the exit gate, a young man walked to me and introduced himself, “I am from Max New York Life Insurance.” Expecting that he would ask me to buy some life insurance policies, I listened to him. But the next line he uttered was like he poured buckets of water upon me. He said, “We are looking for people who would sell out policies to people around them.” Ashamed, I replied, “Sorry, I am not interested,” and walked on.
Now this time my brother-in-law started scolding me, “Why don’t you wear your cloths properly. Someone thinks you are a salesman, others think that you are unemployed. The way you dress forms an important component of your personality.”
Convinced beyond doubt and unable to bear so much humiliation in one day, we headed once again to SN Market and I bought a brand new Levis jeans.
So I finally changed the way I dress because of jeers and sneers of people in one day. The answer is a resounding ‘No’.
This time too the jeans were one size bigger than me and they too hang as loosely as other pairs do.
Well, I am convinced that dress is an important part of one’s personality and would like the way I dress to change. But the change has to be spontaneous; on it’s own and not induced by rejection and humiliation heaped by others.

An open letter...

Hello Bhatiya,
I don’t know you nor do I want to know who you are. But the scathing comment you left on my last posting warranted a reply and I was forced to write you an open letter for you had left me no other option by denying me access to your email address. And I hope you would visit my page once again to read the letter…
Anyway, your criticism was pinching and left me sleepless for some nights. The question reared its head in my mind if I had really crossed the line of decency by writing my exploits, which you said is good fodder for readers’ fantasy, and which are of course very personal and involves someone who is very dear to me. (I also wondered what made you stop short of calling my exploits a figment of my fantasy!)
It is not that your comment was any great; any person with average intelligence and education would have made same comment; for that that is the way your upbringing prepares you to comment on such things. It is only after you get some education in and exposure to literature, you become more open to the idea of sex and passion being inseparable parts of love.
Being a student of Sanskrit literature, I don’t need your help in classifying what I write. You can call it cheap because there is a lot of passion in it but then that is the limitation of your understanding as you cannot see the undertone of the posting which is full of love and the pain of its loss. Before I write something else, I would like to suggest you (for it costs nothing!) to read the Sanskrit classic of Kalidas, Kumarsambhavam, in which the great poet has vividly depicted the lovemaking scenes of Lord Shiva and Parvati. The depiction is so crude and descriptive that it is said that after writing that part of the Mahakavya, Kalidas earned the wrath of the Lord and fell ill. He had to do penance before he could complete the work. No doubt, Kalidas was a great scholar and his works are unparalleled in the History and despite being full of sexual overtures, his works are called classics.
Such examples galore in all the literatures of the world. And there is one particular reason why I cited this example. And that is that one meaning of the name of my character is Parvati. And I believe that by writing like that if Kalidas could not cast slur on Parvati or defile her, my posting too won’t affect the Goddess. Goddesses are like lotus, though in mud, yet beyond it.
So as far as your genuine suggestion of generating revenue by writing porn story is concerned, I would just like to thank you for your advice. I do write for a living but in newspapers and I am making good enough for myself. So you needn’t worry about that. My blog is my personal space in the virtual world and that I write just to give vent to my feelings and I won’t take suggestions from you on what to write, where to write. If ever there would be anything like what you suggested, it would be here only. So keep visiting my blog.
But the initial question still remains unanswered. What was it in your comment that made me go sleepless for some nights? Well, I wondered what was it in my writing that influenced a stranger, a non-stake holder, to write a comment like this. Had it come from some other quarters, it would have been understandable. Had it not been for the support extended by the friends, especially that of a lady, who posted her comment as anonymous, I would have removed that posting.
In retrospect, I conclude that if I can elicit such a scathing response from you, a non-stake holder, the purpose of my writing is served. Keep visiting the page for more action...
And your criticism is always welcome...


Amitabh Shankar

Kiss of life!

Amitabh Shankar


I wanted to gift myself an evening full of love and passion with her. She was to leave for her native place to attend her brother’s wedding the day after. It was about being for a fortnight alone, and it was impossible to live for a moment without her and her memory.
I wanted her to be with me for an evening and she was turning down my requests all the time. Writing an e-mail to her full of emotions was the last resort. My room partner used to call it blackmailing tactics of mine but I used to do it every time I felt like, without compunction. And I wrote one, she was subjugated and she obliged.
I left the office early and picked her from her office. She had to do some shopping, of some artificial jewelry, to match with the cloths she had to wear on her brother’s wedding. And we went to the South Extension. There she looked around the jewelry, she liked some but found the price unreasonable and decided to leave without buying any. I offered to gift her one but she refused to oblige and we left the place.
We decided to go to Pind Baluchi for dinner, a restaurant in Lajpat Nagar, which was probably sealed later. I don’t know if it is still running or not. We had a nice time over dinner. Being from a state bordering Punjab, she kept me telling about the Punjabi culture and the food and their dress and all.
After dinner, we headed to the JNU, the place which I like most and which is also a lovers’ paradise. Sitting on that Partha Sarthi Rock, earlier also we had enjoyed the serenity and the silence of that place. Fresh air and the peace of mind that comes with it adds to the romantic ambience. And this was the place where…
The security guard posted there did not allow us to go to the PSR saying you can go only if you have an I-card and we were not the students. So we decided to go on a walk on the campus. I parked my bike at a secluded place and we went for a walk after the dinner. It was late in the night and not many people were around. We took the east gate road, on which lives the vice chancellor of the university, and very few people take that road.
You need to go on that road to know how beautiful it is during night. The line of trees on both sides and the vapour lights which light up one moment and goes off another make for a romantic setting.
We were talking about everything; about love, relationships and ourselves.
“I don’t know why everyone I talk to proposes to me?” she said.
“When did Varun propose?” I asked.
“How do you know he has proposed to me?”
“I know, it takes just a little of common sense to know that.”
“Hmmm… He proposed to me last night through SMS. I don’t understand why everyone I talk to proposes to me.”
“Because while you ensure that you don’t carry anyone’s tag with your name, you get the tag of being available.”
“My being ‘available’ tag doesn’t mean that anybody comes and takes me along. I think I will have to stop talking to every man.”
“The man you won’t talk to will have his hands around your waist as I am having and you will walk with him alone on these lonely roads.” She giggled.
We had gone too far and she said we should return.
We were talking like always. My hands one her arms and I kissing her all the time on her cheeks, arms and neck. Somehow she left me behind and an idea clicked in my head. I went behind her and put my hands around her waist and lifted her. I was myself surprised by my prowess as her body did not brush against my body for a moment and I lifted her beyond a feet from the ground. She was so surprised that next morning she asked if I had really lifted her or she was just dreaming.
I put her down after few seconds and started walking along with her. Walking by her side was so exciting; I wanted to do all the wild things.
I caught hold of her chin and pulled her lips towards mine. She resisted, half-heartedly though, “Amitabh, Amitabh…” And the next moment our lips met. It was for the first time that I had planted a kiss on her lips. As we parted, she lowered her head.
It is impossible to read a woman’s mind. I don’t know whether she was angry or happy or what but I said sorry.
And as we were walking back again, I put my hands on her shoulder and our bodies pressed closer to each other, and closer … and so close that it ended up in a deep hug. My hands slipped on her back and ended up cupping her butts and then it rose to slip inside her T-shirt. It was soft and slippery like butter inside. Her hands on my back…
And in the dead silence of night, amid heavy breathing of two souls, the sound produced by the rubbing of the zips of jeans was quite audible in the forests of the JNU.
If ever I pass that road again, I still do hear the reverberations… I don't know if she too listens too those reverberations...