Part 1: Going, going, gone.
So I am back.

( Usually when I , or anyone else says “I’m back”, my first reaction to that is, ” And I am Mozart.” Once upon a joke and all that. )

The wedding went off quite well, and the Evil Relatives dispersed sans complaints ( except for a couple who tried to question my lack of “interest” in things of a mortal nature ). My parents are still in Baroda, still dining on Vegetarian thingamijigs, and I made up for all the deprived lifestyle of last week by gorging on loads of Hyderabadi Chicken soon after landing here.

One thing I should point out is that the community spirit of the Gujarati folk left me amazed. Neighbours, well-wishers, relatives of my brother-in-law’s family made our stay, and the wedding itself, an experience to remember. Enviable coordination and goodwill among the folks – my Evil Relatives ( myself included ) could learn something from all of them. The ladies joined the pre-wedding night Garba without a hint of self-consciousness – the Bride’s family had to be literally dragged to join them. Assamese people are not that good at letting their hair down – we do not have a Sangeet ceremony or the tradition of the Baaraatdancing all the way to the wedding hall. Assamese marriages are dry, solemn occasions – enjoyed mostly by the ladies who find them a nice excuse to get together and bitch about other ladies ( i.e those not within earshot) The guys sit quietly in a corner and try not to stare too much at the ladies mentioned above. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Until, of course, someone announces that food is served, at which two things simultaneously happen. A stampede towards the dining hall. A drying-up of conversation, because everyone is too busy chomping and chewing. And slowly, you realise that the ladies have stopped bitching about other ladies, and are bitching about the food instead.

I would love to tell you that this anti-Assamese blabber is all personal, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with my temper at this point of time because of which I am blabbering my guts out, but no. I insist. Assamese weddings are boring. They are long. And if they are held in the winter, there is a fair chance that the bridegroom will shiver to death.

Part 2: Encomium

It’s a joy to realise this, and it’s very hard to say this without sounding artificial, or forced, or just plain loony.

I am happy. I do not have any complaints with my life at this point of time. I have everything I could ask for, and even though I want more, I do not have any problems waiting for the right time. “The Right Time” – I feel like that wacko in The Matrix Revolutions ( incidentally, I saw the movie again on the IMAX screen just before leaving for Baroda) saying “It’s karma.” Karma, my ass. It’s all about patience, it’s about knowing the right people, and it’s about doing the right thing. Patience, I have learned to cultivate – a little, but that’s enough. I am immodest enough to believe that I have always done the right thing in life. And as for knowing the right people, heh heh, these people should prove my point.

Part 3: A Rush of Blood to the Head

Kim Newman’s Judgement of Tears: Book 3 of the Anno Dracula trilogy was awesome – a neat satire, a great storyline, a very good wrap-up to an engaging three-parter – and of course, the biggest quiz-resource I have come across in recent times.

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order – Vector Prime was kind of an anticlimax because I already knew the ending. Didn’t stop me from enjoying the story, though.

Batman: No Man’s Land volumes 1 thru 5. Finished in 2 nights of end-to-end reading. The trade paperbacks have many unanswered holes, but a well–written series, all the same. Most of it felt like Apocalyptic science fiction – more like an Elseworlds story than a DC Universe story.

How do you get a tired chap to forget sleep, hunger and excretory functions and remain awake until 3:30 AM staring at the computer screen? Simple, you give him the first 16 issues of Y:The Last Man in CBR format. Man. Hollywood can go take a hike, this is how the narrative potential of the comic-book can be used to devastating effect. My salutations, Mr Vaughn and Ms Guerra.

And of course, there was the Gotham comics fix of the month. JLA:Earth 2 which I had read earlier, Ultimate X:Men – return to Weapon X, Spiderman: Legend of the Spider-clan, and the monthly Ultimate Spiderman and Batman issues. Scrounging around at Landmark Chennai got me some 34 assorted comics, including one by Will Eisner called The Power – which made me realise why Eisner is so revered in the comic-book world. The Crossword at Baroda got me some more, highpoints being a copy of V for Vendetta#6 and some old Grimjack and Grendel.

