The Perfect Couplet

31st March, 2006: As I lay on my back smoking my hundredth Marlboro that awful summer day, I realized that there wasn’t much essence to my life. I had thought that being a screenwriter would suit me perfectly – I boasted of just the right mix of madness, cleverness and a more or less ripped-off ingenuity. But clearly, I had been wrong.

Don’t be misled for I am mad, clever and ingenuous of course; but my life didn’t seem to find its calling. There were more than a hundred illustrious screenplays littered around my modest apartment, and a few of my own joined the ranks hither and thither. But unfortunately, those few (for which I had insurmountable hopes and dreams) refused to find their way off the floor and into some filmmaker’s hands. Yes, Mira Nair still didn’t like my humorous ‘indianized’ adaptation (in other words, spoof) of a highly depressing not-to-be-named American film, and no, I wasn’t ever going to win a Filmfare. After managing to convince myself that I wasn’t ‘suitable for Indian audiences’, I decided to go occidental and contact Steven Soderbergh. But apparently, he wasn’t very amused by my outrageously funny desecration of an outrageously depressing masterpiece. Sigh, an Oscar had been just fingertips away.

So that awful summer day, I decided yet again to settle for my fate and continue with my life. I dragged myself off the cold marble floor and had enough foresight to check my reflection in the mirror for any revelations (I had always been fascinated by the whole look-into-your-soul thing, though I never knew how it was done exactly). There were no revelations; my hair was still black, eyes brown; no life-altering ideas zipped across my mind, though there was an extraordinarily unsightly zit protruding from my chin, destroying my otherwise mirror-cracking good looks.

I was beginning to massage the zit with some Erytop when I was suddenly distracted by the successive sounds of quick footsteps, a letter being shoved under my front door, and footsteps quickly fading away. I walked over to the door with uncertain steps, and retrieved the unpretentious envelope, slashing it open rather unceremoniously. The neatly typed letter held within was, without a doubt, the deliverance I had been waiting for.

(This is where, I’m afraid, I must disrupt the flow of this narrative and tell you about a certain screenplay I wrote. My Kind of Fooling was a bitter-sweet tale of love and hate thrown out of proportion by a misjudged April Fools Day prank. Basically, a very ordinary story, told extraordinarily. I told you I was a rip-off.)

Returning to the present past (or is it the past present?), Mr. Frost, my heretofore useless agent in the States, who chose to communicate by letters rather than e-mail, had optioned My Kind of Fooling for around $ 1,000 to an upcoming director, a Vietnamese, who, according the letter, was “simply blown away” by my “odd literary prowess” (the only thing that was odd, was that my literary prowess was odd). I tried to discern a secreted compliment somewhere. But, staying true to much despised everyday dramatics, there must be a “but”.

Just as according to ancient cliché, good news precedes awful news, most devastatingly agreeable letters, have a…well, devastating postscript. As it turned out, this Vietnamese guy was sort of stuck on poetry, and he thought that that was what my screenplay lacked – a “blast of poetry” (herein, I must mention that the phrase in quotes is proof of my agent’s intellectual handicap).

Apparently, he had been a poet in his last life or something of the sort, and he had had a vision (I prefer hallucination) that the film would find itself comfortably placed at the Box Office if poetry was involved. As barmy as the reasoning was, he desired that I find the perfect couplet to sum up my theme, a couplet that could be used as the film’s Tagline, and the film could open and, perhaps, end with it. I had to find it within 24 hours, or the deal was off. Regards, Mr. Frost. (Mr. Frost had, kindly enough, granted me two weeks to produce the couplet, but postal delay had managed to steal 13 days from me – bloody hell.)

I must confess, the idea made me sick to the stomach on two counts. Firstly, I hated poetry in any form. A couplet seemed potentially more dangerous because it sought to do its damage in just two phrases; there wasn’t enough time to prepare. As for seconds, I hated even the thought of mixing poetry with screenwriting, because the two simply could not co-exist. For me, such an amalgamation was, to say the least, ungodly.

