God was Murdered

Bollywood & I don’t speak anymore. But our love wasn’t always this grey & cold. When I was ridiculously young, B & I were madly in love like Jack & Rose. Over time, our Titanic drowned. Let’s start at the start . B & I had been friends for years before our first real date — a matinee show of 1942 — A Love Story on a blazing afternoon of May 1994 in Delhi’s legendary Delite cinema. When Gorgeous Koirala & Hairy Kapoor kissed, B & I froze & surrendered to the avalanche of bone-chilling winds of crushing attraction. I had already seen 20-odd Bollywood films on TV, but watching 1942 — A Love Story on the silver screen was an experience worth killing innocent newborns for. Soon, I got addicted to watching movies in the theatre like MJ got addicted to touching kids. B & I’s crush metamorphosed into young love when I watched the second half [my parents were super late & missed the entire first half] of DDLJ in 1995. By the time the curtains fell, I was...

My parents almost never traveled anywhere unless a blood-related, three-month-old baby died after a Pa.kiss.tani drone crashed on her/they house or a non-binary god called my mom on the housephone to visit him/they. Pick up, Mom ! God is Calling ;) And all our travels were shorter distances —141-327.8 km— & mostly in inter-state buses & rarely in a car. The earliest memory I have of travelling in a train is when mom decided to go to Vaishno Devi — I was about 12. We traveled in a non-air-conditioned coach. I don’t recall with absolute certainty, but I remember liking or at least finding the train travel a lot less mindfucking than a bus or a car. Even when I first sat in a plane — on an international flight — at age 18, I felt mildly nauseated sitting inside what felt like a claustrophobia-inducing, penis-shaped tube filled with people who had sold their personalities on eBay — we all sat constipated for hours that felt like weeks in a Vietnamese prison. Of all the modes of t...