Once a year, Hindus demarcate a stretch of 10 days called Shraadein. 10 days of intensely bad luck. Im only half Hindu and that I suppose cuts the period down to five. If life must suck let it be now for today the shraads get over. My christian half might snigger, forgetting that come spring, he'll have to face forty days of starvation - or by the same discount 20. The question is, what is more unbearable: 20 days of hunger or 5 days of bad luck. Here is my testimony to bad luck.
Day 1: Ive lost my rechargables. That of course means I can't spend much quality time with Joe Satriani. When I give him time, he tells me it wont do. I try to tell him about the missing batteries but he dosent care. I try and make apparent to him the guilt when using zinc chloride batteries that I buy with hard earned money only to be with him for 2 and a half hours before the leaches in my discman suck them dry. I must also contend with the the fact that with the number of batteries Ive discarded, ive poisioned the future of 2 and a half children wholl come to me with buds instead of limbs and ask what was so important. Joe is not convinced. "Rattle your dags.... get your act together.... i cant hang around while you sort through your disorganisation issues". He leaves me in silence though 'the souls of distortion' plays on in my mind Pwaay pe pwaaywaayon. Pwayawaya wayaya ya ya waayaaon.
Day 2: I now truly regret those wasted zinc chlorides. At 14 bucks a pair and at least a hundred pairs.... thats 1400 bucks. Enough to have shown my true love something spectacular so she'd hang on to me and my dangling carrots a while longer. No such luck. She left me today and sent me back a few lines I sent her when about to succumb to the temptation of another woman. Being my own arguments, I had no choice but to agree. I suspect she succumbed to the dangling carrots of another.
Day 3: Rid of carrots I sat down to drink. Jim Beam was here to keep me company and I thanked him greatly. It began to rain unseasonally and I joked about the sky crying for me. It didnt stop crying. It beat me like a wailing woman screaming "Why? why wont you have me?" I look up to the rain to and shout back -"Ive had it!" Then the rain stops. Metaphors have left me and Im left with excerpts from filmi magazines doing cartwheels in my monkey mind. It stops raining and it is cold. The cold is always welcome and I let some in. I now speak in chatters. Hey Im Bengali..... Mister Allalone Chatterjee
Day 4: Fishing. Nothing like a little fishing to get your mind off things. I shave, have a bath and the bait is ready. I pull out pick up lines written on the back of bus tickets from college days. "Hey I sorta kinda likey likey you.... do you likey likey me?" is the closest one to usable. The friend who owns the copyright to this "concentrate of condensed milk" is now happily married. I will have to get myself spayed before I can shed enough machismo to know im going to sound stupid even before I begin.
I walk into a bar I frequent. I know these fish and their habits, so catching one is but a matter of anticipation. The german music playing is angry and the poetry sounds flawed even a few languages removed. I am suddenly German. When I turn around they look. It seems odd that a week of absence can make a "part of the furniture" bar bum seem interesting. We have never spoken and I am my only carrot. I would have used the nursing of my drink as an opportunity to glance but today my peripheral vision tells me that I am on. If only I could find out which one of them is a crossword freak, id take todays paper and say "3 across - An unquestioningly loyal subordinate..... 11 letters........... Apparatchik of course!" Id casually laugh and put the only 11 letter word i know to the task of winning her over. But she - and all the shes today are interested in me. Its almost as though they cant resist me. Their eyes wander this way in some sort of anticipation. Maybe women can smell a single man. I walk up to a shapely woman. She is the shape of the woman who just left me. She is tranfixed as I ask her I can borrow the menu card. I am not sure if I can control all thats on the tip of my tongue. Ill save it from tomorrow.
Day 5: Just woke up from last nights crying. I have never known a booger so persistent. It stuck to my nose hair like a yellow tonsil for what must have been three hours while at the bar all the way to the public loo some half an hour later. Texture told me itd been hanging around a while. Shiit! This is childhood stuff. I didnt have the strength to broach the issue in writing yeaterday and nor do I have today. I cannot go to the bar for I am now the boogerman. Today i took out teddy, amy and other stuffed childhood freids and had a tea party. Teddy spoke of his midlife stuffed toy crisis and a deteriorateing sex life. We exchanged pleasentaries and I dropped them to the cupboard with a new set of naphthalene balls. Jim beam came again but a shorter visit this time. I can feel the ebb of bad luck.
Maybe I am christian after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment