The Qatar Diary (Defunct)

Vietnam

2011-02-23T21:01:00.005+03:00

thevietnamdiary.blogspot.com

Alone

2006-12-07T16:24:00.000+03:00

... Again.

Muslim Veil: My day in the niqab

2006-10-18T15:42:00.001+03:00

Muslim journalist Zaiba Malik had never worn the niqab. But with everyone weighing in with their views on the veil, she decided to put one on for the day. She was shocked by how it made her feel - and how strongly strangers reacted to it.

"I don't wear the niqab because I don't think it's necessary,'' says the woman behind the counter in the Islamic dress shop in east London. "We do sell quite a few of them, though.''

She shows me how to wear the full veil. I would have thought that one size fits all but it turns out I'm a size 54. I pay my GBP39 (US$72) and leave with three pieces of black cloth folded inside a bag.

The next morning I put these three pieces on as I've been shown. First the black robe, or jilbab, which zips up at the front. Then the long rectangular hijab that wraps around my head and is secured with safety pins. Finally the niqab, which is a square of synthetic material with adjustable straps, a slit of about 15cm for my eyes and a tiny heart-shaped bit of netting, which I assume is to let some air in.

I look at myself in my full-length mirror. I'm horrified. I have disappeared and somebody I don't recognise is looking back at me. I cannot tell how old she is, how much she weighs, whether she has a kind or a sad face, whether she has long or short hair, whether she has any distinctive facial features at all. I've seen this person in black on the television and in newspapers, in the mountains of Afghanistan and the cities of Saudi Arabia, but she doesn't look right here, in my bedroom in a terraced house in west London. I do what little I can to personalise my appearance. I put on my oversized man's watch and make sure the bottoms of my jeans are visible. I'm so taken aback by how dissociated I feel from my own reflection that it takes me over an hour to pluck up the courage to leave the house.

I've never worn the niqab, the hijab or the jilbab before.

Growing up in a Muslim household in Bradford, northern England, in the 1970s and 80s, my Islamic dress code consisted of a school uniform worn with trousers underneath. At home I wore the salwar kameez, the long tunic and baggy trousers, and a scarf around my shoulders. My parents only instructed me to cover my hair when I was in the presence of the imam, reading the Qur'an, or during the call to prayer. Today I see Muslim girls 10, 20 years younger than me
shrouding themselves in fabric. They talk about identity, self-assurance and faith. Am I missing out on something?

On the street it takes just seconds for me to discover that there are different categories of stare. Elderly people stop dead in their tracks and glare; women tend to wait until you have passed and then turn round when they think you can't see; men just look out of the corners of their eyes. And young children - well, they just stare, point and laugh.

I have coffee with a friend on the high street. She greets my new appearance with laughter and then with honesty. "Even though I can't see your face, I can tell you're nervous. I can hear it in your voice and you keep tugging at the veil."

The reality is, I'm finding it hard to breathe. There is no real inlet for air and I can feel the heat of every breath I exhale, so my face just gets hotter and hotter. The slit for my eyes keeps slipping down to my nose, so I can barely see a thing. Throughout the day I trip up more times than I care to remember. As for peripheral vision, it's as if I'm stuck in a car buried in black snow. I can't fathom a way to drink my cappuccino and when I become aware that everybody in
the coffee shop is wondering the same thing, I give up and just gaze at it.

At the supermarket a baby no more than two years old takes one look at me and bursts into tears. I move towards him. "It's OK,'' I murmur. "I'm not a monster. I'm a real person." I show him the only part of me that is visible - my hands - but it's too late. His mother has whisked him away. I don't blame her. Every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirrored refrigerators, I scare myself. For a ridiculous few moments I stand there practicing a happy and approachable look using just my eyes. But I'm stuck looking aloof and inhospitable, and am not surprised that my day lacks the civilities I normally receive, the hellos, thank-yous and goodbyes.

After a few hours I get used to the gawping and the sniggering, am unsurprised when passengers on a bus prefer to stand up rather than sit next to me. What does surprise me is what happens when I get off the bus. I've arranged to meet a friend at the National Portrait
Gallery in central London. In the 15-minute walk from the bus stop to the gallery, two things happen. A man in his 30s, who I think might be Dutch, stops in front of me and asks: "Can I see your face?"

"Why do you want to see my face?"

"Because I want to see if you are pretty. Are you pretty?"

Before I can reply, he walks away and shouts: "You fucking tease!"

Then I hear the loud and impatient beeping of a horn. A middle-aged man is leering at me from behind the wheel of a white van.

"Watch where you're going, you stupid Paki!" he screams. This time I'm a bit faster. "How do you know I'm Pakistani?" I shout. He responds by driving so close that when he yells, "Terrorist!" I can feel his breath on my veil.

Things don't get much better at the National Portrait Gallery. I suppose I was half expecting the cultured crowd to be too polite to stare. But I might as well be one of the exhibits. As I float from
room to room, like some apparition, I ask myself if wearing orthodox garments forces me to adopt more orthodox views. I look at paintings of Queen Anne and Mary II. They are in extravagant ermines and taffetas and their ample bosoms are on display. I look at David Hockney's famous painting of Celia Birtwell, who is modestly dressed from head to toe. And all I can think is that if all women wore the niqab how sad and strange this place would be. I cannot even bear to look at my own shadow. Vain as it may sound, I miss seeing my own face, my own shape. I miss myself. Yet at the same time I feel completely naked.

The women I have met who have taken to wearing the niqab tell me that it gives them confidence. I find that it saps mine. Nobody has forced me to wear it but I feel like I have oppressed and isolated myself.

Maybe I will feel more comfortable among women who dress in a similar fashion, so over 24 hours I visit various parts of London with a large number of Muslims - Edgware Road (known to some Londoners as "Arab Street''), Whitechapel Road (predominantly Bangladeshi) and Southall (Pakistani and Indian). Not one woman is wearing the niqab. I see many with their hair covered, but I can see their faces. Even in these areas I feel a minority within a minority.

Even in these areas other Muslims turn and look at me. I head to the Central Mosque in Regent's Park. After three failed attempts to hail a black cab, I decide to walk.

A middle-aged American tourist stops me. "Do you mind if I take a photograph of you?" I think for a second. I suppose in strict terms I should say no but she is about the first person who has smiled at me all day, so I oblige. She fires questions at me. "Could I try it on?"

No. "Is it uncomfortable?" Yes. "Do you sleep in it?" No. Then she says: "Oh, you must be very, very religious." I'm not sure how to respond to that, so I just walk away.

At the mosque, hundreds of women sit on the floor surrounded by samosas, onion bhajis, dates and Black Forest gateaux, about to break their fast. I look up and down every line of worshippers. I can't believe it - I am the only person wearing the niqab. I ask a Scottish convert next to me why this is.

"It is seen as something quite extreme. There is no real reason why you should wear it. Allah gave us faces and we should not hide our faces. We should celebrate our beauty."

I'm reassured. I think deep down my anxiety about having to wear the niqab, even for a day, was based on guilt - that I am not a true Muslim unless I cover myself from head to toe. But the Qur'an says: "Allah has given you clothes to cover your shameful parts, and garments pleasing to the eye: but the finest of all these is the robe of piety."

I don't understand the need to wear something as severe as the niqab, but I respect those who bear this endurance test - the staring, the swearing, the discomfort, the loss of identity. I wear my robes to meet a friend in Notting Hill for dinner that night.

"It's not you really, is it?" she asks.

No, it's not. I prefer not to wear my religion on my sleeve... or on my face.

- Guardian News Service.

They accused him and then sacked him...

2006-10-17T14:57:00.000+03:00

Today, a very close friend of mine was sacked from Qatar Airways, for a reason which could very well have been overlooked. But he's a friend, anything I say will be biased.

I have known of Qatar Airways sacking their employees at the drop of a hat, but today, when it happened to a friend, it felt a little different.

The guy's been born and brought up in Doha, when he joined Qatar Airways, they took him on their sponsorship, which meant if he quit or was sacked he would have to leave Qatar and not return for a period of two years, like it always is with all companies in Qatar.

His story, however, is a little different. His home is here, his parents are here, he's spent his entire life here. But he's Indian, and since Qatar Airways has sacked him, he will be flown back to India, where he has no home, no friends.

Isn't it high time this sad ass rule of not being able to switch companies in Qatar came to an end?

Isn't it high time companies in Qatar stop confescating their employees' passports the minute they land in Qatar?

Isn't it high time, we stop requiring an 'exit permit' to leave the country?

Aren't we just nothing more than paid slaves, who don't even have the right to leave Qatar, without permission, as if we were some deadly prisoners?

But Qatar Airways is run by very powerful men, probably not even the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) can do anything about it. As for the media, they dare not publish anything which has the words Qatar Airways printed in it, unless it's a multi-thousand riyal advertisement.

I was referred to as a 'star reporter' yesterday, I've come across this term directed at me many times in my six-year career, but I feel helpless. In another country, I could have single-handedly twisted my friend's fate around.

In Qatar, there isn't much I can do. And I couldn't tell him that when he looked to me for help. But things will change, soon. This is just the lull before the storm.

Bloggers suck!

2006-10-01T19:02:00.000+03:00

(Note: Headline changed from the original Bloggers' Rubbish.)

I couldn't agree with the writer more. Absolutely bang on! Only, I think War For News, which the writer's mentioned (read: slammed) in his article should be given due credit for exposing Indian amateur, straight-out-of-college, untrained, unprofessional electronic journalists, and the workings of TV channels in the sub-continent. Further still, the blog has at least put these screw ups on the global (web) map.

Article below...

(Note: I have taken the liberty of breaking the neverending paragraphs)

By Shoban Saxena

Everyone has a story to tell, but everyone is not a natural-born storyteller. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but a lot of people confuse it with meaningless fuming and ranting. Everyone has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.

There are a lot of people who are sick and tired of having to eke their way through life. A lot of people are sick of being nobody. A lot of people's lives have been reduced to inconsequential chatter with their inconsequential friends. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions and their lives a second-hand mimicry of others' life. Such people form groups, stick together and find comfort in each others' miseries.

Almost all of us know and meet such people here and there - the man who talks about 'what's wrong with this country' at the local tea stall; the men who can explain the stock exchange fluctuations in local trains; the man on a flight who claims to remember every match played by the Indian cricket team since 1975; the socialite in a party who can talk about hair extensions and why all men are dumb and love-cheat rats; and the embittered people who hate everybody in their office but have secret handshakes with some.

They are interesting people. They think that they have something to say. They want to be read and heard and seen. But their aspiration is blocked by the obnoxious monster called the Editor and their high-voltage facts mixed with slam-dunk fiction, with a lot of typos and commas and semi-colons in wrong places, go down a drain called the Editorial Process.

So they turn to blogging and take refuge under a series of posts on a web page in the form of a diary, with hypertext links to other such diaries.

The bloggers love to attack those they hate: from McDonald's to Starbucks to Karl Marx to Mandal to Germaine Greer to the colleague at the next work station.

Blogs are an online stream of consciousness written by people who believe that they are under orders from someone to change the world. Good idea. But the pace at which the blogosphere is getting cramped with half-wits, religious maniacs, failed writers, sociopaths and cold-blooded killers, is scary. They all scream so loudly that those talking sense have to drop their decibel levels.

Every 10 minutes, some three million new bloggers invade the WWW with a vengeance. It looks like revenge of the amateur who dreams of becoming a reporter. And that's a cause for concern.

The editorial content - uncontrolled and unregulated - has made it free for all: In the UK, PayPerPost and Bloggers Republic offer such opinions that would invite legal suits in a newspaper; the US marines are using myspace.com for giving a positive spin to their stories from Iraq, and in Canada, an "angel of death" wrote a blog before shooting at 20 people.

Forget wrong grammar and bad spellings, bloggers are now writing murders on the web.

Bloggers claim in their hifalutin tones that they want to give a voice to the voiceless and replace the newspapers with their journalism. It sounds good, but look at the way they are doing this. Their vision is apocalyptic and their language is acidic. It's good fun, but this is no journalism.

Learning and mastering good journalism is tough. You learn it in libraries, on flooded streets, in front of a rioting mob, in the middle of crossfire between a militia and a military, in war trenches, in the corridors of power and in the hamlets of deprivation. Sometimes, a reporter walks for miles in an area ravaged by a tsunami to get one quote from the man hanging on to a tree for a week.

Bloggers don't have to worry about such inane things. They can learn history and politics from google. They can get their facts from newspapers and then slam them with their half-baked opinions.

And no one can beat Indian bloggers when it comes to self-obsessed preaching, gossiping and bitching.

The Indian blog which has made the most news, carries nothing but office gossip of the two leading TV channels. Called warfornews, it leaves nothing to imagination, not even the office memos which are also posted on the blog. They are like a lynch mob who will not spare you if you dare to cross them. If this is a new form of journalism then it'll make sense only to those who live in a post-modern bubble.

But the smart people in the corporate world have realised the uses of these mercenaries. They are looking for bloggers who are interested in being paid. Eager to make quick bucks, many have already boarded the train of paid bloggers, blowing away their claims of citizen-generated media, free from the restrictions of top-down "old media".

Since there is no accountability and no audit, we don't really know which blogger is being paid by whom to spin what kind of "truth" on the web. But we must give the devil its due. There are bloggers who are doing good work.

From the war-zones of Iraq and Lebanon to the red-light streets of Sao Paulo, there have been excellent stories missed by mainstream media. On the BBC, Mukhtaran Mai's blog is a good effort. This amateur output is raw but written with emotions. It has clicked with people in the West as there is some distrust of large media networks, particularly television, that fails to distinguish between a bike accident on the road and a big war devastating a country.

In the West, blogs have become an outlet for the rage that people are no longer allowed to express in the actual world.

But, in India, with a booming and vibrant media, journalism without an editorial process is a dangerous trend.

It's easy to dismiss journalism as literature in a hurry, but blogging is just organised gossip.

Imagine

2006-09-30T14:09:00.000+03:00

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Qatar Journalist Flees Country

2006-09-26T12:58:00.000+03:00

SURFACES IN THAILAND, MARRIES THAI GIRL, SAYS 'NOT COMING BACK'

A Qatar Diary Exclusive!

An Indian journalist working for the local daily national, The Peninsula, last week fled from a Singapore hotel, where he was on an official visit, landed in Bangkok, got married to a Thai girl known to him, and expressed intentions that he never wished to return to Qatar again.

The "40-something" reporter, who had been working in this Gulf nation for almost 10 years was sent to Singapore by his newspaper, alongwith other journalists from different publications of Qatar, to cover the annual International World Bank meet.

He was due to return, as were the other journalists who did, last week. However, the Peninsula reporter fled the hotel "at approximately 2.30 in the morning" the night before he were to take the flight back to Qatar.

After a few days of searching for the reporter, his paper found out that he had landed in Bangkok and had, in fact, "already married a Thai chick known to him for a few years" and, had decided to never return to Qatar.

According to another source, who seems close to the runaway reporter (message in comments section), he is yet to marry, and the girl "isn't Thai."

It is however unconfirmed why he would 'escape' and not actually resign and leave. Sources say he "had a bank loan" (unconfirmed though), which he had now, possibly, succesfully escaped.

He leaves behind in Qatar, his "Filipina wife."

Unconditional love

2006-09-25T09:54:00.000+03:00

Once upon a time there was a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.

"Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."

"Sure," they replied, "We'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know," the son continued, "He was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."

"No, Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide.

The parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him... but they also saw something they didn't know - their son had only one arm and one leg.

Author: Unknown

Time

2006-09-24T14:27:00.000+03:00

Boundaries crossed, the unforgettables long forgotten, love found, love lost, love found, time running past, still, zillions and zillions of moments left.

Life is quite long. So many things keep happening. Yet, time feels the same. Today was just like it was a year ago. The weather was the same, the people around were the same. It was the same computer, the same phone kept beside it.

Only, things are a little more expensive today. Only, the hairdo is a little different. Only, I may have gained or lost a few pounds. Only, I am happy. Only, I have a life partner to hope to grow old with.

How would I ever be able to explain to another me, that everything changes, whether or not you would like it to, whether or not you believe if it ever would?

Today, the calm within me is unbelievable. I didn't do anything for it to come. It just came, on its own. I thought it would never arrive.

It did. One moment I was without it. I blinked. And it had arrived.

That's just the way it happens. Nothing, ever, lasts forever.

English print journalism in Qatar

2006-09-17T19:49:00.000+03:00

One of the reasons, the number of posts on this blog have declined over the past few months is that the intention was to make The Qatar Diary into a place where I write things that make sense to me - basically about travels and journeys through boundaries and life - not just few free-to-write-what-you-want pages where I would just blurt out my anger and frustrations of my failures, and the inability to make the right decisions.

But there is this one issue I want to address, once and for all. It's about English language newspapers in Qatar. Not just from people I have spoken to, but on Qatar's popular Internet forums like Qatar Living, I've noticed a lot of trash about how bad English newspapers in the country are, or how they cater only to the Indian subcontinent, with a big chunk of their newspages filled with stories about India, Pakistan and the likes.

To start with it, I'm a journalist in Qatar. I am here for the tax-free money, the laidback life and the fact that Qatar is in the centre of the world - geographically - which makes it far easier to travel around.

And now lets face some serious facts. There are now three English newspapers in Qatar. Gulf Times, The Peninsula, and the two-week-old Qatar Tribune.

Gulf Times, the oldest paper in the country, by far, leads with the readership. With all due respect to the other two newspapers, the fact is, The Peninsula, which a few actually believe to be better than Gulf Times, prints just about 2000 copies - sells even less - and Qatar Tribune, though beats both the older papers as far as the design element goes - it's a very good-looking paper, but they got absolutely no news, and no sense of news either.

So lets scrap those two newspapers out of contention here, and talk about Gulf Times, which, because it is widely read, comes under a lot of flack by its young, stupid, Internet-savvy, readers, who spend half their day on the country's Internet forums and shout about how they don't get any news from it.

The first question is... what the fuck do you want? In a country, where no one murders anyone, nobody rapes anyone - if there are rapes no one reports it, hardly any one steals anything, there's not a single celebrity around, what sensations do expect the newspapers to stir? Blame yourself for not going around on a killing spree. There's hardly anything newsworthy happening in the 11,800sqm desert.

As for Gulf Times being very "Indian centric", that's utter outdated bullshit. The paper's been covering everything from all over the world. If you people mean the local pages, don't blame the paper if it's only the Indians 'doing things' in the country.

When the paper calls up the Westerners, half of them don't wanna be quoted, and the other half don't wanna reveal anything at all because they fear losing their jobs, or being 'blacklisted.'

As far as the sensational stuff goes, the journalists are here too for the same reasons you are here - to do their job and take their paycheck and go home to their wives and children. There is a clear line they aren't supposed to cross. The undemocratic country has drawn the line for them.

