In 1613, William Shakespeare was putting the finishing touches on a play which, he claimed, was the best of all he had written so far. His investors were drooling with anticipation – a new Willie Shakespeare play! Even though The Tempest had grossed millions all around the Globe, they were eager to make one more killing on the theater market.
(Sicko note 1: The Globe Theater, in which Shakespeare himself had a stake, could hold a lot of people at one sitting, but what most people, including the producers,didn’t know was that there was a flourishing Black Market in ticket sales going on at that time. The tickets were being sold not on a per-person basis, but on a per-creature quota. So if you were filthy and hadn’t had a bath in a week, you were supposed to pay for all the fleas that came along with you. On an average, a Londoner would carry 500 fleas and other assorted critters on his body at any given point of time. So grossing a million viewers was as easy in the 1600’s as garnering TRP ratings for an Ekta Kapoor TV show in the early 2000’s. )

It was done. The play, supposedly a saga of a family divided, opened on May 14th, 1613 to a packed house. The audience waited with bated breath. An overzealous fan who had the good sense to bring some ears of corn along to chew during the show was almost choked to death by other overzealous fans who claimed that it was interfering with their Billing Rights.
Sicko Note 2: ( A Billing Right referred to the right side of a Shakespearean stage, it was where Willie Shakespeare would crouch in a nervous position, mouthing the dialogues along with the actors, and occasionally weep when the dialogue-delivery got too hokey. The Billing Right was also the place where the Shakey-Bakeys hung around – the official groupies, buxom young women who claimed to have the capacity to recite the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet from memory, and also those who screamed “Billy, We Love You!” in caps and bold at various points of a Shakespearean production.)

The curtains were drawn ( which is kind of metaphorical, because there were no curtains in the Globe Theater in those days, with all those rats around), and the Man came out. A hush. A cough. Shuffling in the seats. Another cough.

“Ahem.”

Silence.

“I bid thee welcome, fair ladies and merry men. Er, gentle men. ”

Applause. Which dies down as soon as WS raises his hand.

“It doth be all about loving thy family. ”

More applause.

“It doth be named Who be I to Thee.”

Thunderous applause. The crowd knew they were in for something good. The groupies squealed, “We love you, Bill!”

And thus the play started. Gaping mouths watched the venerable actors going about their onstage duties. One fellow, the tollkeeper at London Bridge, gaped so much he forgot to breathe, fortunately for him, he didn’t crash to the ground in his death spasms, there were just too many people ( and fleas) to hold his corpse aloft. (It was said that the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down” came out of children screaming the selfsame words when, after the show’s unfortunate conclusion, the body dropped to the ground )

And from the Billing Rights, Billy Shakespeare stared hard at his audience ( trying hard not to stare at the heaving bosoms of the groupies bouncing below him, because Mistress Hathaway was in the house, and she could kick Shakespearean ass when she wanted to ) and beheld their zombie-like expressions. He was exultant, because to all purposes, his play was a success, there was not a peep in the house, narry a rotten tomato to be seen. He had seen worse, back when Juliet had died in the original R&J and he had had to change the ending to make it a happier one, with Juliet and Romeo in a clinch. Those barbarians had wanted a bedroom scene thrown in at the end as well, but better sense prevailed( Thank God, he thought now, that I didn’t change the original manuscript. At least the Eye-ties and the Frogs will get to see Romeo& Juliet the way it was meant to be seen, with teary eyes and heaving hearts)

But what was this? Something was wrong. There was somebody muttering, and Willy could see flashes of red in the long cloaks of the theatre-goers. Oh no, he thought, not the tomatoes. Slowly, and trying very hard not to attract attention, William backed away further into the wings.

Onstage, the wedding bells dissolved. And another wedding couple came on. It was the fourth such sequence that had started. And the audience had had enough.

“We have had enough”, they screamed, one collective voice of indignation that swept through the Globe theatre.

And one bright young fella, a young poet who tried quaint rhyming devices to write love paens to all the flighty ladies of the East End suddenly had a bout of rhyming inspiration.

