Intellect Over Dogma. The Real Eclipse I Would Like To See Tomorrow

Ah! This religious brouhaha surrounding the solar eclipse

Tomorrow makes me feel in what age do we live?

The world despite all science and tech it equips

Lives a couple of millennia behind as a captive

Incurably chained to fossilized and viciously obsolescent dogma

And yet paints non-conformists with a stigma

For something scarcely their fault

Oh Mankind! Hope you can vault

Over to an empyrean orbit

In pursuit of wisdom and rationale

Till the world becomes better to re-inhabit

Making the pale blue dot an exotic locale

Where high ideals and intellect reigns supreme

And every human of the race forms it’s crème-de-la-creme

Traversing Alongside Superstitions

My dad was just stepping out

To purchase the weekly groceries

From a far corner, I was tempted to shout

''Where are you going, tell me please’’?

The words escaped me accidentally

An old habit, picked up as an inquisitive kid

More than intentional, rather inadvertently

But too late it was, it was a wrong thing I did

For I had just stirred up a hornet’s nest

My granny who was tying her hair

Shot up with a leap of zest

Nearly uprooting the chair

She charged for'ard training her guns

On her hapless grandson who stared at the preacher

''How many times have I told you?'' she bellowed, ''don’t you have any sense?''

Not to ask someone leaving the house on whereabouts about the departure

Hmm, so I am sure you got the hold

Grasping the underlying theme,

A common scene in a Tamil household

Where superstitions reign supreme

One evening looking into the mirror

Realized the hair was disheveled, beard unkempt

A sight I recoiled with horror

The uncomfortable scene I began to pre-empt

Slowly opened the door, hoping to plot a secret escape

To my favorite salon the 'Green Trends'

When my shrewd mother spotted the door agape

Sadly there wasn’t time to make quick amends

''Don’t you know it is a Tuesday'' ?

She chided, clenching her teeth

The barber is shunned today

I returned to my room, in anger I could only seeth

One night, at the foot of the table, I stubbed my toe

Rocketing up instantly, groaning in pain

Little realizing the nails I had allowed to grow

For personal hygiene isn’t my expertised domain

I went and fetched a nail cutter

Once the blood stopped to ooze

Lingering pain was still bitter

But now was ready to cater to the bruise

The nails I started chopping away

When granny shimmered into the hall

At the sight of her I stopped midway

Face automatically turning towards the wall

Nails shouldn’t be cut post setting of the sun

She serves as a final warning

To her beloved grandson

''Go to bed. You can cut them in the morning''

One day, I was rushing to catch a flight

Knowing the appalling traffic, I had only a glimmer

Of hope, still cutting it a bit too tight

Untimely moments precipitated to make prospects dimmer

Collecting my luggage, I hurried outdoors

Waiting for the upcoming elevator

Which finally emerged, after traversing all the floors

And out stepped a bloody traitor

Impatiently I brushed him aside to irrupt

Inside, when my flouncing mother began to holler

In my tracks I was stopped abrupt

As she pulled me back inside the home by my collar

Sensing that her fogged son was seeking elucidation

She elucidated, “He looked ash-smeared and one of our ilk

Spotting one while stepping out is a bad omen

So pause for a couple of minutes, while I get you some milk”