They can't go all out blurting about prositution in the country - you think they can't - they can, big time, they got all the evidence, but they won't, because the journalist who wrote it will probably be on the next flight out.

Still they're trying to push that line forward, writing about the court cases, which involve locals in alcohol rackets, drugs... the works man. Busting the gambling racket, with actual pics taken with a hidden cam. Who would have thought two years ago this would ever see the light of the day in national newspapers.

News isn't plucked out of trees. Newspapers get their news from the journalists it hires, and journalists get their news from the people. The people. People have to be ready to talk.

Comparing Qatar's print journalism with that of India or England is stupid, because in India or England people die to be on the news. Here you ask them a question, at least the ones that matter, either they don't speak English or, in case they do, they answer in monosyllabuls.

Where are the stories? Where is the news? What is happening? That taxis aren't enough in Qatar is stale news.

Writing on private fourms and blogs is fuckin easy. Making it to a newspaper column isn't as easy. You have to substantiate what you know with solid evidence.

And please just stop with this 'too much Indian shit in the papers'. There's no other shit happening out here, and the papers have to fill their pages so that you buy it for the classifieds, and read it by the way.

And guess what... as much as it would hurt you, Gulf Times is sold out at every friggin store in town before 9am. But there are always enough Peninsula and Qatar Tribune copies lying around. Maybe you should try reading those for a change.

I for one personally bought them once. Though two riyals isn't too much money, but I swear by christ, I've never regretted spending four riyals as much as I did when I bought them.

And nothing else matters

2006-09-09T15:46:00.000+03:00

The Land Cruiser is parked on the edge of a 200ft high sand dune, just before a tummy-tickling 70-degree fall. A photographer right below, kneels down and takes position. With a gesture of his hand he signals the driver to step on the gas - the jeep rises, sinks and spins, sand spraying against the car windows like dense brown water. Click.

Dunebashing at Masaieed, 40 km from Doha. The recreational sport's one of Qatar's favorite past time.

On weekends there are hundreds of SUVs and desert quads performing crazy stunts out there.

One of our 4wds stuck in the sand and about to be pulled out.

In conversation with Babu John Lazarus, 54, one of Qatar's most experienced dunebashers. He knows every inch of the desert.

The rocky land across the sea is Saudi Arabian soil. It's weird, this side, it's soft sand, all desert, that side, all rock, no sand, divided just by this narrow stream of seawater - a Geographical wonder!

Work's over, now chill out with a beer. Here with NF Ali, another dune freak, who goes crazy with his desert quad.

Photos: Jayaram

When you plan to not plan anything

2006-09-07T19:06:00.000+03:00

"Every start upon an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances seems sensible and likely to be successful."

I recently got back from my 45-day vacation to Australia. It was a solid trip. Nothing like I imagined, and expected it to be. For one, I met my wife on this 45-day trip. We weren't expecting that to happen so suddenly now were we!? And then there were other things, which now, don't really matter.

The trip is history. I believe every journey teaches you something new. This one taught me to smile. It taught me to have few friends in life that will stand by you, no matter what you do, or where you go. But have those few friends. It taught me that life, luck, and fate never give up on people, even though people might give up on them. And that there is no greater pleasure in life for me than to travel, without a tomorrow in sight.

It's been just about 20 days since I got back. What do you know... I work so I can earn enough to travel. For me travelling is the sole point of life, marriage or no marriage.

I may have been inspired by The Motorcycle Diaries. But the next trip I'm planning after about six months of saving my ass off, can shake the daylights out of anyone. Doha (Qatar) to Istanbul (Turkey). Sounds fairly simple. But this one's all the way by road.

To add to it, no car, no bike. Just me and the road. I won't walk it, sure. But to be honest, I don't know.

We're talking about going right across Qatar, from Doha diagonally, enter Saudi Arabia, travel right across Saudi, enter Jordan, cross Jordan, enter Syria, through Syria enter Turkey, and then diagonally upwards to Istanbul, where I'll meet up with those few friends, who're very comfortably flying, after a Europe trip.

Lets add a bit more punch to this whole thing. No bookings, not for a hotel, not for a bus, no schedule. Just a map, my backpack and my sleeping bag.

People here ask me, where next. I tell them Istanbul... by road, I add... hitchhiking I further add. Their jaw drops. It takes a lot of balls to do that, they say. Not a lot I say... just two are perfectly enough.

Why would I want to do this, they ask.

It's because flying to a destination is what everyone does, it's easy, it's comfortable... and it's not fun.

How long will I be on the road before I touch down at Istanbul... I have no idea. It's just a rough guess... anywhere between 15 to 30 days, it all depends on who I meet where.

I travel... to travel. I travel... to live.

Another communal riot on our hands?

2006-09-03T11:40:00.000+03:00

NEW DELHI: Delhi police on Sunday transferred the case of a Sikh youth, who alleged his hair was forcibly cut, to Crime Branch even as it appealed to people not to play into the hands of people who are trying to communalise the issue.

Twenty four-year-old Harpreet Singh alias Sonu alleged on Saturday that his hair were cut by some persons who barged into his Tilak Nagar residence on Friday. However, the police has described the entire episode as a case of robbery and denied any religious overtone in the matter.

One person has been arrested in this case. With protests in some areas, the police issued an appeal to Delhiites "not to fall into the trap of people who are trying to communalise the issue".

A low profile protest was reported from Bhogal in South Delhi.

Additional police forces have been deployed in Tilak Nagar area, a police official said adding there were no protests in the area on Sunday morning. Hundreds of Sikhs marched to the Tilak Nagar police station last night alleging that the authorities have not arrested the culprits despite Harpreet naming them. Some vehicles were also attacked and police used teargas to disperse the crowd.

I see a full-blown communal riot in the making, unless we've grown up and I wasn't told about it.

The riot won't happen because they're angry. The riot will happen because it's been too long since a riot happened, because it's time for a riot.

Sad.

India... sigh.

No bombs, no boundaries

2006-08-26T12:26:00.000+03:00

I still believe in paradise. But now, I know its not some place you can look for, because it's not where you go. It's how you feel for a moment in your life when you are a part of something, and if you find that moment... it lasts forever.

Travel (Australia)

2006-08-23T11:09:00.000+03:00

And in my dreams I'm dyin' all the time... - At Palm Cove, Queensland

Thornbury suburb, Melbourne, where I touched base

With cowlick at her home in Thornbury

La Trobe University, Melbourne, where cowlick's hubby is doing his PhD!

Yep, that's them at Infinity Beach, 20km from Cairns City, the first beach up north from Cairns.

The Great Barrier Reef from up above (a chopper).

From down below

Travel (Australia) 2

2006-08-23T10:58:00.000+03:00

Osprey 5 - The boat that took us to the Great Barrier Reef
Heading for the chopper now
The chopper that would fly us over the reef back to Cairns
Palm Cove, 40 minute-drive from Cairns. One of the better beaches up north of Cairns
Surreal, ain't it! I was there. Don't know what the place is called. But it's at the end of one of the hills in Cairns.
Getting stoned at Palm Cove.

Travel (Australia) 3

2006-08-23T10:46:00.000+03:00

The Great Barrier Reef
No beaches in Cairns, just this lagoon.
Dusk till Dawn, Eating Joint - Cairns City, Queensland
Josephine Falls - Queensland
Mt. Buller - Three hours drive from Melbourne

Affirmation

2006-08-21T12:50:00.000+03:00

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I'm loved when I'm completely by myself alone

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold
I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

Enough

2006-08-16T15:26:00.000+03:00

This is to inform that the admin of this blog has finally found what he was looking for. Just like he had predicted - his destiny found him.

He's got nothing to crib about anymore.

Hence, this blogsite is now defunct.

Signing out of Australia

2006-08-03T14:56:00.000+03:00

Yep, I'm outta here. No blast, no traffic jam, no unusual delay. Everything's bang on target. I woulnd't mind things going a little wrong, but this isn't too bad either. Everything's perfect.
I'm on my way to Hong Kong. Got just about 12 hours there before I get my ass to Delhi.
I met a girl just before I was to leave for Melbourne. The night before... at Turquoise Cottage. The good part is that she was good looking. The second good part is that she came up to me and started off a conversation. The third good part is that we were holding hands standing at the bar counter.
The fuck up, however, is that I was so drunk that it was only in the evening the next day that I realised there was a girl with me the previous night. I didn't even remember her name.
Again the good part - it's that apparently the DJ of TC knows her.
So basically I'm gonna search for her the minute I land. This time I'll try and be sober so I know what I'm dealing with. Who knows, these few days could be life changing for me.
Who knows, maybe she's searching for me as well.
That apart, I had the best time ever in Australia. When I was leaving cowlick and N, man, I was so fuckin depressed. I think I might have been just short of cryin there.
I'll miss you Nitika.
This trip's been brilliant. When I got here, I was arguably friendless. I'm leaving Australia, with at least three new, very close friends, who I'll strive hard to meet no matter which part of the world they're in.
As of now, we're meeting in Istanbul, Turkey in March.
What can I say... life ain't too bad.
Take a small piece of advice from one of the most amazing men you'll ever come across in your entire life.
Travel

It's all comin to an end

2006-08-02T04:26:00.000+03:00

Queensland. Dive the Southern Great Barrier Reef. Damn.

I see the poster right in front of me. I'm in a cafe in Melbourne... everyone's at work... dressed in black, overcoats, ties, polished shoes.

Behind me... a handful of shabbily dressed backpackers... all of them tryin to get in touch with a bit of familiarity through the internet.

I was there. The Great Barrier Reef. Cairns. Way up north. So different. So beautiful. I can't say it. I can feel it... all over again.

Man!

But tomorrow, it'll all come to an end. Melbourne will... for me. But Cairns is unfinished business. I gotta go back there. It's a place meant for me.

Come tomorrow and I'll be on a nine-hour flight to Hong Kong. God knows what'll happen there.

Shit fuck. I didn't do Cairns properly. I didn't have the balls to.

Sad ass shit. Money means too much to me. More than money it's the fact that I am shit scared of not being a journalist, a writer. I don't have the balls to be a waiter at a restaurant.

Aaah.... you won't get it anyway.

I know what I mean.

The Great Barrier Reef. Sure.

It's done. I was supposed to do it with Noor.

Noor.

It's been long. Almost forgot there was a Noor once upon a time. Whatever.

Well... I think it's over and out from Australia.

Unless...

This isn't for you, shoo

2006-07-31T18:39:00.000+03:00

Yeah, I could post pictures, of Australia, or the great barrier reef, or the chopper I travelled in, or me before some of the world's most picturesque frames, of of me standing in capris, a sleevless tee and chappals with a backpack hanging from the back of my shoulders... i could do all that and boast of another stamp in my passport, or how cool I am...

Crap.

Believe me, you won't, it's shit when they say you should live a day at a time, live in the moment. It's shit because it can't be done. It's a myth that sounds extremely beautiful when it comes in the form of an advice by some wannabe asshole trying to sound good.

They say travellers don't give a fuck about tomorrow and yesterday. Or so we believe. I really doubt if that's true. Sure, they try not to think about those two aspects of life. But it doesn't happen. It never does.

Your past and your future are just such a big part of your existence that you possibly cannot separate them from your present, or in any state of mind you are in.

I think about both obsessively though, even though I say or pretend I don't give a damn, that it's the present that matters. Both fuck me up, but it's my future that fucks me up even more, coz I don't know it yet. It's there, probably already planned out, probably I'm supposed to make it, probably there is none (but there has to be)...i don't know, but it scares the fuck out of me to think of where I will be, what I'd be like later on in life, say, 10 years down.

If now I gotta imagine, I'd say I'd be right here, just like this, single, alone, craving for more, empty. But then, it could be totally the opposite. Either way, both options shit the fuck out of me. I'm scared of being anyone but who I am right now. Wrong or right, good or bad, dumb or a fuckwit... this is the guy I know. Anyone else will be a stranger i feel.

But I know. One day, a day will come, when I'd wake up in the morning on a couch in front of my television, somewhere on this planet, i don't know where, and I'll mumble, Fuck Ro, you've been around the world...and you haven't found the one thing you're looking for.

You never will.

Go back to sleep.

Homesick

2006-07-22T10:25:00.000+03:00

Melbourne, Australia, July 22, 2006:
I miss Qatar.

I truly miss Qatar.

ITALYYYY!!!

2006-07-10T01:06:00.000+03:00

Comin from a football-hater, yep, I hate the game - for some odd reason, prolly coz everyone else pretends to like it, but hell, comin from me - a person who isn't as crazy bout football, I fell in love with today. What's the fuckin day...?... July 10, 2006. Perfect. Italy won the World Cup and I saw it all happen. I even cheered. Now where would you see that happen, huh? Nowhere, I bet, unless it's in Rome, or, in Australia - Melbourne - Lygon Street.

A massive screen, thousands of people on the streets - screaming, cheering... man... i can't even begin to tell you sorry ass people where I was, what you miss every second of your life tryin to make it big, tryin hard to make a life, while I just trip around this circular mass of air that we breathe.

Thousands. THOU-FUCKIN-SANDS of people. Australia just came alive. Australia's sporty. They breathe sport. Anything. From dograces to Footi - an Australian version of Rugby, just a lil less harsh - they love it all. They make it a point to make it their reason to live for the day - be it cheering or betting on it.

What can I tell you where I was... you won't get it anyway. Have fun in your rat race, in your crazy world, which you live in and then say, Ro, you're crazy.

The eyes are talkin'

2006-07-09T08:52:00.000+03:00

First of all, let me tell you one thing - i feel sorry for those that don't see the pleasure in travelling, or they might see the pleasure, but aren't passionate about travelling enough to actually take the effort to travel.
To accept that it's fun even though sometime, or someday might not be great. There are days when it isn't as great as you imagined it to be, or want every day to be. It doesn't happen that way.
I like travelling. Moreover, I like travelling alone. Yes, sometimes during my travel, I wish, I had someone to hold, to take a walk with along this beautiful river I saw last evening... the man standing across all alone, playing the trumpet. But the feeling comes and goes.
I've started to like me - my solitude. My space. I am rude, i think, so people stay away. They take away my freedom to feel, or not feel. I can just be me.
Melbourne is a beautiful place. It leaves you alone. it's pretty, the houses are like those ancient, cute little constructions with a small garden in front, a front gate barely the height of your knees, a narrow tiled pathway leading to the first two steps of your main door to the house. You can almost imagine the people inside - all cozy in front of a fire place, drinking wine, talking the daily talk, grounding their kids.
The weather now is more like England, dark and cold, sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy - yes, it's as unpredictable. But the smell is pure.
The suburbs, basically residential areas of Melbourne are quiet - so quiet you can hear yourself breathe, I could hear a woman walk in the middle of a market place, I can hear my stomach growl right now. It's really silent. So much so even if you wanna talk you might naturally tend to whisper.
The city though is different. Buzzing with people, inside bars, restaurants, the pavements all full with people walking by, live music all around on the streets... it's amazing how you have these two sides just minutes away from each other.
There’s one thing that’s been irking me in the past week here in Australia. There’s confusion as far as racism is concerned. Ask anyone, they’ll say it doesn’t exist. But that’s where the confusion lies.
I was given a warning ticket for Jay walking, when there were three blonde chicks in front of me who walked through a red light as well. They were ignored by the cops.
Inside a bar, I was standing with my friends, just standing, talking to them, and the bartender came up and said, if I misbehaved again he would kick me out. Only me. My friends were as flabbergasted as I was.
I think they like Indians, they have no problems with them, as long as they don’t look like me.
I went to the loo, didn’t realise a man had followed me in there. While I was washing my hands, he looked at me and started pushing me inside towards the toilet hopin for a blowjob!
At another place a person came up to me asking for an autograph, he just wouldn’t believe I wasn’t Johnny Depp. Yep, he was a lil drunk.
That apart, another Australian Shark Fisherman came up to me and started betting with me - playing Two Up (Heads or Tails) - Australians bet on anything - I fucked him off 10 dollars. He was so amazed at an Indian who’s got balls that he got sentimental. Called me twice, begging for me to come back to the city to party with him.
All said, I’m enjoying the attention. Honestly? I didn’t expect so much of it in Australia. I guess I should get it by now - that it isn’t the place, it’s just me. I’m the one that’s different. They see it in my eyes, I guess.

Touch down: Australia

2006-07-04T04:05:00.000+03:00

'My name is Rohit. So what else do you need to know? Stuff about my family, or where I'm from? None of that matters. Not once you cross the ocean and cut yourself loose, looking for something more beautiful, something more exciting and yes I admit, something more dangerous. So after 13 hours in the back of an airplane, two dumb movies, one plastic meal, three beers and absolutely no sleep, I finally touch down; In Melbourne, Down Under.

Let me assure you, as a self-confessed frequent backpacker, I was a little taken aback.

They call this the End of the World. Even though Tasmania, New Zealand, and a couple of countries, I guess in South America fall below the Melbourne latitude, they still like to blind themselves to those liveable lands.

When I got out of the airport, and cowlick was driving me to Thornbury, her and her hubby's home, I was dreading - the phrase End of the World - I hoped they didn't mean it literally. What do you know... I think they did.

It's dead silent. And it was just 9pm. Streets are empty. Just a few cars running past. That's a suburb.

Call me whatever you want, but I tell you, take away the pretty blonde girls, the greeenery, and Melbourne Central - town - Qatar isn't much different from M'bourne. Or maybe it is, Qatar might very well be a wee bit more happening.

Unbelievable eh?

Well, considering, I've just been here just about 14 hours, maybe I ain't that accurate. I haven't seen much yet. But I got a knack of bumping into problems. So they don't surprise me much.

I got a warning ticket - for crossing the road when it was red for pedestrians! Like hello! Cut me some slack here. And I wasn't the only one who crossed it when it was red. There were like three blonde's in front of me.

I was the only one the cop stopped and asked for identification. Why do you think that would happen? I don't know honestly. But its no big deal. It's just a friggin warning!

People look. I mean, I don't know what it is, but people look at you. I was seriously wondering is it the long hair, or they just haven't seen an Indian, wearing a backpack on his shoulders and walking their streets with a map in his hands. Or, is it that they think I'm good looking, or loud maybe, if you know what I mean.

It's too early to say, and I am still fucking stoned from last night. Trust me man, I smoked up after 7 months, and it hits you like a storm. The high, which was once a familiar one, becomes alien to you. You don't really figure out, if you're enjoying it, or if it's just landed you in unknown territory. I'll get used to it though.

Three days later, we will be heading up north to Cairns. That of course is another story altogether - a story that I don't know yet. I can just guess, and wonder. I'd rather not. I'm not in a state to know what happened yesterday, and I certainly am not interested in knowing what's gonna happen tonmorrow.

All I know right now is that I've touched down in Melbourne, and going by the first look of it - anything's possible.