“KILL BILL!”, He screamed.

“KILL BILL!” The rest of them took it on. “KILL BILL. KILL BILL. KILL BILL”

The rest, as they say, is history. The Globe theater was burnt down. The blaze ignited the ears of corn the overzealous fan from para 2 had brought with himself, and well, popcorn came into existence. William Shakespeare, with his life and the final bound script intact, fled the land. A young chappie (name unknown) later claimed that it was he who had written the play, and he was lynched by the mob. (So the Globe owners did make a killing in the theater business after all) As it turned out, nobody took responsibility for who it was that wrote the play, and historians tried to fob off a guy named Marlowe as the culprit.

The bound script of that ill-fated play was last seen doing the rounds in a dilapidated warehouse in Parel, Mumbai in India. Some bright lad named Barjatya made a movie out of it, and since there were no synonyms for “Kill” that rhymed with “Barjatya”, he got away with it.

Kill Bill? Ah, now that‘s a movie to be proud of. I am glad I saw it last night. Great print, too.

Hyuk.

When I went to Guwahati last year, I remember listening to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill day in and out. If it had been a tape instead of a cd, I would have had to throw it away.

This time, it was not just one album. Maybe because I was travelling so much, instead of staying at home and listening to the mosquitoes humming Jean-Michel Jarre tunes in my ears. The first part of the journey was dedicated to Evanescence. Bring Me To Life hooked me to the point of insanity. Listening to My Immortal, Tourniquet and Whisper(which is sung with a full-scale choir) in a speeding bus, in the middle of the night – quite an experience. Amy Lee’s voice reminds me of Vasundhara Das ( or is that the other way round?)

Some part of the trip, I put Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced inside the discman, and whoa momma, is it good, or what! The sneer that accompanies every line of Foxy Lady, the jackhammer guitars of Purple Haze and Hey Joe and Are You Experienced… of course I had heard them all before, but the pleasure of listening to those songs on a journey was kind of unparalleled.

Tehzeeb and Boys were always there, at the end of a tiring trek or a long train ride.

My R.AT (Rahman Acknowledgement Time) has soared up! I don’t believe this!!! It happened this way – I was on the train and I had put on my ARR-mp3 cd, and set the playback to random. It took me TWELVE seconds to figure out that the song that started was Ennavale from Kaadhalan. TWELVE seconds. It felt like twelve years, every year being a racking of the brains, as invisible neuron-charges mapped flute-sounds to songs, and songs to time-periods, and time-periods to movies. (I am trying to give an explanation of how R.A.T levels normally work ). Sigh. It was only when the female humming that gave me the answer. I am mortified. I need to go take a break from normal life or something….and listen to nothing else but ARR for the next few weeks.

Literature: I re-read the wonderful Tad Williams story The Gypsy Prince from Tales of the White Wolf, which is a tribute to Michael Moorcock’s Elric by various authors like Gaiman, Williams, Nancy Collins. The specialty of this story is that it features a Fantasy version of Jimi Hendrix ( yep, him again! ) – in his incarnation of Shemei Uendrijj, the gypsy prince, who wields Cloudhurler ( a word-play on Stratocaster ) – the entire story being told from the point of view of a stoned hippie, a Hendrix fan, who gets transported to Elric’s world while on an acid trip, with the uncanny power to shapeshift into a giant or a dwarf, depending on his mood. Hilarious!

Began Anne Rice‘s The Witching Hour, which, I must confess, has got to be the best Rice novel I have read in a long time. It’s history, myth, horror, erotica blended to make a heady concoction. It makes me, among other things, want to go to New Orleans and drink in the atmosphere of that city. It actually gave me the creeps to think of The Talamasca, the enigmatic group of paranormal observers. “We watch and we are always here.” It’s a whopper of a dynastic saga, and, oh-my-god, I would hate to finish it. (Yes, I still have a hundred-odd pages to go, and I am going at something like 2 pages per night )Thank you, Ms Rice, for the experience.

