Visa Power

Nothing beats an interview which starts with a beautiful brunette (BB) looking wide eyed and smiling congratulations at you. Trust me, I speak with experience.

Bluedart delivered my passport today, with a US Visa (F1) for five years. And this Visa followed quite a laborious and to-a-no-end journey of digging through convoluted personal finances, capricious university websites and breezing through 45 seconds of pointless chatting (OK! Not the pointless, but it did not have much of a point to it either). Preparation for visa interview usually entails engaging the (quite needless) services of a Visa counsellor, creating pretty creative balance-sheets, learning by rote a sum total of fifty questions and pursuing with equal vigour, the relation between the number of visa rejections and the hair colour of the visa officer.

The first step, that of Visa counsellors is a cottage industry by itself. The small scale industry that helps people emigrate and ensures that they leave this country for good. (Ironically, increasing prosperity in India, propels an increasing number of students abroad, year on year.) The second step is one with enough intricacy and arcane mystery to defeat any old sherlock holmes story you loved best, the financial documents created by an Indian wishing to emigrate... Oops! Sorry! an Indian wishing to go to the US for higher studies. The third step involves knowing fully well how to pronounce the 'oops!' and 'sorry!' and to never introduce them in the context that I have used in the previous sentence. The fourth step is completely voluntary and more often than not indulged in with a speculative fervour in sync with the land without a Las Vegas: where repressed feelings find a variety of outlets. My favourite, atleast from this day, would be dark brown.

After a few sleepless nights and misplaced attempts at comprehending finance and discovering a new fullform for the acronym BS, I decided to place all my bets on a not-quite-digitally-touched up photograph to scare the interviewer into granting me a visa. Anyways, I reached the vfs office, (my worshipful emulation of this Japanese concept still intact) just in time. Before I could finish the quite steeply charged 150 bucks cup of coffee (which reminds me, coffee with too much sugar tastes as crappy as one without any), we were called to board the bus which was to transport us to the embassy. It was quite an uneventful journey (the only worth mentioning non-event being that I did not have to fight for a window seat with a resourceful five-year old).

At the embassy, I passed through a door where people confused pull with push (quite personifying that eternal dilemma that is every door's destiny). Following this I subjected myself to the indiscreet inspections of a metal detector and was fingerprinted. Digitally. Digital fingerprinting reminded me of the travails I had to undergo at the Indian passport office, first for finding an inkpad and then sqeezing any molecules of ink left on it to my thumb. Digital fingerprinting is better. Much better if the screen is not dirty and the attendant there does not clean your fingers 10 times, forgetting in her earnestness that its the screen that is dirty. I also got a token here, a pink slip with a number, which was to be my identity till the time that this number is called out on the speaker. After getting the token, all I did and all that everyone does is sit quietly, listen carefully and just pray that you don't have to visit the loo anytime soon. Because the number is announced only once.

Nervous and not so nervous faces were scattered in the waiting room. Providence (or rather an anonymous VISA officer), being especially gracious, my token number was called, along with 10 others, before 10 minutes of waiting were over.

10 people make for a long queue, but at the grocer's or the railway counter. It's faster at the US consulate. You get your yes or no in 30 seconds flat. I was fifth in the queue when the BB called me inside.

BB : Hi!
Me: (forgot the good morning M'am I had parotted, and with that, in a chain reaction, forgot a whole lot of other things) Uh.. oh... Hi!
BB: (Smiling) Can you pass your token please ?
Me: (Passed the token, still in a daze, forgot to smile oh.. sure.. as I had practiced)

At this point in time, BB gets my documents out of the envelope that has been given to her. Then gets my form out and stared wide-eyed. Raises her eyebrows. I see her looking at the photograph. As I eliminate the chances of any hair-raising and frightening details on my face, I consider the possible of malicious intentions disfiguring my countenance. I prepare an elaborate answer on how the al-quaida may have had a role any size mismatches of my photograph.

BB: (The raised eyebrows and the wide eyes are followed by a wide wider widest smile) 1570!! You got a wonderful GRE score! Congratulations!

Me: (Feeling quite gratified but at a loss of understanding. I mean, these people are supposed to be some of the rudest on the planet, right.) Thanks!!

BB: So, what degree are you going to go for at Rutgers ?
Me: MS in Electrical and Computer Engg

BB: MS.. (Some guy comes behind her and starts talking with her. I wait for a few seconds). So, who is going to pay for your education.
Me: My parents. (Suddenly remember the lines I had rattofied) My mother and my father.

BB: So, what do they do?
Me: Tell

BB: What is your income ?
Me: Tell

BB: What are you savings ? You must have savings right ?
Me: (No I don't but I especially created them for thsi day!) Tell... If you want, I can show you the documents..

