baali

Note: Fellow blogger Aayushi evocatively wrote about what home meant to her. I loved it, and decided to write about what home means to me. Here it is.  

*

Home is when you start feeling for a house.

Home is tracking the cost of onions, potatoes, tomatoes and garlic. Home is being able to identify every vegetable the bania sells (before it’s cooked). Home is always purchasing pao kilo of everything.

Home is cracking open an egg and half-frying it. Home is measuring out the minimum amount of water needed to make Maggi. Home is really making it in two minutes.

Home is guesstimating how many cups of coffee a litre of milk will yield. Home is buying, boiling, cooling and refrigerating it.

Home is admitting that running out of sugar and salt is a domestic calamity.

Home is storing the numbers of three electricians, two plumbers and one odd-jobs man. Home is remembering (and paying) the fees of the paperwallah, the cable fellow and the cook-cum-maid. Home is fighting with the dabbawallah over a misplaced tiffin.

Home is grumbling about the quality of service these days, at age twenty-one.

Home is calculating how much I owe the istriwallah and how much the raddiwallah owes me. Home is having a file full of warranties. Home is remembering when the contract for pest control runs out. Home is sensing when the water purifier needs servicing.

Home is stashing away a not insignificant boodle in the wardrobe locker.

Home is stocking up on soap. Home is inspecting my toothbrush for wear. Home is avoiding the toilet which flushes erratically.

Home is spinning a load in the washing machine only when I run out of clean underwear. Home is singing while I dry and fold the clothes.

Home is switching the curtains, replacing handtowels and getting the tablecloth ironed. Home is using trays. Home is occasionally bringing out the crockery.

Home is wishing for warning before anyone comes over. Home is dusting frantically, and shoving things into the nearest cupboard. Home is cherishing the gift of storage space. Home is hoping the sofa is stainless. Home is believing that a damp cloth can fix anything.

Home is sitting by the window when it’s raining, and feeling protected. Home is leaving the front door open to let the wind whoosh by. Home is early nights, two blankets and noon awakenings.

Home is privacy. Home is loneliness. Home is a prison. Home is freedom. Home is a chore. Home is comfort. Home is money. Home is worth it.

Home is not what I possess. Home is what possesses me.

* * *

Not one that I underwent (impossible), or one that I conducted (impractical), but the one I witnessed. Here’s what I learned:

Tum do, tumhaara ek. Minus one, if you’re ambivalent about the whole no-sleep-no-life-potty-all-over-the-place routine.

All men desirous of a second child deserve a penectomy. And their very own vaginas.

Wives murdering spouses who pressurise them into bearing more children, should be let off by courts, citing extenuating circumstances.

Instead of Mumtaz Mahal after her fourteenth child, it is Shah Jahan who should have died. Look at the cheek of that man – he built her a monument boxed in by four giant phalluses.

When aggrieved women who are mothers several times over, unite to protest the lack of male uteruses – now that’s a labour union.

Medical caution aside, I fully sympathise with pregnant women who demand epidural anaesthesia and C-sections. Those who aphorise about ‘no pain, no gain’ can go have a baby, just for fun.

Episiotomies without adequate anaesthesia merit the intervention of Human Rights International and the UN Peacekeeping Force.

For a woman about to pass out of exhaustion become a mother, delivery and deliverance is the same thing.

No medical specialty requires humane doctors more than OBGY.

Soon-to-be fathers stationed in the waiting room while squirming at the cries of their wives, should be made to sit in front of a large angry sign saying – ‘see what you did!’

The only way that men can possibly bond with their wives during delivery is by self-inducing constipation, then straining to relieve themselves. Not that they’d even come close to the real thing.

Roving playboys who abandon unwed mothers need to be sniffed out, tracked down and devoured alive by rabid dogs.

Male schoolteachers spouting Moral Science have no business talking about the Dignity of Labour.

Surrogate mothers are misguidedly altruistic, heedlessly mercenary, mindlessly masochistic or the most heroic human beings alive.

Women who want to birth twins should have their heads examined.

Condoms are singularly the most important inventions since the discovery of rubber.

The most effective family planning measure is to drag the loving husband into the labour ward and force him to watch his wife pop out a two-and-a-half kilo un-streamlined mass through an aperture that is normally just a few centimetres wide.

I understand all the hoo-ha about compulsory sterilisation. Now let’s give Sanjay Gandhi a Bharat Ratna.

Despite teddy bears, Justin Bieber and a pregnant Schwarzenegger in Junior, there is nothing cuter than a newborn baby.

No muscle in the entire male or female body is stronger than the vagina.

Women are indubitably the stronger sex.

I now understand why, every year on my birthday, my mother relives her own eighteen-hour labour in odious and obstetric detail. Thank you, Aayee.

My great-grandmother gave birth to twelve (living) children. I’m going to try and get my road named after her.

 * * *

Hi yaar!

How’s it going? Sab theek? Aur baaki sab?

You don’t know me – yet. But your Quaid-i-Azam was dadaji to the chap who makes my bed sheets, so we’re practically family friends, nai?

You may have seen me, though. I’m ashamed to admit that I was once part of the jingoistic mob which screams patriotic challenges across Wagah Border every evening. For the sake of our friendship, I hope you weren’t reciprocating on the other side.

I’m writing to you because I’m worried. I recently read about a survey which found that a majority of my countrymen, and yours, hate each other. I’m worried because I know it’s true.

But I don’t hate you, yaar.

I realise that you are no more capable of presenting me with Dawood than I am of gifting you an undiverted Jhelum. What is firdaus bar roo-e zameen in India is the ‘k’ in ‘Pakistan’; neither of us can solve the Kashmir problem, so let’s not celebrate Diwali with N-bombs, okay?