Interesting note: Two of the scarier books I have read were both on trains. Stephen King’s The Shining was one, which I finished on a journey from Delhi to Guwahati, and I remember shivering on the upper berth, and closing the book from time to time and looking down at my friends just to ensure myself that there was no snow outside and there was no hotel and I wasn’t trapped in a bathroom and there wasn’t a rotting body in the bathtub. This book was the second of the two. Boys was the saving grace this time.

I chanced upon William Buck’s version of The Ramayana in Gol Park, Calcutta. Things have changed a lot there with a new fly-over near the park, and a new ( and lousy!) Planet M outlet nearby, but the old bookshops still stand, and the collections remain as eclectic as they were five years ago.

The last couple of days were hectic, what with a trip to Warangal for TriviumMMIIIAD, where I conducted the Music’n Movies Quiz. Met up vrikodhara and all the other juniors. Thankfully they liked the quiz. Heh. Again, nothing much has changed in that place…even the rags they write at all the fests are full of the same half-baked puns and semi-literate ego-bashing. Funny, but I have never come across any REC “bulletin” that praises an effort by someone.

Man, I sound so bloomin’ sanctimonious.

On the first day, we visited the first Two of the Evil Relatives.

On the second day, we went to the Kamakhya temple ( on a hilltop) and the Umananda temple ( on an island in the middle of the Brahmaputra )

On the third day, we wended our way to the rainy peaks of Shillong.

On the fourth day, we slept for quite sometime, and Sasi saw the delights Guwahati and Sualkuchi had to offer.

On the fifth day, we slept some more, and in the afternoon, we visited the next Evil Relative. .

On the sixth day, we faced some more interesting Evil Relatives, and tried to break previous sleep-records.

On the seventh day, I burnt cds while Psasi made pleasant conversation. The earthen lamps looked beautiful at night.

On the eighth day, we started The Tour. First stop: Golaghat. Duck meat. Bamboo-shoot pickle. Tea gardens. Late-night Discussions. More cd-burning for me.

On the ninth day, ephelunts. Or rather, one ephelunt. A long trip into the bowels of the jungle. A rhinoceros on the path. Lunch on a ramshackle boat on the Diphlu river. Kaziranga National Park was an awesome experience.

On the ninth day, we continued The Tour. From Golaghat to Dibrugarh to Digboi, home of my ancestors. Tea gardens galore on the way. For some odd reason, the five-hour journey took some nine hours.

On the tenth day, we toured Digboi. Visited the refinery, the oilfields, the newly inaugurated OIL museum, the golf course in Digboi. More Evil Relatives. The colonial ambience of Digboi gives me goosepimples everytime, it’s like a piece of Heaven hidden away, seperated from time. Family legend has it that anyone from my family can go inside any house in Digboi and be recognised and welcomed. ( Both my mother and father come from that place) This proved kinda true, when I started talking to the curator of the museum and she turned out to be an uncle’s sister-in-law.

On the eleventh day, we were back in Guwahati, and visited the Last Evil Relative.

On the twelfth day, we discovered that buying cds on the Kamrup Express is not a good idea.

On the thirteenth day, a storm heralded our arrival at Calcutta, and the IIM-Calcutta LAN made sure that I went berserk. I had my first Cafe Mocha in 14 days, and also travelled via the Metro Railway for the first time. And then I came back and started burning cds.

On the fourteenth day, Sasi assumed the role of The Psycopathic Tourist Who Gazes at Oil Paintings in Museums and Visits Planetariums and Then Goes To See Gangs of New York. And I coughed and colded and burnt more cds.

On the fifteenth day, we paid three hundred rupees ( instead of 150 )to a Taxi Driver for getting us to the station at Five Thirty in the morning, and then waited for five hours at the platform, for the Train had a bad case of the runs. (It wasn’t running on time, you see) And finally, after a gap of 24 hours, I slept. In my dreams, I saw cds whirling, the small icon of Nero seductively beckoning to me.