A quick trip to best Book Stall yesterday brought in some good stuff. A hardcover copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, a book that has a tendency to get lost whenever I buy it. This is the third copy I have bought so far. Four issues of Heavy Metal magazine. A book called Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace by Bruce Dickinson, yes, the same guy, which was kept in the children’s section and contained some of the wittiest pornographic writing after Ted Mark. A copy of Walt Kelly’s Pogo – a Dell paperback. Brian Lumley’s Necroscope: The Lost Years. Greg Rucka’s Shooting at Midnight ( Rucka is a crime fiction writer who has written some good Batman storylines, and also some nice crime comics )

I decided not to bring up the fact that Best Book Stall is offering 82 volumes of Leather-Bound, gold-engraved Punch magazines, containing all the issues from 1841 to 1945, and each bearing the seal of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s personal Library, for sale. The price is a princely 60 000 rupees.

I feel like Swamp Thing. A Swamped Thing.

Or rather, My Sister’s Big Fat Assamese-Gujarati Wedding.

I am in Baroda now, somewhere in the suburbs, and the temperature is almost Hyderabadi – sunny days and breezy, slightly nippy nights. The reason why I am here, along with 20-odd members of my Evil Clan, is of course, my sister’s wedding. It’s on the First.

The last couple of days have been a flurry of travel schedules  – I was in Chennai for the Odyssey Quiz, which kicked ass. Mine. Then boarded a bus the same night to Hosur, and then changed buses to reach Bangalore. ( My advice: Never trust a Travel Agency named Muskaan Travels. The Muskaan refers to the grimace on your face that has frozen during the night, unable to withstand the icy wind raging inside through the windows of the bus. The windows are all single-panes of glass, designed in a way as to reduce inter-passenger confrontation about whether to leave them open or shut)

Anyways, Happy News A: I had won a bid for a batch of 48 Swamp Thing comics on eBay. Hooray!

Happy News B: Arul (Mani, the Man They Call God ) gave me four cds packed with CBR and CBZ files, notably the complete Groo comics by Sergio Aragones, and Sandman 1-75. Hooray!

Happy News C: Yesterday,  I met , ,and had a jolly good time. Hooray!

Of course, with all these Happy Things happening, the Law of Averages needed to catch up – and it did.

*sigh*

My Evil Relatives.

You know what? I have a weird family. We can collectively give the Kaurava-Pandava fracas a resounding snub. I mean, look at it this way, the Mahabharata is just 100 guys against 5 guys, and the rest of them folks in the Multi-Episode Epic were pretty clear about their priorities – they either join the hundred guys, or bet on the underdogs. My Family on the other hand is an ever-changing entity of a number of factions, and you never know who’s in which. So you have cases like A talking to B about C and D, and then A goes to C and badmouthing D and E, and by that time,  B and C have decided to give E the cold shoulder.

It’s been a night and a morning since the twenty-odd folks got together, and I feel fagged out already. Sheesh.

I have good things to look forward to. Notably, the bunch of Gotham comics I bought in bangalore. Ultimate X-Men, here I come!

There might be words of dissent about me being a spoilsport and a wet blanket, ,but hey, I am here to enjoy myself. And that’s precisely what I will be doing. My sister’s enjoying herself too, visiting Beauty Parlours and all. My parents have been doing things since morning that I can’t make any sense out of, and I choose not to.

There is a very high degree of Improbability that Sanghamitra, my senior and friend, would be reading this. In fact, Sanghamitra doesn’t even exist, she got her name changed some eight years ago. All the same, I need to talk to Sango. I need to tell her a story, and then I need to thank her.

Long, very long

So I went to Lucknow for the weekend, to conduct the Maestro General Quiz for IIM Lucknow’s Manfest. My journey to and from Lucknow was courtesy Sahara Airlines – and, well, it was fun.