Tough luck with all that political instability, man – I feel for you. Must be difficult accepting that the guys in power aren’t the guys you voted for (or against). And I hope you haven’t lost anyone you know in those horrid blasts that occur every now and then.

Those reports of an alleged dalliance between Hina Rabbani Khar and Bilawal Bhutto did warm the cockles of my Bollywood-romantic heart, though. And Fatima isn’t too bad to look at either.

I learn more about your world every day. Khuda Ke Liye was a gut-wrenching watch. Mohsin Hamid’s novels reflect our mutual disenchantment with irrational religious dogma. An anthology of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poems is the first non-English work I’ve ever read. I doze off every night to the strains of Farida Khanum’s ghazals and am just beginning to discover the greatness of Madam Noor Jehan. The porosity of our cultural borders inspired born-there-bred-here poet Gulzar to write:

‘Aankhon ko visa nahin lagta

Sapnon ki sarhad nahin hoti

Band aankhon se roz main

Sarhad paar chalaa jaata hoon

Milne Mehdi Hassan se.’

My orthopaedician uncle visited your nation – twice – and was charmed by its gracious hospitality. They’ve even relaxed the visa norms now, so let’s not wait until Aditya Chopra makes a Veer-Zara sequel (or we look as ghastly as Shah Rukh Khan) to meet, okay?

I want to visit Lahore some day. I’ve always imagined it as a replica of puraani Dilli, replete with cloistered courtyards, patli galiyaan and great street food. And I really want to meet some Pakistani medical students.

I hope you live in Lahore, yaar.

You’ll visit me here too, won’t you? I’ll take you to Mohammed Ali Road during Ramadan and you’ll tell me the kebabs are just as good as they are back home. I’ll visit Haji Ali Dargah for the first time, with you. And you’re going to love Marine Drive.

We’re not so different, you and I. You’ll see.

Your friend across the border,

Mrigank.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three weeks.

It had been three weeks of playing someone else, and things had gone along with clockwork precision. It took him no time to slip into character. He had to be a shy, nervous guy. A guy overwhelmed by talking to a girl as pretty as her.

But it had all gone according to plan. He had resisted the temptation to ask her what she was wearing at night.

She had asked him to meet, but he had politely refused.

He wasn’t comfortable. She understood that. She liked it.

When they did finally meet for the first time, she was taken aback by how confident he was. He knew where to go, and what to do, and what to say. He looked her in the eye, and she felt a strange tickle when he spoke to her while doing that.

The second time they had met, it was at the State Museum. A solitary place with echoing halls and corridors. The guards there turned once to look at them, and there was no one else.

They walked along the corridors, talking. There were times when their hands brushed, and in his mind, he knew exactly how to react. No reaction.

It had been half an hour, and as they moved from one hall to the other, amidst the busts and figurines from centuries ago, she felt surreal. A stream of light spilt into the doors, and walked in the direction, to the other hall.

There were pictures, and large boards next to each exhibit, describing in English and Hindi how the item landed in the museum. She looked at them cursorily, but her mind was running. She had felt his hand brush against hers. Everytime he was reading one of the boards, she stole a glance at him. She saw his dark, sinewy arms, and it sent a shiver up her spine.

He knew she was staring at him. He couldn’t see her – he was reading the boards. But he felt her. He felt her looking at him.

They were in the last hall of the museum. From outside the door, she could see the well-lit corridor. They would be visible to everyone on the road.

He had just turned, when she pulled him to her, and kissed him on his mouth.

He held her by the side of her waist, and pulled her closer, till he could feel her breasts on his chest. Pressing softly.

Her eyes were open, they were looking at him, and she could feel how hard he was, rubbing against her.

Step 3. Accomplished.

********************************

It had happened before he had imagined it would. A lazy afternoon, a solitary grandmother at home, and a few frantic calls.

He was surprised to see the fluency with which she went about it. No bullshit. She bolted the door, and took off her T-shirt.

He watched her breasts in her bra. Full, congruent breasts in a white and green striped bra.

The next few minutes were a blur.

It wasn’t slow and arty like they show in the films. Nor was it like rough and wild. It was like two factory workers going about their work.

Every now and then, he had to bring himself back to reality. That he was here. Doing this.

Every now and then, he would open his eyes and look. He noticed that there was a line along her spine, it stuck out like a midrib of veins on a fragile leaf. He noticed that the necklace she wore dangled down exactly as much her breasts did. 

He wanted to drink it all in. Notice every bit of it. This might not last, but he wanted to keep it for himself.

And after a while, he couldn’t think anymore.

It was in flashes. When he finally came, he was on top of her on the floor. His dark body sliding over hers with his sweat.

When he looked at her body, her shapely thigh next to his, he noticed his sweat on her legs.   He was spent, and yet he wanted more.

“Do you want me to light a cigarette?” he asked. She turned towards him.

“What do you think this is, a Chetan Bhagat novel? My grandmother will kill me!” she said.

That evening, when he sat with his friends who passed comments at girls, he told them what had happened. One guy didn’t believe him, the others simply laughed. A high-pitched laughter that a father laughs when his son tells him that he fought a tiger at school that day.

So these bastards needed proof.

And proof is what they shall have.

He stayed awake that night, and waited for everyone else to fall asleep. He dragged a chair to the dining table, and climbed on it, to reach the attic where unsused stuff was kept. It took him a while to find it, but he felt the cuboid cardboard box, his second phone – Nokia 7250i.

It had been a shitty phone, honestly. He had suggested it to his father because it had polyphonic ringtones and a colour screen. But what use would his father have of it? The keys were too far spaced out, and his father hated it. “It looks like I am holding a fish. See how ugly this things is,” he had said.