The Goodbye Boy

2006-06-29T18:35:00.000+03:00

Yep, it's here - the day. Time flies man. Every second time's going by. Barely realised, it was one full year yesterday that I started blogging. That's it's exactly 13 months today that I arrived in Qatar, without a clue what I was in for. Seven months since I left with everything I owned with the intent of never ever coming back to this place which is turning me into a retard. Only to realise, Delhi's worse, and I ran back here.

And now, again, it's time for me to pack. Only this time, I know I'm coming back. But it's really not what's on my mind. What is are those two days in Delhi -42 hours actually. Meeting those few who still like me. Seeing those many that hate me, and watching those quite a few that want to know me, but never had the courage to say, "Hi, my name is..."

What will the say when they see me again? How will they react? "Hey, look! That guy. He's back!"

After all, I'm not one of them anymore. They used to see me every single day, and wonder, what the fuck is that thing? And suddenly, one day, I left. I was forgotten as a couple of Wednesdays went by without my lonely face in the middle of that crowd.

It's fun... to go back. I like it there, but I don't think I can take much more than 42 hours. It's a place I already know, and no one really is waiting for me to come back. They're okay, either way. Actually they'd rather have my intense ass away if it was their way.

42 hours. That's all that takes just to re-assure myself that there's just one thing I'm looking for still - a place that I can call home.

And so, I am Delhi-bound, once again. I'll be back in Qatar just a day before India hoists its national flag to celebrate its 59-year-old Independence.

Till then, this is Rohit William Wadhwaney (Reporter, Gulf Times) signing off.

And... inspiration

2006-06-24T19:27:00.000+03:00

Another strike of invisible lightning. An outburst of non-existent fire, again. It's right here, inside of me.

A lot of people say I'm too harsh on myself. I expect too much out of me. I'm doing alright.

It's not true. It is, by their standards. Yeah, I'm alright. But the standards I was born with, the exceptional talent, the unbelievable fire within, the anger, the persistence, to win every battle that is out there to be won, I might very well be wasting it all. Why?

Why?

I really don't know. I have these phases. I think everyone does. Mine are just a little too erratic, too extreme; my mindwork could probably be responsible for it, but I take immense pleasure in being everywhere, at least once in my life - from right there on top, to rock bottom with a drilling machine in my hand, and every other place there is in between the two extremes. I won't deny, I like the extremes far better.

It's strange how sometimes nothing inspires you. I mean when nothing actually manages to inspire you. I don't know how to say this.

Maybe something inside me just said, "Listen dude, fuck off. It's enough! Let's get the fuck up and get back."

It's a sorry excuse for escapism - what I, and a lot of other people give and eventually actually start believing for it to be a more peaceful way of life - "I can't find what I'm looking for. I'm still searching."

That's bullshit. The only reason we haven't found it yet is because we have no idea what we're looking for. And we're too chicken shit to find out what we really want coz we're shit scared we just might find it...

And then what, we'll wonder.

I don't know when I started believing we all were meant to reach our respective destinies. A lot of people (the dumb ones, but questioning is a human right, so it's fair) counter, that even though your destiny is planned you still gotta work towards it, or change it for that matter.

It isn't right. This is of course my opinion, it has to be, but it makes complete sense to me, that when we begin to drift away from what we're really supposed to be doing, something, or in my case, nothing just suddenly shakes us up, out of the fuckin blue, to put us back where we belong.

It's really easy - life. We just make it tough. Sure, there's a lot of sadness in life. Loneliness and all that crap. It's crap. But it's easy. You just gotta hang on till you die. You'll see where you were meant to be.

Trust me on this one, and I ain't bullshitting, I say life sucks, and I mean it. People ask me do I regret being born, and I can't answer that question. It's a bullshit question. I could have answered it, if I knew of another option but life. I don't know what death is all about, what happens after, where, what, how and all that jazz. Shit. Life's all I know.

I can't possibly regret it.

But I do know, I sometimes try to deny it though, but life's a super-ride. You could either dig your head into someone else's stomach through out the damn thing and believe it was the biggest mistake you got on it, or it got on you. Else, you could spread your arms and scream at the top of your lungs, out of the sheer thrill or fear of it.

I don't know which category I belong to. I've switched my stance so many times over the past few years of my youth, that it's left me a little confused. But if I really were to answer that question, I'd say, I had my arms wide open, I was screaming in joy, in thrill, in fear.

But then, I got a little bored of screaming too long. Of enjoying it. So I shut the fuck up, and dug my head under my chair for a while.

And now, I'm fucking bored of this. I wanna spread my arms once again and see how fast the coaster's going. I woulnd't lie, I've missed the scenery outside, the speed at which objects travel past you. The tingling sensation in my tummy. The joy of fear - that will this be the day?

Although I already might have, I am nobody to preach. Yes, that 19-year-old boy, was. But back then, no one would take him seriously, and to be honest, he was just too bindaas to even give a fuck if you listen to him or not.

But from the experience of being that 19-year-old boy once upon a time, I'll tell you one thing: The true joy of life really comes from standing on Rock Bottom looking up at all the people who've never been there, and while all of them are looking down at you, laughing, you casually take a sip of your beer and say, 'Fuck you assholes. I'm on my way back up.'

Say a little prayer

2006-06-23T12:47:00.000+03:00

For once in my life, after a really long time, so long I can't even remember how long, I'm not trying to provoke you. Just this once, I'm not trying to bring out the bad side in you just so that I feel good about myself. Just this once, I ask you to keep all your hatred for me aside, and say a pure word for a very very good harmless human being, who, right now, is not okay.

Her name's Nahla Nainar, the author of a book called The Town of Fools, Gulf Times' Features Editor.

A few days ago she fell sick, and later, it was discovered she had a clot in the brain. She is in the hospital at the moment.

I don't know how it happens, how you do it, when bad things happen to good people, when good things happen to bad people. I really don't know how it works. But I do believe in good things, in good people, in God, in purity.

You don't know her, you obviously don't even care. I have had the pleasure of meeting her. You know how there are those few people in this world, totally the opposite of me? When you just see them, or when you enter a place they're physically present in, you just get this positive vibe, a good vibe. They have this positive aura around them. Yep, totally the opposite of me, that's her.

I don't know, if prayers work. I don't know if there really is a God, or is it just my belief to not feel totally all alone in this world. I don't know why miracles happen, who makes them happen. But somehow, they do.

Just say a good word for her. Just this once. After today, I promise, I'll be back to trying to make all of you hate my very existence.

Ro.

Loneliness

2006-06-18T15:11:00.000+03:00

Loneliness is an emotional state in which a person experiences a powerful feeling of emptiness and isolation. Loneliness is more than just the feeling of wanting company or wanting to do something with another person. Loneliness is a feeling of being cut off, disconnected, and/or alienated from other people, so that it feels difficult or even impossible to have any form of meaningful human contact. Lonely people often feel empty or hollow inside. Feelings of separation or isolation from the world are common amongst those that are lonely. The first record of the word "lonely" being used was in a play by William Shakespeare.
Loneliness should not be equated with being alone. Everyone has times when they are alone for situational reasons, or because they have chosen to be alone. Being alone can be experienced as positive, pleasurable, and emotionally nourishing if it is under the individual's control. Solitude is the state of being alone and secluded from other people, and often implies having made a conscious choice to be alone.

Common Causes

People can experience loneliness for many reasons. The first experience of loneliness for most people is the first time they are left to themselves as a baby.
All kinds of life events seem to be related to loneliness. Loneliness is a very common response to divorce or the breakup of any important long-term relationship. Loneliness can be a response to a specific situation or event, such as the death or extended absence of a loved one. Loneliness may also occur after the birth of a child, after marriage or after any minor or major life event.
Loneliness can occur in marriages or similar close relationships where there is anger/resentment or a lack of "loving" communication.
Paradoxically, loneliness frequently occurs in heavily populated cities; in these cities many people feel utterly alone and cut off, even when surrounded by thousands or even millions of other people.
Loneliness can also result from low self-esteem.
Some say that loneliness has become a major problem of modern times. At the beginning of the last century families were typically larger, and very few people lived alone. Today however, the trend has reversed direction: over a quarter of the U.S. population lived alone in 1998. In 1995, 24 million Americans lived in single-person households; by 2010, it is estimated that number will have increased to around 31 million.
It's not just a problem of more people living alone. Familial connections are much more tenuous than they used to be. Nowadays, it is not at all unusual for family members to be separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles.
Learning to cope with these changes in life patterns is essential in overcoming loneliness.

Loneliness as the Human Condition?

Some existentialist philosophy views aloneness as the essence of being human. Each human being comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person, and ultimately dies alone. Coping with this, accepting it, and learning how to direct our own lives with some degree of grace and satisfaction is the human condition.
However, other existentialist thinkers argue the opposite. Human beings might be said to actively "engage" each other and the universe as they communicate and create, and loneliness is merely the feeling of being cut off from this process.
Also, Buddhist philosophy argues that loneliness may be completely overcome by making authentic connections to other human beings, on an emotional level. Under this viewpoint, loneliness is therefore the opposite of the natural human condition; it then becomes the lack of action against a human system as constant as hunger or thirst. Loneliness becomes the lack of action.

Effects of Loneliness

Chronic loneliness (as opposed to the normal loneliness everyone feels from time to time) is a serious, life-threatening condition. It is a major risk factor in artery erosion, high blood pressure, and stress-related conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, and stroke.
In 2005, results from the U.S. Framingham Heart Study demonstrated that lonely men had raised levels of IL-6, a blood chemical linked to heart disease.
Loneliness can play a part in alcoholism, and in children a lack of social connections is directly linked to several forms of anti-social and self-destructive behavior, most notably leaving school early dropout, along with hostile and delinquent behavior. In both children and adults, loneliness often has a negative impact on learning and memory. It can have a devastating effect on sleep patterns, and thus on the ability to function in everyday life.
Various studies have revealed that loneliness is implicated in a wide range of medical problems, some of which may not be symptomatic for years. One particularly remarkable finding, from a survey conducted by John Cacioppo who is a psychologist at the University of Chocago, is that doctors say they provide better medical care to patients who have a strong network of family and friends than they do to patients who are alone.
Among many other negative effects of loneliness, one of the most important is depression.

Treatments

It is often posited that loneliness is "the only disease that can be cured by adding two or more cases together."
Often, people mitigate loneliness by interacting with others via the Internet. However, it is widely believed that purely online relationships are no substitute for in-person relationships, an opinion based at least partially on the fact that a person's true identity is very difficult to determine on the Internet.
To the extent that loneliness is caused by depression, it may be helped by similar treatments, such as various forms of psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy (anti-depressant medications), or both.
Another treatment for both loneliness and depression is pet therapy, or animal-assisted therapy, as it is more formally known. Some studies and surveys, as well as anecdotal evidence provided by volunteer and community organizations, indicate that the presence of animal companions -- dogs, cats, and even rabbits -- can ease feelings of depression and loneliness among elderly people in nursing homes, for example. According to the Centres for Disease Control, there are a number of health benefits associated with pet ownership: In addition to easing feelings of loneliness (because of the increased opportunities for socializing with other pet owners, in addition to the companionship the animal provides), having a pet is associated with lowered blood pressure and decreased levels of cholesterol and triglycerides.

Quotations

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. - Sir Francis Bacon

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. - May Sarton

Loneliness is the worst pain in this world. It constantly eats away the person's heart, and can cause the person to hate, to feel enraged--the same rage and hate that can cause one person to kill another. It is like a wound of the heart; the type of wounds that cannot go away with a kiss or a hug. The only thing that can make this great pain go away is love and compassion, another human heart to pull them out of this hell. - Diana

Loneliness is beautiful, for it's loneliness that leads to thoughts, thoughts lead to curiosity, and curiosity to discovery and realisation - Rohit Wadhwaney

Source: Wikipedia

It's the distance

2006-06-13T14:30:00.000+03:00

I've come a long way from home. So far away, I don't even know where home is anymore. All I have left is memories, some sweet, some bitter. A past I'd rather forget, but can't.

Hope, that one day, a place will find me - a place that I'll call home.

It's not too far away, not physically. But the distance I've come is in the mind. It's too far away. It's unreachable.

It's foolish to try and turn back. This is me, no matter what. I can't be altered.

I've accepted defeat... Total failure. I lack the courage to fight back. So I help the failure along. So much so, I've started enjoying the act of provoking others. I've started taking pleasure in making people hate my very guts.

Clearly, it's defense mechanism. I'm so scared that they won't like me, so I try and get rid of the entire suspense - I just help them to hate me straight up.

I've seen life slowly slip by me. I've watched it go by, inch by inch. After every inch I'd say, 'it's just an inch, I'll take a big leap and cover those few inches, hold it back, things will be okay'. I wanted to see how far I could leap to have it all back. Make life a little more interesting.

Then one day, I turned around to make that jump...

HAHAHAHAHA!

I couldn't even see it - my life. It had disappeared. Where would I jump? Which side? How far? I couldn't even see a glimpse of it. Everything was gone, just like that, inch by inch.

So, after a couple of tears dried up, I turned back around, and, step by step started walking, step by step away from my life. No aims, no ambitions, no goals no more.

Just one - One day, I'll touch the horizon.

JM

2006-06-11T12:26:00.000+03:00

I'm scared to call him my idol. Actually, I'm scared to call anyone my idol. The fear comes naturally alongwith the arrogance I refuse to get rid of. It's a part of me now. It comes with me, no matter anyone likes it or not, no matter they say, 'It will take you nowhere.'

But there's this one guy in this world, who showed me the road to freedom. There was.

The one person, who without ever even meeting me helped me unlearn the crap, you and your society taught me. He gave me that little push from the back, just knowing he's back there, made me walk the distance.

I don't care what he did, how he ended up.

All I know, is this:

"A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself."

"Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence."

"Drugs are a bet with your mind."

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

"Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to-letting a person be what he really is."

"Hatred is a very underestimated emotion."

"I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical."

"I am the lizard king. I can do anything."

"I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown."

"I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something."

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then - whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again, and they won't be able to forget me - ever."

"I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments."

"I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences."

"If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."

"I enjoy drinking. It loosens people up and stimulates conversation. Somehow it's like gambling; you go out for a night of drinking, and you don't know where you'll end up the next morning. It could be good, it could be a disaster. It's a throw of the dice. The difference between suicide and slow capitulation."

"Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you."

"Love cannot save you from your own fate."

"Music inflames temperament."

"People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend."

"Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies."

"Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts."

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask."

"The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder."

"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence."

"We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict."

"When you make your peace with authority, you become authority."

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors."

"I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable."

"We can only open the doors, we can't drag people through. I can't free them unless they want to be free. Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything — not just wealth. All the bullshit that he's been taught — all society's brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that."

"I think I was just fed up with the image that had been created around me, which I sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously cooperated with. It just got too much for me to really stomach and so I put an end to it one glorious evening."

"I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just... in between. I want the freedom to try everything."

It's time... almost

2006-06-10T16:29:00.000+03:00

It all comes down to this. Half a year of monotony, work, money, watching the clock tick by each hour. It all comes down to this - a trip to another part of the world, a part unseen, untrodden. And everything that's gone by, everything that I await thereafter - it all seems worth every monotonous day of this life I have lived.
I live just for this one month that comes twice every year. Six months, that's about all I can do at a stretch where regular daily life is concerned. After that I need that trip, that trip into a world that breathes across the ocean, that knows no boundaries, no faith, no religion.
Just another stamp in your passport. Memories, moments that make your life just about worth living.
I believe... I believe everyone's a traveller. Not to this or that extent, not to a certain level. Everyone's a traveller, period. Some get the opportunity to, some just don't. And when they don't, they don't see a side in them which wants to break away, which wants to break into a zone of total freedom. I use that phrase a lot don't I? Total Freedom.
I coulnd't possibly tell you what it means. No one can. You have to feel it for yourself. If I could possibly try and explain that term, I'd say, It's about knowing, if after today, you lost everything you owned, everyone who you love, who loves you, you won't have any regrets. Coz you still got you.
Most people call us hippies. I don't look like them. They don't look like me. Not when we're busy making money for our next trip into an unknown land, with a few bucks, enough to come back when it's all exhausted, a map of the place we're heading into, and a pack of chewing gum in our pockets.
Parents tell their children to be scared of us. Coz we're dangerous and dirty. We're not. But it's hard for those who refuse to understand us to like us, if you know what I mean. We look the way they want to feel. They're scared. We're scared too. But the difference is, they think fear is negative, we're sure it's positive. Fear is just the first step of doing what you never thought you would.
Peace sans luxury.

Everyone wants to get away at some point of time. Somewhere or the other. They're just confused as to where to go. They're scared of the unknown, just like everyone else. So they try and take a piece of home wherever they go. They go from a city, to another city. They check into a good hotel with a TV, cable, the news, a swimming pool maybe. Sure, they can afford it.
But you really gotta ask yourself. What is the point of that?
Most of us don't ask ourselves that question. So the answer never comes by.
Some of us understand, we didn't travel a thousand miles to sleep on a comfortable bed, in luxuriously locked four walls, with fantastic room service.
It's to find something, something different, something a bit more exciting, and yeah, like Richard (The Beach fame) put it, I admit, something that's a little more dangerous.
I think, travelling is just another way of rebelling. Rebelling against man-made boundaries, against fences he's put up so that no one dare intrude into his world.
We're so shit scared of anything that's different. But it's not putting off. Not when I lift my head up and see people like me all over the damn place, blatantly ignoring people who come out of the airport sliding their suticases on trolleys.
It's quite simple actually - to do how we do it. You just gotta start believing one thing - but that's the difficult part - You gotta start believing that you got nothing, absolutely nothing, to lose.
20 days more and I'll be off to meet the real me.
Where am I going? It doesn't matter.
Not just yet.

Pure Shores

2006-06-07T12:53:00.000+03:00

I've crossed the deserts for miles
Swam water for time
Searching places to find
A piece of something to call mine
A piece of something to call mine
Ran along many moors
Walked through many doors
The place where I wanna be Is the place I can call mine
I'm movin', I'm comin'
Can you hear what I hear?
It's calling you my dear out of reach, Take me to my beach
I can hear it calling you
I'm comin' not drowning, swimming closer to you
Never been here before
I'm intrigued, I'm unsure
I'm searching for more
I've got something that's all mine
Take me somewhere I can breathe
I've got so much to see
This is where I want to be
In a place I can call mine
I hear it calling you
Swimming closer to you
Many faces I have seen
Many places I have been
Walked the Deserts, swam the shores
Many faces I have known
Many ways in which I've grown
Movin closer on my own
I'm Movin, I feel it
I'm Comin, Not drowning
I'm Movin, I feel it
I'm Comin, Not drowning

Bond... James Bond

2006-06-06T14:32:00.000+03:00

Current Status: All seven arrested coz of me released from prison.