Punctuated from time to time, I live through archaic Brahminical

Beliefs, sometimes impacting, holding me at ransom

Never to date have I received any empirical

Evidence, sometimes painless but nonetheless irksome

I never minded the ladies fingers when I expected a feast

On the eve of the mathematics test

Or prostate to elders facing the revered east

While receiving a monetary gift at their behest

I also accept the illogical appendages demanding adherency

In the process, which come naturally concomitant

Such as the random coin to the note of currency

And I will still drink in these minor irritants

But many a time I beseech, in a voice near tragic

Upping the ante, with a cri de couer

Will you give me some bloody logic

And Each time, my plea they ignore

A cornocupia of unconfounded myths

And emetic superstitions reign retrograde

As science and rationality defying faiths

Keep getting passed down generations by the Blue Rinse Brigade

As their rigidity and senescence

Begins to ossify with passing years

So has my patiently inculcated acquiescence

Sometimes to trod the path, sometimes to let it fall on deaf ears

Night and Daymare

I don’t know from where I was coming

I had no inkling as to where I was going

All I knew was my lips were humming

Some crestfallen lamentations of my own doing

I distinctly remember it was on the highway

Not a road cutting thru the city

I was also cognizant of the emotions that outweigh

Bearing heavy on mind, were singing a melancholic ditty

I didn’t care about the speed

I brushed Laggard trucks and lesser cars aside,

However there was one SUV belonging to a similar breed

Who in close heels for sometime drew up by my side

After a gutsy duel of driving skills

I gave in, ahead sped the more robust car

The spirited battle gave me the thrills and frills

But not the lead, Close but no cigar

A good fifty feet now separated the vehicular masses

Making peace with the undoubtedly decisive winner

I snuck behind comfortably tailgating the master

Closely monitoring the gap, determined not to extend the lead

Ten minutes passed without much activity

To my ruminations, I quickly came away

With both motorists in control of the situation, displaying gritty

Resolve to not yield or concede any further leeway

According the knackered accelerator

A deserved pause, ensconced in cruise mode

I flung my worries to be taken care of sometime later

Bombinating the interiors with buzzing tunes of Depeche Mode

When the detestable competitor cocked-a-snook

Suddenly hard-braking totally disloyal

To the enshrined rubric of the freeway driving rule book

To my horror I found myself at the receiving end of the brake’s betrayal

There wasn’t time to probe into the incomprehensibility

The gap narrowed! I began to panic

Forty feet, I had to do something with agility

To conjure up something from thin air, my flailing hands began to fossick

Thirty feet! The car ahead was coming to a stop

I frantically searched for alternatives

Twenty Feet, Ten feet, I squealed a hapless yaup

I had to trigger the last-gasp Putative

Option, the hold hand break

Five feet away! I pull

Too late perhaps, too slow on the uptake

The car crashed, and I was lifted into a mazy lull

Oh what a nightmare! My eyes blued into pallor

I could hear the blasting of my palpitating heart

As I sat up on my bed recoiling with unmitigable horror

Only to realize day and night when viewed athwart

Presented the same situation. One being nightmares

The other when looked at the unavoidable circumstance

I had woven myself into, were inextricable daymares

Sheer acts of my own doing, and blameless happenstance

The Hairmen In Our Lives

Seated in front of the laptop, I write this, feeling exuberant. Exuberant seems to put it a touch too mildly perhaps. To say I am basking for the nonce in joie de vivre would be mot juste. The reason is very straightforward. After nearly a year or so, I have finally managed to get a satisfactory haircut of my liking. Satisfactory. Hmm… is the exact word I am looking for. To women who shop all day and zero in on that one piece of kitschy habiliment and to men who fantasize scores of potentially suitable hairstyles and finally nail down the one which in their minds brings out the best of both worlds –The heights of 'handsomeness' and concealment of alopecic tendencies just about to the right extent, satisfactory is a word of paramount importance. And it is undeniably a self-centered and narcissistic emotion. Imagine it this way. The woman who made that garish purchase, not up to the minute with the dernier cri in the sartorial world doesn’t give two hoots about what the scenesters in her circle think, as that purchase gave her the ultimate gratification. Likewise the man, never the one au courant with the style du jour, doesn’t care a sod as to what a revolting sight his unprepossessing hair has turned into, as long as he feels his new hair dressing embodies the pinnacle of manly beauty.

Right from my college days, it has always been a rather on and off love story between self and hairdressers, and it continues till today. There are 4 distinct commandments in the 'Men’s guide to the Perfect Haircut – Beginner Version' that every man stepping out into the big wide world must be aware of. I will expound them in detail.