It didn’t last a few months and his father bought a simpler, basic phone. Mother had packed it in its box and kept it for posterity.

He held it in its hand and turned it around. Say what you want about the phone, this was when it would prove its utility.

The next few days went in perfecting the frame.

He set up the phone behind a pillow and took his position in front of it. He did a batting action, a bowling action, all the while on his knees. After about a minute, he got up, picked up the phone, and turned it around.

It was funny to look at himself in the camera. He looked much darker than he was, like a ghost who was making a YouTube video for his channel. The light had to be adjusted.

He opened a window first, and checked how it looked. He then closed the window and used the tube light. He found out that he looked better in natural light.

Over the next few days, he knew exactly how to place the camera, and how much it captured in its frame. He knew how to place it so that it captured the picture with the right amount of light. He also knew how much shaking of the bed it could withstand without falling off.

And then he waited.

********************************************

He didn’t have to wait for long.

The following Wednesday played out exactly like its predecessor.

Grandmother was in the porch today, but that didn’t make any difference to his plans. He waited outside for a minute, she called Grandmother inside, and he sneaked in.

He ran up to her room. He had played it out in his head a million times. He ran in without making a noise, on his toes. He reached the room and bolted the room from inside.

He looked around. There was a window facing the door, and the bed was on the right of the door. He needed to have his camera against the light, and the bed was on a side.

He ran to the window, looking for an ideal place. He found some books, and made the camera stand behind it. But it would slip off.  He found a pencil box with some old pens in them. He could create a space by pushing the pen stand near the books and then putting the phone behind it.

But what if the curtain came flying? He couldn’t fold the curtain up, as she wouldn’t want to risk leaving both the window and the curtain open. He had to think, fast.

He pulled the curtain down, closed the window, walked up to the door and switched on the tube light. Better to go with a safe option, than one that might fall flat on its face.

He placed the camera, behind the pen stand, and turned it towards the bed. He went to the bed, climbed on it, and stood on his knees. He made a few moves, moved to the left, and then to the right.

*Tap tap*

She was at the door. Should he just go open it?

But he had thought this out. It had to be perfect.

He ran back to the table, picked up the phone and looked at it. He saw himself out of the frame by a few centimetres. So he had to stick to the middle of the bed, towards the bottom. He made a mental note.

*Tap tap*

He quickly put the phone in silent, deleted whatever was on the Memory Card, switched on the camera, and placed it in its place.

He wiped his hands, and walked calmly towards the door.

Her eyes were big, like marbles. “What were you doing?” she asked.

“I was scared your grandmother might come in” he said, a worried look on his face.

She smiled. “If she could do that, you wouldn’t be here in the first place!”

She walked in, closed the door, and looked around the room.

His heart was in his mouth.  His blood was in his cock.

**************************************

In the early 90s, there were three kinds of Bengali films.

The taxpayer-financed exercises in intellectual masturbation, which would have a weeks’s run in Nandan before being sent to film festivals in Cuba and Bulgaria,  marked by egregious vomiting, death and long languorous shots of dirty soles of feet, much appreciated by bhodrolok with unkempt beards, jholas, hawai chappals and fantasies about Truffaut.

The Swapan Saha-Sukhen Das jhaal muri of populist entertainment, made largely for a suburban and rural audience, cheap knock-offs of Hindi movies or hyper-emotional tragi-dramas with themes drawn from village Jatras, a spicy mixture of talcum powder, flab, and body-parts bartered for treatment of tuberculosis.

And of course Satyajit Ray films.

Then Ray died.

With it, a significant section of the Bengali urban population, too unworthy for Chiranjeet in a cowboy hat but too cinema-illiterate for the wannabe-Fellinis, stopped watching new Bengali films.

Which is when Rituparno Ghosh came into the frame. And one by one, all those who had fled the theaters came running back.

Like Ray, Rituparno had that deft touch, the ability to tell a story simply and engagingly, without the intrusive heavy-handed direction that sadly often masquerades as “waah kya art” directorial prowess. “Sohoj katha jaaye na bola sohoje” (It’s difficult to tell a simple thing simply) and that Ritu-da, at least in his best works, could do that so precisely is what made him such an amazing filmmaker.

What I found most unique about Rituparno Ghosh, and this perhaps was because of his background in making ad-films, was how he was a true commercial artist. This is even the more unique, since Bengalis, especially those that label themselves intellectuals, consider  ”the market” to be Satan itself. Rituparno understood his art. And unlike many that came before him, he also understood commerce. He limited his oeuvre to a world he understood, urban, middle to upper-middle-class Bengal, which perhaps not coincidentally, was also his target demographic. He was out there on TV, in award shows, and in the media, promoting himself and his films, flamboyant and camera-friendly—a far cry from the ideal of the “serious” director, who, at least in Bengal, was expected to speak through his works, and through his works only. He made Hindi movies. He worked with mainstream Bollywood stars, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Bipasa Basu at the heights of their careers, and also established Bengali popular stars like Debasree Ray, Prosenjit and Rituparna, none of whom had displayed much in the way of acting chops before Rituparno cast them in lead roles.

And yet, and this is where he was so unique, he never sold out. He made experimental movies.  His characters, even in his most mainstream creations, were broken and cracked and difficult,  not always the easiest to understand or empathize with. He went heavy on dialog and light on action. He loved making his urban audience cringe with gratuitous sequences of menstruation, sweat, and even near-blasphemous imagery. He wore his sexuality proudly on his sleeve, despite the inevitable social blow-back  (A common refrain in Bengali living rooms “Rituparno is a good film-maker, but why does he have to be…err…like that?”)  He explored alternative sexuality in Chitangada and when that did poorly at the box office, he made a detective thriller, but with a non-conventional actor (director Sujoy Ghosh), thus continuing, till the very end, to walk the line between artistic whimsy and market awareness.