Mission 'It's just about a story': Accomplished.

Time: To play another game.

No Guilt

2006-06-04T16:46:00.000+03:00

Seven poor labourers, who toil really hard under the really fuckin hot sun here in Qatar away from their family to make their families' lives a little more comfortable, are in jail today only because of me.

Am I guilty?

No.

It's that time of the year - the 'Fuck You' time.

GI Jane

2006-05-30T14:26:00.000+03:00

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Pain is your friend, your ally, it will tell you when you are seriously injured, it will keep you awake and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain?

Don't know!

It lets you know you ain't dead yet.

One year...

2006-05-29T12:57:00.000+03:00

Today, I completed a full one year in Qatar. To be really honest, I haven't laughed at all this whole year. I have, but they've been pretentious bursts of laughters.

This has been the loneliest one year of my life, though, arguably. I might have been lonely before, but was always surrounded with people, never lonely enough to realise the loneliness.

Qatar made me step away from the crowd and look deep inside of me. I figured out who I truly was, what I really wanted, but was far too chicken shit to actually admit that I finally know what I'm all about.

It seemed to be the end of the road. It's sad I still refuse to realise, it's only when you figure yourself out that your journey begins. I'm just so scared of solving the puzzle, scared of - what next then?

If I ain't confused, if I ain't complicated, what the hell am I going to do with my life? Where am I going to go? What then?

It's crazy. Life is crazy. Everyone keeps saying how beautiful life is, how we should treasure the most precious gift called life. That's all bullshit. A big whole load of crap because they got nothing else to say. They feel nothing else.

Life isn't beautiful. It's not pretty. And it sure is not easy. But of course, we don't want to end it. Just because life sucks it doesn't make death any less scarier. That's where the fuck up happens.

You gotta go on living, and hoping that one day, you'll lead a normal life. Normal - that's another strange word. I don't even know if I know what normal means. To me it seems to be holding on to a pretense, doing what makes others happy so they continue to love you, like you, to be shit scared of losing what you have, people, things... whatever.

I'm abnormal.

One whole year, I've dealt with just one issue - me. I've spent time with myself, thinking, dreaming, figuring things out about me. It happens easy when all you have is you.

And in all probability, I've come to just one conclusion - I may crib and cry about wanting the normal things of life, the simple things everyone claims to want to have, friends, family, peace, money, a decent life. But I am sure, normality is the last thing I want in my life.

I don't understand normal. If a simple normal thing comes to me, I first complicate it... just so that I can understand it, and later get entangled in the complication.

I feel at home there.

And I don't regret it. I only crib.

Just one day

2006-05-25T12:13:00.000+03:00

Everyday a day goes by... Nothing changes.

Life seems so pointless, when the very things I dream of, dream for, the day dreams that help me get through the day, the real dreams, fantasies, the most unlikely situations I smile about as if I were sure they're going to happen, elude me.

Just one day. I lose it every day. That one single day. It passes me by, every day. All I do is sit around and watch it go by, looking at me, craving for me, begging me, to hold out my hand and sieze.

I don't.

I'm desperately waiting, waiting for a miracle that may never happen. Still waiting, hoping, that it just might.

How important is one day? Just one day. How important are those one days that turn into months, and sometimes years? How important are those few years of your really long life?

I don't know. But I do know life is very long. Long enough for there to be enough time to get it all back, always a chance for a second chance.

I'm living in a small little circle. Just going round and round the same line. So many of those one days gone by, I still find myself at the same place. I must be walking a circular line, refusing to step out, shit scared of something - of living a normal life, of happiness.

Day after day, a day goes by in a place, I can't really blame, with people, I can't really blame.

Blame no one but me. For, it's me, me who's waiting, just waiting, for a mircale to happen - a mircale that may never happen.

Still... waiting, quietly watching each day slip by me everyday. Staring at time in its face, while it laughs at me.

Times of India are such losers

2006-05-23T17:25:00.000+03:00

This is sad, really sad. I mean like really friggin' sad.

Imagine, a media house, the likes of Times of India, apparently the largest selling newspaper in the whole fuckin world, feeling intimidated (?) by the likes of a 20-something boy ---- that would be me.

What else could it be but being intimidated - that I was once employed with them, and when things didn't go down too well (despite giving them stories that were picked up by international media) resulting in my immediate termination from the company a year and a half ago, they went to the extent of removing my last name - Wadhwaney - from all the stories I had done!

Example 1; Example 2; Example 3; Example 4...

I don't really know what they were trying to do, but unfortunately for them, almost all the stories that I did during my five-month stint in their fucked up organisation were picked up by either some top blogging websites or some International publication, with my full fuckin name - Rohit Wadhwaney.

Rohit without Wadhwaney is like a man without balls!

TOI, you suck bigtime!

This is journalism

2006-05-21T12:00:00.000+03:00

I have the story. The entire thing. Each and every detail. Pictures, taken with a camera, hidden. All angles, covered.

But like every time, just like anywhere else in the world, I need the goddamn official quote.

There was a Friday, there was a Saturday, and I had the mobile number of the official incharged. Sad shit's that this official asks me to call his office after the weekend's over. That's Sunday, today.

I know he doesn't know shit. What he says or doesn't say, won't add or take away even a bit from the story that'll be flashed in the papers on Tuesday, rain, hail or storm.

But hell, I need his quote for my story. I don't need it. Journalistic ethics do.

And so I call this guy up. I shudda hung up when he said he didn't have anything to say at the moment. I shudda kept the phone down and quoted him. I waited, till he said, "you come and meet me in office."

Meet him! For one stupid quote.

When?

Tomorrow.

For one stupid quote, a story delayed for yet another day.

But what the fuck! Let him have one more good night's sleep. After that, it's my fingers and his ass. For, whatever he says to me tomorrow from the second I enter his office, he's on record, whether or not he likes it.

It's time to kick some ass, again.

Poker is not a chance game

2006-05-18T11:32:00.000+03:00

"Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy . It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring or hard and impersonal. It is fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just."

"If you can't spot the sucker within the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker."

"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."

"There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker... Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kindhearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a 'flush'. It is enough to make one ashamed of one's species."

"Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker."

"They anticipate losing when they sit down and I try my darnedest not to disappoint one of them."

"Poker is a game of people... It's not the hand I hold, it's the people that I play with."

"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."

"Poker is the game closest to the western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents and where - at least in the short run - the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens."

"Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."

"Poker is a godless game, full of random pain."

"Luck favours the backbone, not the wishbone."

" Is poker a game of chance?"

"Not the way I play it."

"Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker EVERY YEAR? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas?"

Tehelka

2006-05-15T14:40:00.000+03:00

A story that appeared in the Delhi-based Tehelka newspaper in the April 29, 2006 issue. You can read the full story here.

As for what's written about me...

A Generation in Transition. The urban young in post-liberalisation India inhabit a world infinitely more complex. Brimming over with opportunity and potential, vastly more challenging. How does it alter them? How do they alter it? What do they believe in? What moves them and what doesn’t? What do they want to wear? What do they want to do? Who do they want to be? For photographer Anay Mann, one among them, what began as casually shooting friends turned into a fascinating journey of discovering a generation. Since then, his project has grown into a kaleidoscopic portfolio of the contemporary young —iconoclastic, eclectic, exuberant, unaffected, disaffected, each forging separate routes. Mann, who counts photographers Bharat Sikka — who taught him to “think independently”— and Prabuddha Dasgupta — who gifted him the idea of the “intimate picture” — among his mentors, appears well on the way to creating his own genre.

ADRENILIN JUNKI

Rohit Wadhwaney, 23, loves the fast life: gambling, alcohol, camping trips, chilling with the Israelis in Manali. His Gypsy is souped up to look like a sports car. But that’s the flip side. Rohit is also highly aspirational, a focussed go-getter. He is currently working in Qatar, bored out of his skull. His blog has some pretty strong views on Pakistan.
'I'm sprinting towards a deep cliff, knowing there's danger ahead, still sprinting, almost uncontrollably, hoping to survive the fall, or build my wings on the way down and fly away, or for an angel to fly out of nowhere and rescue me'
Picture caption: Shoot Up: Rohit Wadhwaney bungee jumping, camera taped to hand by photographer Mann, snaps his own appetite for life.

---

Abey bhen ke takke Anay, you could have at least told the reporter my right age. And if you did come across my blog, my age is mentioned there dude - 25. I can't stay 23 forever, now can I?

Anyway, I see that bungee jumpin pic is going places eh? Exactly like you said brother.

Great stuff!

Navy Cut, now in Qatar

2006-05-13T10:11:00.000+03:00

By far, the most preferred smokes among the youth of India, are now available in Qatar.

Wills Navy Cut - its story is strange. It's a cheap brand of cigarettes. Sometimes people ask you, what brand do you smoke, some say Marlboro whites, reds, some say Classic, some say Benson, but there'll always be one at that table, probably with long hair, a beard, specs maybe, wearing a Kurta and jeans, the artistic kind that still probably uses a steel glass filled with a lil bit of water for ashtrays at his home, who casually takes out his Navy Cut pack and lights one up.

And trust me on this one, each of the rest on that table, will collectively go, Man! Navy Cut!

Every smoker's smoked them in his/her college days, some continued, some moved on to other brands to look a little classier. The love, never died.

Eeeeeeeehaaaaaa!

Last night, when I saw them here for the first time, the grocery store guy thought I had gone mad. My face turned as if I were orgasming staring at the pack kept behind him.

The last time I smoked like I smoked last night was when I was in school. When my parents would go out for lunch or dinner, and I'd take out one ciggie and smoke it like there's no better thing to do in the world. There wasn't actually. Not back then, until smoking just became another habit - an act you perform just to see smoke come out of your mouth.

Last night was different though. How do I tell you?

Ok... if someone called me last night just generally, and casually asked me: "Soooo, what you doing?" I'd have replied, "I'm smoking."

Lets hear it for Navy Cut!

I'm back... bigtime!

2006-05-11T12:13:00.000+03:00

Hi, I'm Rohit, most probably an alcoholic, sober for eight days.
In the past eight days, I've discovered a few things - that alcohol doesn't suck, it's the way I abused it does, that the only one reason I was always frustrated, rude, chicken shit of affection, alone and depressed, was alcohol, that I might have wasted at least three years of my life perpetually drowned in a high (read: low), that there is no better feeling for me than to wake up early in the morning (without a headache and a foul taste in my mouth) and not having to go through my wallet, my stuff to see if I didn't lose anything, that I am a very good reporter and breaking exclusive news is the one thing that makes me the happiest - the feeling only overshadowed by the misconception that alcohol was better...
And that there is a God, who has His own ways of making you realise what your purpose is and that you're drifting away from it.
I've found the real me. The urge, the urgency, the restlessness, the phone calls, the sources, the tremendous information network, the desperation to see my name in the next day's paper, the struggle to make the front-page lead.
That's me. That was always me.
Is there acraving to drink? Honestly? Not at all.
Yes, when I'm walking back from the gym, I do sometimes tend to feel like wanting to go out, party. What really stops me is just that...I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning regretting that I drank last night - an act that didn't serve any pupose whatsoever anyway. That I want to come to office fresh, with all my crazy energy, and give the people of Qatar to read somein new and exciting, somein they've never read before in local newspapers here, that I want to give vent to an urge that's always lived within me - the urge to remind people, I'm alive, that every minute, every second I am digging out a story that's been hidden and forgotten under piles of dust.
And honestly, it isn't to do the society any good, it isn't to help those in trouble, it isn't to bring the guilty to justice... it's just because it's a story, and I am a reporter - a reporter, who will go to any extent - pretend, sympathise, persist - to see that story in the next day's paper under his name.
There is no greater high for a journalist than to be on the front page of a national daily with an exclusive story - a high that remains for one entire day, and then dies out the very second the clock strikes midnight.
Today's news is tomorrow's trash. And then, it's back to digging out some more stuff, to regain that high, for yet another day to come.
I'm Rohit, an out and out news reporter, only misguided by an illusion that I am a misfit, that I live to make this world a better place - a delluision that once entered my mind, and held a temporary place... because there was nothing else in there to fill it.

The Itch-2

2006-05-10T11:16:00.000+03:00

The itch

2006-05-08T13:03:00.000+03:00

It's begun. Actually, it was always there, but I wasn't helping it. I let it grow and grow more and more till it became unbearable - the itch. The itch to continue trying to create something - a story, that will live on forever.

I don't know if I am good at it or not. All I know is that I am. I don't know if my creations will ever be appreciated or not. All I know is that I am. That I breathe. That 18 hours of a day, I'm thinking of some or the other book I am going to write... one day, for sure. That I was born to be an author, good or bad, I don't know, recognised or not, I have no idea.

But I can't help it, I write - it's what I do. I think. I imagine imaginary tales, and try and make them sound real.

It's an itch that I've refused to scratch for a long time now. It was a bit of fear, after, I guess, the failure of my previous two works, thinking, I might just scratch it too hard and turn the itch into a wound.

It's a feeling of a hundred complete ideas locked inside you with the key inside your pocket. You're scared, to open the lock, fearing, what if you are not able to do justice to it? For, you know, inside, you're already a best-selling author, only if there was such a technology, that you're mind, you thoughts were attached to an inbuilt computer and a printer. You think of a story, and it's out there in print.

The scary part's when you have to start thinking of what you thought and then re-produce it on paper. It's never as good as you thought it.

That's the scary part.

But the itch has now become unbearable.

I am about to start my third book. I thought, I'll start when I leave Qatar, because there is no inspiration here.

Let truth be told, by choice or compulsion is irrelevant, I'll be in this country, for at least another year and a half. And my itch can't wait that long.

I understood, the inspiration doesn't come from places or people. Inspiration is within you, the only thing blocking it is fear - the fear of failure.

It's time for The Search.

Reminder

2006-05-07T16:29:00.000+03:00

Code word: Doha QR 18,357

You came here (to Qatar) for a reason - a reason, nevertheless, unknown still, to you.

Stop making yourself believe, trying to convince yourself, and others, that you're just traveling around.

Something out there pulled you here, and is making sure that you stay on. There's nothing you can do. There's nowhere you can go. As of now, all roads lead back here.

Where is it?

What is it?

What do you waaant?

I have no idea how it works. But I got reasons to be assured yet again, I don't hold the remote control to my life.

Well, whatever. If I can't, I won't even try.

If here it has to be, here is what I'll be back to, over and over.

Potrait credit: Untold Secrets

Money can't buy me

2006-05-06T16:11:00.000+03:00

I'd be lying if I said I thought about it. I never had to. But I'd be also lying if I said I wasn't tempted.

Even while I was writing the previous post, I always knew, I wasn't going to go for it - 70k a month, RWW managing a IT/Tech news website back home in Delhi for a European company.

It was tempting, sure. But never tempting enough.

No money is worth even the paper its made of if you earn it doing something you don't like. Sure, you make that money, but you sell your life away - a life that is worth a hundred times more than what you make, always.

Make money, but keep your life in your pocket, safe and sound. Don't trade your life for money, you're dealing yourself a big loss.

The money you make - every penny of it - is your profit. You keep everything that's yours with you while those bucks keep coming in.

Even when the woman I would love spend the rest of my life with told me, "Come back, I'll marry you," it couldn't get me to take up the job that would give me most of what I want from this life - a nice house, some good money, a beautiful wife, India. Most of it, yeah, but it would take away me from me.

I am all I have.

As far as that woman is concerned, I know, at any given point of time in life, just five minutes with her face to to face, and she'll be in my arms for good.

My life in this desert continues.

Sorry Mr. Cornwell, if I misled you into believing I was considering the job. I was actually just for a second. But any person in this world who expects me to join their company in a week's time is either far too arrogant, or plain stupid.

Both of which, I dislike, unless, it's me.

And, finally, a curve?!

2006-05-04T11:57:00.000+03:00

It's May again. This time around, every year, something happens, a conspiracy of sorts, it seems someone somewhere is trying to call me, trying to lead me to somewhere, trying to tell me something, by turning my whole life around, by trying to get me to take a decision - an act I fear the most.

It's more or less been a cycle. Come May or June or July, and I have almost finished a year, give and take a few months, in an organisation. And by this time, somehow, I get a call from some other company, asking me to join them "immediately".

Last year, it was Qatar. The year before that, was Times of India. This year, it's India, calling me back once again, with a monthly package, only a fool like me has the potential to turn down - Euro 1200 per month (Indian Rupees 70,000 pm), working for a Europe-based web publication that specializes in the IT/Technology sector.

Don't ask me how it happens. I have absolutely no idea. I don't even ever apply. They just come around with an offer, and make my day, a living hell.

I begin to think, dreading to take that decision. I start wondering about the pros and cons. But then 70k is a whole lot of money in India. I can have a rented pent house in one of the highrises in Gurgaon - something I always wanted to have. I could live like a king.

But then, I'll be back in Delhi, a place I once ran away from.

I'd have to leave Qatar, a place, no matter how much I deny, I've gradually fallen in love with - the peace, the quietness, the dullness of the bars, the teeny weeny bit of fame that I have here.

I'm scared now, just like everyone else, to get back into the real world - of working extra hours, slogging your ass off, the crowd, the chaos.

But then again 70k is a lot of money in India.

Here in Qatar, I make just about 80k if I convert the riyals into Rupees. But then, I am in Qatar, where a small bottle of beer costs about 200 Indian bucks, as compared to India where I can get two big bottles of beer in a bar for 170 bucks during happy hours, which go on till 9pm.

In Qatar, where I pay about 20grand for a room, and compare it with India, 5 grand more and I can live in a pent house, may be.

But it's the IT/Technology journalism field - by far the most boring beat in the profession. Even though I have a couple of ex-women of mine working in PR agencies that deal in the sector, hence, it's going to be quite a smooth ride, I'll still be doing something I don't enjoy.

Do I need to learn - to accept the fact that work is work and not fun? That work's not supposed to be something you enjoy, that's why it's called work? Will I become like any tom, dick and harry, who do things just so that they can get their paycheck at the end of the month?

I don't know.

I'm scared, just like any of you. I'm no different, like I keep pretending to be. I'm shit fuckin scared of jumping into a cliff I don't know the depth of.

I can do it, if there's no time to think.

They want me to join in a week. There's no time.

And for the first time in my life, I have to take a decision on my own. No dad, no mom, no friend to throw the blame on if the decision falls flat on its face.

For one time, I need to decide what I really want - if leaving India was just a way to escape or did I truly see an opportunity to travel, something I say I want to, from Qatar and beyond, or if I truly left my heart behind in India.

I wonder if an amount like 70k can get the better of me - to do something, at which even though I'll be good, but don't really want to do it.

I'll know, soon enough.

It's strange how suddenly life changes, its directon changes, the journey changes, destinations change. It's like a fully-automatic train, which changes tracks on its own, and you - you're just a passenger.

