God was Murdered

I absolutely love Cricket, Australia & Steve, but more than any sport, country, or human, I love honesty. I’ve played a lot of sports in my life, but before all those sports arrived in my life, there was one sport that defined the word sport - you're spot on, it was Cricket. I looked up to ridiculously superhuman players - Lara, Warne, Dravid, Cronje, Azhar, Tendulkar, McGrath, Akram. They could do no wrong. All these players, I realized over the years, had flaws like me & you.  Azhar & Cronje broke my heart when they got involved in match-fixing in early 2000. That destroyed cricket for me. In February 2000 I moved to Australia. The way people played sport - any sport - was breathtakingly beautiful. Unlike Gavaskar [who played for ‘draws’] & Tendulkar [who played for ‘milestones’], Aussies played to ‘win’ - they played for the ‘team’. It was infectious & impossible not to fall in love with Australian killer instinct. Then started the jugg...

I don’t recall the precise date, but I know it was March, like it is now, of 2006. That’s 12 years ago. People say anyone who’s been a friend for longer than seven years is family. But, I’ve been friends with about 100-odd humans for 7-odd years now. I don’t think time alone makes someone family. How those years were lived is the defining factor. How two hearts interacted is the only thing that matters. You’re family & 12 goddamn years we’ve been together - bloody colossal. I reckon I wouldn’t be wrong in pronouncing ‘You & I’ are the only person with we both call family who wasn’t pre-decided by 'blood' or formed by 'making love'.  You & I love our blood families in our own ways. You & I have fallen in love with a girl with intensity fiercer than 2008 stock market crash. You & I have loved - You & I have been destroyed by its fire. You & I are still here. Far away & together. You have no idea how much I want the darn telep...

It was the winter of 1997 - January I reckon. I was in Grade X. A friend whose name I no longer recall informed me ‘I won’t be coming back.’ He wasn’t going to return to boarding school after the board exams in March. He wasn’t a close friend, yet I felt a vacuum. This was the first occasion I had ever felt this uneasy feeling about someone disappearing forever. This was the first occasion I consciously thought I would be losing a human I had shared food, classroom  & washroom  with. I recall sitting pensively on the academic block’s building’s pavement. Mr. Goel [our House Master & Maths teacher] noticed me. He came & sat next to me. He asked what was I reflecting so seriously about.  I told him. Then he said something I’ve never forgotten - mainly because life doesn’t let me. ‘We meet to depart.’ From that March of 1997 to March of 2018, people have met & left & they will continue to leave till it’s time for me to leave Eart...

When I was two-years-old, I lived alone in a rented ground floor room of a house as my parents were away at work during the day, till late evening. Most of the hours, I sat in front of a screen-window watching the world with my amazed little eyes. Instead of being scared, I revelled in the freedom. And mom has testified that I preferred staying home alone instead of crèche. I never cried and was calm as Buddha. May be not Buddha, but surely I was not a coward.  Indian DNA isn't corrupted, upbringing is. Gradually, over the years, the country of my birth has pushed me into becoming a full-bodied coward. And my life is a constant battle to keep a shred of soul, a sliver of dreams, a fragment of courage, a slice of honesty alive in me. Instead of Soul-Dreams-Courage-Honesty, this country is built & runs on Caste-Religion-Money and primarily Cowardice. As a kid when I played cricket with poor (cleaner’s sons) kids, my father reminded me of my caste (thakur) & ...

Shashi Tharoor’s speeches have been vandalising YouTube relentlessly like a broken record about how great India was, the amazing potential it has now, and the future looks spectacular. I swear to lord and his smarter cousin - satan, I’ve really tried, from the bottom of my soul, to like Mr. Tharoor, but even after I overlook his obnoxiously imperial vocabulary, it’s impossible to disregard his delusional assertions & implicit jingoism. Here’s the deal - He never got to witness what real world feels like because he won the first prize in the birth lottery - a multi-millionaire pedigree. When it comes to scholastic intelligence, Shashi will crucify me like Australia did India in the 2003 cricket World Cup final, but in raw street intelligence, I will turn the tables & knock him out in round one like Tyson did throughout most of his career.  If, like me, you’re going to JLF ’18 (Jaipur Literature Festival), take a glance at Shashi Tharoor’s shoes & then at mine....

Humans love falling in love. And the most reliable test of the authenticity of true love is longevity - if you fall in love with someone and you both stay together for decades - make babies & grow wrinkles together, everyone accepts that as the gold standard for eternal love. What about the love that doesn’t have decades of togetherness & wrinkles to boast of  - what about the love that didn’t culminate in lifelong marriage with kids to leave behind - what about the love that lasted a year, a few months, a month, two & a half weeks, four & a quarter days, one day. At times, people fall in love - a love that makes them shiver in blasting summers, a love that dazes them & makes them believe in miracles, a love that makes them feel things that even cocaine can’t, a love that destroys them & makes them come alive, a love that makes everything stop when they’re with their love, a love that makes them glow, flow, and float like the ducks, a love that m...