While Rituparno may be with us no more, it is this legacy which endures in the new wave of Bengali cinema that so clearly follows the Rituparno model, of which “Bhooter Bhobishyot” is perhaps the best example, which seeks to be entertaining as well as original, providing as it does a much-needed alternative to the derivative  holocaust of the “Challenge” and “Paglu” variety.

Which means that Ritu-da has left his world in a better place than he inherited it, blazing a trail for others to follow.

And what really can be a greater achievement than that?

No, literally. Pixar's lighting/rendering systems were completely redone for their new film Monsters University. In my correspondence with Chris Horne, who studied Visualization at A&M and works Pixar's Lightspeed, he mentioned his work on MU:

I was on MU from May 2012 until April 2013 -- so yeah I worked on it for a *very very* long time as far as the lighting department is concerned. When I joined it was only leads + 1 shot lighter and me. It was a blast to work on because we completely rewrote our lighting system to be a raytraced/GI system -- and since I was on early I got to test the boundaries of it and figure out how we should light the show from a technical aspect. We really explored the lighting system - and I feel like a significant amount of work we did back then is going to live on in the way we light shows with this new technology. It was really unnerving and weird though to run into something new, ask some really smart people what the hell is going on, and hear back "We have no idea. It's all new. Good luck!" P.S. - the film is fully done and in the can as of this week (including credits, stereo, and all their international permutations, and the audio related to all of those). Creative production here finished maybe the 2nd week of April?

I was surprised that Pixar was just now using all ray tracing in their system. A few emails later I asked him if audiences will notice the difference in lighting:

There's a huge difference in MU compared to past films. Even people that don't know anything about our tech change going in walk out going "HOLY CRAP!"....but they have a hard time putting their finger on why it looks so awesome. Personally I see a huge difference between MU and Brave - there's more shaping, more little splashes of color, and everything feels a little bit more dynamic and pulled together. This is particularly evident in the toxic urchins sequence - where every single urchin is a light source. We couldn't have done that sequence in the past with our old technology. 

Historically we don't use raytracing. It wasn't until Cars that we actually supported raytracing (and even then it was a haphazard and mostly broken support). We really only used it for highly reflective smooth curved surfaces that absolutely needed to be truly reflected and not faked. We fake almost everything - mirrors, wet surfaces, eyes, shiny props like belt buckles/spoons/swords/etc. We obviously can't get away with that on Lightning McQueen - so we would cache out the scene into a brickmap (essentially a kd-tree with shading attached to the voxels) and fire rays against that (so even then....we aren't doing traditional raytracing). For shadows - we would sometimes use raytracing when we needed particularly awesome looking contact shadows. The same shadow would ramp off to using a shadowmap to help lower the expense. 

So our Director of Photography went to a studio that is so clearly raytracing averse and essentially said "We're raytracing everything. True reflection and refraction in the eyes reflecting actual SCENE GEOMETRY and not a brickmap. Yep - we're refracting through the cornea onto the sclera and iris. Oh and all your shadows are raytraced now - no more shadowmaps. Nope. None. Yes I know you like them but no. And global illumination! We're doing that now. By default. Everywhere. Oh and I almost forgot - all reflective surfaces will do real true reflection....and deciding what's reflective will be a shading decision instead of a lighting one. Yes you heard me right. Now get to work" It was extremely controversial, but it made a huge impact and really was one of the true success stories of the film. And now I'm working on that.

If you're advanced enough to understand the tech jargon above, good for you. For the uninitiated, ray tracing is a relatively advanced CG lighting technique which virtually simulates actual rays of light and all their interactions with the objects in your environment. In technical terms, Global Illumination lighting is like super hard core ray tracing. Both techniques use up a lot of memory. A more comprehensive explanation can be found here.

I was surprised that ray tracing in Pixar was historically a clunky, haphazard process. I always thought of it as this smooth, polished machine like something you would see at an Apple store. It's cool to see Pixar making history and advancing themselves over the past couple of years, I mean you can already see the difference in the images above.

Follow Chris on Twitter: @distastee
And follow me on Twitter: @masonsmtx

He first told me he loved me after we brushed our teeth.

That night, we both came home exhausted.  We had had a long day— running errands, doing laundry, visiting family, seeing friends– organizing everything we would need for the week ahead.  We didn’t have a lot of time together because his work made him travel during the week, so weekends were rushed and chaotic, but I didn’t mind.  We had only been dating for two months and I was just glad to be with him, regardless of what we were doing.  That night, as we got ready for bed, I savored the minutes we spent together.  With the day’s commitments behind us, we could finally be alone.

Brushing our teeth was a particularly nice moment.  It was just the two of us in my blue tiled bathroom.  Just the two of us staring at each other in the long rectangular mirror, making funny faces at each other while we brushed our teeth, awkwardly, happily, together.

But that night, as Nate brushed his teeth, he seemed anxious and hurried.  After only a few seconds he began putting his toothbrush away.  I thought he was just being lazy because he was tired, so I tried to stop him.

“Don’t put away your toothbrush—you have to keep brushing your teeth!” I cried.  “My aunt and uncle are both dentists and they say that you should brush your teeth for at least two minutes, otherwise it doesn’t really count— your teeth could still decay.”

“My teeth are fine. You are crazy,” he said, smiling and rolling his eyes at me in the mirror.

“It’s true!” I said, both agreeing that I was crazy and still half-heartedly insisting that he keep brushing his teeth.  We both laughed.