Why can't we just sit back, sip our wine and enjoy the view... instead of constantly trying to take control over the machine, which we really don't know how to operate?

Nirvana

2006-05-02T14:28:00.000+03:00

To Boddah
Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complain-ee. This note should be pretty easy to understand.
All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guity beyond words about these things.
For example when we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do,God, believe me I do, but it's not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. It must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're gone. I'm too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.
On our last 3 tours, I've had a much better appreciation for all the people I've known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why don't you just enjoy it? I don't know!
I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what i used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I can't stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that I've become.
I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Empathy! Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.
Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.
Peace, love, empathy. Kurt Cobain
Frances and Courtney, I'll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life, which will be so much happier without me.
I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

- Kurt Cobain, Feb 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994.

Rising rising

2006-05-01T13:39:00.000+03:00

Most people, I repeat, most people living in Qatar wouldn't have even noticed. But the mercury is rising. And I am about to live through the second of the two worst summers I have witnessed in my life as of yet.

Does it get any hotter than this? Any more humid?

It couldn't. Sit inside a steamed sauna for 15 minutes, and imagine, if that is how thick the air was outside, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I'm exxagurating, but just the fact that when I sit inside the sauna in my gym and wonder, Fuck, just a little thinner, and that's how Qatar's gonna be in the coming months, is enough to assure me, it's just short of trying to breathe underwater in the peak summer months in this desert country.

42 degrees. Sure, Delhi gets there. But no, the 42 degrees here means 60 in Delhi - the humidity. It's killing.

On the main roads, there ain't a soul around. Just pieces of man-made machinery on wheels zipping past on empty silent roads, gradually turning into wavey mist as they reach the Mirage you see in the distance.

The humans inside, form 'most' of the population of Qatar. They're rich and intelligent. They absolutely never face the sun's wrath here.

Inside town, the lives don't change, be it December or May. Only now, they're not wearing a sweater and the drops of sweat continue to sneak out from behind their ears, some of them dying to cling on to the eyelashes. They don't crib. They might be intelligent but not rich enough. The sun is their roof.

Then there's me, 25 - rich and stupid. I've walked to virtually everywhere in the city, hot or cold. Such is the arrogance (read: stupidity) I don't like anyone noticing that I might be suffering outside in the heat, not even the cab drivers. I rarely put my hand out to stop them. Instead, I wait for them to honk, till then I pretend as if I'm humming a song, assuring him that I saw the empty cab, but I coulnd't care if he stopped.

I'll continue walking.

I'm not stupid. I see more than those that zip past in cars. I notice a lot more. I look around. Enter shops that I find interesting. I find stories to write about. I find untrodden paths, roads that lead to my office or home.

There, I find some more stories.

In one year here, I know a lot more about this place, than people who've lived here a decade.

It's never hot enough. It can never be, not for me. The sun's my soulmate. I look up every morning, and challenge it. It self-assures me of my strength.

And how I survive kilometers-long walks is a very simple thing. The mantra is made up of just three things.

1) Find roads, which aren't straight enough that your sight can reach too far to remind you how long the road is.

2) Choose paths that go through a busy market, where there's life, where you can see things/people, and where people can see you.

And the most important one... 3) Take one step at a time. Don't think of the distance or how far you have to go. Just remember, your destination is just one more step further. That's it.

This is how I walk...

through my journey...

of life.

It can never get hot enough, not for me.

Sach a big disappointment!

2006-04-29T13:00:00.000+03:00

I'm not in the mood to blog. Whoever's interested in knowing how the concert went, read the story here.

Sach!

2006-04-27T11:47:00.001+03:00

Imagine this - a really blue sea, you're being transported by a boat to a small dreamy island, situated about a mile away from the city, where six bands, including Euphoria and Jal, will perform live.
Surreal eh? Guess what... it's fuckin true.
The other four bands performing there this evening are Entity Paradigm, Call (two other Pakistani bands besides Jal), Rouge (a UK-based three-member hot-girl band, of Indian, Iranian, Egyptian origin), and the quite avoidable Mika.
You gotta see the venue to believe it.

All this courtesy: The Sunshine Rockers, a nine-member event management firm that marks its debut in Qatar with this 110,000-dollar worth event.
Hats off!
By the way, the concert is called Sach, I hold a VIP badge, and a small photograph of the venue is...

...this!

I ain't what I write

2006-04-25T20:18:00.000+03:00

"I know it seems contradictory to claim I don’t have very firm beliefs - people often tell me my writing is very opinionated. But then writing is, in the final analysis, a very limited mode of expression, and certainly inadequate as an indicator of what a person is really like. Even the most honest, searching writers tend to be much more confused, ambivalent and inconsistent in their everyday lives than their writing would suggest."

- Jabberwock

One for the album...

2006-04-24T21:57:00.000+03:00

Six years...

2006-04-22T14:27:00.000+03:00

Yes, almost. June 3rd, 2000. A 19-year-old boy had walked into a local small-time newspaper office looking for a job that might fetch him some bucks for his daily smokes, and of course, hoping, he might finally find what he's looking to be.

Done. 3,500 Indian Rupees a month.

I was a journalist.

Today, I look back, and it seems ages since that day, since those years when breaking news was the greatest pleasure ever, almost comparable with masturbation. No denying, it still is. Only, the urge to 'go for it' is on the downside.

It's almost unimagineable, even for me, to try and recall, how I felt then, what I was like, so much fire, so much energy, the urge to be something, I was like a sniffer dog I guess. But it's unimagineable - as if it weren't real. I might have been burning too hot, too fast. I burnt out, I guess.

I think I've come a long way.

I may still be, but then, boy-o-boy... "was I a young man in a hurry." I wanted to be everywhere, all the time. It's impossible, but I wanted it that way. I went for it.

Yeah, I might have come a long way - eight jobs, two awards, two countries, hundreds of controversies and even more scandals - from the Phoolan Devi murder, to the Bofors hearings, to the Delhi Golf Club Great Blackmail, to the Pushkin Chandra Gay Murder, to the DPS Sex Scandal...

...And to Qatar, where life goes on slow and smooth. No controversies, no scandals, no murders, no rapes, no sensations, and no major strategies to increase newspaper circulation.

A quiet life.

I have a habit of googling people I know - just to know, without asking them, where they are, what they do... and just in case they've become major hotshots, or if they've changed jobs.

Everyone - my ex-women, friends, ex-friends, former school-mates, enemies.

Nothing's changed... with anyone I could find on the net. Some have still not reached google. Some are there because I wrote about them. Some of them have been working in the same place for years together, probably doing exactly what they had been earlier. Some are there because of articles quoting them on the "effects of tequila," some have their names on press releases as the RSVP person.

The guy who used to cover the neighbourhood - water problems, parking woes, Residents Welfare Associations, is still covering the same thing, maybe on a raise of five thousand probably.

Some have moved from print to television. Some have moved from Delhi to Mumbai.

I sometimes wonder, obviously not everyone wants to live a life that I do. But the life I live is the life I know. Being settled, calm, a secure job, a family, yeah sure, it's stuff that I want, but I've come to believe it's something you just dream about. It can't really happen in real life. I dream, I smile, I move on.

And because I don't, I can't do it, I don't understand how those people can work in the same place, covering the same thing like Defence, or Crime, or BJP, Congress, Administration... How? How do you make a career in a single god damn newspaper beat? Does it not make you put a gun to your head?

I can't go on doing the same thing over and over and still be excited about it. And in my book of life (whether or not anyone believes in it), no one can.

Times Now, CNN-IBN, Aaj Tak, Channel 7, Sahara News, Star News, Zee News...

There are channels and channels, one after the other in India. Each of them claiming that a particular story, the same one, was broken by them "first".

Who cares about who broke the story first?! Except of course the news channels that are pushing and pulling each other to get one up, maybe get a few extra viewers that day, an ad or two more during breaks.

How do you become part of it?

I've been very lucky in my life. I've really always got what I wanted, just when I want it. Perfect timing.

But I'm foolish. I throw away what I have, to make life a little tougher for myself. I do it quite unconsciously.

Here I am sitting a sea away from India, in a quiet (a little too quiet) land, feeling sorry for the idiots running around the parliament, or the cop-station with a mike in their hand and a cameraman on their ass, pushing other camermen, shouting, screaming... just a for a byte, for a story that would get just about two minutes air time.

But what can be done? They actually like their life.

I don't know how this happened. It's strange, I always landed away from the crowd. Yet, I found peace in my loneliness when I was among them.

How many of them get the opportunity to step aside from the rat race? How many of them would see that opportunity? How many of them would want to?

I did, get the opportunity. I did, see that opportunity. I did, want to see it.

I don't know. I'm just lucky.

Or plain stupid. Either way, I might crib and cry about how I wish I were just a regular, normal guy, who's unlike me, always with different thoughts, different answers, different beliefs, or how I wish I were part of the crowd, how I wish I could fit in, be just like them.

But at the end of the day, or on a few days like these, I'm really happy about the way I turned out to be. I know me, for once I do.

What am I doing?

I'm breathing.

Is Pakistan mentally abnormal?

2006-04-15T11:27:00.000+03:00

Seriously. It's so god damn pissing off. What the fuck is wrong with Pakistan?

Why the hell do people from there keep throwing bombs in India??!! I mean, think about it, have you ever heard of terrorists from India sneaking across the border and planting bombs on busy streets of Islamabad or Karachi?

What are they, mentally challenged or somein? I mean for fuck's sake give us a break.

They're obviously so friggin insecure, even 50 years after partition, that they feel the need to keep proving that they have grenades!

Or what? I don't get it. What do they achieve, I mean really, what, by throwing bombs here and there?

It's really a universal fact. They're such fucked up hypocrites, claiming this to be the holy war and that they're the warriors of God, and they go around bombing Mosques, killing their own people while they're praying to the God they claim to be fighting in the name of. I mean, Jama Masjid! I swear they're fucked up.

And you know what pisses the fuck out of me? When regular people from there keep saying you can't blame the whole country for some people's actions. Fuck you man!

If they're in your country, these few fucked up people, why don't you fuckin arrest the shit out of them and hang their balls off???

I wish America for once could just keep its butt out of the Indo-Pak issue.

Just go inside and wipe the fucked up country off the map man. Sure, a few innocent people will be killed, but what the fuck... it's worth it I think.

Haven't we just about had enough of their stupidity. God help those idiots if I become the PM of my country.

Two Hours. Two god damn hours. And...

Operation: Wipe off Pakistan!

B-O-R-E-D

2006-04-11T14:39:00.000+03:00

What the hell do you write about when you're as bored as I am?

Crap, I guess.

Saw that movie, the re-make, Zinda? Imagine a guy, being locked up in a room, with a bed, a TV, and the exact same food for breaki, lunch and dinner for 14 fucking years.

I feel like that guy, and I swear by Christ I am not exxagurating.

My life hasn't changed a single bit in the past one year. I don't even feel that a year has gone by.

A year used to be so long man. I mean, a year changed you as a person so much, times changed, things changed, life changed... completely and utterly. Utterly?

Whatever.

Every single day in Qatar over the past one year has been exactly like the previous one, give or take a few depending on how drunk I got during the nights, which doesn't really make a difference either because I anyway don't remember half of those nights.

I wake up, change, come to office, write a story, go to the gym, come back to office, chat or surf or blog, go to a bar, drink, go back home, pass out.

This is precisely how I must describe the past one year of my life. Because it's the truth.

In other countries, things happen. Things happen on their own to give you that tad bit of excitement you need in your life every day because there's life. There's a little bit of competition, a little bit of struggle, a little bit of rivalry, and a FUCKING LITTLE BIT OF NON-POT-BELLIED-NON-OVER-FIFTY-SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED DRUNK WESTERNERS-LOOKING FOR PROSTITUTES IN BARS!

I decided I'll stop going to bars. It's boring after all - bars in Qatar. All of them. There's precisely one good one, where there are a few chances of you meeting someone nice, someone who doesn't charge money to sleep with you - The Pearl - which expects you to wear a suit to come inside. I mean come on... give me a god damn break! They don't allow men inside with jeans. You gotta be dressed formally, and you gotta be kidding me!

What is this? Gladrags!

What the hell do you do?

I go home watch DVDs have the same god damn food I ate the previous day, due to shortage of restaurants that are Non-Mallu-Putting-Coconut-In-Everything, and crash.

What do you do if not go to a bar and drink yourself silly?

I wish I enjoyed talking. I wish I enjoyed making friends. I wish I could talk on the phone for hours. I wish I enjoyed reading.

I wish I wasn't me.

Else I wish I had the balls to pack and leave. I don't.

I'm fucked.

Fucked in Qatar, in every sense save literally.

Lord, have mercy!

RU, this one's for you

2006-04-08T12:16:00.000+03:00

"She loved me. I loved her. Only, we showed it differently.

She showed me her love by giving me all her respect I never really deserved. I showed her my love in my anger. My anger was my love. My love was my obsession. My obsession was Ravina.

Ravina was mine. Only mine."

- Rohit Wadhwaney, 18/6 Patel Nagar, Chapter 3

It was one November morning, when I first laid my eyes on her - her hair all wet falling down on her shoulders, a body any 17-year-old school goer would die for - perfect breasts, perfect butt... a short top, boot-cut jeans, a couple of trendy bracelets on her right wrist. And what more, she was from the British School.

Trust me, back then, at least in the school I went to - the all-boys MSM (Mount St. Mary's) - you have a girlfriend from British School, and you're the dude. You're bigger than the head-boy. You're talked about, you're talked to, and no matter who you are, what you look like, you immediately become part of the cream of MSM. Somewhat vain when today I think of it. But that's... school life!

She's way out of my league man, I thought. It was a time when you've never been kissed in your life, and all you've done is hear all your class-mates talk about how they got laid the previous day after school, and you shake your head along as if it's no big deal, you've done it a hundred times before, only that your girl is a massive secret, maybe you've even faked a name. It was a time when you're not really sure if you're good looking. Maybe you're not. With all due respect, schools don't really allow you to be yourself. They expect you to be and behave the way they want you to be.

You can't grow your hair, you can't wear earrings... you can't... be who you would really turn out to be later on in life, certain things about you, not just your hair and a couple of rings, yes, that too, but not just that, but everything else that comes along with that - who you are, your attitude. It's really missing in school life.

Na-aa, I wasn't a good looking 17-year-old. I was black-tanned, thin, short - basically a timid guy with side-parting, and a broken nose.

To cut a really long story short, she gave me the first kiss of my life on March 4th, 1997, a little over nine years as of today.

What can I say, I was living a dream. Those two minutes, when she was working my lips, I had lost all count - the past, the future, even the present. My mind stopped working. I could only hear my heart, I'm afraid even she could, beating like a train gone wild.

Everything that I now look back at and re-live seems as if it were just waiting to happen. I was at the right place, at the right time, and I was hell-bent on going as far as I can to make her fall in love with me.

She met me at a time when she and her then boyfriend were going through a terrible patch. I knew then, there was absolutely no room for error. It's do or die. I gave her the shoulder she needed, all the time.

Before I knew it, I was going steady with an out and out hottie, who spoke with a Brit accent, and loved me like crazy.

I was going to get married, eventually, to my childhood sweetheart.

If I, today, have to point out when the love turned into obsession, or when the beautiful, polite, caring man she met, turned into a crazy obsessive lover, who would go uncontrollably berserk even if he saw her talking to another guy, or when I hit her for the first time, which would later turn out to be a lot of times, I really can't.

If I think about it today, it's just a flashback of incidents that come together in my head one after the other, but not particularly in order of occurence.

Why I did it? What drove me to hurt her physically? They're questions I have no answers to.

You know, how a kid, when he gets his first toy, which he just adors playing with, refuses to let it out of his sight, and if anyone else tries to play with it, he goes mad. It's just his, because it's the best. He'd rather destroy it than let it get into another kid's hands.

We were together for five years.

It was she who spoilt me - taking all the shit I gave her, and in return, she'd still be nice to me. She let me take her for granted.

Do you understand when you don't walk out on people that easily? It's when you think they're the best you can do, and it's what you deserve. You're afraid you won't be able to do better, to find better.

She saw me through my college life, saw me through one of the worst injuries i've suffered till yet, saw me through four jobs, till the day I finally said, "Over," meant it, and shattered both our dreams, shattered everything she knew and always wanted.

We still talk sometimes. Somehow, she still makes me feel, without really saying it, she never got over it, that what I did to her made her fear relationships and love, that she's turned into a walking-talking rock.

Sometimes, she makes me believe, without really saying it, that when she said she'll love me forever, she meant it, that she still does.

At times, she makes me feel, without really saying it, I've hurt her forever.

But at the same time, she tells me, without really saying it, that sometimes when you get hurt too bad, something inside you shuts off and can never really open up again. That me and her have just become a memory we might never forget, that the words "I've finally grown up and changed," now hold no more meaning to her.

I've just one regret - she'll never know how much I loved her.

The bigger regret actually is that, in fact, I will never know how much, and if I really ever did.

(A few years too late, but) I'll just say, I'm sorry.

(Just a memory)

Punch

2006-04-05T11:26:00.000+03:00

I don't understand this.

What?

What's reading got to do with writing?

What do you mean man?

I mean, you write. You write, others read. That's the difference between you and them.

Do you ever read what you write?

Certainly not in public. Barely read it in private. You know, all those you see reading in coffee shops...

Yeah. What about them?

They're not reading. They just wanna get laid.

You get laid, if you're seen reading?

The chances go up. You look a tad bit more attractive than you actually are with a book in your hand. And if you write a book, the chances double up!

Women will sleep with you if you write a book?

Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book.

Here's the typewriter. Sit down, and write.

What?

What do you mean what? Just write. Punch the God damn keys for Christ's sake!

Wait man! I'm thinking.

No - No thinking. Thinking comes later. You write your first draft with your heart. You re-write it with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!

Yeh hai meri kahani

2006-04-04T18:28:00.000+03:00

(This is my story)

When I was...
being born... I was so fat that the doctors needed an obstetric forcep to pull me out.

When I was...

three... I was shit scared of my father. I would hide every time I saw him.

When I was...
four... I'd hide under my bed every morning, hoping today no one would find me to take me to school.

When I was...
six... I was being trained, alongwith my sister, to become a world class competitive swimmer.

When I was...
eight... I was growing up to become a prankster, a major extrovert, funny and happy.

When I was...
ten... I hid behind a wall of our drawing room, watching my dad drink his evening whiskey, waiting for him to get a little high, so that I could tell him, I didn't enjoy swimming.

When I was...
thirteen... and timid, some top Indian cricketers saw me play cricket with professionals many years my senior, and were almost certain I would go on to play for the country.

When I was...
fourteen... every single day my dad made me repeat out loud: "Cricket is first priority. Studies second. And everything else follows. I will be a champion. I will not quit, because I am a winner, and winners never quit, because quitters never ever win."