Commandment Numero Uno. The principal motto that any man, particularly the juvenescent or the bachelor type needs to enshrine in his rubric, when he proceeds to get a haircut, is to avoid any potential temptations of attachments to one single hairdresser or a hair cutting establishment. This is applicable for the entirety of his life. It is perfectly normal to predict that the same chap behind the rolling chair who produced a perfect hair cut on the previous occasion can turn your hair into a total disaster in the next outing. I will illustrate this through an example. I vividly remember one occasion a lustrum ago in my halcyon MBA days in IIFT Delhi, when I got a terrific haircut from a chappie who plied his trade in the putrescent bylanes of Katwaria Sarai. I was on cloud nine similar to today. Normally the one vocally self-critical about my appearance all the time, even I felt I could haven’t looked better. The near perfect results gave me the necessary ammunition to embark on a romantic pursuit of feminine interest. An entire trimester was expended in doing the arduous spade work in terms of establishing communication, initiating combined studies, late night coffee & Maggi chit-chats à deux at the Nescafe under the pretext of group project work, and what not. At the beginning of the next trimester, when the hair grew incommensurate with the size of my skull, I went back to that venerable tumbledown one wintry morning as the penultimate step in the wooing process. The cardinal blunder I did was to doze off (thanks to some late night preparatory work for a Guest Lecture or some such rot) after giving the guy the usual do’s and don’ts - Which is pretty simple and has remained constant throughout – Don’t shorten the back and front too much but you can shear off the center hairy portion more closely. I don’t know if it was my execrable Hindi accent or what, the imbecile misread my instructions and did exactly the opposite! When I woke up to my horror, I found I resembled what my dad would frequently term in Tamil as 'Uricha Kozhi' translating to Skinned Chicken! All that I had initially planned out, had to be defenestrated into the garbage bin along with my hair. The final instalment of my mission was to ensorcell the object of interest by means of a coup de foudre of sorts, take her on a date before the trance wore off and suggest a merger, which eventually never came to fruition as I knew I would come a pathetic cropper if I were to even get within a ten foot pole distance of her! This explains why I keep changing my hairdressers all the time. Every alternate occasion, the fellow bungles.

Which neatly segues into Commandment No. 2 reifying the 'Caveat Emptor' rule. Marketing and Sales birds will know this by the back of the thumb, but for the benighted blokes who haven’t tasted much success in the world of haircuts, let me elucidate in the most simplistic terms – If you want an appealing look whether it is a haircut or a shave, the ownership of the tonsorial output solely rests on you. No point in scapegoating the hairdresser if he turns you into a beastly clown, for it is you who has to pay the ultimate price of becoming an object of derision ranging from a few days at the very least to a good couple of months at max! So one of the most challenging portions in any of my quarterly trysts with the coiffeur, is to bring myself to play this rule to perfection. In my case it is the shaving part which demands devotion of extra attention. It takes a quite a handful of miscalculated snips of the erroneous scissor to know the haircut is going astray (unless you flake out like I did in the aforementioned occasion), which gives you enough leeway to bring back the man into line. But in case of a shave where the margins are too thin, extra caution is of the essence. Still its fine if it is a clean shave that you are looking for, for one can’t mess about the hair too much as all of it is going to go to the cleaners anyways, but if it is a more intricate one, where skilled sleight of hand is imperative and uninterrupted concentration is of the essence from both parties. You need to monitor every second like a hawk. All it takes is one momentary lapse of focus, or a sudden inexplicable urge to go harder with the sacred razor on a softer spot or any other cack-handed behavior to land you in deep trouble. The entire map will end up as a mockery. Post the Katwaria Sarai incident, I have maintained a high level of fastidiousness every time I hit the parlor. I settled on a French beard a year and half back, as the best possible way to arrange my whiskers. One of the mistakes nature did was to lower the keratin content in the left of my stiff upper lip where the moustache encounters the beard. The costive hair follicles on this small portion make the reduced growth a tad too conspicuous, so I need to put the area under strict surveillance when the man is about to do the editing. I tell him to leave that portion while he can trim out the remainder to maintain parity with the right side. So understand my friends, attention to detail is sine qua non.