“I’m getting into bed.  Hurry up,” he said, kissing me on the cheek opposite of where I was holding my toothbrush.

“Ok,” I promised, grinning at him through my mouthful of spit, but I stayed in the bathroom alone, brushing my teeth for another few minutes just to make a point.

“Stop brushing your teeth!” he finally called out from the other room.  This time he sounded annoyed, so I stopped, worried that if I took any longer he’d be asleep by the time I came to bed.  He could fall asleep in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t want to miss the few precious moments I had with him still awake.

When I finally got into bed, it was too late— he had already turned over and his eyes were closed.  I thought I would soon hear him snoring.

“Good night,” I whispered, moving closer to him under the covers. “Sorry I took so long brushing my teeth,” I added as I kissed his shoulders.

“I love you,” he whispered, with his back still to me.

“What?” I asked, sure I had heard him wrong.  Just a month ago he had told me that he didn’t believe in love, because his parents had once told him they were getting a divorce.  They never actually went through with it, but it had made him think love wasn’t real.  After he told me that story, I knew I could never tell him I loved him first, so I tried to convince myself I didn’t, even though I already did.

“I love you,” he said again, turning over to face me on the pillow we shared.  “I know I told you I didn’t believe in love, but I do now, because I know I’m in love with you.”  I lay silent, too stunned to say anything.  “And I’m glad you finally stopped brushing your teeth,” he continued.  “I was getting so nervous, waiting here alone, thinking about how I was going to tell you that I love you.  I almost didn’t do it, because you took so long to brush your teeth.”

“Well if I had known you were going to tell me you loved me right now, I wouldn’t have brushed my teeth at all!” I joked, and we both laughed nervously.

“I love you too,” I said finally and it was true.

For four years after that we brushed our teeth together and made silly faces in the mirror and told each other we loved one another.  After two years, we moved into an apartment together, where our toothbrushes rested side by side in a glass in our new peach tiled bathroom.  I continued to lecture him about the importance of brushing his teeth for a full two minutes, and the necessity of not leaving wet towels on the bed, and visiting his family on the weekends, and applying for a different job so that he could be home more often, and other things he didn’t care about and wasn’t ready for.  He knew I lectured him because I loved him, and because I am the oldest child.  He just rolled his eyes at me and affectionately told me I was crazy, and I laughed, because I knew that it was true and that he loved me anyway.

Throughout all four years our weekends continued to be chaotic, as his work kept him traveling most weeks and our time together was constantly cut short.  Sometimes, he would go away for long periods— disappearing for weeks, even months— taking his big green toothbrush with him and leaving my smaller pink toothbrush alone in the glass.  That lone pink toothbrush pained me, a daily reminder of his absence.  But I put up with it, because I knew that he would come back and we would have more time together, eventually…

But eventually, just spending the weekend together was not enough.  I wanted more as he came home less, so we fought more and laughed less.  I no longer found weekends that revolved around his errands exciting, and I could sense that my lectures, once endearing, had become nagging.  One night, tired of the fighting, the loneliness, and his unyielding schedule, I said, “ I think you have to find a new job, or you have to leave.”  I don’t know what I expected to come of my threat, but I didn’t expect him to leave.

But he did, accidentally leaving his toothbrush behind.  I had once hoped to see that green brush in our bathroom, a comforting reminder of his closeness; now his toothbrush stung me, bringing tears to my eyes as I brushed my teeth alone.  When it finally became clear that he wasn’t coming back— not for the toothbrush and not for me — I threw it out in the garbage can under the kitchen sink, because I couldn’t bear to see it lying in the open bathroom trash.

Since then, I’ve had a few boyfriends who have given me toothbrushes, but none have told me they loved me.  After two months together, Eric bought me a blue one and gave it to me as a surprise.  “I got you something,” he said, excitedly taking the new toothbrush out of his bathroom cabinet and presenting it to me as gift.  That night, I beamed as we brushed our teeth together, thinking that this gift meant, I want you to keep sleeping over, which I assumed also meant, and no one else is.  But when I brought up the issue of exclusivity a week later I realized that he had a different idea: I wasn’t the only one who had a toothbrush.

Josh broke up with me after two months, deciding that things between us were moving too quickly.  He said he didn’t really want to “break up” – he just needed a “break”- so he tried to leave his toothbrush behind.

“Take your toothbrush,” I said as he was leaving my apartment, because to me a break and a break-up are the same thing.

“Well maybe I’ll leave it here, just in case…” he suggested feebly.   I was too confused and hurt and angry to ask what he even meant.  His ambivalence was annoying.  Two months had once been enough time for someone to know they loved me, why wasn’t it enough time for him to figure out if he liked me.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply. “Take your toothbrush, or I’m throwing it out.” And I knew I would, because I had done it before.

On our first night together Brad told me he had a toothbrush for me, but then ended things before we got that far.  We had been friends for almost a year, and when I finally slept there for the first time I thought he wouldn’t only give me a toothbrush, but would also one day tell me he loved me.  After just two weeks he said he thought we should stop seeing each other, because our feelings were getting too big.  I didn’t understand; I had been waiting years to feel something big.  Brad didn’t want big feelings though; like Nate, he didn’t believe in love.  His parents were divorced and so was his older brother and his last girlfriend had left him because she loved him, but wasn’t in love with him.

I wanted to tell him that I would never leave him, that if he gave me a toothbrush I wouldn’t give it back, that he would never have to throw my toothbrush away.  But I was too scared to tell him how big my feelings were, so I left, because he didn’t ask me to stay.  In the end, I only slept there twice, so I guess I didn’t really need my own toothbrush.