When I was...
fifteen... I was shit scared before going in to a match, thinking, "What will dad say if I didn't perform well today?"

When I was...
sixteen... I fell in love, with a 13-year-old.

When I was...
seventeen... I fell in love again, and had my first kiss, my first lay too.

When I was...
eighteen... I turned a rebel, grew my hair, pierced my ears, walked around with half my shirt buttons open, started doping, and cricket... cricket had become nothing but an obligation, performing, winning, had become nothing but a boring duty.

When I was...
nineteen... I set fire to my cricket kit, in front of my father's eyes, and saw tears in his eyes for the first time in my life.

When I was...
twenty... I was a hot-shot... hot-blooded, sentimental, immature, and an angry kid making some serious waves in Delhi's crime reporting scene.

When I was...
twenty-one... I had left home, was living in with a girl, winning top awards in journalism, cheating on women left, right and centre, and doping practically every single day.

When I was...
twenty-two... I wanted to be famous, and wrote my first ficticious novel, based on a half-true story, of myself.

When I was...
twenty-three... I was hurting, very badly.

When I was...
twenty-four... I had turned into an introvert, and arguably, an alcoholic.

Today, I am...
twenty-five... a former cricketer, an ex-boyfriend to 25 women, an author of two books, living in another country, rude, all alone, and lonely.

Yeh hai meri kahani (This is my story).

Bhen Chod Sutta

2006-04-02T10:36:00.000+03:00

Alright, people... if you understand even a little bit of Hindi you're gonna love me for this one.

First of all, I need to shatter a rumour that these guys are IIT students in India. That's bullshit.

The song called the Bhen Chod Sutta Song is composed and written by a group called Zeest, an underground Karachi-based Pakistani band made up of founder, composer, guitarist, lyricist and lead vocalist Skip, manager and supporting vocalist Abeer and Anas, Aneel and Raheel on conga, tabla, and drums.

With some unmentionable lyrics this song is sure not to top any official charts but it is all the rage in India right now.

Not only in India. As far as numbers go, the Sutta song has had 7,600 downloads in 21 days.

"Like a cigarette passed from one tobacco-stained hand to another, the Sutta song has been covertly sneaked across the borders, download networks and bypassed moral censors to become the anthem for “all smokers and dopers,” writes the Mumbai-based Mid-Day

If you haven't heard it, I think it's time you did.

Give it up for Bhen Chod Sutta Na Mila.

Right now...

2006-04-01T11:45:00.000+03:00

...My destiny is getting closer to me.

...

The face of terror

2006-03-31T18:06:00.000+03:00

September 11, 2001 - a tribute

George Bush (Address to the Nation), 9-11-2001, 8.40 pm.
Good Evening,
Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.
The victims were in airplanes or in their offices -- secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors.
Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.
The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.
These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.
Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.
Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.
Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C., to help with local rescue efforts.
Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks.
The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow.
Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well.
The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.
America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.
Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me."
This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time.
None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.
Thank you. Good night and God bless America.

Three things

2006-03-31T13:52:00.000+03:00

If you're not a thinker, you're lucky.

I drive myself mad thinking about things - things that are probably absurd, totally out of context, yet at the end of it, I feel yet a little bit more enlightened than before I thought about it.

It happens to me every now and then. Ever wondered what would happen to you - your mind - if you thought deeper into things than you actually 'should'? Deeper than 'normal'?

You'd be me. You'd be abnormal, just like me. I am not like you. I look like you, just a little quiet, sometimes a little sad, mostly alone, but I ain't like you.

Maybe that's why I'm a writer, not a great writer, I know, but still, I am a writer.

I think... about things that might have nothing to do with you or me, at least on the cover, but deep down, what I eventually think out is the truth - a truth that most of us never cares about. And you shoulnd't actually. It doesn't really matter. Not to you.

But someone's gotta do it. Someone's gotta make it easy for you. Everyone, after all, can't think.

But it's a catch 22 situation... for me, a solution to which I might have found.

I think about stuff that's divine, stuff that could make me go insane when I relate it with something. But most of the times, my originality, or clarity in thought comes only when I'm high. I have no problems with that.

I totally believe to think crazy, you need to be on the other side. The fuck up, however, is that I think because I drink, and I forget because I get drunk.

Yesterday, I started to write down what I think. If I could count how many plots, how many ideas for books might have surfaced in my mind while drinking or smoking up during my life and eventually drowned in the high as well, I woulnd't be able to.

I dream of writing a book one day, every word of which will be written while I'm stoned. I just wanna see what comes out of it.

I've been getting a lot of mails - people telling me that my blog has changed. Some say the passion is lost, some say it's become very "different" than before, some say it's become "thoughtful", and it's almost certain my blog has lost quite a bit of it's traffic.

Most of the reason for it is that I can't access my office computer after midnight. Midnight is when I'm high, midnight is when my mind's at its best. I can write what I think.

I write so I can learn what I think.

I think as a kid I was stupid. I was strange. I did strange things. When I'd be bored, I'd walk into the kitchen, switch on the gas stove, and i'd pick up all the ants roaming around somewhere and then burn them alive!!!

I saw a small tiny little thing walking around on the bar counter yesterday. Really small.

As an instant reaction, just like probably anyone would do, I picked up the glass kept on the side to put it on top of that thing so as to crush it.

I stopped.

I wondered, what the hell is it doing to me? It's breathing, right. It may have somewhere to go, some things to do, right? It's a life after all.

Maybe I'm overreacting to the life of an ant, but how do you kill something you see walking around, for no rhyme or reason? Just because it's not supposed to be there?

How do you take away life? I don't think anyone has the right to. No law, no court, no judge should have the right to take away someone's right to breathe.

What's the idea of giving someone death penalty, that he isn't alive to commit the crime again. That in fact is the entire concept of law, to prevent crime.

What if the person, who's been sentenced to death for a crime, truly repented? What if it was the last murder he ever committed?

You want to punish him? Sure. Lock him up in a room for his entire life, give him basic things though, like a television, a nice bed, neat food, a neat toilet, and never let him come out of there.

That's quite a punishment.

But let the guy breathe for cryin out loud. Let him die a natural death.

Why do things enjoy killing other things?

Why did I enjoy killing those ants?

Noor?

2006-03-28T14:34:00.000+03:00

Confessions

2006-03-28T11:55:00.000+03:00

All alone

Negative

2006-03-25T12:26:00.000+03:00

It could have been the people I met. It could have been the country I landed in and stayed on, when every inch of me was screaming out to me to run.
Or it just could be me. Unlikely though.
I am certain, it's the people I met - Man... God... Abso-fucking-lute losers. I swear.
And I won't blame them if they think the same about me. For a mad man, the sane are as mad as the sane think about the mad man.
But there was something about them - the people in this country I met - they were so unlike... my kind. As if they never really grew up. Never really took any chances in their lives.
Something about them, that I could never really get attached to them. Something about them, that I never found them funny, or fun. I hung out with them, hoping that maybe a few days later, I'll become like them, and this alien country would turn out to be a little more than just lonely.
I have no qualms about saying, that the people I met had absolutely no idea about life.
They think like Qatar - like most people here. Maybe I'm just being a little too harsh on them.
But it's quite fair to say, it's because of them I've just started hating everything. Every single thing has begun to piss me off. The way people talk, the way people think, the stuff they do thinking they're doing to to enjoy themselves...
It's just so turning off.
There was this girl I met, besides several other people, who was stunned that I had no particular ambition. She's an Indian, but born and brought up in Doha. Exactly the type, that would probably bore someone like me to death in a matter of minutes.
She's someone for who I am probably demented to not have a goal in mind. She's never met anyone like me. I am an alien to her. Same old crap, "let's go dutch", "oh I want to make a lot of money", "I nam going to watch F1 in Bahrain".
Grrrrrrrrrr.
You know what I mean?
Same old normal shit.
What some people, who usually bitch about her to me, don't realise is that they're exactly like her. Absolutely normal.
Normal's good? Normal sounds pretty normal. Yeah, normal's good. But normal's just so friggin boring.
Flight stewards, and air hostesses. Well, I don't have a problem with them. They make your journey on flights quite worth it actually. But with all due respect, they spend their entire youth in a job, which requires absolutely no brains.
They might be potentially intelligent, maybe, but their job's such that it probably turns them into brain-dead human beings. Their job pays them alot, without making their brain itch for a second. So obviously they stop using their brain, and iti eventually becomes disfunctional.
More than half of the people I met were cabin crew! The rest were the ones who enjoyed hanging out with those brain-dead people, coz maybe somewhere they knew it gave them some sort of sense of superiority hanging out with some people who you could make your point in seconds and they'd consider you... wohaaaaa... he's good man!
Pathetic.
But I'm sure there are some people out here who're just like me. But what to do now, I've just started disliking everything. Be it going out, be it the taste of beer, be it the gorgeous looking woman beside me at the bar who said, "I like your hair."
I was like.... "oh shut the fuck up."

Get the point man? I'm refusing to open up to anybody now, because I am almost certain they're gonna turn out to be stupid losers, who're totally shit scared of everything and live in absolute denial.

I'd rather be alone than be with people I just can't connect with.

Those people need to travel.

Qatar is fun for a while, but it's not a place where you can stay forever. You need to get out. You need to let go.

Rohit, FIGHT!

2006-03-23T16:45:00.000+03:00

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will.

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill.

When the funds are low and the debts are high.

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.

When care is pressing you down a bit...

Rest if you must, but DO NOT quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

as every one of us sometime learns.

And many of you and I... turn about,

just when we might have won... had we fuckin stuck it out.

DO NOT give up... though the pace seems slow,

you just might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than it seems to a faint and faltering man;

Often the struggler has given up... when he might have captured the victor's cup;

And he learned too late when the night came down... how close he was to the golden crown!

Success is nothing... but failure... turned inside out.

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt...

And you never can tell how close you are...

It may be near when it seems afar;

So stick to the fuckin fight when you're hardest hit...

IT'S WHEN THINGS SEEM WORST THAT YOU MUST NOT QUIT.

FIGHT YOUR FUCKIN ASS OFF.

FIGHT!

FIGHT ROHIT, FIGHT!

You are still the same man that was born at 9.05 am, 13th of October, 1980.

10 months down

2006-03-21T16:54:00.000+03:00

It's been 10 months, here, in Qatar. The country, well, good or bad, has grown on me.

Somewhat.

Here I am, with my future in the palms of my hands. I can either hold on to it. Or let it slip away, and carry on living, life, like it was a game, an easy, tough, game.

I can stay on, save my ass off, and secure my life ahead. Build my dreams of one day owning a beach shack in Goa, from a beach shack to a night club in Delhi, from Delhi to Mumbai, probably die a filthy rich man.

It's right here, upto me.

You know how everyone starts their careers off, at a pay of say 5000 (Indian Rs.) bucks, then they go up to 10,000 and then 25k a month. You wonder then, fuck, 25 is less dude.

You look back at your first job, how happy you were getting those 5 grand. Man... they were enough.

Then 10k seems less, then even 25k, and you just want more and more. It's never enough.

Coz, "If you ain't enough without a Gold medal, you're never gonna be enough with it."

everyone gets a chance in their lives to become rich. It's my belief, everyone. We all wonder, hell, how the hell am I ever gonna buy my own car, or build my own house, earn enough to send my kids to school, like my father did, how will I ever earn enough to have a family, and live a decent happy life.

It seems almost impossible. Everyone goes through this. And I so did. I never thought, I'd ever earn enough.

But then, what is enough? That, though, is totally besides the point.

And suddenly, somewhere in your life, something, some sort a miracle, when you least least least expect it, you see standing in front of you, staring right at your face.

You know, that's your chance. Your chance to cash in. But it's scary, coz if you mess up, and you don't cash in on that chance, you got no one else to blame but you. No destiny, no fate, no hard life. It's you and no one else, it's now, or never.

Life becomes easy after that. It becomes a little monotonous too. You've saved, probably invested, secured your entire family's future, without even knowing the girl you're probably gonna marry, without knowing if you're ever gonna get married. You've just secured their lives and yours.

You're safely away from the cliff, the edge of which you once were infactuated with.

Here I am, 10 months in Qatar, planning my holidays to Australia, to Chicago in December, almost convinced, I'm here to stay. Here in Qatar, a country, which I had to search for on the map before I was about to land in.

Maybe I secure my future beginning now. It's scary though. If I do it, what will I ever be bothered about in my life? What will scare me? What will keep me going?

The Search? The Search for love? I'm somewhat tired of that search. My search has become more into a girl's search for me... waiting like a helpless eunuch for the girl to find me, if at all there is a girl who's gonna be mine forever.

I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm worried.

I'm becoming normal, with age. I'm worried about saving money. I'm no more fun. I'm no more a bungee jumper.

I'm no more, me.

I feel like losing it. I mean it. I feel like being mentally abnormal. I just hope I already am.

I learn the hard way, my way

2006-03-19T15:37:00.000+03:00

I had never used a credit card in my life, till about a month ago. Lots of people told me lots of (negative) things about having a credit card in your wallet.

One of them was, "Ro, a credit card is not meant for a person like you. You'll fuck up, when you can't even manage yourself in your salary."

It made sense to me, when in the next 15 days I had blown up double my salary on my credit card.

But it didn't scare me.

It's bullshit when they say credit cards are meant for disciplined people. Mega Crap!

Credit cards are meant for totally indisciplined people, like me. Those that are disciplined will never need any credit cards anyway. They should manage rather well in whatever they earn.

That plastic was meant for me. For me to learn.

Learn the hard way. It's taught me.

Whenever people, including my parents, or my well wishers, my friends would tell me something, I'd never bother listening to them. I still don't. That's just me. It's something I really can't help. Even if I could, I woulnd't really help it.

I learn things in my own sweet time. I learn them from my own experiences, from things I see and feel rather than from what I hear or what another person has to say.

Why should I do something, someone else, who's probably lived a few extra years on the planet than I have, is telling me. How he thinks is different, what he does is different, what he wants from life is completely different from how I think, do, and want.

I'd rather fall while walking on the wrong path, get up and trudge back to the right path after I am totally dead sure that the path I am trudging on is wrong, instead of doing what someone else thought was right, maybe it was, but I'd always wonder... what if I had taken that path.

At least my way, the hard way, where making mistakes is not a crime, I am sure of both ways. These are my experiences.

Today, my indiscipline, taught me a whole lotta things. It made me go back straight home for three straight days instead of a bar. I'm peacefully watching TV, DVDs, sipping coke, eating chips, and waking up early in the morning fresh, sans a hangover.

How did this seemingly impossible thing begin to happen. Who taught me? When did I learn?

I learnt when I was supposed to learn. I learnt because of the mistakes I was supposed to make for me to learn. Eventually, I always do.

But I enjoy making mistakes. It makes me feel very human.

I am an extremist. Until I reach the peak of anything I do, I don't stop. Be it a song, which I would listen to over and over till I can't listen to it anymore, or it's love, or it's alcohol, or work...

It's living life the hard way. It's living on the edge. And (according to me) if you aren't living on the edge you're grabbing way too much space.

Life's really easy, sometimes terribly boring, sitting safely away from the cliff.

I like being near the cliff because I believe in my destiny. I believe in fate. I surrender to God's will. If I must fall, I will.

Yes, that's easier than the easy way - blame everything on God's will. But what the heck! The ride's still on.

I am just a pencil in God's hand. It is He who writes.

Watch me now save money, finally!

PS: Comments from now on have been disabled on The Qatar Diary. I don't need you anymore.

Heal the world

2006-03-19T14:18:00.000+03:00

The world is waiting. Waiting for one child; Black, white , yellow, no one knows... but a child that will grow up and turn tears to laughter, hate to love, war to peace and everyone to everyone's neighbour, and misery and suffering will be words to be forgotten forever.
It's all a dream and illusion now, it must come true sometime soon somehow.

I want to be a champion

2006-03-18T17:04:00.000+03:00

Don't cry about today.
I'm not crying. I never cry.
Well you should. So I can tell you not to. Nadia, the tragedy isn't that you fell. It's that you were the best there and you didn't live up to it. You're not serious about gymnastics.
Yes I am.
No you're not. You're just playing.
No.
Did you ever see anyone as bad as you were today?
No.
Well then. Go back to the schoolyard if you just want to turn cartwheels and play.
No. I want to be a champion.
----------
Ooh...
Papa...
You think it is possible for a little girl to fly?
I'll never quit...
Nobody's here today...

It was good, wasn't it?

Don't let us down...

Nadia, concentrate. Forget everything but the exercise.

----------

Today, I'm sharing with the world, our (me and my sister's) inspiration as kids. As aspiring sportspersons, dreaming, training... to be world champions.

Before each and every of my cricket match, before each and every of her swimming competition, after our father had pepped us up, motivated us to the peak, we'd sit down and watch Nadia...

These two clips that you're about to see are enough to pump fire into any sportsman.

It was about the time, when Cricket and Swimming were the lifeline of the Wadhwaney family. Everything that happened inside our home was
solely dependant on our performances on the green circular field, and the rectangular pool full of blue water.

This is the clip of the Games in which Nadia Comaneci won the first ever Perfect 10 in the history of the Modern Olympic Games.

And this, one of her final performances in the Games in 1984, while she was injured and Romania needed 9.9 to win.

Nadia stood up and said: I'm competing.

No you can't...

How much do we need to win?

9.9.

Tell the judges I'm competing.

------------

Both of us somewhere... lost the fire that was burning within us.

Or maybe the fire was so strong that it burnt us out. I'm not sure.

Sorry papa.

Holi

2006-03-15T11:16:00.000+03:00

I just found out. It's today - my favorite festival... Holi.

And I ain't there. Where I am, it's a normal day.

Where I wish I were, people are freakin out - soaked in colour, wet, high on Bhang, sitting under the hot sun, drying themselves up, hogging at sweets.

Holi... just a holi. The first one I ever missed.

It's a price you gotta pay for being away from where you spent three-fourths of your youth. It's a price you gotta pay for wanting to earn more money than you actually require. A price you gotta pay for being an escapist.

Well done, Rohit!