Commandment No. 3. More often than not there will be atleast one peculiar aspect of the process which is bound to get you narked up. It is impossible to enter the parlor and maintain a state of perfect ataraxy till the time you get out. And hairdressers have the uncanny knack of bringing out the vitriolic side out of the most unflappable men through some pestiferous idiosyncrasies. I have two which sit perched right atop the scroll of honour. The first one is courtesy of the only modicum of divertissement one can find within the fusty room, apart from the unedifying tete-a-tete between 2 senescent septuagenarians queueing at the back. And that’s the TV. 90% of the time, the content that is broadcasted is appalling - Hackneyed soap operas, unheard of music channels playing vapid movie songs video jockeyed by some abject loser, or abominable reality show programmes masquerading in the name of entertainment. Irrespective of whether it is Delhi or Chennai, Hyderabad or Bangalore, only the vernacular varies, the substance remains the same across the length and breadth of the country’s parlors. I don’t know if it is some sort of a meditative fodder for the hairdresser, but the double-hatting apparently helps in his case to concentrate on the cutting while invigorating his frivolous senses. Most of my time is usually spent royally ignoring what blares on the idiot box. But there is always one golden minute in that half an hour pile of abysmal drivel, which is bound to attract your attention and make you train your senses on it. It could be a short clipping of one of Vadivelu’s uproarious rib-ticklers or some exceptional movie song featuring your favorite svelte actress, commanding your attention and gaze. The eyes magnetically roll up and you wish that everything else can be paused for that one minute. It is exactly during this critical juncture that the pestilential fellow will violently turn your fixated head to the opposite side or push it down, so that he can start chopping away the locks on the other end or from the back. If you gently try to turn your head TV-wards he will again return the favor, this time with a more forceful shove. On one occasion I remember while in the midst of a haircut, a fellow hair-dresser sitting idle on the adjacent rolling chair who was switching channels abruptly stopped at SUN Music which was playing 'Ragasiya Kanavugal', one of my favorite numbers. I involuntarily retracted my bent-down face, to catch a couple of quick glances of the stunningly winsome Trisha, as the least expectant hairdresser jerked into a fit of spasm, and severed off a small portion of my ear! Similar painful experiences have taught me that the best way to deal with such situations is to stop the chap in his tracks when you want a breather and pretend to scratch an itchy ear or nose, thereby getting a few precious seconds to wink at the moving celluloid images.

The other quirk of hairdressers that used to grind my gears at a time when I used to go for a clean sweep of the facial plains, was their insistence to slather your moustache with a rich foamful lashing of Gillette Shaving Cream followed by the beard, but then having a go at the beard first. This initially seemed ok on first thoughts, for it was natural to imagine, that after the beard is gone, the moustache would duly accompany. But I was mistaken. After the first round, it was procedural to expect a second shave with a lesser dollop of the cream to ensure there are no hirsute traces. After all it is called Double-Foam shave! But almost across India, hairdressers had and perhaps still have this obsession to focus on the beard for a good quarter of an hour. Being an operations management student at first, I appreciate that sometimes one has to endure the LIFO principle in life as well, but not at the cost of the moustache indurating into a floe of sticky white gloop, quickly attracting the attention of keenly scrutinizing flies that are buzzing about the vicinity.  The couple of minutes that lapses between the completion of the full beard shave and the start of the moustache shaving is one of the most frustrating moments in the exercise. I remembering trying to tell the chaps numerous times sometimes even begging them that they either shave off the moustache immediately after the beard, or fully finish the beard before even applying the cream to the moustache but it always fell on deaf ears.

And that beautifully flows into the last of the quartet of commandments, and a fitting rebuttal to the previous one. You are well within the right to have your own quirks! And something that can pique the hairdresser adds icing to the cake! In my case the end is the most pleasing and intended to ensure it is not anticlimactic. After the haircut and shave is completed, the hairdresser, moisturizes the face with a few droplets of H2O, smears the aromatic camphor-flavored facial cream on the besprinkled dial and daubs the after shave lotion which is followed by a fleeting horripilation, a feeling not unlike to what Louis XVI of France must have experienced when the searing blade of the incoming guillotine made contact with his neck. Then a tender massage of the head follows. And then a soothing calm descends upon the motionless body now reposed in a state of torpor. The hairdresser pleased that the ordeal is over, approves with the nod of one who has done his job to perfection – A signal that you can get up, pay up and leave. This is where I insert my rejoinder. Staying firmly rooted to the spot, I ask him to pick up the razor again and ask him to scrape the clean shaven face in the reverse direction. The reactions vary from bloke to bloke and time to time depending on the mood. Some take it sportively and give in, and some protest in exasperation as if to say “Eh what?” Some take it personally as if the credentials of their craft have been brought to question, and some demand an explanation for the strange request. Every single time so far, I have had one logic which has worked to perfection – An inveterate lie that I have an interview the next day and though he (the hairdresser) has done a good job, it would need a bit more chiseling, and that I can still see very miniscule hairs, that need to be pruned out, which is possible only if we shave against the grain. I could have asked him at the very end of the shaving round, but I wait till the very end, to riposte this. Imagine a Kenyan athlete who after completing the 20 mile stretch under the scorching sun and collapsing in exhaustion after breasting the tape, is told by the marathon organizers, that there is another couple of miles to go and they had wrongly marked the finishing line! It is a not so dissimilar sight, to see the poor chap, cursing under his breath, as he takes razor in hand and obliges. Dermatologists will warn such an approach could cause razor bumps and skin irritations, but that’s the price I am ready to pay for the pleasurable feeling and to relish the delectable moment of pure Schadenfreude! Voilà!