Nevertheless, I was not going to let $1,000 slip me by because of some goody-two-shoes couplet. I decided that my life had, at last, found its essence. At that point in time, everything depended on this couplet – the perfect couplet. I took a swig of some Absolut vodka, put on my glasses, stuffed yet another cigarette in my mouth, and sat down at my PC with a determination that astonished even me. It was going to be the Internet and me, hand in hand, for the next 24 hours. And we were going to emerge victorious in this battle against time, this – this tryst with fate.

That was where my troubles really began. I, personally, had always appreciated the Internet’s contribution to daily Indian lives – be it spamming, blogging, gaming, chatting, trading, gambling, or any other suitable waste of time. But, that awful (awful) summer day, the Internet decided to wage a war on me; and it seemed to be backed by divine forces in its dishonorable mission.

I developed a sort of – let’s say virus. First of all, there was the question – What is the perfect couplet for my screenplay? Rhyming? Blank? Classical/Existential/Modern/Crazy? Should I look for something with a deeper meaning? Or would that turn off my target audience? Should I write one on my own instead? Bah! I was a moderately rich and ignorant twenty-something screenwriter, diving head first into the neurotic world of poetry and accompanying chaos. Needless to say, I was confused and terribly unqualified.

To top it off, my PC went berserk, bananas, and completely out of control (I followed soon after). There seemed to be a sort of lapse of communication between the input and output devices as oodles of web pages turned up from absolutely nowhere, and flooded the desktop. German couplets (followed by French, Chinese, and Portuguese ones), somewhat marched onto the taskbar uninvited and I seemed to be well underway to making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Google Searches by an Unmarried Male”. My eyes began to do a sort of jig in their sockets, and a delightful headache ensued.

After a few hours of furious unarmed combat, I was convinced, heart and soul, that the so-called Internet, the “Web” was something that my PC had spun out of pure spite, to torment me for ever and ever. Couplets swam around my head like drunken fishes. Everything turned into poetry. I began trying to believe that ‘hair’ and ‘telephone’ rhyme, which was the best idea I’d had all day. I had always thought I’d been born mad, but I found myself growing madder and madder.

By eleven in the night (12 of the 24 available hours having passed), I found myself seated in front of my PC in – more or less – a trance. There I was – my eyes glazed, my brain and other associated parts apparently in a coma, but my body as a whole refusing to give up. I temporarily pretended, as people often do in Out of Body Experiences or times of plain mortal exhaustion, to swim out of my body and analyze the scene from above, so to say, objectively. Let’s say this story was my screenplay; that made me the protagonist; and all the tangible/intangible elements around me like my PC, the Internet etc. became the antagonists. My bachelor pad was the background or setting of the screenplay, and my character’s goal was to find the perfect couplet. I ought to have reached the third and final Act by then, so the Plot Twist was due any minute. Yes, there was a screenwriter’s method even to my madness.

Then, I fell asleep.

1st April, 2006: I awoke with a start and a delicate consciousness that I still hadn’t found bloody couplet. I wasn’t sure what it was that I had dreamt about, but a lot of flying, swimming, and ridiculously alive couplets were implicated. As my eyes swam into focus, I was mildly surprised to see that my PC hadn’t shut down. I eyed the screen rather suspiciously and discovered that one web page was still open and blinking obstinately. I yawned, and conceded that I’d rather just humour it, lest all Hell broke loose again…

And there it was – the perfect couplet! Two successive lines of perfection. Plain, simple perfection. I read it only once and nearly burst into tears with an uncontrollable multiplicity of emotions.

My PC, I realized, had been attempting all night to tease me in a manner which now seemed most excessive. I gawked at the horrid machine, hating every inch of it for its obtuse sense of humour. Whoever said machines didn’t think for themselves had obviously been uncompromisingly drunk, perhaps even tortured to say it. I felt fooled, deceived, bamboozled by my very own PC.