Right now

2006-03-13T15:51:00.000+03:00

Right now, people are having unprotected sex

Right now, opportunity is passing you by

Right now, justice is being perverted… in a court of law

Right now, Blacks and Whites don’t eat together very much

Right now, you could be outside

Right now, the light from a star in M-5 is heading towards Earth

Right now, light that left M-5 a thousand years ago is getting to your house

Right now, God is killing Moms and dogs… because he has to

Right now, guilt is turning someone inside out

Right now, there’s a bomb factory hard at work

Right now, you’re sitting too close… for comfort

Right now, somebody’s got the wrong idea

Right now, oil companies and old men are in control

Right now, it’s business as usual in the woods

Right now, nothing is more expensive than regret

Right now, people who can’t read are bumming

Right now is just a space between Ice Ages

Right now, youth is king

Right now, the truth is being obscured

Right now, science is building a better… tomato

Right now, pigs are becoming… lunch

Right now, someone is working too hard for minimum wage

Right now, a convenience store is open

Right now, your parents miss you

Right now, oysters are being robbed of their sole possession

Right now, no one is safe from loneliness

Right now, it’s cold where someone you love is

Right now, it’s nicer in Cabo

Right now, a mad man is wandering the streets of the town you live in

Right now, a tired man with a wounded heart is sitting in a coach seat on an east-bound transatlantic flight looking out of the window wondering how to say ‘dog’ ‘howl’ and ‘moon’ in French just in case it comes up

Right now, she is going on with her life

Right now, time is having its way with you

Right now, forces are aligning against you

Right now, someone is walking on to the nude beach for the first time

Right now, our government is doing things we think only other countries do

Right now, you aren’t doing what you most wish you were

Right now, is harder than it looks

Right now, your memory is getting longer while your life is getting shorter

Right now, dogs have it good

Right now is not the fault of the Japanese

Right now, there is no cure

Right now, people are doing it for money

Right now, a bowl of soup would be nice

Right now, keeps happening.

Bllllleeeyuuuck!

2006-03-13T14:59:00.000+03:00

Blogging SUCKS!

My Page SUCKS!

The commentors SUCK!

What I write is totally unlike who I am... when I read it, I laugh. Because it's just a whole load of mega crap.

It pisses me off everytime I log on to The Qatar Diary.

EEEEYYYYUUUCK!

What a fuckin waste of time...

Aaah... time, that's what I wanted to blog about. But why blog? It's in my head. I know it. Why the hell do I have to write it down like I am in the 2nd standard and I'll forget if I don't note it down.

Yeah man.... this thing... it SUCKS bigtime. Most other bloggers suck as well, but they just don't think so.

Yeah man... you all SUCK!

..........................................................

I'm a writer

2006-03-10T13:42:00.000+03:00

It's strange how nervous I get before I am about to start writing. Not this blog. But when I am about to write... for professional reasons. A feature for my newspaper, mostly.

Why, I wonder.

It isn't like I won't be able to write. I always manage to end a story I begin. I always have. It's but natural you will.

But I just get so tensed. William Zinsser said a writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. Makes so much sense. It is scary.

Scary, because once it's not begun you don't know how it will turn out to be.

I get scared.

When I was younger though, working for newspapers as a reporter in my oen country, writing a news story was like a piece of cake. I could generate three or four stories in a matter of one hour, and I could do it blindfolded.

Not a thought about what to write, how to form a story. Just write the damn thing as if I were copying it from somewhere and just typing it out. That fast.

It was always an almost-clean copy. There was never no nervousness.

But now I want to raise my bar, all the time. Write, to prove a point to myself, all the time. I just know, if I like it, chances are other people will as well. It's how I feel.

It's just so emotionally exhausting. To write.

I go into a trance when I write. Like I was the only one on the planet. What's happening around, who's saying what... it's all just a haze.

It's just the screen in front of me, the keyboard below my fingers, my eyes glued to the half-written sentence in front. Not even a blink.

I'm scared, all the time, to go into that trance. Because then, the outer world around me has disappeared.

I get lonely. There's no one around me. I'm deaf. I'm lost... in a world i'm creating with my fingers.

It's scary.

But I'm a writer. It's what I do.

No, the act of writing is not fun. Typing that full stop after your last word of your work, however, is ecstatic - a feeling I cannot possibly describe.

As if you weren't breathing all this while, and suddenly after that full stop, you breathe out. Relief.

For that feeling, I'm ready to go into that scary trance again and again.

It's what I do.

The obvious!

2006-03-08T15:16:00.000+03:00

'Terming the twin bomb blasts in Varanasi as a "terrorist act", Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav hinted at the role of a Pakistan- based terror outfit behind them and said the state government would work together with the Centre to solve the case.
Addressing a crowded press conference at the Circuit house, Yadav said Tuesday's blasts were "definitely an act of terrorism".'

Oh really! An act of terrorism, is it?! And look at us, we fools, we were thinking a 13-year-old kid, went to the supermarket, bought what he thought were firecrackers, and left them around the city.

And then yesterday, a Times of India story read: 'Indian PM Manmohan Singh has condemned the bomb blasts.'

Aaah! Let's give him an award for condemning the blasts.

And Indian journalists are such fucking fools to even write this. Of course he'll condemn it you chutes. That's what PMs are for! It's a freakin bomb blast in the country he heads!

What do you expect him to say? "Oh no, it's cool. It's just a bomb blast. Chill out guys. Where the hell's my beer?"

Bloody idiots.

Lord, check this out!

Me Me

2006-03-08T12:43:00.000+03:00

Through the eyes and fingers of a very pretty artist - Frozen Fingers!MeMe
Hahaha...

This one just takes the cake. Sitting all the way back in India, she could sniff out the narcissism!

Fingers, Shukran Jazeelan! It's really sweet.

Read it, carefully

2006-03-07T10:14:00.000+03:00

A Chicago Tribune column that changed my life

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

June 1, 1997

By Mary Schmich

Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.
I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97, wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Think, and that's it. It's gone.

2006-03-06T14:02:00.000+03:00

I am impulsive. I ain't saying that because scores of people have told me that. It's like I keep talking about ugly people who think they're not ugly but in fact good looking.

Everyone knows what they truly are, unless they're blind.

Likewise, I know exactly what and who I am. What I behave like. That I am sometimes rude even though it's not my intention to be. That most people bore me to death. That I am not very adjusting. That I contradict myself more often than not.

That, yes, I am extremely imulsive. I don't think before I act. It comes naturally to me. Once the words are out of my mouth only then do I hear them and realise how I truly feel, unless of course I'm drunk senseless. Then most of whatever I say, might be true, is certainly not what I mean.

For example, I barely knew this guy, who's party I went to a few months ago. And I barely know his girlfriend. I mean I might have met her just once before for a very brief time. I was drunk. Super drunk. And I told him (apparently), "Dude, look at you. And look at her. She's a chute."

I mean I coulnd't have possibly meant it. I didn't even know her.

There is some stuff I've said impulsively, which I've regretted. But that was in the past. Those were people who I lost because I said what I truly felt. I sometimes wished I didn't. They were some really good looking girls.

I don't really care about the guy friends I lose. I eventually end up telling myself they deserved it. But I swear some of the guy friends I've made are just so intolerable now. They're exactly who I do not wanna hang around with.

I have no control over my tongue, my mind, my heart... nothing. What comes out when, where... no one, including me, has a clue.

This is my eighth job. I'm 25 years old. Except for Times of India, where I was sacked, I've quit all the other six jobs. Just... one fine day. Got pissed off, wrote my resignation, and walked out. Finished.

And somehow, everytime, sometimes a month later, sometimes the very next day, I always got another job. All the times on a higher pay than the previos job. You can't remain jobless for the rest of your life, and I always knew, worst comes to worse I know I ain't gonna be sleeping hungry. I'll somehow manage food.

Do you think I would have left those jobs had I thought it over, like my Dad used to say all the time? I mean everyday when I'd be back from work, Dad, sitting near the bar in the drawing room would ask me, "You haven't quit, have you?"

You can't quit your job when you think it over. It's not how it's done. Trust me, I've done PhD in quitting jobs. I assure you, it's scary to quit your job, without another job in hand, no matter how confident you are of getting another one. But trust me, if you think it over, you're gonna be shitting bricks. Once you've quit, the fear vanishes very very soon. Then you know, you've quit. Now whatever must happen, will happen.

But you start thinking it over, and you're gonna get to all the "what ifs" in the world and screw yourself up. Eventually, you'll find yourself trying to enjoy that same very job, which you probably hate from the bottom of your heart.

I keep saying this one thing - Sometimes you gotta take the leap and build your wings on the way down. Take your chances.

I am not saying be impulsive like me. You'll end up all alone most of the time.

All I am saying is...

If there's something you want to do this moment, like for example, go and talk to a girl standing near the bar, or quit your job, or whatever... do it... without thinking it over. Because that's the particular moment the fire's the strongest in your belly. You think, and the moment will go. The fire will die down.

Think, and chances are you ain't gonna do it. And if you do, you're gonna mess it up.

Jump, if you want to jump. But jump now, don't think if you'll survive or not. If you do, you ain't gonna jump.

Open your eyes

2006-03-04T13:13:00.000+03:00

How can I set free anyone who dosen't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom? I think it's a lie - people claim they want to be free - everybody insists that freedom is what they want the most, the most sacred and precious thing a man can possess. But that's bullshit! People are terrified to be set free - they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their security...

I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown.

The only solution is to confront yourself with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel and in exchange, put on a mask.

Some people surrender their freedom willingly--but others are are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents; they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you are born with.

Teachers, religious leaders - even friends, or so-called friends -- take over where the parents leave off. They demand that we feel the only feelings they want and expect from us. They demand all the time that we preform feelings for them. We're like actors-turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom ... endlessly searching for a half-forgotten shadow of our lost reality. When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder ... the most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is ... Most people love you for who you pretend to be ... To keep their love, you keep pretending - preforming. You get to love your pretense ... It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image - they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forgot all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it - they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.

Hahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Woooohooooooo...

Friends!

- "You know Rohit. Everyone can't be like you, who always lives for the moment. This life of a backpacker."

Hahahahahaahahahahahahahahaha!

Blogging's become an obligation

2006-03-03T11:04:00.000+03:00

It's become just like everyday work. An obligation. That's what what started out as passion has turned into.

I am almost sure, I am not the only one who feels this. There are some bloggers I know who blog every fucking day. Those are one of the most irritating blogs I find. And if you see their pictures, I mean the bloggers' pictures, you'll understand why they feel the need to blog everyday.

Yuck!

I used to blog everyday.

I don't know why. It was a high. The awareness of the fact that I don't need an editor to approve or disapprove what I write. That I don't need quotes. That I don't need confirmation. That I am being read.

It was a jounralist's vent. A toy I played with.

Exxagurated.

Pissed people off, with my honesty. It's normal for people to hate what they can't have. Don't blame them.

I used to have a really long list of blogs that I visted as links on my blog. Gradually the list shortened out. One day I looked at that long list and I wondered, do I really like these blogs? Do I really ever like clicking on them? Are they there on my page just to make my page look fuller?

Yes, they were there without a reason.

Now I visit blogs, one of the first things I see is how often do they post...

If the posts are daily, I am almost sure, they're ugly to look at - the bloggers. This might sound stupid. But believe me, it's true. It's because those people have absolutely nothing to do. They'll tell you posting a blog takes just ten minutes, but they won't tell you how many hours after that do they keep clicking on the comments section to see who's commented, and then they'll reply back to each.

They have nobody. They're basically repulsive.

I could name a few but that would be downright insulting. I still have some manners left with me.

I hate ugly people. Dislike, rather. They're just so creepy.

Digressing.

Blogging's started feeling like an obligation. Something I must do... in most probability to re-assure myself if I want I can still attract a crowd, just like I used to.

It's no more about me. It's no more about what I truly feel.

It's all because of others. It sucks.

???

2006-03-01T16:56:00.000+03:00

There is a massive possibility I might very well be in love and not have a clue about it!

So...

When exactly does the lightning strike?

Life!

2006-02-27T11:48:00.000+03:00

It's strange!
She was nowhere in sight.
Or did I have my back towards her?
Just when I thought, it's never going to happen again...
She tapped me on my shoulder,
I turned around,
And my heart skipped a beat...
Again...
I met someone.
What you upto, JC?
Is this it?

It's rainin' water!

2006-02-23T13:32:00.000+03:00

Now, that's an image which you'd come across really rarely in this desert country. Rarely, but you do come across it every once in a while - more like, once in a year or two.

Rain makes me happy. Somehow, the dark clouds shadowing the wet earth, making the surroundings really dark, attract me.

I wonder if it's the day-time darkness that I'm attracted to. I wonder if it's the dark side of life that makes me smile.

Rain's beautiful. I must have been really surprised when I probably would have seen water falling from the sky for the first time in my life. I don't remember it though. But I'm sure, I would have looked up and wondered what the fuck's happening!

Obviously, I'm guessing my mom and dad woulnd't have briefed me about the concept of 'rain', at least before I was standing under the dark sky, with my hands spread wide, looking up, trying to see, where exactly is the water coming from, trying to stare at the farthest drop until it came crashing down right below my eye. I could still not connect it with the clouds. Just coulnd't see that far.

It was obviously too dark. It always is.

"I hate rain."

Why? What's there to hate about it?

Strange.

It's beautiful. The grey clouds, some jet black. The crash, the streak of lightening. The deafening growls. Water. Darkness. Water. The Earth, wet. Water. Smell.

After every storm, if you look hard enough... a rainbow appears.

The storm's my rainbow.

Over.

Photo Credit: Clinton Cardozo

When being alone is the safest bet

2006-02-19T13:22:00.000+03:00

Most people go out of their way to make, and keep, friends. I'm a little different.

I go out of my way to avoid making friends. And just in case I do, subconsciously or consciously, I make sure they don't stay for very long. I make it a point to make them go away. In most cases, they go away with bitterness towards me.

I don't blame them. I'll just say, I eventually find out, they're not my type. Again, it's not them with a problem. It's probably me with the problem(s).

But then again, I feel, I'm better off alone. At least for the time being. How long this time being will last... God knows.

"Ro, I've started a fight maybe a couple of times. But all the other times, it's you who's started a fight and been rude."

"I agree. I totally agree. I am not blaming you. I am saying, I've started fights more times than you. I've been rude too. That's why I wanna be alone. I wanna get rid of the very chance of a fight regardless of who starts it."

"You can't keep letting go of friends, Ro."

Friends. It's quite a task to make and keep friends, isn't it? You gotta make sure, you don't say the wrong thing at the wrong time. You gotta hang out with them. You gotta ask them how their day went. You gotta talk and listen to them.

It's quite a task, for me. I guess, I've gotten so accustomed to being alone, that any sort of company seems alien to me.

But in all fairness to me, I used to hear that friends understand each other. With friends there are no obligations. They don't have to talk all the time, they don't neccesarily have to hang out together all the time, right?

So why can't my 'friends' understand the fact that I don't enjoy talking or listening to them. That I don't really care how their day went, or what's troubling them. if they need anything from me, they should ask for it, and without a question, I'll do it for them. But can't they just save the whys, hows, and whats for someone else. I don't care. I just don't.

If there was medical treatment for a person like me, I swear I would take it to start caring about things.

I have way too many issues of my own, in the first place, to handle a person with even one issue. I can't take it.

I'd like to meet and be with a person who has no issues whatsoever. Who's ok with the way I am. Who understands me without me having to say a word. Who understands, I care, but I can't go around showing it every single day of my life. That I am drowned enough in my thoughts, in my dreams, in my fantasies to surface and start listening to what they have to say.

I know, I'm hoping for the impossible. I know people without issues don't exist. I know, to keep people in your lives you need to meet them half way. That things won't always go my way.

But in my world, where I stay alone, things always go my way. I am not answerable to anybody. I don't have to laugh at a non-joke. I can say whatever I want to to anybody and not feel bad about hurting a friend. I don't have to think before I say or do anything.

That's why...

I'm better off alone.

What is it with you homos?

2006-02-18T10:35:00.000+03:00

Lets start with the facts.

1. The number of men into men in Qatar far outweigh the number of hetrosexuals. Some say it's the same case in the whole of the Mid East. But I haven't been in the whole of Mid East, I've been in Qatar. I'll talk about Qatar.

2. I am not Gay. I'm as hetrosexual as they come.

3. Gay men, for some odd reason, find me very attractive.

Now that the facts are cl3eared out, I'd like to ask all these gay men, what the fucking fuck is your problem?

Tell me somein. Why do gays think its so cool to be gay? I mean, I am hetro, I don't go jumping and screaming around that Wooohoooo I am straight, I am straight.

If they think being gay is ok, then why in the first place do they make so much noise about it. They're the ones who're making an issue out of nothing, and on top of that saying they ain't gettin their rights. What rights dude? You don't need rights to screw a man in the ass. Just lock your goddamn bedroom and do it already.

On the same issue, I am a regular man with a natural sexual preference. Natural. Hetro. I find a girl attractive, I hit on her once. She doesn't show interest, I back out. It's as simple as that.

Gays, on the other hand, they think because they're gay everyone around them is gay as well. They'll try can convince you... disgustingly will try and touch you here and there, and then give you that idiotic smile, which they think is seductive, and believe heck, I've got this guy! It won't really matter to them if the other guy is showing interest or not. It doesn't matter to them if the other person's gay or hetro.

They make you get to a point when you hafta really get nasty and rude with those fuckers. And it's really sad to be rude to them. Most gay men are really sweet. Just that they have this knack of getting really repulsive.

Last night, like several other nights before, I met one such asshole. I was just enjoying a drink alone at the bar counter. But no, he couldn't see it. He had to hit on me.

I told him I ain't gay. Na-aa he didn't budge.

"You're too handsome to not be gay."

Yaaayyyy... great try. Take a walk.

Nope. Still some courage left in him.

Awrite. Here goes. I turn around. Those that know me back home in Delhi, will vouch for this. When I stare at someone with my angry look, most piss in their pants. I just stare, without blinking, while the person being stared at might try and look here and there, might try and say, "what?". But I'll keep staring.

Yep, it pretty much did it. Didn't see him after that.

People, I am not concerned with any of you. I don't care about anyone. What they do, what they want, where they are, what they think. I just can't get myself to care. I am an angered man. But I don't like getting angry at people. Like I said, I don't care about anything or anyone enough to get angry. I am ok with what anyone does.

All I ask for is to be left alone. All I ask for is to not be cared about.

Why can't I be left alone?

It's getting frustrating because I don't see any women out here hitting on me. Yet, I'm hit on at almost every friggin day.

All men. Trust me, it's frustrating.

It's like a hetrosexual being thrown into a room full of gay men for a long long time.

It's a fuckin gay-land, this place.

Are there any women out there??? HULLLOOOOOWWWW!

Jus' Cribbin

2006-02-14T16:55:00.000+03:00

February 14th. Just remembered it's Valentine's Day. The first, in the last eight years of my life, when I am single, when no one's trying for me, when I am not trying for anyone.

Just one lonely Valentine's Day.

Saw a couple walk hand in hand, saw another one sitting on a bench in the park, the guy talking on the phone, the girl holding his one hand with both of hers, kissing him lightly on his cheek every two seconds.

My heart almost drowned. Fuck Ro, you got nobody, nobody's missing you.