Coming out of my reverie, I hasten to the mirror and gaze at it for a good minute or two. Marveling the contents of the reflection once more I realize what a charmer I am. Phew if only I hadn’t walked down the aisle, I wouldn’t quell any bobbing emotions and would be all ready to set off cantering like a knight in shining armor in rescue of the nearest damsel in distress, confident that this time lady luck will smile on me, both literally and metaphorically!

The Smell of Summer Iron

It is one of those pleasurable things to rhapsodize about. Call it the way you want - breezy, buoyant, lively or any other of those associated synonyms that my cerebral thesaurus would proffer from time to time, but the central idea being, that the moment the idea popped up in my mind, I grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, before it could escape the fringes of my evanescent memory!

The inspiration occurred to me a couple of days back when I rejoined the gym located exactly opposite Prajay Megapolis, the gated community in Kukatpally, Central Hyderabad where I reside. To say I rejoined wouldn’t be overstating the reality by a distant margin, because even though I did have a membership for the past few months, my attendance was risible to say the very least. I would have paid a few meaningless visits, and my otiose exertions would possibly have qualified to being classified under the label 'Apology of a Fitness Workout'. However as always I could trot out a myriad of excuses for my hebetudinous attitude, the primary ones being – It was winter, the most abhorred period of the year for me (for those willing to know more read kindly my Blogpost - The solar connection http://hubandspokebrain.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-solar-connection.html) which meant an increased inability to sleep causing me to look as dull as ditchwater, back to back visits to Chennai and Salem where food and company’s own water were aplenty resulting in me piling on a truckload of calories (a fusillade of 'onslaughts' on the digestive system seems to be apposite), and Peak.

An honorable mention about peak is in order. It is that period of the year when Amazon the global E-commerce and Technology giant and the employer which provides me the daily biscuit, starts pumping the populace with products and killer deals at an accelerating pace at atrociously cheap prices, thus putting a million nonplussed brick and mortar establishments on the line, leaving them scratching their heads. A million ravenous customers slog it out virtually on the land’s end of their credit cards at 11:59:59 PM as new deals go live at midnight sharp only to run out at 12:03 AM. More often than not, technology does the dirty and a web-server or two caves in due to heavy traffic, or a glitch in the checkout page of the Amazon website causes the asking price to triple or some well thought through strike by the delivery stations comes to fruition. You know something or the other like that, but the results eventually leads to a fifty thousand folks calling customer service at the same time and a massive call queueing that follows, with the hapless customer service agents on the other end at their wits end. For me, being the capacity planner, the work cut out for me was to plan the logistics of this hecatomb - Basically the hapless customer service executive headcount to be put on the wrong end of the customers’ wrath for an incessant barrage of phone calls and chats for six consecutive weeks. The ordeal begins on a black note with Black Friday at the onset of the thanksgiving weekend and unremittingly continues for 6 miserable weeks in a row till the year throws in the towel and the new one begins. 

Anyways, I am digressing as always. I could talk nineteen to the dozens about peak, but with an eye on not wanting to dwindle my paltry readership further, and to keep them hooked within their yawning goldfish attention spans, I will retreat to the substance. So you get the point, to cut a long story short, why I could not make the 300 meter walk from my doorsteps to the muscle factory.

So as spring segued into a bright jaunty summer, I was at my effervescent best. At 40 degrees, as the sun hammered down on the Deccan Plateau nestled in the heart of the Indian hinterland, at 11 AM, I loved it and craved for more degrees. I could feel the impulse and energy to stretch my tissues again, while the world sweated away and plunged into the precincts of the air conditioning at every available opportunity. Losing no time, with bottle (water to set things clear) in hand, I hit the gym again once again with a zestfulness and resolution to pump some iron and better my previous mediocre attempts.

There is something about the summer air in a gym that has the effect of a roborant drug on me. As I stepped into the hallowed portals of the gym, it almost immediately reminded me of similar efforts I had embarked on 8 years back, as a 21 year old, with all the time in the world while waiting for the official joining letter to join TCS, trying to build a macho body in Anand Gym, Chennai.

