Sunday, April 27, 2008

Saboraud's lonely dish

This happened to happen sometime during internship (and SSC's) early days. The setting was Hotel Pamm in Siliguri, Hillcart road.

Just before you cross over into it from Malaysia, the Singapore government has lined up dustbins outside the toll booths. They are dustbins second. Firstly, they serve as the dumping ground for any gum you might be chewing (doing the same chewing across the border is illegal). Siliguri is much the same. A garbage dump en route to Eastern India’s prima dona, Darjeeling. It is a dirty, cramped, brunt uninspiring city, the kind whose ugliness gives rise to a contempt that manages to overpower the pity its step-daughterly treatment generates. And NJP was its groin. But it wasn’t the city that kept Sabouraud on the verge of tears every moment he was awake. It was the fact that he was having to do the one thing that he both hated and was bad at, and would have to go on doing for the next seven years. A lump as hard as a fist made its way up his throat, and punched a tear out his right eye. He wiped it away, sitting alone at lunch and weeping had ‘loser’ written all over it.

6 comments:

TSO said...

not you too! dear god, is every blogger i know going into macabre musings? you're strike 3. im out! maybe its the saturn retrograde blah blah (insert medley of planets and angles and zen sounding words here). or maybe its global warming slowly frying our brains. who knows, who cares? keep writing.

TSO said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TSO said...

Sorry had a bit of accidental mouse clickage there. Comment virgin, aren't you? Pls do reply to a comment on your blog on your blog itself, so that a third person (no I am not running a secret Postcards to Paranoia fanclub, sorry but third person is hypothetical) can view the comments and replies from the author in order. And as sure as the Irish know their pints, I empathise with the temporary universe falling to pieces mood swings, which are saved by quiet holding your cuppa of tea and watching the sun set on a preceding pleasant 24 hrs "peace with the world and fellow human being" moments. Its just that on that particular day, not only was I in the dumps, but all my blogspot sources of inspiration seemed to have found a choice garbage pile in the frontyard of their minds as well. I just wish we weren't so concurrent!

Ashutosh Ratnam said...

Right you are again (about the novice bit this time), and as for your little dab at coincidence, i do believe there's more to it than just plain chance. I read this time magazine issue about how (no offence) females tend to have their cycles coinciding if they live together, it had something to do with pheromones and the majickal world of smell. I have unfounded reason to believe it's something far more profound, and far less well defined. Basically that if people tend to be in the same frame of mind, somehow, they get drawn together......There was this little kiddie documentary on The Discovery Channel and this dude witha cockney accent was conducting weird science experiments. He took a jar full of multicoloured gumballs and shook them up over and over and over.....and gradually, all the reds found the reds, all the greens the greens, and yes, all the blues the blues...........

TSO said...

Hm, you might be on to something there. But my worry is - sorry, I'm not sure how far I believe in magic -(my heart does but my brain is preconditioned by classical physics) - that all proven laws that have broken myths of magic have pointed towards like objects always repelling. And this makes sense, two people with absolutely similar mindsets may find themselves rubbing each other the wrong way. In organizational psychology, it is the premise behind there being a clash if there are too many leader-wannabes in one team. Maybe its more a matter of balance. For people to "find each other" they must have some common goals/beliefs/God's glue if you will but they also must be opposite in some ways, cause opposites attract. And that's when we complement each other, throw dissimilar ideas at each other and in fact, become a bit like each other over time. You've got me going on tangents now, Ratnam. I'm getting ahead of itself. I'm now thinking this could even explain peer pressure and mob mentality. Dissimilar with some common ground, and more time with each other cause them to be similar. With the passage of time, I suspect, much like a relationship jaded with time, you get too similar - and that's when trouble begins. Hm. I like your point.

Ashutosh Ratnam said...

Thanks for drifting the this side of the gumball jar, but that's sort of the point i'm trying to make. Don't dismiss this sort of thing as magic, cos i'm near certain that at a metaphysical level, the repulsion is overcome by the sheer strength of familiarity. It does snowball up along the molecular pecking order (probably explaining your bang on the mark observation about mobs and peer pressure) but yes, it does get lost somewhere along the way too.....once again your interpersonal relationship example holding true. Almost atavistic. I'd delve deeper, but right know learning metaphysics is too much of a bore to bother with....thanks for the feedback.