I fear not being able to be with anyone now. It's a possibility. It's almost like I've forgotten how to be romantic, how to get a girl - an art I had more or less mastered till about a year ago. Screw that, it's almost as if I have forgotten how to go around. I mean... what to say, what to do, where to go, to be possessive or not to be, could I be, could I care enough again to be a little possessive that I am, to cry, to surprise her, to make her laugh, to talk for hours on the phone and not get bored... I've forgotten everything.

Just nothing seems worth it anymore. The effort to initiate a conversation, to explain myself to someone, to say the same things all over again... it just seems too strenuous.

Well what can I say? I am not gay. But I sure am a waste for a hot guy. I sometimes wish I could donate my looks and attitude to a more needy person. Coz I'm totally wasting it all.

I don't like listening, I don't like talking... I find it boring to talk to anyone about anything at all. And when they start talking, I just roll my eyes up and mumble, "there s/he goes again," which is very visible and audible.

As if I had heard everything that there was to be said, as if I has said whatever I had to say, and saying or listening to it over again is just too much of a task.

No points for guessing, why I am single today. I am to blame, or maybe not. Coz no one would really go out of his way to be the way I am today. I didn't either.

Things, situations, circumstances change people. There is a reason why I'm not the flirt I used to be. There's a reason why I'm not the charmer I used to be. A reason too many, I guess.

Happy Valentine's Day.

If anyone out there gives out lessons on 'how to go around', please feel free to contact me. I need to make a comeback, before I realise I'm 40, and fat, and bald... and still fuckin single.

Or instead, can I please at least get a sympathy lay? [Fags, stay away]

In Qatar, white is right

2006-02-11T13:36:00.000+03:00

But then again, don't get me wrong. The intensity isn't as bad as the old times in England, when a taxi driver would refuse to drop you to South Hall at 10 am saying it's his lunch time, or a supermarket security guard following you around in the market just coz you're not white, or that you're Indian.

But then again, a thief's a thief, right? Be it a theft of 10 bucks or 10,000. It's still a crime.

And so, I'll tell you stories and stories about Qatar. How much I am falling in love with this country, how amazingly it's changing, growing.

But then again, it ain't perfect, just like probably any other country, except say the Islands of Langkawi or Seychelles.

Here, Qatar, a country which houses people of almost 50 different nationalities, is a country in which, if you ain't White, you'll feel a little bit of pinch here and there sometimes.

Either you ignore that pinch and turn around and walk. Or you stand up, and decide to do something about it. You may or may not be succesful. But it's the law of my life. If you give me grief, I'll give you grief.

I ain't Jesus. I'm a headstrong human being. I'm gonna fight back.

We're not gonna talk about how White's invariably are paid a lot more than non-Whites in Qatar. It's a pointless thing, especially when money doesn't mean anything to me. If anyone else wants to talk about it, go ahead. But not me.

I'm talking about pride, which I do care about. I am talking about, being a decent looking, well-spoken, well-dressed (maybe a little too stylish for some), long-haired writer, an image I do give a damn about. I'm talking about being an author of two books. I'm talking about being the man who broke news of one of the biggest sex scandals ever to have erupted in the country of India. I'm talking about being a former Pro-cricketer in England. I'm talking about pride, which I do care about.

In a country the size and population of India, I was never EVER EVER stopped from entering in any restaurant, or bar, or whatever.

In Qatar, (what, is it half the size of Delhi?), working for the leading newspaper of the country with an unmissable name that appears every now and then, I am stopped from entering places.

This isn't about me. This is about so many non-White men, who are refused entry into restaurants and bars like the one in Rydges Hotel, or Intercon's Paloma, saying "entry only for couples and members", when everyone knows there is no membership system in Qatar whatsoever, and there are about a hundred white stags inside, probably allowed entry in shorts and slippers. It's about those non-White men, who quietly turn around and walk away, and probably then head to a cheap-sad-ass restaurant or bar to have a drink or eat food.

It's about them.

As far as me, if a club or a restaurant stops me, Like Rydges did twice, and Paloma once, when the entire place inside was filled with White stags, I bring hell down on the hotel, and make sure the guard at the entrance who stopped me opens the door for me. I make sure that happens.

I'm sorry, but I ain't used to being stopped from entering any place.

And so the black Sri-Lankan guard at the entrance of Rydges bar stopped me last week. Same excuse, "Couples and members."

I quietly took out my ID and my newspaper card, and told him, "Dude, I'm just here to have a beer and shoot some pool."

Two white men came out of the lift, while I was standing before the ropes of the entrance to the bar, the six-and-ahalf-foot black guard opens the gate for them, smiles and they enter. I am still standing outside.

"I thought you said couples only."

"Sorry, you cannot enter," is what he said.

"I want to speak with the bar manager."

"She's off. Come tomorrow at 10am."

"Brother, when I come tomorrow, you will open this gate for me."

"We'll see. Let's see what you can do."

I swear, I didn't sleep that night, I had a focus for the next day. The next morning, I began to give grief to the hotel, left right and centre... from top to bottom.

Finally reached the F&B Manager. He told him he'd look into the matter.

fair. The next day I went back there. This time there was no one at the gate. I went inside, with a friend, drank, came out. Easy.

Now yesterday, after about a week I went back there. The same black Sri-Lankan. He whispers something to the other guard something about me being the same guy from Gulf Times, and after a bit of their tamil talk, they said you can't enter. That was it.

I called up the F&B Manager at midnight. Obviously man. My phone went inside, and out came a blonde lady who was apparently the bar manager.

"Why did you call up my boss? He's giving me hell."

"Well, I'm sure you deserve it. It might not be your fault at all, and you may not be even aware of it, but you are responsible."

"But I am here. You could have spoken to me."

"The last time I asked for you, you weren't here. So cut the jack."

"Whatever, go in."

That's the way she allowed me inside what she called, "My (her) bar."

A customer, like they say, in Qatar, is fucked.

Anyway... that apart. The real sad part about all this madness is that all the guards who refuse entry to people because they ain't White at gates of restaurants and bars are either from Sir-Lanka or Africa!!!

Maybe I am being a little too hard. It isn't that absolutely no non-White is allowed inside. No, that's untrue. Of course they are. But no White would ever be refused entry, no matter if he's wearing shorts or slippers or whatever. While a non-White must follow rules. He'll be refused entry on any account.

I ain't saying everyone should be allowed. And also that it's impossible to know just by the face who's gonna or can cause trouble inside a place. But all I am saying that just by the colour of the skin, you can't know either, who really is gonna be trouble inside.

For example, last night at Rydges, there was a Brit blonde on the dance floor. I haven't seen a bigger non-charging-slut ever in my life. She was dancing alone... when there were three ugly men, from different different tables smooching her around. Some holding her, smooching her, then the other one takes her, pulls her by the hair and kisses her, and then another.

It was by far THE most pathetic sight I had ever seen in my life. But no, it was ok... coz she was White, a White, who was eventually escorted outside by the guards after she started abusing the DJ for not playing her song, while the men from different tables fought with the guards coz they were just about to lose either of their night's vagina... or were they plannin an orgy?!

The other day at Oasis, an Arab, a regular at the Oasis bar, dressed in shorts was refused a drink because he was in shorts.

On another afternoon, he brought down hell to the hotel, when a White entered the bar in shorts and sneakers and was handed over a beer by the bartender.

He said, "Fuckin hell, this is MY country, and in MY country, you smoothen rules for a person who's from another place, and not for ME???"

He made it a point to have that White man escorted out and return in proper trousers, while all of us started clapping and cheering.

So, what do we do?

There are two sorts of people in this world. One, who quietly tolerate everything. And the other, who stand up and take responsibility to change them.

My name is Rohit Wadhwaney. And I'm about to tell these people, that speaking English with an accent does not imply education and power.

The best party ever!

2006-02-08T17:36:00.000+03:00

Yep, that's correct. The best party Qatar has ever witnessed. Right, Qatar. You all must wonder, what Qatar's party scene is like, right?

I'll give you a general picture of the nightlife and nightbirds here in this desert country in my next post. In this one, we'll just talk and see about one party that happened on Feruary 2nd, 2006 at the Diplomatic Club.

Global DJs - that's what it was called. Paul Mendez (UK), DJ Kv (Radio 1, Dubai), Master Jay (Ministry of Sound), Joe Mitri (QBS Radio, Doha) and Michael Parsberg (Safri Duo) came together in Doha to give Qatar one of it's most happening, dark, loud and underground night it has ever witnessed.

That'll be me... trippin!

Clint and John, my flat mate.

Chicks? You wanna talk about chicks? Man. They were all over. HOTTTT! And if that's not enough... scroll down.

People, people really started (s)tripping late into the night... oops, I mean morning!

And who the hell cares about the sun! It must be rising somewhere... whatever!

As usual, two beers at one time. Yeah, yeah... nothing's changed.

The party got over at about 4am. John had gone back home by then (Apparently, I had told him to go back home at about 3) It was Clint and I, tripping on stage. I was sllllllloshed. All I remember is walking towards Clint's car, with Clint and some other people.

And when I sat in the car, what do I see. Clint, in the driver's seat. Beside him, Michael Parsberg (Safri Duo!!!). Beside me in the back seat, a blonde chick, totally drunk. Beside her, DJ KV and beside him, Paul Mendez.

Wohaaaa people. What the hell's happening!

Where are we going?

An afterparty! What happened there. Yeah right... you wish! Cut me some slack here will you?!

Picture Credit: John Makau

Another post on the party@ http://creativelock.blogspot.com

Se7en - Part II

2006-02-08T12:18:00.000+03:00

Tagged by Cat. And this will be the last tag I'll be doing.

7 things to do before I die:

1. Fall in love again. I terribly fear I won’t be able to. Leave alone falling in love, now it’s become a task for me just to like or get impressed by people.
2. Find myself. I am just so lost. I gotta take this mask off. I’m just very scared to pull it off. What if I don’t like the real me?
3. Write a bestseller. Written two books already. Though I liked them, coz through my writing I was trying to show the ‘real’ me... I was being myself, no one else liked them. I guess no one else but me really likes me.
4. Act in a movie. I have absolutely no explanation for this. It’s just a gut feeling that I will.
5. Have a daughter. If I do manage to fall in love again… Shaayari, that’s what I’m gonna call her.
6. Change one person to be like me, who in return would change one more, so on and so forth. I am the answers to your prayers. Today I stand up and tell you, I don’t have the guts to change the world and make it a better place. But one of me, with the guts and the courage, can do it. As far as me, I can just change one person at a time, and talk about changing the world. I know I won’t.
7. Wear a skirt and go to a bar. Skirts for men, the red-black-and-white checked, butt-hugging ones, are in bigtime. If you don’t see it, then trust me, it’s gonna be the next ‘in’-thing. You’re gonna see them everywhere.

7 things I can't do:

1. Stop drinking alcohol. I don’t know if I’m addicted to it… and to be honest I don’t even care. The truth according to me is, I don’t wanna stop drinking. If I don’t drink, what else do I do all alone?
2. Have any more sex with a ‘stranger’. Everyone has a quota for everything. I’ve exhausted my quota of fucking around with anything I saw moving. I might have even exhausted several other people’s quota, I think. Now it just seems impossible to take my clothes off in front of a woman I am not comfortable with, or in love with, or wannabe in love with. Johny won’t come up. Just won’t.
3. Talk and sing on the mike. I didn’t know I had this phobia of mikes. But I just can’t speak or sing on it. I can sing otherwise, but put a mike in front of my mouth and I’ll forget everything. I’ll start sweating and shivering. Do I wanna rectify it? Are you mad! I can’t go on rectifying everything in my life. I got better things to do… or so I’d like to believe.
4. Have sex with a man again. I think I turned to men a few years back because I was just so bored of having sex with women. And honestly, the thought of it really turned me on – being with a man. But then, the act was never as turning on as the thought. In fact, it used to turn me off. I realised it’s just the thought I like, not the act. I’m allergic to gays now. They make me wanna slap them.
5. Hangout with people without any class or looks. I just can’t. If I was Jesus, I’d hang around with all the wrong crowd, Man I’d never be bored. But you all would know by now, that I am not Jesus. So LAY OFF!
6. Compete anymore. Competition, of any kind, used to really excite me. I was an out and out competitor. A very bad loser. I would do anything to win. Anything. I would initiate competition. I don’t know, I lost that zing. It’s not there anymore. Today, if I am shooting pool, I’d play brilliantly. But when it would come to the black ball, I’d sub-consciously give the game away. As if winning has almost begun to scare me. Get my point? Losing is so much more easier.
7. Talk to Noor again. God, I wish I could. Once, just once. But I know, I won’t. Because I can’t. She was always just an illusion… an illusion no one but me would understand.

7 things I always say:

1. Babe
2. …fuckin…
3. Awesome
4. Daayyum (Damn!)
5. Balls…
6. Cheers to those who wish us well, all the others can go to hell.
7. Where are we going drinking tonight?

7 books I have loved:

1. The Partner - Grisham
2. DaVinci Code - Brown
3. The Bible Jesus Read - Yancey
4. The Prophet – Khalil Gibran
5. Wuthering Heights - Bronte
6. On Writing Well - Zinsser
7. 18/6 Patel Nagar – Rohit Wadhwaney

7 movies I love to watch over and over:

1. Kaante (Hindi)
2. City of Angels
3. Waisa Bhi Hota Hai (Part II) (Hindi)
4. Andaz Apna Apna (Hindi)
5. Hera Pheri (Hindi Comedy)
6. The Mexican
7. Se7en

7 things I get attracted to:

1. Good-looking people
2. Power
3. Uninhibition
4. Alcohol
5. Piercings
6. Courage
7. Tattooes

7 people I want to tag:

Whatever…

Here's Se7en - Part I.

Salaam Aalekhum.

If you don't laugh your asses off...

2006-02-06T17:25:00.000+03:00

I swear, I've seen this tape about 50 times today, and everytime I've laughed harder. If I watch it once more, I'll probably die.
Had to share it with you people.
This is a news studio, with a reporter and a couple of guests, one of who (the woman) is disabled and the other a man with a very girly voice. Just check out how the reporter starts laughing at him in between the show.
It's hillarious. Abso-fuckin-lutely hillarious!
Click here.

I wonder if the reporter would've been sacked after this...

Hmmm...

Over Cartoons????

2006-02-06T09:57:00.000+03:00

Are you serious???
They burnt down the Danish Embassy in Beirut yesterday!

I wonder... what would the man, who, while writing this particular slogan before holding it up like that, be thinking? What?

William Zinsser

2006-02-05T13:13:00.000+03:00

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this as a consolation in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

"I might add," "It should be pointed out," "It is interesting to note that" - how many sentences begin with these dreary clauses announcing what the writer is going to do next? If you might add, add it, if it should be pointed out, point it out. If it is interesting to note, make it interesting.

Clutter. That's what clutter is - "With the possible exception of" (except), "Due to the fact that" (because), "he totally lacked the ability to" (he couldn't), "until such time as" (until), "for the purpose of" (for).

The airline pilot who announces that he is presently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitation wouldn't dream of saying that it may rain. The sentence is too simple - there must be something wrong with it.

A number of wannabe writers make the same mistake. But not all, like Walden.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitiude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.

The man snoozing in his chair with an unfinished magazine or book open on his lap is a man who was being given too much unneccesary trouble by the writer.

This is the problem of the writer who sets out deliberately to garnish his prose. You lose whatever it is that makes you unique. The reader will usually notice if you are putting on airs. He wanted the person who is talking to him to sound genuine.

Be yourself.

"Who am I writing for?" I'll say that, over and over. But I just can't get myself to say, "Whom am I writing for?" I don't know. It's just not me.

No rule, though, is harder to follow. It requires a writer to do two things which by his metabolism are impossible. He must relax and he must have confidence.

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia, and, as for his confidence, he is a bundle of anxieties. See how stiffly he sits, glaring at the screen that awaits his words.

A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. Just by my newspaper days I can vouch for the number of trips made to the coffee room, or smoking zone per reporter-hour, which far exceed the amount of smoke and caffeine the human body can take. It's all just to delay the act of writing.

Self destruction

2006-02-03T16:33:00.000+03:00

You know how somehow you just know where you're headed... in the back of your mind or something like that.

I'm drowning. I'm going down. Yep... I'm drowning.

And the funny part is, I'm doing nothing to stay afloat.

Especially when I know how to swim.

How can I do this to myself?

Maybe I'm just trying to see how long I can hold my breath.

Or maybe, I'm just waiting to see when exactly my heart stops beating, and how it feels.

Or maybe, I'm just being the rebel I am - a rebel, without cause.

Maybe...

Life for rent

2006-02-02T12:38:00.000+03:00

I haven't ever really found a place I call home. I never stick around quite long enough to make it.

It's just a thought. Only a thought.

I live aimlessly... goal-lessly. It's a life of a vagabond. Today, I'm here. Let alone tomorrow, I don't really know where I'd end up this evening.

What am I doing? Just getting through life, thinking, once this one finishes off, I'll come back and start all over.

I never really admit it. I don't even really think about it. I do actually, but quickly drink up another shot of vodka. But it's true, no matter how much I try to run and hide - things have gone terribly wrong in my life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not miserable. Don't know where it all started, when it all started going wrong. But somewhere there, somewhere, I started getting entangled in a search, started getting used to loneliness. And I didn't even realise I was getting entangled. The ropes went on and on twisting and turning around me.

Before I knew it... today was already here.

I can't blame anybody... but me. I was always, and still am, shit scared of taking decisions. My decisions are always wrong.

I just mess everything up. I have this uncanny knack of managing to mess everything up. I wish I didn't. I wish I was normal.

I know, normal is a very relative word. What's normal for you could be abnormal for me. But just that I wish I wasn't the way I am, or turned out to be. Even in a crowd, I'm alone. Even sitting around people, I ain't really there.

Always lost... always looking at the door - as if I were waiting for my saviour. Looking... hard.

I wasn't born this way. The rebel inside me messed it all up... just to see, maybe, how bad could it get.

Sure, if I really put my mind to it, I can fix it. But I don't think I want to anymore. Lazy... woulnd't be exactly the right word. But yes, the laziness to fix it might have derived from the fact that I have gotten so used to being 'different'.

Yes, my life's become a mere search to find who I really am, what I really want.

But honestly? I'm shit scared of finding the real me, coz I don't know what he'd be like. I've kinda fallen in love with my pretense. Fallen in love with the mask I wear.

So I'll just get through this life... wandering about like a backpacker. Living a life, that's up for rent. In my next one, I'll try and be like you.

It's just a thought, only a thought.

This's where I'll be tonight

2006-02-01T16:09:00.000+03:00

The Al Sadd football stadium.

Who'll be on the stage? Bryan Adams and co. Obviously performing live.

Who'll be right in front of the stage... on the lush green field? Me.

He he he.

Party time!

Read story here.

...

2006-02-01T13:25:00.000+03:00

Nothing lasts forever...