Anand Gym was one of those utterly shoddy and ramshackle establishments in the middle of a rather bourgeois neighbourhood in the neck of my woods in South Chennai, which was viewed upon by the great and the good as an incongruous hole in the heart of aristocracy. The gentry always desired Dimensions or Talwalkars or some sort of more affluent fitness den which does not have to corkscrew it’s customers into paying for its glitzy and extortionate fitness packages. They would instantly be drawn to it like a magnet. In such gyms it was commonplace to see plump boys and overweight girls wasting their parent’s hard earned money chatting away on mobile, as their legs trundle along at less than 5 kmph on the treadmill. Adipose middle-aged women never lost an ounce of weight in years but nevertheless came every single day after packing off their kids and husbands, for that 2 hour ritual of gossip that make all the difference in their lives. Funky DJ and philistine music blared on all day. The equipment typically would be brand new and imported from the Hit pits of America but most of them barely touched. There were still a few well-meaning youngsters, who did come with the right intentions to build health, but to cut a long story short, to me it was all that a gym ought not to be.

To me the kind of place, where I found my calling was Anand Gym, that revered tumbledown, where sturdy auto drivers, mechanics, small shop keepers and the lot of those, came paying a trifling 100 bucks per month. Being a Men’s only gym had its own set of advantages. We did not have to care about the more delicate pre-requisites for the gentler sex. Most of us worked out in sweaty inner vests and some bare-bodied (Never me though!). Shoes were anathema to the place and there used to be a rack outside the broken door, as an unspoken reminder to those entering with shoes, that bare-footed workouts were no less when compared to wearing Adidas, Reebok or Nike. There was no air conditioning and the old Usha fan that had been instated 15 years back rotated with a speed that drove away the air instead of circulating it. The carpets weren’t cleaned or dusted since the time they were rolled out the first time, and the rusty sharp scrappy iron protruding from the dumbbells would put off any man with finer sensibilities. The entire place reeked like the dickens as sweat from able bodied men swirled in the air and the humidity inside could choke the toughest of the Bedouins. A stickler of hygiene would have labelled the place as a cesspool and a haven for disease-making, putting it in stiff competition with the Couum River at the top of 'South India’s Sordid Set of Stinking Squalors'.

But there was a distinct air of camaraderie and bonhomie, which would have put Bertie Wooster’s pals hanging out at the Drones club to shame. The banter in the air was infectious. Youth swearing at each other in a friendly way with the choicest cuss words in Colloquial Chennai Tamil, dietary idea exchanges on the foods that need to be consumed to ensure the perfect nutrient balance, discussions on the methods to make a more nutritious recipe of Aatu Kaal (Goat Leg) Soup to be consumed as a pre-work out appetizer, and animated debates on whether Naatu Kozhi (Country Chicken) had a higher protein content over Broiler Chicken, typified the usual quotidian day at the gym. The Gym master and proprietor Venkat, an exceptionally friendly man who had won the Mr. Chennai Bodybuilding title a couple of decades back ran the show. Young and budding body builders such as myself turned to him for inspiration and drank in every word he uttered, goading him with the revered salutation 'Master'. A life-long love story with boiled eggs took root in me thanks to this man’s unrelenting endorsement of egg-whites as the perfect post work out meal. Initially disappointed that I was just a Ovo-lacto vegetarian, and not a full blown meat eater, he was of the firm view that I need to be put on an egg-heavy plan if I were to finish on the right side of the body building ledger to compensate for the potential calories lost to abstinence from meat. Gulp down as many eggs you can if you want to gain 'mass' he used to say in that awe-inspiring commanding tone of a man who knows his stuff. My mom initially recoiled with horror when I said the number of boiled eggs per day prescribed was a whopping 8, she convinced that 0 seemed a more reasonable number and she was fine with a number higher than that if one of us both agreed to leave the house! After much haggling we hit the middle ground at 3 eggs per day.

In the mornings, latest Kollywood chartbusters preferably the fast paced beat numbers more commonly known as 'Kuthu' songs played on TV and in evenings, typically it was IPL matches that took centre-stage. The debates turned into pre-match and post-match analysis even while workouts were in progress, gravid with discussions on Dhoni’s team selections and admiration for the way he captained the local favorite team CSK. There was no shortfall of amiable buzz that enveloped the place, and surely no better rejuvenation for a good workout.

