How on Earth? How?

The more I think about it, the more intriguing it becomes. How on earth can a company get everything - just about everything - right, in the mind-bogglingly complex world of consumer electronics, with established deep-pocketed players, a demanding and hence extremely fickle consumer mindset and booming technology that renders every novel thing "so yesterday" in a few months (or even few weeks) time?

I am talking about Apple. The half-eaten fruit that has fully eaten up many players, digested them and thrown them out of its arse.

I am so overwhelmed while writing this that I don't know where to start. But because I have to start somewhere, let me begin with some quite shockingly iconoclastic traits that the Apple devices possess:

• When everyone is asking for more features to be packed into the tiniest of packages, how can an iPod have just one clickwheel, no in-line recording and no FM radio?
• When it's all about showing off your personality and hence the colour of your device, how can you have a music player with just one colour (the colourful iPods came much later, it was just plain white for a very long time)
• Apple has legendary marketing and branding skills. We all know that. But then, how can you create probably the only portable device in the entire history of portable devices that doesn't have your name and logo on the front of the device (and lose the opportunity to have it appearing in photographs across the print media when a new device is launched)
• When variety is the flavour of the season, how can you have just one kind of iPod for a long time? Even today, there is only one iPhone. One look, one set of features. (if we ignore relatively minor things such as OS upgrades, internal memory etc., that is). Look at Nokia. Look at just their N series. How many varieties? How can just one phone model give all other high-end phones a run for their money?
• Today standardization and flexibility is the name of the game. Give us standard micro USB chargers and USB interface. Give us standard bluetooth control. Standard memory cards. Standard video support (e.g. DivX support). In such times, how can you create a device that doesn't support any standard video formats, doesn't allow you to put a memory card of your own, doesn't support standard bluetooth control features, doesn't allow you to replace battery or memory and doesn't have a standard USB interface? How?

I have probably said enough. Apple is by far one of the greatest iconoclasts of our times that has repeatedly proved several trade pundits (who tried to predict consumer preferences and market trends) wrong, left, right, top and bottom. I can't help but marvel at the ability of Steve Jobs to make decisions that in retrospect could have looked like an organized suicide.

Now-a-days, every time a new top-end phone is launched, News headlines go ballistic crying "iPhone killer" all over. Let alone killing, these phones are not even within close distance of iPhone, a phenomenon that it is. While most of these much-publicised devices have failed to latch on to consumer sentiments, iPhone has only grown. And grown fast selling millions each year. There are phones out there with all kind of features that are in vogue today. In contrast, iPhone releases just one feature at a time and still consumers suck up to it. And every time it releases a new feature, it makes a lot of money charging for additional features. Like the recent OS 3.o upgrade for iPod touch owners.

How can you get ideas seemingly from nowhere on how to wade through this horrifyingly complex business and get it right every time?

Thinking simple. That's all I can make out with my humble brain. Quite surprisingly, Apple works for all the reasons that one would predict it would fail for.

Here is why apple works:

• Simplicity in features (or rather lack of features) with a very high focus on design, usability along with a big price tag makes apple devices exclusive and help them clearly stand apart in a race of features (No more "Does your player have recording facility? Mine has") People who own iPods just have iPods. Not a set of features cobbled together in a device.
• Limited variety (just one iPhone, just one kind of iPod..well for the most part) generates more media focus, instead of being dissipated across multiple model launches. It also helped create an astonishingly large array of iPod/iPhone compatible accessories (such as docking stations, arm bands, cases etc.) creating a further consumer pull. Others, because of their varied models, lost out on accessories.
• On the software front, developers are going crazy over Apple software because both iPod touch and iPhone have the same softwares in them and are of the same exact size. This creates a large ecosystem of users who they can target. Multiple sizes / softwares wouldn't have worked this great
• Avoiding working with multiple partners: Sure Apple doesn't provide GSM services. But look at it...it has its own music store, own music transfer software iTunes, own hardware and own OS on that hardware and its own Application Store (talking about flexibility, you can't put a software on your iPhone unless you hack it and void the warranty). It therefore has an incredible control on the quality and features that it delivers to its customers. All that an iPod ever needs by way of service is a reset. Nothing goes wrong in that device or its software. My other mp3 player died in an year. I have vowed not to touch anything but iPods, at least for the foreseeable future.
• Inflexibility for greater profit and feature/quality control: You allow people to replace batteries and they would put cheap Chinese ones. Allow them to put memory cards and they would put corrupt or virus inflicted ones. Limiting experimentation on the device make sound sense for greater control on device design (how can you expect a shiny polished flawless steel back-cover if you wanted a replaceable battery?) and build quality. It also helps prolong the life of the device and earn extra bucks for Apple through supply of original Apple spares / accessories.

