Rain Rain

Rain rain, come and stay

And wash all our sins away

We are consumed by heat and rage

Rain, come

Quench our thirst and moisten our throats

On this midsummer night

Drench us, make us dare

To dream of castles and gold

Wet our throats so we may sing

Of deeds of valor, young and old

Rain, won’t you come

And take away our pain?

Rain, rain

Come and stay

Nobody wants you to go away

Rain rain, come and stay
Wash away the grime from day
Bathe us with cold drops o rain
We want you to come every day!

I wouldn't have it any other way
Rain, oh rain come and stay
Nobody wants you to go away

The Bilge Master

For Those Pursuing Roads Not Taken

This one is for my seniors. I am sorry I could not be there for your farewell(s), but as some of you know my state of health is a little bad.

I still remember the first day of college. After orientation, we were told to go home. On the way out I was accosted by a group of seniors, but I was not afraid. These people did not seem hostile, they had welcoming smiles on their faces and they became my first ever friends in college. By the end of the first week, my seniors had told me which books to refer to, why the infamous WBUT Organizer was necessary and the importance of doing classes.

My seniors were not confined to just the Electrical department in college. They were everywhere. They were also from all years. I remember being struck by how much I had in common with them. I must digress here and point out that I was a kid who did not like his school life because I felt like I was different, and I was made to feel different in certain cases. As a result of this, I found that I read different books and watched different movies that the rest of the crowd and for that reason, people called me crazy and not in a good way.

All of this changed in college. I found friends with the same “mental disorder” as me, and I started to feel right at home within the first month of college. This was made possible due to the part my seniors played in that first month.

I clearly remember chatting with some people from fourth year, who have now passed out, others from third year, who will now pass out and my immediate seniors the second years who were like my pack (if I assume I am a wolf). The Fresher’s welcome they threw us was an amazing way to integrate myself into the college, because after that program I was officially a part of the college.

I also would not have been able to anchor the annual college fest, Metapsyconix if a senior hadn’t come to me, thrust a microphone in my hands and said to me “Get up there, Ashesh”.

I realise I am rambling on here, so I think I should wrap up soon.  I guess what I’m trying to say is I love my seniors and I will miss each and every one of them. That is the reason I did not name any of them in this writeup because all of them are special in their own unique way.

I will miss playing FIFA with them, shooting photos which become WhatsApp and Facebook DP’s for them. I realise that I will step into my final year after this semester and then pass out myself. There will be no familiar senior faces in the college for this last year.

Know this. All of you made a difference to a kid fresh out of school, who is now a grateful junior, honoured to have seniors like you.

I hope you will forgive me, because I must now put a stopper on the words I have written and refer to the words of the immortal J.R.R. Tolkien thus

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say!

Ashesh Mitra

They Call Me Gotham

I keep seeing them in my dreams and sometimes when I am awake. I see a man dressed in black, with tiny triangular slits for eyes, a clown who has green hair and yellowing rotting teeth and I must survive from what it is they plan to do to me today.

The Bat creature likes to anchor himself to my gargoyles and traverse the night sky, gliding above my buildings; stalking his next prey. The criminals all seem to think he is some sort of devil, but this is not Hell’s Kitchen. I am not New York.

Sometimes, the Bat brings a Robin with him to further his cause. I remember the corpse of the last Robin, beaten to death and left to die by the green haired one with rotting teeth.

I empathise with the Bat. I understand his anger and his need to seek out justice.  But at what cost?

The presence of these individuals- the man who looks like a crocodile, the short man who walks like a penguin, the woman with the abilities to control my plants and the Cat; these individuals come out into the glare of orange street lamps, while the Bat lurks in the shadows.

I miss the days when this was nothing but jungle. But then they had to develop didn’t they?  This is not a city. This is a proving ground. I am the one who is left after the dust settles on yet another confrontation.

The winner goes back to his cave with the computer consoles and the worldwide GPS, to plan out who is going to attack me next. He is a guardian, acting as a shield, protecting me from my own self. Yet on some days, even this man tires himself. He has spent so long chasing death masquerading as criminals, that I believe it’s just a matter of time before they defeat him and he lies in my grounds.

I am forgotten. I am alone. I am bleeding.

They call me Gotham. I am under siege. Help the Bat.  Help me.

Based on an article that my friend Runa Chatterjee wrote on Gotham City

The Bilge Master 

Brief Victory

I just returned from a 15 minute walk. Why is this important? It is important because I have been unable to leave my room for almost three weeks now.

But, today I did leave the room and also left the house. I had my music on my phone turned up to a decent volume, I had a bit of adrenaline coursing through my veins; and I walked. I walked the length of the colony we live in and walked back.

No hallucinations. No sickness. No feelings of apprehension or fear psychosis.

This is a win. I notched one up against the bastard in my head. I’m fighting back. I could not have done that without all those people who kept their patience and faith in me and gave me the strength to do what I have gone and done today.

One win to me!

(For those that dont know, I have been suffering from depression) 

The Bilge Master

3 AM

3 AM

Is characterised by silence

With a voice of its own

It is a baritone which lacks sound

And communicates via gestures unseen

3 AM

Is for the insomniac

Whose sleep has left his eyes

And who sits drunkenly in a chair

Waiting for fresh air

3 AM

Is creativity brought to life

Because in the silence

Of the night

Our insomniac composes

His new opus

3 AM

Is a time to love

And to remember muses

Whose names are of little consequence

Dwarfed by their vehement presence

3 AM

Is the time to chase away

The demons lurking in your head

The shadows that seek to intimidate

And to absolve yourself of blame

3 AM

Is when the night is darkest

But you know the dawn is on its way

And

3 AM

Will leave soon

But I wish it could stay

The Bilge Master

A Friendly Collection of Strangers

Sometimes strangers you meet in the street help you. These people you meet for one brief moment in your lives, but who could potentially change your lives forever. Take a minute and think about that.

There are strangers and then there are people who are strange when you’re a stranger and women who seem wicked when you’re alone. Yes, I just paraphrased Jim Morrison there because this is a post about strangers and rock and roll.

AC/DC’s sleeper hit Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution springs to mind as this writeup takes form. I always liked that title more than I liked the song. It was funny and I remember laughing when my friend told me such a song existed. I also remember the first time a song made me cry. The song in question was Goodbye Blue Sky, whose artist needs no introduction, and certainly none that an amateur like me can adequately provide.

I have never met Jim Morrison or Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or for that matter Bryan Adams and Jon Bon Jovi. I have never known what it is like to compose, or to write chord sequences and to put ideas to tunes and tunes to lyrics to create the perfect melody. The list goes on. Freddie Mercury, Pete Townshend, John Lennon. These people are all strangers.

So why do I love them so much? What is it about these strangers, whose existence makes them my friends? What is it about their work that makes them so dear?

I have no idea.

Now you’re starting to get slightly impatient or perhaps you’re confused. What is this guy trying to say here? I guess I am just trying to tell you about music as I see it, or rather as I live and breathe it. Music has power. It can transport you, just like reading a book can. Some songs are even used in therapy sessions for mental patients. I know because I’ve sought comfort from my demons via music countless times. Music can also make a boy in India exactly the same as a 14 year old in America and give them the foundation to build a lasting friendship on. Music is and has always been more than just words and notations on a page. It is a living entity, which speaks to us in the form of pulses.

Over the course of the past nine years I have listened to music. I have heard legends talk politics, love, sex, drugs, heartache, loss, death and even just going for a jog through music.  Music is transcendental and for me the most important thing about music is the fact that it is adaptable.

There are days when I don’t want the sun to shine, or Mario to rescue Princess Peach. I don’t want everything to be right in the world. Then again, there are days when I am so deliciously, deliriously happy that I just want to dance or lose my mind and randomly jump up and down. Once again, I find that music supplies me with happy endings, but more importantly values the importance of sad endings too. I’ll be honest. Sometimes a song makes more sense than a wise human being does! Sometimes, you just need to shut the world out and lose yourself in a song, or a piece of instrumental magic. Music understands this need to escape and it provides what you’re looking for.

And your mother told you that talking to strangers was bad...well maybe she too talks to the same strange voices on cassette tapes and compressed in mp3 format files or stored on vinyl record that I do now.

The people told us rock and roll was bad for us. They felt we idolized junkies and people always high on pot, or immoral people, sinners even. To those people, I would say- you guys missed out on so much. David Bowie, Lou Reed, The Who, Cream and in later years Nirvana, The Foo Fighters and Paulie’s comeback!

You’ve missed it all, mate.

But I have not. 

I have swum in it and drowned in it and it has spoken back to me. Sometimes it has told me what I did not want to hear, sometimes it has been wrong but music listened to me just as I was listening to it.

That is a quality you’ll find in very few people these days! Now, someone put that record on!

The Bilge Master

Imaginary (Rebooted)

This is a story about college romance and friendship. It features three people, two of whom are in love and a friend of theirs who likes to stay by himself. This friend is not secretive, merely an introvert who chooses his company carefully. He wears baggy jeans and a black hoodie that he keeps up.  He can be seen with an iPod, always listening to either Metallica, or Black Sabbath or Tool. If he isn’t listening to music, he is texting this mysterious girl that nobody has ever met on WhatsApp. His name is Hiren.

Our lovebirds are called Tanya and Arnab. Arnab likes to debate a lot. He has gone to three MUN debates and come back with the Best Speaker award. Unlike his friend Hiren, he prefers The Beatles and truth be told it was their shared love of Penny Lane that brought Tanya and Arnab together.

Our third character is Tanya. She likes Audrey Hepburn movies, her favourite being Roman Holiday. She is also captain of the college quiz team. Her nickname around college is Little Miss Know It All but she doesn’t give a damn.

Tanya and Arnab met because of Hiren. He was the one who introduced Arnab to Tanya at the college fest and then melted into the shadows which was his usual style. Tanya and Arnab hit it off and started going out with each other within a week. One strange thing that accompanied this development was that Hiren opened up to Tanya as much as he did to Arnab. He was there for both of them. He used to help resolve some of their fights when they happened and he also sometimes accompanied them on dates, with his father’s old digicam. Hiren’s photos were treasured memories of the fun times they had in college.