Yet, as for the perfect couplet being “perfect”, it really was perfect. Basically my PC, after trying to kill me all night (when did machines get this malicious?), had delivered me a life-saving drug – in verse. It was going to change my life permanently, and I was going to become a better human being. I was going to clean up my bachelor pad and call pest-control. I was going to marry my Oscar and live happily ever after – that beautiful summer morning, I became a realist (in the most idealistic sense, of course), and a humble believer in the inhumanity of all machines.

Oh yes, the couplet:

“It takes all kinds of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.”
[ROBERT FROST, In the Clearing]

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NOTE: The story is somewhat true, in all its absurdity. It was written for a competition that I did not win, and I was BOUND by the guidelines to include a couplet of my choice, which is what led to all the melodrama. And I'm SURE nearly everyone has experienced the whole man versus machine thingie. *Sigh*...

Things People Said [Part I]

I was leafing through this really old, really strange and really yellow book of quotations this morning, and found some timeless pieces, which, I thought, must be posted here and shared for all eternity. Happy reading!! Cheerz.

ON LAW:

1. "Laws are dumb in the midst of arms." [CICERO, Pro Milone] - Focus on the "laws are dumb" part...

2. "The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!"
[J. J. ROCHE, The Net of law] - I know its a wee bit melodramatic, but, nevertheless, fairly accurate.

ON LAWYERS:
[*Sigh*...I might be turning a little obsessive.]

1. "Necessity has no law; I know some attorneys of the same." [FRANKLIN, Poor Richard's Almanac for 1734] - Note the year in which this was written. It may as well have been written yesterday.

2. "And whether you're an honest man or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief."
[W. S. GILBERT, Utopia, Limited, I] - A very very true statement, this. Creepily true.

ON DECEIT:

This one is, by far, my favourite:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."
[LINCOLN, (A. K. McClure: Lincoln's Yarns and Stories)]

That's it for now. I'll be back with more later, unless I'm dead, disemboweled, madly in love, normal, or otherwise incapacitated.

The Scoop

DISCLAIMER: The text hereinafter included need not be true, false, or partly true or partly false, but may indeed be partly, if not completely, somewhere in the middle of truth and, uh, the opposite of truth. The text does not necessarily represent the opinion of the author or any other law student, but indeed does purport to do so with a strange sort of vehemence and utter despair. Any objections or disapproval, mild, bitter, profane, or otherwise, may be swallowed whole, for the ears that they shall fall upon, are indeed deaf as Italian marble.

INSIDE THE MIND OF THE DISILLUSIONED LAW INTERN:
WHY LAW WAS "THE" MISTAKE

(1) I get bored too easily, and considering legal commentaries run into several hundred pages, I wanna drool all over them and drown in it;

(2) There are a lot of other things I can do, y'know, like take part in the administration, make the office look better, drink more coffee, sing, dance, help them organize so that the files don't have holes the size of three years in them, basically just entertain them...! I feel underutilized. Their HR didn't see me comin'!

(3) I feel that I'm much more creatively inclined, and law requires a rather stunted mentality, coupled with a more severely stunted outlook, all the same expecting you to maintain a holistic approach, which, quite frankly, is wholly contradictory and drives me nuts;

(4) I'm always wanting to write watertight confidentiality clauses, but apparently, things don't need to be as confidential as I'd like them to be;

(5) Law books are too fat. I'm actually thinner at the waist than some of them;

(6) We use the word "matter" more than molecular research scientists;

(7) I hate post-its;

(8) I spend more time formatting than I do drafting;

(9) The more I research, the further I find myself from the probable answer;

(10) Judges have too much time on their hands for poor interns to handle - I refuse to read a 400-word long judgment in a language that would put the combined forces of Wordsworth, Dostoevsky and Shakespeare to shame, only to discover that they (the judges, that is) did not think it fit to deliberate on the "merits of the case";

(11) There's nothing called integrity in the profession; even mandrakes are more self-respecting.

END NOTE: Unauthorized reproduction of the above is entirely encouraged in legal grapevine. Amen.

Difference

Well, it's definitely been a while since I've been here. I don't even know if anyone is going to read this, really, so who am I talking to? Anyway, here's a story I wrote in a desperate attempt to do something constructive with my spare time (I've had a lot of that lately), and to make myself feel worse about life in general. Here's your chance! Please criticise, rip, tear, and bite into this stuff. Cheerz! :)

Difference

I

“What am I going home to?” thought Gabriel as he walked back from l’Alliance Française to his dirty, overcrowded apartment, on the sixth floor of a dilapidated building around a kilometer away. It was nearly seven in the evening, and the sun had just about snuggled itself between two distant hillocks. Gabriel, treading carefully on the pavement, couldn’t help but wonder if this was it. It was one of those moments in time when everything came to a sudden halt; the sun fell asleep in the arms of those conniving hills, the traffic ceased to rush by, bicycles froze and people stopped marching away. At that very moment, to himself, it was only he that was alive. For once, it was only his troubles that mattered.

“There are too many people I live with,” he told himself. They were all different, all terribly human; it was difficult to understand where the dilemmas actually arose, and who had resolved it all. Sometimes, the problems themselves faded away into the darkness, the void that existed between and separated them; and every once in a while, they just lay forgotten, for there wasn’t enough time! The people he lived with were all men, of course, all twenty years or so of age; had they been women, they wouldn’t have lived through it for two whole years. That was one of the first things Gabriel had learnt in college – no man can remember, resent, and hold a grudge like a woman can.

“Why should I be the one to realize that it’s just because we’re different?” he nearly shouted into the stillness. Indeed, he was aware of the fact that not everyone considered an opinion to be a mere ‘opinion’, a judgment only a ‘judgment’. Only if people understood that disputes stemmed from differences in human nature, and that it was useless to grudge someone their own identity! Therefore, Gabriel often found himself feeling exceedingly foolish and let down when he’d forgive in expectation of reciprocal clemency, and of course, be the recipient of only hatred and mockery. No one is mature anymore in the true sense of the word, he told himself. If people were mature, they would forgive, they would forget, and they would not hold on to things past.

“And that is why modern society will crumble!” Gabriel found himself whispering rather shallowly to the still passers-by, hoping that they, at least, would understand his plight. He, who of his own accord, as one in over a billion Indians, had figured it all out! “But you cannot do anything,” he told himself sternly. It was useless even thinking about it. No matter what one did, there would always be someone to blame another, someone to hold another guilty for his opinion, someone to kill another over a mug of beer. And there would be only one Gabriel.

And so the young man trudged along, the world around him slowly coming back to life. He shook his head, wishing he could be like the others – wishing that he could resent, hate and not forgive; perhaps then he wouldn’t wonder what he was going home to, for he would be a part of it.

II

Rajeev puffed and panted as he climbed his way up six stories, the darned electricity having gone yet again. “Why can’t Pune housing societies have power backup?” he asked nobody in particular, glaring most ineffectually at the elevator grill. Yes, it must be said that Rajeev hated Pune, a Maharashtrian city as famous for its educational opportunities as for its cultural diversity. And then, of course, there were the bad things it wasn’t famous for, as Rajeev loved to discuss time and again – how about the orthodox landlords? And then there were the crazy motorcyclists, who weaved in and out of cars piled on top of one another; the tiny strips of roads in between potholes that appeared each monsoon, and grew by the day.

No, he really didn’t like the city. And one out of five years of his legal education was yet to be borne! How would he pull through another year of the madness, the pollution, the drinking binges, and all the other crazy things law students did? As he panted his way up the final flight of stairs, he realized that he had had enough of it all. His own lifestyle had begun to drive him up the wall; the others, of course, didn’t help. Why were things this difficult? All the house music that he loved seemed to echo his existence and lose its rhythm.