There is only one rule to reach the top. Break all the rules. You will either sink or you would lead. You won't drift at least. If you just drift, you can never lead. Large companies (I could mean the Sony's, Samsung's and LG's) may not be breaking too many rules today, but they must have on their way to become what they are today.

Illogical Involuntaries

I tore open the packet hoping nothing except what I thought it would contain. And then as I was about to throw the envelope into the trash can, a neatly folded paper floated out, settling quickly onto the floor. I picked it up and there it was! A letter. A Letter in the truest sense. An old-world letter. The kind that is written with fingers joined. When an impatient pen touches a waiting paper. Not the kind that is punched onto raised plastic buttons throwing some random sequence of 0's and 1's into a heated mess of silicon junk. With fingers separate.

A Rakhi. With a letter. From a sister I speak to on phone every week.

I initially thought it was stupid. Or completely silly. Or may be just a thought. A false thought. Illusion. How can my eyes be moist? I speak to her so often. Now-a-days, we are meeting a bit more frequently too. What difference can a letter really make when I spend megabytes of airwaves talking to her?

And then a drop lands on the unfolded sheet. Oh no! I can't cry like this. It's so embarassing. And for what reason? A letter?

Yeah, a letter. I realize.

Rakhi is the only occasion when sometimes, just sometimes, I receive letters. From my two sisters to be precise.

A little bit of enquiry. How my brother is doing in an alien land. Is he taking care of his health. Is he eating properly. Is he sleeping well and trying to work a bit less.
A little bit of lamentation. We aren't fortunate enough a tie a Rakhi on his wrists. We are'nt lucky enough to share a sweet broken by our teeth.
A little bit of wish. Let the Gods shower flower on the road he takes. May he be the happiest person on the earth. May he have no obstacles ever on his way.

These are the letters I have grown up with. Since my childhood, I have compared my notes with my elder sister. I have corrected the notes of my younger sister. The letters have a face. They have an old identity in them. There is a smell in them. The way the "Bha" of "Bhai" curls or way the sentences droop. The way typos are corrected or the way words are chosen. It's our childhood that the paper carries with it. Unlike an email, it carries with it bits of my sister. The motion of her hands that is so familiar to me. The memories of those days.

How can it be compared to an email? Or an SMS?

How have things changed! In the times of instant gratification, the charm of waiting is gone. But if you think, waiting is not such a bad thing after all. I remember the days when I used to write letters to someone who I was trying to establish a romantic relationship with (albeit unsuccessfully). You write a letter and wait for a reply. You wait for days, sometimes weeks. But somewhere in the corner of your heart you believe that a reply would come. In the pile that the postman dumps in the common room, one day you would have your name written. It set offs possibilities, expectations, fears and excitements. The process of waiting is not waiting really. There is no waiting for something. It is the thing.

I look around my cubicle. No. No one is looking at me. I wipe my eyes by the sleeves of my shirt with a flick of my shoulder. It's so illogical, I am tempted to think. But I could do nothing to stop my tears, even though I kept on telling myself that this isn't happening.

We are today a crowd that swears by words such as voluntary, logical, methodical, certainty.