BB: (Starts writing something and waves her hands, as if she does not have time to deal with such petty trivialities)
Me: (feeling relieved at not having to explain something I did not myself understand)

BB: (Starts typing something) Why did you choose Rutgers ?
Me: Its got a wonderful wireless program. I want to specialize in wireless communication....

BB: (Body language interrupts me) Take your I20 please... (Then holds her voice like Amitabh in KBC. The pause continues for some time after which, the eyes behind the spectacles start smiling) Ok! Your Visa has been approved and you will be getting your passport in 2-3 weeks.
Me: (Finally return this smile) Thanks!

I visit the loo after this and experience the fact that US consulate toilets are not very different from other ones.

(Completing this post from IIML. Call it an irony. Call it poetic justice. Btw, only I can understand the latter. So you better refrain from guessing. )

An August Guest

(Post started on: 13th May 2006 12.57 a.m.)

August is a regal month. Grand like the emperor it is named after. It is the month of showers, of holidays, of Raksha Bandhan, of semester beginnings. But perhaps I will remember it for one more factor. 'It' had come uninvited in August. Turned up. Just like that. Then 'it' was murdered. Who did it? Perhaps one. Perhaps many. Perhaps none. I will never know. Perhaps this is what happens when you lack legs, when you prefer coiling up to sitting down and to top it all, when you turn in uninvited. It's a killer concoction. Literally.

It was a few days after the 'flood' and a few days before the date I had chosen to grace the Graduate Record Examination. The inundation had, in the most indiscreet and depraved fashion, played havoc with my time-table. The disorientation, impairment, haste, panic had finally given way to sense, calm, order, reason. I thought I had settled down, by that day atleast. Finally, to life with its mundanity, to satisfaction with the ordinary and the expectation of the quotidian.

That day started like the usual days started then. Late. At noon almost. The day was not sunny. But it was also not raining. The heavens were a mixture of black and blue. The light was soft. The winds were weak, more like a breeze. The skies had been more than extravagant earlier. The weather was trying its best to appear threatening. It only managed to appear exceedingly pleasant. That happens when you have spent yourself, done much more already than you ought to have. Transience of thought and an impending fear were the only facts that bound me inside reading wordlists. It was not that important but it doesn't matter. I thought it to be important.

As the clock chimed two, I sat down. For my daily tryst with morality, ethics, art, science. Condensed into 45 minutes. Simple, sweet and served at short notice. The only area of intimate concern and worry to me here, was that I was supposed to prepare, spice, season and serve it. They also call it an exercise in essay writing, an exercise in presenting views, notions, contentions; easily chewable, digestible, assimilable. It was worth 6 points in the GRE. It was the part every test, mock or otherwise, inaugurated with. The Kaplan mock tests did not display their rebellious non-conformist attitude in the beginning, for the initial test of writing skills. They stuck to morality, ethics, art, science, the whole deal.

The topic did not disappoint me that day. It dealt with ethical dilemmas.The usual dilemmas, everyday stuff. Right, wrong. Correct, incorrect. Black, white. Or grey. Custom-made, for custom-made answers. I started thinking. Then, I started typing. Ethics are very important, especially for the GRE. Typing is also important: 700 words, 45 minutes.

I was somewhere in the somewhere in the middle of quantifying and comparing the estimable the heinous, when I could make out the first traces of the commotion outside. Something was unsual. Perhaps a raucous child was separated from his fragile ego, the whole and sole of which was invested in his only toy. Expectations and approximations however, have an irritable and infallible tendency of conforming rarely with reality. I listened some more, pretty unsurreptiously interrupted and disrupted. My hands dealt with the keyboard like everyday. Thought took a backdrop, but expression continued. It seemed the commotion was drawing near. Individual words were perceivable. Snake... Its moving fast... Its entered his house. My doorstep was host to an assortment of neighbours now. The proximity of the cacaphony indicated that the reptilian visitor had chosen my abode. I sat still. But my hands refused any attempts to tranquility. They were still busy churning out words. Perhaps it was a tranquil state for them. It happens when you do something too many times.

My family was at the doorstep now, greeting the stranger, the stranger from the strange land. Its moved beneath the cot. I sat up with that, perhaps physically. My fingers were talking, dancing, typing. The excitement in the air was palpable. You could touch it, feel it, kiss it and preserve it for a later day. A later day when the talking fingers could give it a handful. Close the doors. Communicating with a stranger is laborious, if the tongues are different. It is downright impossible, if they are physically so. A language does not merely communicate, it connects, endears, bonds, it makes the stranger feel at home. But stranger was not home. A flood does not discriminate. It also does not rehabilitate. Get the stick out. It was thirty minutes. My fingers stopped dancing, playing. The greater good was justified. 600 words is enough justification.