“Five years for a law degree is too long,” he decided, as he pushed open the door to his apartment, untying his shoelaces. By the end of the second year, one had seen all the discotheques, drunk one’s self unto embarrassment, smoked up several hundred joints of the most mediocre marijuana, and often fallen in love as well. And that was it. What had he done during his third and fourth years? He simply couldn’t remember. There had been more alcohol, more clubbing, but his heart hadn’t been in it. It had become mechanical, a sort of a social necessity.

He took off his shoes, found his way to his bedroom, and collapsed on his bed in the utter darkness. “Gabriel should have been home by now,” he thought adding, “Why does he do all these things?” He was always running around to get to some class on time; and then there was social work, and general socializing that had nothing whatsoever to do with social work. Was this sensible? Rajeev, personally, couldn’t understand it. Why not choose one thing and deal with it properly? It was a sign of weakness to him, to be unable to choose; to be unable to appreciate something completely, to tear it apart for what it was worth, and to derive the utmost benefit. And that is why Gabriel was exceptionally good at most things, but the best at none. “It’s sad,” Rajeev thought, shaking his head. It must be difficult.

And what was so urgent anyway? What had Gabriel wanted to speak to him about? It must be one of those things. Gabriel was the pacifier, he always had been. He always chose the middle path, always tried to sort things out, and had that rare ability to be on each one’s side, though siding with none. Rajeev, suspicious as he was of everything, believed this to be hypocritical. Indeed, he believed that Gabriel was in fact a yes-man of the worst sort. He was too weak, too scared to retort or grudge or resent. He always bowed his way out, avoided the worst. He sat in a corner, and eyed everyone beadily; taking everything in and never revealing what went on behind his large brown eyes. And then, when the storm had passed, he slowly rowed over to all sides, and attempted to sooth everyone. Is this really not instigation?

So yes, Gabriel would have called him (Rajeev) home to pacify him. There had been a fight a few days past, an obscure event that one couldn’t even remember. It was hazy; Rajeev could see it in his head as if through smoked glass. In spite of its obscurity, it had left things dry. That was the thing about unresolved differences – they had this strange stench, and they sucked all the joy out of the immediate area, leaving behind a strange lurking blackness that couldn’t be seen, but could be felt. It was like there was a sudden vacuum, as if everyone had suddenly frozen inside. One suddenly felt like one was miles away from everyone else, even when in the same room. These feelings, Rajeev realized, could not be described, or even understood. And Gabriel hoped to understand all of that, and pacify him.

Rajeev smiled to himself, wondering how different Gabriel would be inside, overlooking the fact that these perplexing thoughts were, after all, human.

The sudden buzzing of his silent, vibrating mobile phone extracted him from his deep thoughts. Sid was calling. Why was he calling? They hadn’t spoken in days.

“Hello?” Rajeev was skeptical as he placed the mobile next to his ear.

“Dude? It’s me, Sid,” said the voice, sounding shaky and tearful.

“Yeah, I know it’s you. What’s been up?”

“Uh…dude, something terrible just happened…”

III

As Gabriel lay in the middle of the road, his destiny bleeding him dry, the wheels of the motorcycle that had hit him still whizzing, he couldn’t think of anything in particular. There were curious faces gathered all around him; he could see Sid crying on the phone, a few beggar children peeped at his messed up body through a maze of legs, their eyes wide with discomfort and confusion. The wheels wouldn’t stop turning, and the whizzing sounded hollow inside his head. He could see the blood flow from his side, finding its way through the gravel and potholes, ultimately meeting a little stream of water at the mouth of the gutter. He closed his eyes, trying to think of something, but disconnected images flashed through his head; the beggars’ eyes, the motorcycle approaching, a bouquet of lilies, a fight, his father laughing, Sid crying. And slowly, as the siren of an approaching ambulance beat around his head, the images slowly faded away into darkness; Gabriel lay motionless, dying, and wondering if he was dead yet.

Phew, I FINALLY made it...

I mean, Oh My God...getting this blog started was, most simply, the toughest online battle like ever!! Nevertheless, here's to much future blogging!! Cheerz. ;p