But sometimes involuntary things do happen to us that we might want to call illogical. But sometimes they are as logical as anything in the world can be. Just that we fail to make a distinction. Between what is logical and what isn't.

Have You Arrived?

How do you really define "Success"?

What do people mean when they say someone is successful? Do they mean that the person they call "Successful" has reached a certain threshold that they aspire to reach themselves? Or there is an absolute minimum to be reached? Is there a threshold of achivement beyond which one could be called 'Successful'? Who decides that threshold? Why can't I call myself successful?

Let's take an example. Is a man who is just declared "Successful" by newspaper headlines today not one yesterday? Why not? What did he to today to become sucessful? Assuming that he is capabable of achieving more and there are already people who have achieved much more than him, why are we calling him successful today? Would a film star be called successful if he gives just one hit? If not then how many hits? If yes, then why? He could give five flops tomorrow and his career might be finished. Are we being premature?

A young man, who leaves his village for a decent paying job in a city like Mumbai might be called successful back home. His folks back in his village might look at the way he dresses, the way he talks and the way he spends money, and marvel at it. "Look at him", they might say, "he has become a big man". But this guy would be a nobody in Mumbai. A nondescript face in a vast sea of humanity.

The example above probably was an extreme case, but the point is if success is so relative, how can I find my place in the hierarchy of life's achievements? Is it a constant attempt to define and redefine yourself? Your priorities, your happiness, your contentment? If I am happy with myself, am I successful? Or, let's say if I think I am successful, but I am not happy at all, am I really "Successful"?

When I think I could one day lead a happy life doing what I love to do, I am always assaulted by the fact that I can meet someone one day who would tell me that I am happy with myself because I have stopped trying to reach greater heights. He would say people who want to reach heights of success are in a perpetual state of unhappiness. And this unhappiness drives them further.

But this confuses me further.

Given that each of us lives a different life under different circumstances and contributes differently to the society we live in, is it possible that we have as many definitions of success (if not more) as there are people?

When I look at myself and try to find my own definition of success, I am assaulted by conflicting theories that I myself put forward and many cases people around me throw at me.

Am I successful? Am I not? Do I want to become one? Do I not?

What?

The curious case of Lux Cozi

As I type these letters from my dirt-covered keyboard (did you know that keyboards are among the dirtiest places in a household, next only to the toilet?), I am not sure whether I want to write this post at all. It's a late hour of night, 12:08 am to be precise and I am, as usual, almost. However, I do have an odd liking towards sleep-writing (is there a specific word for it - may be somnamgraphism?) after a friend of mine jokingly mentioned to me that all my posts that were written while I felt sleepy were particularly intesting. He could actually be true. When you are sleepy, or drunk or may be about to die, your mind is perhaps uncluttered. It's heavy, but it's clear too. Thoughts that deeply belong to you and sit somewhere inside some dark alley of your intricate neural network suddenly come out in the open when you are semi-conscious. Inhibition drops like a loose trouser and your true self shows (okay, bad comparison, agreed. I blame it on my state of mind :) ). One of my engineering friends who could hardly utter a word in English during his campus placement interview spoke in absolutely fluent English that night when he got sufficiently drunk. He drank for not making it through.

I am digressing. Yeah, the topic is something else. The Lux thing.
Yeah.
Give me a second. I am coming back to my senses.

Rarely you do come across ads that sweeps you off your feet. In a grotesquely negative sense, that is. Or scrwes up your senses really badly. You wonder who, after eating what, under what circumstances and under whose supervision created that ad. Lux Cozi is one such thing.

Why does someone buy an undershirt? To get lucky? "Apna luck pehenke chalo" goes the tagline. Wow! Out of every other possibility in the world, all they could think of is "Luck" as a selling proposition for an undershirt? The product has a series of ad-films featuring Sunny Deol, the greatest dancer of modern times and a plump kid who goes as a sidekick to apna son-of-dog-blood-drinker. The ads too are as innovative as a senile governmet official waiting for retirement.

I want to write more. I am usually so turned off after watching the Lux Cozi ad that if you slip a pen and a pencil (or a screen and a keyboard for that matter) through my fingers, I could go on writing pages. But now is not a good time. It has been a long time since I last watched the TV commercial of Lux Cozi and my eyes have alreay started a mutiny against my brains. I will probably come back to this post later and edit it, once I chance upon a fresh telecast.

For now, Goodnight!

That Feeling!

You look at the clock. It's 5 minutes to 10. You know you have five minutes to gather yourself, draw the legs of your pressed pair of trousers upon yourself, wrap the trouser waist around your hanging striped shirt with buttons yet to find their respective holes, plug that fattening (from credit card slips, forgotten invoices, occasional self-photos and a motley of obscure visiting cards) wallet into your back pocket, toss the car keys into the left pocket and mobile into the right, guess out belt hoops and weave the snaking leather into it, grab a stale sandwich from the covered plate on the dining table, run the fingery comb through the still-wet hair, glance for a second at your reflection passing behind the mirror, secure your feet and rush out, half-closing the door. You know all that. And you have done that, year after year after year. With practiced ease and nonchalance.

Today, however, it's a bit different. You still look at the ticking clock. Yes, five minutes to 10.

Just as you pull the trouser on yourself, pull blood to your leg muscles in an attempt to sprint, you see a pair of little legs on your bed kick air. You see little hands clenching and unclenching and cutting the cake of air at random angles. You hear faint cough sounds, exaggerated breath sounds. You hear this beside your pale sleepless wife, who has just closed her eyes, swollen with unspent nights. You have faint memory of the previous night; lights being turned on, cry-sounds, someone sitting up on the bed with bleary drowsy eyes till the next time you woke up again to find her still sitting on the bed, with a bundle in hand, hushing it, shaking it to silence. You had gone back to sleep, partly concerned, partly unconcerned. But when you have taken your bath and have freshened up, the faint images of last night pin you to the wall and spill guilt from your perforated skin.

So you decide while still looking at the clock. Unsure. For sure. You take the bundle in your hand before it explodes and wakes up everyone in its wake. You don't want that to happen. You feel responsible. Embarrassed. Guilty. Loved. Rather possessed by love. A salad of emotions.

Little legs kick your gut. They rumple the pressed shirt. They enter the gaps between button holes. A warm softness presses against your chest. Tiny nails scratch your face-wash dried cheeks. Ooops! hurts. You bring your face closer. Milky air hangs loosely around. And the clock ticks away. It shatters your thresholds, limits, estimations, calculations. No, you can't reach in time. You know that by now. But you are fettered. By the looks from large eyeballs in small sockets. A tiny mound of a nose with flared nostrils. Two lines of lips that curve like a beak.

The expression on the face of the bundle changes. Thousands lines of white appear on the skin of pink. You know that the explosion is not far away. In a Hollywoodian effort, you throw all your tricks to diffuse the bomb. In silence. With each tick of the ignored clock, you see your efforts failing. What if he starts a full-scale weep? You sweat from concern. From anticipation. But you still keep at it.

Your hands ache from patting. Your waist feel numb. But there isn't much scope to correct the position and restart the diffusion process. So you hang on. With an aching body, you shake that soft puddle of moving flesh and soak up every moment of it. But those large eyes are still looking from behind the wide-open lids. You feel tired. Spent.

You look around. Your wife's sleepy face. The ceiling with a fan hanging from it. The trespassing rays of the morning sun through curtain gaps. And then back to your undulating lap. And you notice tiny lids closing down. An elation runs through your anatomy like an electric spark. You feel the moment of "Yes, I can" as you keep working at it till the tiny lump falls silent, motionless.

What you feel is a strange feeling. As if nothing else matters. Your 35-hours work-days fade into trivialities, tight deadlines lose their significance, boardroom presentations seem like water cooler talks. That rush of blood tells you that NOW you have really arrived. The sense of achievement and even more, the contentment dwarfs every bit of success that you have ever felt in your life.

You look at the loveliest thing you have ever created and smile into the thinning air at that defining moment of success. What a feeling! The clock stops. It runs out of ticks.

Slamina

They saw Heaven get emptied. They knew timing was everything. Because who doesn't want a piece of the Heaven? So they both came running. From opposite sides. The thin fast. The thinner a little slow. While they ran for the Heaven, the Gods watched. But how did they watch? Amused? Confused?

The climb was steep. But who thinks the Heaven is in easy reach, anyway? They both clambered, fell, retried. Oh, a game had started. Between two luckiest beings of the earth. Because you don't get around to have this everyday. A chance to rip open the oh-so-beautiful Heaven and drown yourself in it. What a feeling!

Yes, that is what they did. When they finally climbed into where it lay, they rummaged through it, desperate, expectant, delighted and disppointed at the other's presence. They snatched it from each other. The dog and the girl. In the municipality garbage bin, they put their faces into the now-torn polyethylene bags from which stinky yellowy stale Heaven flowed out. The Gods after watching for a while, moved back into the restaurant kitchen.

I wish I hadn't watched it. I tried to stay away from the Heaven, like all human being would for as long as they could. Behind the dark glasses of my vehicle. I pulled the button to lift the glass shut, but it was too late. The stink had entered. And had invaded my insides. I was dead.

A tinted-glassed four-wheeler with a dead human being inside kicked off dirt on the Heaven, inside which the struggle for life (not death mind you, as you would usually expect) raged between two four-leggeds.

Oh..., if you are still wondering about the title, read it backwards.

Did someone say Trucker?

The muddy amber light in a shape of a round-edged square flashed through my windscreen as I waited at the signal. The rusted wood-metal body of the weathered truck stood in front of me, its tattered tires still on the tar of the drain-water polished road, blocking my view of the signal lights. Slightly irriatated, I turned my car a little to the left and could see the hanging digital clock counting down to green. The blazing red of the signal glowed hopelessly as the santros marutis optras civics of the civilized world nochalantly turned right and moved on, on the lawless road.

I couldn't see what stood ahead of the truck. I was almost certain that there was some sensible head inside a car that blocked that truck's way, which otherwise would most certainly have jumped the alternating sequence of indifferent colours.

And then the truck moved. As it turned right, I looked ahead and realized that nothing was blocking its way. All this while, the truck judiciously had followed the traffic rule at signal that many of my colleagues gleefully jumped. And then, a naked black body rotating a black wheel while sitting high above the optras and civics faded into the the black of the night, away from civilized headlights as the truck took another turn, onto a path less travelled.

Yes, he could. But many of us couldn't. Because civilization is not about what you sit inside. It's about what sits inside you!

The Business of Tragedy

As most of us seated on their drawing room sofas watched with horror the terrible turn of events unfold on the tv screen and read from the internet real-life terror accounts of survivors - for whom clock had stopped inside the two ill-fated luxury hotels Taj and Oberoi-Trident in Mumbai - I couldn't stop looking at the business angle to all this. You can call me perverse, but let me tell you, I wouldn't be writing this if it were not for one particular utterly money-worshipping news channel that tried to mint money even at this hour of national tragedy.

But first, the innocuous business connections. This was probabaly unintended, but I couldn't help but notice the number of times the word "Blackberry" appeared in all the news articles. Many people held hostage inside the hotels got continuous feed of the developments through their Blackberry devices. Others sent out SOS emails to officials and their relatives. Couple of foreign journalists provided minute-by-minute update of the NSG operation to their respective international news sites through their Blackberrys. Given that this was an event watched closely by the international community, Blackberry couldn't be happier. The attention it drew to its handheld device was tremendous and worth hundreds of million of advertisement dollars. All for absolutely free. Another obvious beneficiary is Kuoni Travels, whose board neatly placed at the Taj entrace was aired for several hundred minutes on all news channels without the company spending even a penny for such huge airtime.