I rushed outside, somewhere between the triumvirate of the still cot, the panicky neighbours and the agitated household. Insecurity was pervasive, the air reeked of it. It passed through your nostrils and inundated your senses. Insecurity was stamped under the cot too. No language made the stranger feel home. Whack! It hit the tail.But no one cried. Language, expression and communication lead to trust. Trust that allows humans to exist. Trust that prevents people from roaming around the streets weilding bludgeons and trashing each other at the slightest suspicion. Everyone on the street is not out to get me and I am not out to get anyone else. This is one of the fundamental axioms of humanity. A calibrated trust pervades society, permits existence and enhances growth.

Its moving from beneath the cot. A flash of black followed that statement. Home! It searched for it. Lunged for it, from beneath the cot. The one place where understanding prevails, where security does not cause the air to go foul. A reptile does not have legs, but it moves fast. It can even descend steps, faster than me. But it can only run in my land. It cannot leave for its own.

A bicycle parked makes for a makeshift, eventful home. It also makes an insecure home, for a stranger in a strange land. It will trouble someone else now. The first blow missed the head by a whisker. The coiled form was agitated, searching. There was no space for uncoiling between the front wheels. Whack! The head was pulp. Mistakes may happen once but they do not continue in perpetuity. The searching eyes were obliterated. It was still, almost coiled. The air was losing its heaviness. The ruckus was subsiding. There was a crowd around it. A crowd of civilization, education, security.

I rushed inside, within time. 45 minutes were just over. Another section was waiting for me.

Fun? Nah.....!

"There is Aamir, there is Kajol, coming back after a really long time, the production is Yashraj. How bad can it get?" Those were my thoughts as I marched into Chandan for the evening show of Fanaa. I seriously did not have an idea of how bad it could get! To call it fatally boring would be an understatement. The whole team of Fanaa deserves a pat on their backs. With such a rocking starcast (one which ends all requirement for any sort of publicity) and such a famous production house to boot, it would take real effort to produce such a dud. With so many things going in your favour, it takes all the sweat and toil possible to make an audience cry for mercy as the film inches towards its hair-tearing climax. We can well nigh salute them, for they have achieved the nearly impossible.

I think the Gujrat BJP had truly humanitarian concerns and economic motivations when they (unofficially) banned this movie. The hangover that comes after enduring it can render a mortal human incapable of any productive endeavour for atleast a day. And after looking at the crowded hall massaging its forehead (at Mumbai), I can safely assume that Narendra Modi is truly against all activity that negatively affects the economy of Gujrat. By the way, if you really have a grudge against someone, buy them a ticket of Fanaa. I promise you the person won't leave while the movie is still in progress, hoping against hope that it going to be good. Its really worth it. Those who still plan to see the movie and care about jokes (in Fanaa's case) called 'story', 'plot' and 'climax' can stop reading now.

The movie starts with a subtle scene introducing a blind Kajol. She has her back towards the flag while saluting it. Thats it! The subtlety ends here. And from here starts a misplaced attempt at melodrama that seeks to combine Yash Chopra style tear jerker romance with James Bond and Rambo. Its not all intertwined but served piecemeal, one at a time. So you have romance, followed by rambo, backed up by some more romance mixed with crying, then a James Bondesque spy thriller and following close on its heels, some crying while James Bond is still in action. Seems confusing? It's more when you actually get down to seeing it. First of all, you have this five day love story. Kajol, i.e., Zooni Ali Beg, lives in (Poland passed of as) Kashmir with her parents. She is blind but she is still going to be the lead dancer of her troupe for the program on 26th January. And this programme is at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan we are told, at night! This is where the inanities begin.

Anyway, Ms. Zooni comes to Delhi, and meets Rehan, the tour guide (that's Aamir Khan). Then they forget how normal people speak. Why do they do this? Thats because the dialogue writer has a cell phone and he wants to flaunt his technical abilities which involve composing and reading SMSes. To achieve this end he showcases his long archived collection of SMS shayaris as dialogue between Aamir and Kajol. When the first shayaris appear, you can appreciate those, but slowly you start getting restless and after half an hour of celebrating SMS wit, you can almost scream, "Gimme back the plain and simple Hindi/Urdu back. No one speaks like this". This was not my opinion alone. I could hear a just perceivable 'Oh God!' from the row in front when they start with the corny poetry again and yet again. Anyway, after boring us with shayaris for around one hour, the director gets bored and decides to marry the main characters off. So, you have Aamir madly-deeply-passionately in love with Kajol in five days after which he sleeps with her and brings her back from the train (when she is returning to Kashmir). As for her colleagues, they let him take their blind friend. Forget about calling her parents, its too much trouble!. In the next scene Kajol decides she needs to tell her parents about this. This is how the conversation goes:
(This is not exact. Just the approximation of the conversation which was as short.)