Most of the folks had the tendency to focus on Upper Body strength and conditioning. The tough beefy eggs boasted of broad chests, and sturdy biceps but hardly cared about the musculature in the lower half of the torso which remained an unprepossessing sight. More the calories, the merrier seemed to be the Motto! A good chunk of the gap between 2 consecutive muscle strengthening repetitions more commonly known as the shortened 'Rep' was spent by these tough eggs in posing in front of the dusty mirror flexing their muscles trying to resemble 'All Brawn and No Brain' henchmen or side-kicks of villains in Tamil movies, more colloquially known as Stunt Parties. Though menacing looking, these blokes in fact were extremely helpful when it came to helping the thinner of the lot such as myself, who worked out cheek by jowl to gain muscle. They were most encouraging and would assist me with the bench press or provide a handy intervention and bellowing an inspirational 'Come On!' or '5 more!', as I would be on the verge of collapsing whenever I picked up a barbell or dumbbell a tad too heavy for my liking. Iron fist in a velvet glove in short. Or should it be the other way round?!

After a solid hour and half of giving my muscle all the action it craved for, I used to come out of Anand Gym, wiping my brow feeling great, the secretion of endorphins and the adrenaline rush simply incredible. As I headed home I looked forward to the cold water bath, followed by the egg whites which would be waiting for me.

So the first day in my new gym, was a similar experience but for the fact it is Unisex, and a Telugu equivalent of Anand Gym. It is a few shades different undoubtedly, add a slightly more posh setting with newer equipment and a few viragos to it, but it certainly reminded me of those golden days, as I embark on my 'Six Pack' mission for the 14^th time in my life. This time I am here to stay!

Lepidoptera

I was zooming on the highway

Squeezing every penny out of a frazzled speedometer

Ruling the road to me, was child’s play

Sanctimoniously brushing aside lesser cars and many an inferior driver

In quest of destiny, I zipped along

Not caring two hoots about my travelling competitors next door

I don’t blame myself, it is in a common world we belong

A feisty SUV, drew up by my side

Giving me a death stare and edged forward, with a twerk

Summoning up all the blood lust, taking hurt on my pride

I curvetted notoriously, applying dexterous wristwork

Stepping on the gas and pipping the hapless vehicular bystander

And took charge of the road again

Flouting every single lane rule in the book, I admit in candour

With all the road to myself and in cruise control

Enduring a period of fleeting ennui, I turned to music

To smoothen my nerves and soothen my soul

And to start my usual cogitations, just seemed to be politic

As an army of butterflies arrived in fizzing fashion

In swarm after swarm, providing instant fodder for thought

And to set the philosophical mood buzzing in passion

The fluttering butterflies, spread their area of coverage

Having a go at the milkweed, their primary creed

Traversed towards the rich pasturage

On either side, of the perilous crossing of human greed

As car after car, drove through the swarm of razzmatazz

Delicate smashing ensued, as coloured confetti Paper sprinkled

From above, tattooing the little corpses onto the welcoming glass

After massacring several more and once the hundredth had died

With a semblance of conscience and a soupcon of queasiness setting

In, I pulled over the car onto the side

To take stock of the yellowed smattering

Peering over the vitreous landscape

Like a seasoned lepidopterist

As a few winged friends, tunnelled through the door left agape

Marking respect to the ones that were no longer with us

I carefully picked up the little bodies and deposited them in zip lock covers,

Alongside one of their brethren, waving to be plucked, a lone hibiscus

To be united while laid to rest forever, best friends – Butterflies and flowers

Was the least I could do, as a paltry self-assumed absolution

From the sins I had thus committed

As I tottered towards the vehicle of decimation

Back in the driver’s seat I couldn’t help but ruminate

What if humans, like the butterflies, though different conspecifics

Bonded together by a closely intertwined fate

Eventually become undone by one of nature’s malevolent tricks

However ominous maybe the aftermath

It is not a thought altogether to be relinquished

That we would be the culmination of nature’s ultimate wrath

Imagine a tethered astronomical object light years away

Let suddenly loose from cosmic captivity

Ferally hurtling through a vortex in search of its prey

Pale-Blue-Dot-wards in search of a galactical destiny

Be it a comet, a meteorite or an asteroid

Perhaps a similar fate of the butterfly, which isn’t a distant possibility

Awaits us, but till then my friend, preserve your Sang Froid

Atleast the butterflies served a loftier purpose

The pollinators, to keep the food chain intact work round the clock

Also serving as climate change battlers, unlike the scrofulous human circus

Which immutably drugged by avarice of lust, fame and ambition, continues to flock

Towards unplacatable desires and unquenchable thirsts

My long jeremiad never looking to surcease

Manifests occasionally into futile outbursts

As panglossian hopes of melioristic redemption lay tattered

The thought of Armageddon isn’t so out of place

Like the butterflies, if one day a shattered earth lay scattered

And countries and oceans were catapulted into outer space

Redeeming Homo sapiens from this unruly farce

That is one less planet for the universe to worry about

But atleast then would retrograde humans become one among the stars

Thumbs up to the winged green thumbs!