For starters, I thought I was supposed to go on Saturday, and on Friday evening, I discover that the tickets that had come through the post had “16th January” written on them. Oh yes, me being me, I had not bothered to check for times and dates and such minor details – the quiz was on Sunday, so I assumed that the flight would be on Saturday. Panic button! A hasty trip to the Airport, and a couple of glib explanations later ( “ummm, I got the tickets by mail just this afternoon, after the flight had left!” ) the tickets were rescheduled to Saturday, with a six hour stopover in Delhi.

The morning flight on Saturday was delayed by a couple of minutes, and the evening flight by THREE hours – so it was ten thirty by the time I made it to Lucknow. The Indian Ocean concert was supposed to begin at 9:30 at IIM, so the guys there had told me to take a prepaid cab to the campus, and that they would foot the bill. No problemo – that was exactly what I did, and an eager taxi-wallah at the gate led the way to his car – a stately Ambassador that had seen better days. I love Ambassadors. I don’t bump my head on the car ceiling and I can be very generous about spreading my legs inside and I can pretend to be a Chief of State or something, and look down at the puny vehicles on the road. Ambassadors are, diplomatically speaking, Kings of the Road.

I should have been forewarned when, after opening the door for me ( “Waah”, I thought. “True Lucknavi politeness.”), and getting behind the wheel, the driver began a complicated process of jiggling some red wires and some green wires together. The car finally started, accompanied by some magnificent stutters and gasps, and we were off.

Let’s examine the state of things again, shall we? Unknown city, Late night, slight nip in the air – much chillier than Hyderabad, me inside a stately vehicle, looking outside and discerning very little activity, obviously Lucnow sleeps early – an occasional truck passing by, and a taxi or two. I have my newly-bought handycam with me, clutched in my lap, an airbag at my side, with thoughts of attending the Indian Ocean concert and making bootleg videos occasionally passing through my mind – and the thought of the Quiz-to-come, and slightly paranoid notes to myself – “did I remember to bring all the questions?” “Where have I left the audio-questions cd?” “Ooh, I hope the place has warm water.”

And suddenly there is a screech – and a crash, and the sound of a lot of things breaking at the same time – all three of the sounds emanating from the fact that the guy had somehow managed to ram the car into a HUGE truck!!!

What followed was slightly surreal. I was thrown against the driver’s seat, and thanks to the well-padded nature of the Ambassador, was spared any physical injury. Ditto the Handycam. ( I confess to thinking more about the cam than my limbs, which is another proof of how materialistic my priorities are ) My bag kinda flew off the seat, and ( i think ) hit the driver. The windshield developed some spidery cracks, and at first glimpse, I thought it was broken, because all I could see was white, and then I realised it was just the front of the car which had opened up and lay splayed against the windshield. The clatter I heard was various parts of the car falling to the road. And all at the same time, I am telling myself “OhmyGodiwillmisstheconcertOhmygodiwillmisstheconcert” over and over again.

The driver’s reaction was profound. A normal man would have screamed and cursed; he just mutters to himself, and rushes out of the car and jumps around trying to pick up all the pieces that have fallen off. Then he tries opening the door to his seat, presumably to drive the car to the side of the road, and the door refuses to open. I keep my bags aside and try to open his door, and the damned thing refuses to budge. Then he comes over to the backseat, and opens my door, and very politely says – “Very sorry sir. Looks like the car won’t move.” I tell you, his self-control amazed me.

And then, another taxi comes up by and by, and this guy tells the other guy to drop me off to the Institute. I refuse to keep my bags in the back of the car ( it already has two people inside, and their bags inside ) and we proceed to the Taj, where the original passengers were going. As the car moves along the highway, we repeatedly hear some weird clanking sound, and the driver assures us it’s just the engine working up because of the cold. Then midway, a car passes by with the passengers yelling something at us, and our driver suddenly stops the car, jumps out, and runs to shut the dicky, which was open all the while.

Lucknow, my friends, is a happening place. I kid you not.

Finally made it to the campus at about midnight, and as the guys there showed me my room, I could hear Ma Rewa being sung by the band, which was a sign that the concert was about to end. No Indian Ocean for me that day. Wasn’t it lucky that I already met them the last week, and talked to them and gave them chocolates and got autographs to my heart’s content?

Now that’s another story.