Bitches Brew

I like jazz. Maybe. I mean im a musical novice. I listen to a bit of rock mainly… quite a bit actually. But then its not all rock, I mean I listen to Hindustani classical too... bit of a range there… for somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about generating music so to speak.
Point being, there are times in my life when I like jazz. Like right now, when im driving home from another hard days work filled with extremely pretentious discussions. Discussions about ridiculous topics generally, but executed with thoughtful frowns on everybody’s face to make it seem important.
Wandering again.
I like the drive home after the days work. Its not a quiet drive, there’s always music playing. It’s funny though, it’s the music that makes the drive quiet in a way. The music generally cuts out everything else… gives me some me time. Now since I listen to rock more often, I tend to either hum or scream with the song playing. Depending on the song and my mood in any order.
With jazz, with my ignorance about it and all, I tend to let it play and let my mind follow its own thoughts. Not very deep thoughts or anything like that. They’re my own (the thoughts I mean). That’s their only claim to fame here.
So, yeah this album is playing and my thoughts had drifted to a day on the beach when I reach the signal. It was red of course. I mean you generally have to wait for the green twice before crossing this particular junction anyway. The car to my right suddenly moves forward a couple of yards or so to fill up the gap between itself and the car in front of it causing me to instintively turn that way and look straight at a random lady leaning against her steering wheel and looking left… at me. You know how uncomfortable those post-breaking-of-eye-contact-looking-everywhere-but-back-at-the-eye moments are. Im super vain and all, but she had probably turned because of the music, I mean you don’t get to hear this kind of stuff often. I mean it’s so rare that most people arent aware of its existance even. More importantly, she isn’t a looker by any stretch. So the whole leaning on wheel, looking sideways is a tad repulsive. I mean even if she was seriously hot or something, that wouldn’t have… maybe it would have… been attractive. You can get away with any amounts of dumbness if sufficiently hot anyway.
The signal turns green and I manage to get sufficiently ahead of her by the next red and wait out an uneventful signal. Next green, me out of there. The signal being the NGEF junction on old madras road. Now the stretch parallel to the track between the NGEF junction and under bridge just before kasturi nagar is the best part of my day. It has been so for as long as I can remember. No actually, when in school, I liked the hours of cricket between 4 and 7 odd better, but now, this definitely is. This tragically lasts at most a minute and a half though. There’s something serene and dark about that place. Even with all the traffic and all, it some how grips me. Maybe the track to the right being elevated enough to not allow us to look beyond it and hence giving an illusion of us being at the end of the civilized world… I don’t know honestly.

My thoughts generally border on the park that’s formed in my head without really getting in. This park is my second travel to Cambodia and all the shit that I had to take there and the consequences, the reward, Karma and all that. This is central. This is a set of seriously depressing memories. Like I said, the stretch is just the best part of my day… not the happiest. You tend to look back fondly on the sad memories for some reason. There is a certain romance in the hell you went through… in retrospect.

You know, this whole post is probably just the introduction to some long winded reflective crap. Get the whole mental aspect out of the way stuff. It’s funny how the word mental suddenly made people start wondering. All I mean to say is, this is mentally normal, just very unapologetic.
You go through a very trying time and are releived (in rare cases, happy) it’s over. The memory stays with you a while, the details fresh but the pain reduced. You can let the memory go or you can jot it down. I choose the latter.

I pass the underbridge and turn right to kasturi nagar. This part is even better drivewise. Now there’s another track (which was on the bridge I just passed), to the left this time and apartments to the left. Curving road, fastish and sparse traffic at any time. Heaven in Bangalore. Also, this marks the clear transition from the city to the suburbs of the north east. North-east… the best part of any place. Take India for instance. I’d give my arm to be in the north east right now.

The whole north-east reference is actually a long running joke with a friend from south Bangalore. This friend is the second person in the know who I spoke to before starting this whole jotting down exercise. The friend being from south bangalore is referred to as southie in the jokes. This brings us to another theme which is very central. The north-south divide.

People tend to ignore this. I used to ignore it the best I could for a while. Experience has taught me that there is no getting away from it. So much so that im fairly certain that it’s stupidity to look the other way and pretend that it doesn’t exist. Im going to speak my mind, im going to lay down facts and im going to do this in as unbiased a manner as possible. Only unapologetic.

Past kasturi nagar, the place gets further residential. Now here’s the best part of this place. There are a few colleges around and this has brought is a hell of a lot of people from China and surrounding countries and Afros (not sure where from… met a couple from Kenya, but most of them arent from there, if american, then african americans, else africans… can we use the term afro and not be racist or inaccurate? Let me know if otherwise).

The Chinese chics are perfect. I agree that maybe the teeth are an issue… but then who the hell looks a gift horse in the teeth anyway?
They are just perfect. Just incredibly beautiful in a completely sexual sort of way (the word sexy just doesn’t say it these days). You can absoloutely worship a Chinese (or thereabouts) lady without any depth of emotions if you know what I mean.
I know im married and all, just that I don’t want to pretend it screwed around with my thought process or anatomy. Of course I love my wife and am fairly certain about being loyal and all… just that the chinese are super sexy (or the longer version of that word) and there’s no denying that… unless you’re blind maybe.

The beauty of the whole asian girl thing with me is, it’s completely shallow. Completely sexual. Complete worship. It’s probably because of their accent (not the fake ones who’ve lived in the USA or somewhere). Maybe it’s just me.
I’m an Indian you know. If you’re one too, you’d know what I mean when I say that I have had the weight of 12000 odd years of culture hurled at me at a head shattering velocity. This culture could be now be assumed to be encased in a massive wooden box and placed on my head and parts of it trickling into my brain all the while and me hunching under the weight.
I think it started off as a very rich school of thought. Lets leave it at that.
Point being, sexuality was integral to our culture for significant periods of those 12000 odd years maybe its that part that has trickled down in larger doses to my brain. Let’s blame culture now.

Perfect.

Anyway, me home now. Laptop’s taking hellishly long to start up (high time I replaced it). Wife’s been back a while, went out just now to pick up a gift for a wedding. Nice and quiet. Im wondering if something like “you can feel lonely in a room full of people hammering you with opinions and the exact opposite of it when in car all by yourself” sounds cliched enough to conclude a writeup like this…
Finally started up… I start typing