The Two Snakes

Two snakes peeped out from a far brown mound

Then emerged from their holes and began to slither

In unison and a collective quest to become more renowned

With a resolve to not dither and hopes not to wither

Though difficult to comment with certitude on their incipience

To a fair degree one can fathom that their existence long preceded aliens and Homo sapiens

At some point they did diverge, but meandered forward in close proximity

Their paths consistently offset by a parallel curvilinearity

On every single inch of their epochal trail

They firmly stamped their indubitable legacy on Terra Firma

Perhaps an inexorable outcome of Karma

Displaying supple flexuosity enabling them to countervail

Demonic acts courtesy human and nature

Or call it Forces of God, Oh that caricature!

However the snakes scarcely did bother

Determined to only keep moving, grasping all their nettle

Braving arduous terrain and vagaries of weather

Single-minded and dogged in their pursuit to prove their mettle

Their pigmentation did change Midway

Darkening from shades of dark blue to charcoal gray

As the topography changed from dense vegetation

To landscapes populated by diverse inhabitation

The long winding snakes bred curiosity

But did not lay out a vicious dragnet

But diverse fauna mysteriously were drawn to it like a magnet

As they sensed an end to their paucity

Thus slowly did grow the confidence of the species

Culminating in mass migration towards the snakes which never did cease

Scanning the roster, one perceived ants, infinitesimal in size, nevertheless abhorrent

But In large numbers, an army of exterminators

Snuggly ensconced and dotting the route of the reptiles, as if in accompaniment

Slow beginning to take bites of it, as the prey became predators

Bewilderingly and antithetical to all imagination by a long stretch

The serpents ingested all the venom, but never once did retch

As the scavengers began to feed on the visceral excrescence

While the two seemingly insouciant snakes epitomized colubrine impotence

A few rats further invaded into the skin of the game

As green and brown rotten lumps formed on its calloused

Flesh, and a few more rodents unhesitatingly espoused

The rapacity, and vaulted over the putrescent frame

But the sagacious snakes separated by concrete blocks and strips of pasturage

Smiled to each other and gladly embraced the unholy entourage

Years passed and the esteemed beings continued to offer themselves

To the infesting rodents, remarkably managing to coexist

Despite pandering to the ravenous avarice of the millions scrambling on the edge of its broken curves

Battered and bruised but tireless in its pursuit to keep up with destiny’s tryst

Finally, at a remarkably far flung distance

Topography changed colours one final time, to reveal the ultimate significance

As the two serpents met journey’s end

Till the very end giving themselves unconditionally to their fiend

At last slaking their unquenched thirst

They mingled gratefully into the big blue pond

Becoming one with their master, to initiate a supreme bond

A Tennysonian predestiny envisaged at the very first

True they were made weak by time and fate, but were strong in will to strive

To seek, to find and not to yield as they scripted the heroic act of Thrive

"Excuse me Sir", the words ground my deep preoccupations to a resounding halt

Turning my head I perceived, on the aisle, laden with her Paraphernalia was the Air-hostess,

"Sir, your Water Bottle, Maggi Noodles Bowl, and packets of pepper and salt"

Grouchingly accepting the offering I abandoned my ruminations to enter recess

"Would there be anything else you require"? She concluded in an endearing tone

"No thanks", I dismissed her tetchily with a nonchalant wave, keen to be left alone

I hastily turned to the vista outside, only to find we had breached an altitude that enshrouds

The sweeping vistas, as the metallic eagle had already soared above the clouds

Casting one final look outside, I saluted the invisible riparian anguiform

From Fifteen thousand feet above the ground

Weighed down with helplessness and admiration in heapful measures abound

As the venerable curving twins battled below, braving the storm

I drew up my window, turned to fork and lovingly twirled

A snake-like noodle, as we traversed across the skies in search of a better world