On the sixteenth day, I came home, which was much cleaner than I had expected it to be. And wallowed in love and affection.

On the seventeenth day, I Found Nemo. And it was good.

On the eighteenth day, The Answers are about to revealed. Just three more hours to go.

i have just walked up a hill, washed my feet in a snake-infested pool, trodden on blood, paan-juice and goat-dung, stood in the sun for an hour, contributed to the general sonic pandemonium by ringing two loud temp,lke bells, seen a goat’s severed head used as a candle-stand, warded off pandits begging for money. And I am supposed to feel religious. Freakus Religiosa.

/*went to Kamakhya temple after a gap of thirteen years. The blood was from animals that are sacrificed, the carcasses are carried around the main temple building, in order to ensure that the goddess is aware of the kill.*/

* * *
Man, I feel like a tourist in my own home-town. Heh heh heh.

* * *
MY father rented this car for us to go around the city and to Shillong. The driver was a psycho chap who would play Tere Naam and then at our request put on Kandisa or Talvin Singh and then his auditory senses would rebel and he would put on Tere Naam again. Then sometime during the Shillong trip, he put on a remix album which had some guys singing “hari Bol” in the chorus of Jaane Kya Hoga Raama Rey from Kaante.

* * *
The smell of urine on the Guwahati roads is subtly different from that on the streets of Hyderabad.

* * *
Stuff we didn’t get in the shark-infested waters of Shillong ( that’s a metaphor, Shillong does not have sharks. Not even when it’s raining) :-

1) Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita DVD.
2) Apocalypse Now Redux DVD.
3) Jag Mundhra’s Tales from the Kamasutra, which incidentally has Rajeshwari Sachdev in a…er….meaty role.
4) Chasing Amy DVD.
5) The Beatles: Yellow submarine audio cd.

The DVDs were all available for 200 rupees, and the audio cd, which was originally priced at 85, miraculously increased to 120 when i showed some interest in it.

* * *
First reaction when someone hears Boys:- ‘I need a copy’.

* * *
I seem to be getting slightly wary of Sasi’s copy of Lonely Planet. Hard to believe that I stayed in Guwahati for fifteen years and he knows more about where so-and-so hotel is, or where this site of historical importance is. Hmmm. Maybe i can trash it when he’s sleeping.

* * *
We go to Kaziranga tomorrow. To ride the ephelunts.

* * *
I am supposed to be on a vacation and Psasi wakes me up every morning before eight.

* * *
The keyboard sucks.

I leave for Guwahati tomorrow. Two weeks vacation with psasidhar with (hopefully ) lots of places to visit. I am going there after a year, no doubt everything will be the same – bad roads, misty mornings, evil relatives, oranges, my room….

Last night there was a distinct chill in the air as I was coming back from Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon ( which, incidentally is a fantastic movie ), and it made me so happy – it’s winter again! My favourite season!

Once upon a time, I would get really psyched up when October ended, because that meant the Guwahati Book Fair was near. The book fair would be held at around the end of December – the usual date was Dec 29, and it continued for about ten to twelve days.

What I am gung-ho about:-
1. home-made food ( which I will get bored of in two days)
2. meeting some cousins and old friends ( subz3r0, you there?) ( again, I will get chaatofied and I know I will end up spending most of my time at home )
3. Diwali with my parents. (hmmm…..no fireworks, of course. I am a Target brat. )
4. My room. I am saying this twice. My room. Hee hee hee ho ho ha ha.
5. Shillong. Which I think I can convince my father to allow us to go on a bike. ( In case you didn’t know, I have the set of the most protective parents in the whole freakin’ world, to whom the combination of “senior” and “motorcycle” spells “doom” )
6. Oranges. Lots of oranges. ( Matrix-like sequence of looooooong shelves whizzing past me, filled to the brim with juicy oranges. Ooh. I am horny. Kind of. )

Wheeee. I just got the DVDs of Roja and Bombay.