"Mom I am in love!"
"Who is he?"
"Rehan. I want to marry him. I want your permission."
"Yes my daughter yes. We trust you completely. We will come to Delhi shortly. You can start preparing for the wedding."

This about it.The happy family of AnK (Aamir and Kajol) goes to the doctor, who immediately puts Kajol on the table for a retina transplant and before her parents arrive, lo and behold! She gets her sight back. But poor Aamir dies (You actually know that he cannot die because they do not show his dead body anyways), before Kajol ever sees him, in a bomb blast near Rashtrapati Bhavan. Now comes my favourite part. This is the mother of all unintentionally funny moments. They actually call Kajol, who has never seen Aamir (She was blind, duh!) to identify the badly burnt body of Aamir. The doctor actually puts this in words:

"Identification main karne wala tha, par body itni boori halat mein hai ki tumhein hi identification karna hoga."

This was supposed to be a usual emotional scene, to get the lachrymals work overtime, but I was laughing my ass off. I could imagine the director laughing his ass off too while shooting this scene:

"Do you think this will actually go down people's throat? Blind girl, Identification et all.."

"Hey! Listen buddy, our viewers are STUPID. Let me spell that out to you S-T-U-P-I-D. They will swallow anything we show them."

"Oh.. but .."

"I have been in this business a long time. There are a lot of dumb people around. My audience has its IQ in single digits. They will enjoy this scene.... HA HA HA HA HA..."

I didn't feel quite right after this and stopped laughing. Coming back to the movie, the sad family goes on to their home and we are introduced to the anti-terrorist squad headquarters investigating this scene. Here we are introduced to Tabu, who tells us that the militant group IKF is fighting for Kashmiri independence. They are terrorizing both India and Pakistan. Now call me biased, chauvinistic, or simply realistic but I take a strong exception to absolving Pakistan of all crimes in Kashmiri Terrorism. I even do not agree that Pakistan today is not in concert with the militants. The movie however, makes it amply and painfully clear that the terrorists are independent of any national identity and are threatening both India and Pakistan. Since, Indian movies are already banned in Pakistan, any ideological or economic motivations behind these clarifications were lost on me. A possible reason occured to my brother later on : Paksitani diaspora pay for Indian movies!! So much for clean entertainment.

Tabu goes on to introduce us to the chief operator of IKF, who is expectedly, even for the most numb-skulled, an Aamir Khan with a different haircut. He may be a terrorist but because he is Aamir and because this is a Yashraj movie, he apologizes to Kajol's photograph, tears it and throws it down on the road with a flamboyant disregard for any civic sense that a terrorist with his chic should possess.

Like all good conventional Hindi movies, the story is picked up and dropped exactly 7 years into the future, not a year less, not a year more. Now starts the rambo like spy-thriller. Aamir the terrorist goes on to procure the last component (called the trigger) for making a nuclear missile (they have already collected all the other parts, dont ask me how!!). For this he impersonates a Captain Rajeev from the Indian army. All this while Tabu puts on a oh-so-tough look, spouts a case for plebiscite in Kashmir and decides that she wants to play chor-police (in the modern avatar of terrorist and anti-terrorist squad officer). While, Aamir runs from the commandoes and kills them one by one in the Kashmiri (or Polish) Jungle (a la Rambo: First Blood), you think he is only doing a cheap imitation of Sunny Deol. Deol is much better at this. Trust me! I have seen Gadar. Deol can atleast make me laugh. Aamir makes me squirm. As cinematic fate would have it, after killing everyone around, our zakhmi anti-hero lands up in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere. He knocks a door in the middle of nowhere. And guess what? Kajol opens the door (she lives in the middle of nowhere!!). Then they show a kid behind Kajol and this is like the second most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. He got a kid!! Like all good, dutiful and sincere Hindi movie couples, their one and only attempt at procreation had met with unprecedented success. Aamir is so shocked at this point that he goes unconscious. (The audience too gets shocked but God in all his mercy does not make them unconscious.)