But as it is said, all things must come to an end. College ended after three years, but to the three of them it seemed like yesterday that they’d stepped in as freshmen. Arnab decided he would study further and signed up for an MBA programme. Tanya decided to test the waters and joined a start-up.

Hiren said he had landed a job working for a company his father once worked at, but was very vague about the thing. Bit by bit, he started to increase distance between himself and Arnab and Tanya. He would always cite work as the excuse, saying that they were bleeding him dry, but that he needed the experience to land a better job later. He also reduced the frequency of his visits, but was always there on the phone whenever they needed him and Hiren would also meet them every now and then. However, all three of them sensed that their professional lives were causing them to slowly drift apart.

Our love birds continued dating even after college ended, and Tanya’s job was in the same city as Arnab’s college. Two years passed. The situation with Hiren remained in status quo.

Arnab landed a job with a decent company after passing his MBA. He didn’t waste too much time proposing to Tanya shortly after. Their wedding was a simple one, free of razzmatazz. Needless to say, Hiren showed up and he was there throughout the ceremony. He wore a striking black kurta over pajamas and it was one of those rare occasions when he smiled in photos. Hiren seemed as happy as Tanya and Arnab that this was happening.

The day after the ceremony, the three of them went on an impromptu road trip to a dhaba. Over lassi and items from the tandoor they caught up. It turned out that Hiren had recently been promoted to senior manager, which was a promotion that had been coming for a long time. The flip side was that his work load had quadrupled, meaning he wouldn’t be as available as before.

Little by little, one email at a time, one text message at a time, over the course of the next year, Hiren vanished. Arnab once remarked to Tanya that Hiren had written. Tanya didn’t recall who Hiren was.

Tanya and Arnab had their first child in September 2011. Hiren showed up for her first birthday, but didn’t interact with anyone. He just came and went.

2011 was also the year the fighting started.

Arnab had recently been promoted at work which meant he was coming home at odd hours or sometimes not coming home at all. Meanwhile Tanya was shouldered with her own job at the start-up, which was not going so well and the baby. Fuses were short in the once happy family and fights broke out often. There would be name calling, things thrown and tears shed on both sides when the fights happened.  In all of this turmoil, Hiren was nowhere to be seen. He had just disappeared from their lives, and it seemed that something else had disappeared with him. Arnab took to drinking heavily. Tanya started to sleep in the guest bedroom.

Then, somewhere around November 2011, something changed.

Babli, their daughter was playing in the garden. She suddenly looked up from her toys and she saw a man of medium build, wearing baggy black jeans and a hoodie which was turned up. The stranger stood and watched her for some time and then he walked away, seeming to vanish at the point where the road started to curve.

Babli saw this stranger again two days later and this time, she decided she would ask him to come in. However, when she made a move towards him, he scuffled off, vanishing once again where the road curved.

Meanwhile, the frequency of the fights in the household had lessened and Arnab was drinking less than before. The stranger’s visits to the corner of the house became more and more frequent.

Unable to keep this a secret any longer, Babli went and told her mother about the stranger, giving her an accurate description of the hoodie and baggy jeans and his above average height. Tanya looked at Babli shocked, and then she dialled Arnab at work.

“I think Babli just saw a friend of yours. She described him exactly as he looked in college. You remember that weird guy? What was his name?  Himesh? “

“Hiren.”

“Hiren? But Hiren has not been in touch for years now, I don’t recall the last time I saw him”, said Tanya.

At that moment, Babli started waving at someone in the garden, a person in baggy jeans and a hoodie.

“Arnab, come home. I think Hiren is here”, said Tanya

This time the stranger did not go away like he usually did. He walked up to the door, rung the bell and asked if he could sit down. 

He said it would become clear when Arnab got home. Arnab arrived a few minutes later, and walked to the sideboard to pour himself a drink.  He found his favourite Scotch on the rocks already poured out for him. He looked up from the glass and saw Hiren.

“Can you see Hiren too, Tanya?” he asked

“Yes. But why after all this time..?”

“Well, remember how in college we were so madly in love with each other? Hiren was inseparable from us back then. It was like he was a part of us, On the drive back home, I got to thinking- what if our love took on a physical form during college. An imaginary friend if you will. That would explain why Hiren went everywhere with us, but we never minded him. It would also explain why he disappeared when we started to have fights.”

In the corner, Hiren nodded and smiled.

Arnab smiled as he took Tanya into his arms. Hiren was back. Everything would be fine now.

The Bilge Master 

Cerberus Junior

I was feeling lost so I called for my dog,

What came to greet me was a skeleton with white misted eyeballs,

It had no tail and the corner of its mouth was bleeding,

It looked like something straight out of Hades,

Not knowing what to do, I fled from the scene,

I could hear its clicking bones as it chased me to a ravine,

Here it was clear that it’d be him or me,

I prayed it would go away, but nobody heard my screams

And the dog bore down on me, a demon of the dream,

It knocked me down into the sand of the ravine

And I felt its rancid breath on the edge of my tunic

I wished to wake up, but alas it was too late,

For wake though I did, the dog had followed me from the dream

The Bilge Master