It’s been five years since Nate moved out and nine years since he first told me he loved me.  I’ve brushed my teeth over a thousand times since then, thrown out through dozens of used blue, green and pink toothbrushes.  Usually I try not to think about that moment, because I don’t want to feel sad every time I brush my teeth.  But sometimes, when I’m alone in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror with a mouthful of spit after brushing for a full two minutes, my eyes well up with tears, and I remember how he first told me he loved me after we brushed our teeth.

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“The bitch deserves it,” he thought.

He thought of her. Slender shoulders that pointed out, going down to her breasts – round, soft, with pink nipples pointing straight. Her waist that curved out into her hips, and her pink, soft pussy.

He thought of how she closed her eyes when he had finished fucking her. There would be beads of sweat on her forehead, and her cheeks would be pink, like her cunt lips.

He felt himself getting hard, thinking of her body. Of how he had lifted her up in his arms and pushed her to the wall. And held her thighs and rammed into her. Nice and hard. And she kept moaning, making him go at her harder.

Now the bitch deserved what was coming her way.

He was going to shame her in front of the entire world.

****************

When he had first told his friends that he liked her, they had laughed. Not a snigger, not a giggle.

An insulting, animal-like laughter – like a pair of cruel hyenas.

“Zebras paida honge, saale,” Prabir had said, and they laughed louder.  “Aur tumhare family albums sirf Black and White mein honge,” as the laughter grew, slicing him.

When he went home that night, he couldn’t sleep. He thought about it.

The fact that he was dark never bothered him until now. It never occurred to him that there should be any problem with him being dark. Surely that was something that only girls bothered about?

He got up and switched on the light. He stood in front of the wooden almirah whose left door was a mirror, and inspected himself. Yes, he was dark. You couldn’t deny that.

He took off his shirt, and then his track pant and looked at himself.

His face, neck and arms were dark. Some areas were lighter – like the insides of his arms, and the insides of his thighs. The rest was a dark brown. His eyes went down his body – his flat chest, and down to the penis hanging between his thighs.

His darkest part.

**********************

The next few weeks were troublesome.

Everywhere he went, he noticed people’s complexions. College, television, films – it was all the same. The villains were always dark. The villains, the thieves, the pickpockets, the servants – all dark.

The heroes, the Gods, the noble, the lords were all fair. He noticed how Bollywood heroes – from Rajesh Khanna to Shah Rukh Khan – applied make up and put on lipstick. Even darker guys like Ajay Devgan applied make up to look fairer.

Why were the poor darker, and the rich fair, he wondered.

May be it was because the poor are always out working – toiling and struggling out on the streets. Their sons followed them, and so did their grandsons. Till their clan was caught in a trap of darkness.

On the other hand, look at the rich. They stay indoors, they have people doing their work for them, and that’s how they are fair. And then their sons, and grandsons.

He thought of his father. His father belonged to a family of farmers. His father had gotten a job in the city and that’s how they landed here. He was a little fairer than his father, but how do you wipe off generations of toiling under the sun?

“Dark” meant sinister, evil, dirty. And look at the word “fair” – such a show off! Stands for justice, nobility, beauty. “Fuck this shit,” he thought, “I am going to nail her. And show these bastards.”

And he hatched a plan.

*******************************

The first few days involved studying and observing.

It was difficult to get to her in college because it was open sea for the sharks. She always hung out with her friends – all of them fair and pretty. What was it with pretty girls that they only hang out with other pretty girls?

When she wasn’t with her girl gang, she was always surrounded by guys, and to get to speak to her would be impossible. Not worth the trouble.

He found out where she went for tuitions. It was a smaller group he would have to tackle there.

SM Tutorials. A small group, but with a more specific purpose. Everyone here was from different colleges, but they all eyed her all the time.

A tuition offered more freedom than a college did, and this meant that they would giggle around her like idiots and then go have pani puri. Those lecherous bastards, he could see the lust in their eyes.

Her tuitions got over at 7, and she returned home. If she ever turned to look back, she would have noticed at some distance, a black Passion Plus following her every movement. But she never did.

In those few weeks, he learnt about her. That she matched her T-shirt with her hair band. She always wore a helmet, so you couldn’t see her face, but her ponytail flew behind her when she sped up.

It was like a burkha, in reverse. You could see everything but her face. Her T-shirt – in bright colours green, red, and orange – and her breasts that bounced a little when there was a speed breaker.

That was perhaps the reason everyone turned to look at her when she crossed. Shop keepers would turn their heads when she crossed. Guys chatting on the road would sometimes nudge the other and they would turn.

She would visit a stationary shop every week. He never saw her come out with books, and she never carried a college bag, so it had to be pens she was buying, he gathered. She would spend a good ten minutes and then walk out of the shop.

She visited a beauty parlour once every two weeks. She was done in 15 minutes, so obviously there wasn’t much she needed to do there. Right before the turn to her apartment, she stopped by the road, bought a packet of Tiger biscuits and fed the puppies there.

He would follow her after she left college, always maintaining a safe distance from her. He had to. Her Scooty Pep had two big mirrors like an alien’s eyes, and if she looked into them, he would be visible. So he rode at 40, and stayed a good 100 metres away from her.

Once on one of the darker lanes, two guys rode noticed her and rode next to her, constantly revving up the engine. She did the same, but her Scooty Pep was no match for them. He watched it go on.

If he stepped in and shooed away the boys, it would have been a dashing entry. The guys were local urchins, and wouldn’t stand a chance against him. One slap to one of them would send them scooting.

“Don’t be a dick,” he told himself, and rode on, as the guys got tired of being ignored.

He would be near her apartment everyday at five, when she went to the tuitions, and then be near her tuitions at 7, till she went back home.

It became a practise. He found himself thinking about her for three hours a day.

**********************

In the three weeks, he knew what a day in her life was like.

He made his first move on a Friday. She had stopped at the stationary shop, he arrived after five minutes.

“Mo’ Bla hai?”

The shopkeeper stared at him.

“MoNT BlaNC,” he said loudly with a smile. From the corner of his eye, he saw her turn and smile. Step 1 accomplished.

The shopkeeper, obviously, had no clue. He walked to the shelves, and brought out some pens. The stupid gel pens with ugly designs that had nothing going for them except that they cost more than 100 bucks.

“Yeh nahi. Fountain pens.”

“Woh zamaana gaya,” the shopkeeper said with a hint of a smile.

“That’s just sad.” Shrug of shoulder. Turn to left. Look at her for just two seconds, and raise eyebrow.

She gave him a look of half recognition. Like she had seen him somewhere, but didn’t know where. He neither acknowledged, nor dismissed her.

He turned and left.

The next few days in class, it wasn’t tough being heard. There were so many idiots around, all you had to do is stand up and not sound like an ape, and the lecturer noticed you.

He sat in the bench behind her that day. A bit of her bra strap was visible on her left shoulder. A pink strip on her fair skin. He followed the line down till he saw the sides of her waist. If he stared at it for a minute, he would get hard. But there was a task to accomplish, and the opportunity couldn’t be wasted.

The Accounts class was useless. The lecturer was a lazy bugger and he would smile and crack jokes with a few guys in class. Since he was powerful, everyone was vying for his attention. Talking in smiles and laughing at his jokes.

The English class, however, was seen as a boring one. No one really spoke, and the ones who stayed silent were either on their phones or spaced out.

Perfect.

“The Guide” by R.K.Narayan. The lecturer was a passionate man. When he spoke, you could see he was looking into the students’ eyes, looking to see if someone would respond to him, show some sign of intelligence. But he got nothing.

“Sir, may I ask a question?”

She turned to look at him, as did everyone else in the class. But he was looking at the lecturer. His question was explained in detail, but he couldn’t care less.

Step 2. Ensure she knows you are a person with a brain. Accomplished.

The third step didn’t take much longer.

He had arrived at the turning near her apartment five minutes before she did. And brought with him a packet of biscuits. The puppies ran towards him with their short legs, and tails curved. They ran like cockroaches when the light’s switched on.

He took one of the puppies, a white one with a black patch on its forehead, and lifted it up. He walked to the side of the road, where the gutter flowed. He held its forelegs in his two hands, and slammed it into the ditch below.

He heard a thump when it hit the ground, and the squealing began in a few seconds.

The other puppies hung around there, looking. He folded his sleeves, folded his pants up to his knees, and got into the ditch.

She arrived a minute later. She came running to see what was going on.

He looked at her for longer this time, as he put his hand into the ditch.

She knew who he was.

What followed was exactly what he had planned.

When she went home that night, she had met an interesting, intelligent guy from her class. There wasn’t anything eye catching about him, but he seemed to be someone with layers to him. Layers that would be interesting to peel off.

Slowly.

He. He slept a satisfied sleep that night.

**************************************

It began with messages. Texts.

And it remained that.

They never spoke on the phone.

What began as a Thank You text, stretched for longer. And he was good at this. Taking one topic to the other, and leading it till it grew into a thick, bubbling conversation.

And then, he would call it off. “Think about that. Good night!”

When he went to college, she looked at him. He looked at her nervously and looked away.

She thought it was cute. That he was afraid to talk to her in public. She had no clue.

Once when he had gone in with a new T-shirt, she waited till their eyes had met and then texted, “New T-shirt ”

He looked at it, conscious that he was being looked at, turned to her, smiled nervously and looked down.

It was Chemistry. And you had to see it to believe it.

After that, everytime they saw each other, she would smile. Or say something loud. And all her friends would giggle. And they would cross.

*beep*

Ur scared of me

Atelophobia.

 

She waited for the day to get over, and went to her computer to find out what it meant. And smiled.

When was the last time she did something like this?

You know how guys are. When was the last time she waited to say something to someone. Knowing that the person was too shy to even approach her.

When she sent him a text, she loved the way he replied. Calm and composed.

But she knew how tensed he was. She knew he wouldn’t have the guts to say something, if he did meet her.

She smiled.

*beep* The blue screen lit up on his bed, throwing a bright light on him, and the blanket. Like the cover of a Harry Potter book.

Slept off?:P

He looked at the phone, smiled, and kept it down.

And turned over and slept.

She looked at the phone for half an hour. When she got bored, she touched herself between her legs. Dark, sinister thoughts, that she could relish by herself.

She was sweating, and she fell asleep.

(Illustrations: Upali Mishra)

In today’s article I will compare the two platforms I use the most for home automation projects: the Arduino platform, and the Raspberry Pi platform. Of course, asking which one is the best would be a much too simple question. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Instead, I will compare the two platforms on […]

The post Arduino vs Raspberry Pi: which platform is the best for home automation ? appeared first on Open Home Automation.

I was traveling a few years ago, reading a book. The family seated opposite me began to eat. They offered to share their food with me, and I declined. But the young wife was rather insistent.  After I’d said ‘no’ twice, she said: “It’s okay. We’re not from a low caste. We’re upper caste.” I suddenly felt weary. This was a literate woman, trying to be friendly with a stranger on a train.

When I feel like I need a real cleansing, I walk into the fitness center of Ranchi’s only five-star hotel and use the deluxe shower in the women’s locker room. The water pressure and heat are pure bliss, and I leave the place feeling cleaner than I’ve felt in weeks.

The staff doesn’t ask me if I’m a guest. Nobody stops me. It doesn’t matter if my clothes are sloppy and I look disheveled. I can waltz in like I belong, be greeted like someone important, and leave without any incident.

I can do this because I’m white.

There is a hierarchy here that determines the way people treat each other. I know plenty would argue that this social order is complex—that it’s developed from colonial history, the caste system, tribal traditions, gender roles, and modern politics. But on the surface, it seems pretty straightforward. If you’re small and dark, you’re used, abused, and walked over. If you’re tall and fair, you’re treated with deference.

This isn’t a hard-fast rule. But that said, I know what I see. People who do manual labor and menial jobs, cycle rickshaws, farm—essentially, the poorest of Jharkhand’s population—have darker skin and tend to be short and slight. Those in positions of authority (politicians, police officers, businessmen, government officials) are significantly bigger and whiter. This isn’t just an imagined phenomenon or a coincidence: those in the army and police are specifically chosen for their height.

To prove that I’m not exaggerating, check out this ad for the wildly popular skin-whitening cream, Fair and Lovely. The dad’s line that sends the girl into tears is “I wish I had a son.”

There aren’t 1950s-America-era signs around Ranchi designating “Whites Only”… but I’d like to see someone with dark skin try to walk into that five-star fitness center looking as disheveled as I usually do. It just wouldn’t happen. And I admit, I take advantage of the ridiculous privileges that my appearance grants me. It’s an uncomfortable reality in Jharkhand, and my time with the Yuwa girls has allowed me to witness what it means to be at the bottom of this hierarchy.

Fair and Lovely and Sick of It

While there are definitely more advantages to being a white, blonde female here than drawbacks, I’ve got to take a minute to illustrate how I’m treated daily. Mostly, I’m stared at like I’ve come from a different planet. These are not subtle glances. I’m talking about open-mouthed, unabashed gaping. People doing double takes in the street, stopping in the middle of traffic, halting conversation to point me out. It’s impossible for me to be anonymous, although I do my best by wearing a scarf over my face and hair and donning sunglasses when I’m in a crowd.

The number of foreigners that go through this place is minuscule, and most of them are businessmen who stay inside their hotels. So although I can understand why I’m such a spectacle, it’s exhausting to be gawked at whenever I step outside. I didn’t realize how freeing anonymity could be until I couldn’t have it anymore.

I’m usually treated with the utmost deference, often bordering on celebrity treatment. My appearance has gotten me into utterly absurd situations. I’m often asked if people can take photos with me—in restaurants, stores, zoos, concerts, malls, bathrooms, offices. Sometimes people don’t have the audacity to ask permission and attempt to take sly photos in which I’m carefully framed in the background. It’s expected that I’ll skip through long queues instead of waiting like everyone else. I’m exempt from most public rules, and am often waved through security with a smile and a head bobble.

During one especially bizarre afternoon, I ended up as one of three chief guests at a school award ceremony[1]. I shook hundreds of hands, gave an impromptu speech about the importance of education (I’m pretty sure nobody understood what I was saying, so I wasn’t nervous), and handed out a bunch of certificates with cameras flashing throughout the entire event. Again, this happened because I’m white.

It’s gotten to the point that incidents like this no longer surprise me. I’m worried about what this is going to do to my ego in the long run.

The Other Side

Spending the majority of my time with the Yuwa girls, I get to see glimpses of the way they’re treated, and what’s it’s like for girls who don’t look like I do. While my white-blonde-foreigner status keeps me right near the top of the social ladder, the Yuwa girls rank near absolute bottom. As poor, dark-skinned, tribal, unmarried girls, they are rarely given basic respect when they’re out in public. I’ve seen them ignored, glared at, scolded for the pettiest of things, and disregarded. I’ve seen a feverish, exhausted girl be shooed out of a doctor’s office because the sandals on her feet were “too dirty”.  Several girls told me that they’re made to pay a cleaning fee at their government-run school—and then they’re forced to clean the school.

On an impersonal level, the hierarchy of Jharkhand is uncomfortable. When it gets personal—when you see kids you care about being treated like shit—it becomes indescribably infuriating.

A few weeks ago, I found out that many of our girls had been slapped, verbally abused, made to pay bribes, and forced to sweep the floor by officials at a local government office. They had been going to this office repeatedly for weeks, attempting to obtain their birth certificates. They need these certificates to get passports to compete in the Spain tournament, and hadn’t told Franz about the ongoing incidents of abuse.

I felt sick to my stomach when I heard this. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hurt someone more than I wanted to hurt the cowardly worm who would lay a hand on these kids. What disturbed me more than the fact that a grown man in a government position was hitting 12-year-old girls: the girls didn’t consider this behavior out-of-the-ordinary. They’ve experienced the same treatment from teachers, principals, postal workers, uncles, fathers and brothers. They were used to it.

While the girls seemed ready to disregard this whole episode as normal, Franz wasn’t. Within two days, the girls’ story was on the front page of the 2^nd largest English newspaper in India. The story went semi-viral on Facebook. People were angry—Indians and non-Indians alike. Supporters Yuwa in positions of power in Jharkhand put pressure on the local office responsible for abusing the girls. Eventually the man who had caused the most trouble was removed from his position—although not before sending cronies to one of the girl’s houses in an attempt to ‘discourage’ her family from pressing charges.

The optimist in me wants to believe that this incident and the outcry against it will help the girls realize they’re worthy of respect and demand it as they get older. I want them to be angry about the injustices they encounter daily. I want to believe that these tough kids can start to change the system in which skin color, status, and gender determine the way people are treated.

Neha, a young local woman working for Yuwa, agreed that the girls now seem more likely to unite against injustice. “But,” she added, “They need to know someone will stand beside them.”