Now the true champions of tradegy-business - the news channel I was talking about. On the channel, I was looking at the screen that played images of the last journey of martyrs who died fighting for the country. Suddenly, the screen started showing names of each of the serving officers who laid down his life and urged viewers to start SMSing! I can understand if the SMS is to provide an opinion on the terror strickes or vote for a sensitive question on national security. To my utter disgust, the screen showed a glowing "digital" candle with a text below urging viewers to "keep sending SMSes by typing 'SALAAM' and sending it to some goddamn number so that the candle keeps burning in the honour of the martyrs"! Basically it wanted us to believe that as long as we kept sending SMSes, the candle would keep burning. As if it costs the channel a bomb to keep the digital candle "burning" on the screen. What the hell, I thought. How would it help if all of us were to send 'SALAAM' messages to the channel's number?

Of course, it won't help anybody except the channel which would make a lot of money out of all the SMSes. Each SMS is a premium SMS and while you end up paying Rs. 3 or 6 or whatever for each message, the money that you pay is comfortably distributed by the Telecom company and the Channel. What a perverted way to make money!

Life or Religion?

Every time I go into a discussion with someone on the kind of things (read blasts) happening in our country, I come out frustrated. People talk about how the members of a community should be out of this country, how they are better off in Pakistan and how they are meant to do things like that, because their religion is like that only. How true! And what about us? We hindus? We are a great bunch of people, peace loving, unharming. Isn’t it? What about Babri Masjid and Godhra carnage, where either with full state support or with state turning a blind eye, thousands of innocent people were murdered in broad daylight? I know we have a torn and painful history, but leaving aside the incidents during the partition of India, how many blasts took place in independent India carried out by the members of the other community before the Babri Masjid and Mumbai riots?

If with state support we kill people who are already marginalized, have less access to education and are fewer in number, what do you think the reaction would be? It is there for all of us to see. While terrorism can never be justified, what needs to be understood is its causes and reasons. I have no doubt that Hindus are primarily responsible. And now it seems that some of our spiritual leaders have left pursuing the spirit and started collecting RDX instead. Does the path to God lead via RDX?

Now let’s talk about Hinduism a bit. You see Hinduism is, without a speck of doubt, the greatest religion the world has ever produced. We are a bunch of peace-loving, unharming people who grew up on Bhagawat Gita and the valiant deeds of Ram and Krishna. Valiant they were, because they represented the prevail of good over evil. And how? Since our childhoods, We have been fed on the minutest details of how the good vanquished the evil…the gorier it is, the better is the prevalence of good, probably. The blood dripping arm of Dushasan - severed by the brute force of Bhima - wetting the untied hair of Draupadi, Krishna splitting the body of Jarasandha into two, ripping him from his groin to head by pulling apart his legs, A lion-faced Narsimha laying flat Hiranyakashipu on his laps and tearing apart his heart in his lion-nails…the victory of Good marches on. And I am not even talking about the extremely trivial instances of beheading the evil incarnations or killing them in some other way that doesn’t involve too much of their evil blood.

So what? You may ask. Those were mythical instances of driving the message home…that after all good pervades. Perfect, only except the fact that for us mere mortals, differentiating between the Good and Evil may not be such an easy answer after all. And the moment you think someone (or rather some community) to be the Evil, then there is no one stopping you. Because from our Mythology, we know of all the nice, justified and apt methods to finish off the bloody evil (human beings in our case)

You see, we are a religion that believes in Karma and again..may I ask…how? Oh, by dividing the human race (read Hindu race) is so many castes and sub-castes (based on their Karma, right?), super and sub-sub-castes that those who are out there to find the constituent of an atom by breaking it up in an automatic hedron collider would be put to absolute shame. What a belief in Karma!

The intention of my article is not to bash my own community. It’s meant for some introspection. Just because we are a majority, we needn’t always be right. Just because we ourselves belong to a religion, it need not be the best thing the world has ever produced.

Memories of a Man

Exactly one year ago, after my dinner at night, my mom had called me to say that my grandfather is probably no more. She used probably to lessen the shock it would have on me, because last time I had seen him, he showed no signs of the plans he had in his mind. Plans to leave us, me, unexpectedly, for a place from where painful memories stream into you for as long as you live. He was perfectly fit, an athletic that he was, walked upright and enquired about me, from my job to bringing home his grand grand kid. How would he have loved to see the four generations of us sitting in the lap of one another smiling smiles from different ages! From different worlds separated by times of a lifetime.

I remember the days when I used to walk holding his hand. He was the tallest at home and hence, I loved most to climb onto his shoulders, as it afforded me the maximun view of the world around me. And also the thrill of maximum height from ground. When about to fall, I held on to his hair, not realizing then how it must have hurt him. He would smile and say, "Don't make me like your father". He hadn't lost his hair till he lost his life. Before his aftennoon siestas I used to sit hear him with a grain of paddy to pick and pull his grey hairs. And massage his enormous body to sleep.

He was my greatest saviour. I hid behind him to save myself from my parent's fury when I messed up with my homework or hit my younger sister. Or ventured into the kitchen and ate something I shouldn't have eaten. No one dared pull me from his clutches. It was a place where I got supreme protection from the vagaries of the world. In the loving cocoon of his arms I saw myself grow into an unfaithful someone who hardly now remembers him, unless he is called up and made to remember his grandfather's death anniversary.

There have been innumerable wintry nights when I had escaped from my bed and slipped under his blanket into the warm comforting feeling of his chest. I would put my legs on top of him and dig my face into his neck. He would curl his hands around me and I would sleep stiller than death. He slept only after I did and when I ran a temperature and couldn't sleep, he would pat me and run his fingers through my hair. I would love the coolness of his body then. He would caress his hot and ill grandson till the the smaller of the two fell asleep.

I wouldn't let him go when he left me for a couple of days for work. I would hold onto his fingers, legs, shirt hem, hair - anything I could lay my hands on - to plead my mom not to separate me from him so ruthlessly. I would scream and roll to the floor crying, tears making of mud of the floor-dust. He was my life, then. And I was his life, all through his life.

I called him all kinds of names. Some male, some female. He had come to accept all the naming I did for him and answered when I called him with his weird names. I watched with rapturous attention when he shaved or - even more interestingly - took out his test tube to check his blood sugar. I have ran several times trying to fetch like mad his medicines when he felt pain in his chest. His heart was so heavy with all the love he had for me that it faltered. But, then, I too had loved him as much as one can love someone. I had learnt from him lessons to last a lifetime. Under starry nights, sitting in his lap amind wafting fragrance of mogra flower, I have been lifted off to different worlds, from magic cities in the sky to unknown depth of the ocean. His stories have spun my imagination. They have given wings to my thoughts.

We all go through the grinds of our days. Running, competing, travelling, worrying, trying to keep pace with a world that mostly seem to run faster than us. To hold our head above the rising waters of competition. I do, too. And in all these, we sometimes tend to forget or at least forget to acknowledge adequately people (such as our parents) who shaped our lives and made it what it is today. It was their sweat, their pains, their unslept nights that had kept fueling our lives. At the risk of sounding silly, I wonder, why so beautiful loving human beings ever have have to leave us.

I don't know if my kids would love their grandparents as much. They wouldn't grow up with my parents. They will only get to see their grandparents in summer vacations. They are the children of a nuclear world. They would miss the love from many who could love them probably more than I ever could. Like my grandfather did to me. More than my parents.

When I think deeply in solitude, I can feel a hole inside me. A hole from the realization that I would never be able to see my grandfather again. I will never have his comforting hug. As I write this with welling eyes, I see my grandfather sitting in his usual place - on the verandah in the morning sun - holding the newspaper, tea cup sitting beside him. I turn into a little kid, run to him, lift the flaps of the newspaper, part his legs a little and escape from the world. Into his lap. My face dug into his wrinkled stomach.