Then proceeds the romantic movie part 2, by which time you really do not care what happens to the characters. Live, die, go into a coma, do whatever you want, just end this movie. (A welcome change in this part is the low frequency of the ubiquitous shayaris, there are only corny dialogues and a oh-so-cute kid thrown in for free.) It is now that you understand the whole point of Kajol's blindness in the first part. She is not supposed to recognize the living Aamir (even though she has already identified his badly burnt dead body). Anyway, here Aamir suddenly remembers that inspite of defacing the streets of some country with Kajol's torn photograph, he still loves her. Kajol fulminates and tells him of her perpetual state of mental delirium where she cut and pasted ears, noses, lips, eyes from various photographs to form Aamir's photo. (The fact that the travel agent with whom Aamir worked can give her a description and make life easy never occured to her, but then as I said before, details are certainly not the strong point of this movie.) The next day Aamir tries leaving. Here comes the third most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. Kajol runs after him and then gives him ONE TIGHT SLAP. My friend summed up the emotions welling up properly when he said, "That should have been the director!" So, AnK marry officially now and live happily ever after. Except that we still have the IKF and Anti-terrorist squad angle to be taken care of.

There's the mission too after all. At this point the screenplay turns into a word for word reproduction of the climactic scenes from 'The eye of the needle' by Ken Follet. The climax is suitably Indianized, but Kajol (quite unnecessarily) kills Aamir in the end. Logic ofcourse, is as oblivious from the finale as from the rest of the movie. Kajol gets the trigger, escapes from a mad Aamir (just a bad impersonation of any action hero worth his salt here, nostrils flaring, eyes pretty large and emotionless). She contacts Tabu who advises her to.. well.... do nothing (she has to kill Aamir in the end, which she won't be able to do if she destroys the trigger now). Keeping true to the long lasting tradition of the police coming in at the movie's end, Tabu et al come in the end and the quite dreary movie ends on a drearier note.

Aamir and Kajol try to act their best but are still confused as to what they are supposed to do. Rishi Kapoor drinks and cries for all he is worth. Kiron Kher appears again in the ideal-mother role (Am I the only one who feels she is getting typecast?). Shiny Ahuja and Lara Dutta have roles so short, that you suspect they were put into the movie for a game of find-me-if-you-can. Tabu, does mostly nothing except for frowning, ordering and coming in towards the end. To sum up, efforts of the cast are valiant but they are no match to the incompetent story, confused editing, corny dialogues and directionless lack of entertainment. The movie is confused as to what it wants to be, shifting from one mode to another, confusing the audience and disorienting any sense of continuity. Good movies are not always logically correct ones but they are always ones where the audience experiences a 'suspension of disbelief'. A state wherein he/she can vicariously experience the travails of the character. They know its all untrue but they still believe it. If the movie is funny, it persuades you to get the main idea. However, the only state Fanaa put me in was 'suspension of all belief'. I didn't care two cents for the characters, and movie does not have any central idea.

Inspite of it being such a dud, I know the movie is going to do well. Since you have no work in life (how did I find out? coz, you read this post upto here!), you are probably already making plans for the movie. I know what you are thinking right at this moment, "There is Aamir, there is Kajol, coming back after a really long time, the production is Yashraj. How bad can it get?".... Another victory of hope over experience.

Over and Done !

I never thought I would get mushy about it, or that I would even retain an iota of sentiment about it. I never thought it would hit me with such a feeling of awe and leave me dumb, grasping for words, struggling for expressions. God knows why, but I started feeling a bit empty today. Unless I am one of the chosen few personally stamped unlucky by the almighty, I finished with my engineering today. I guess I had finished it an year ago when I had given up hopes on my college, but yet, today I was done with it. Officially. Over, done, finished, completed... like a THE END they show at the end of the movies. The only difference is: the movies actually end with the THE END. Engineering and what I did here or rather failed to do here would remain with me for a long time.

It had grown upon me painfully, but it was something I liked almost with a spirit of masochism. It was wasting, gangrenous, but it was a part of me that was gangrenous and you don't cut away a part of your body that easily. The boring lectures, ineffectual practicals, cutting edge copy technique inventions for the class test, assignments, had all seeped inside somewhere, almost ritualistic. It is something so commonplace that even though you hate it, you never expect it to go anywhere. The feeling that emerges is of chasing the ephemeral days, like running after a an elusive butterfly, yet hoping, in your heart of hearts, of never catching it. Waiting for the days to become better but not wishing them away, for these are something that no new step can ever be : stable.

I am feeling this void perhaps because stability does not come easy. As each phase ends and another begins, so starts a struggle for adaptation, for existence, for survival. What I hate most is uncertainity. However futile may have been this exercise in the pursuit of education, it scarcely left me in doubt to its futility. It did not leave open any scope for idle speculation. What is today, will remain tommorrow, my thoughts decreed. It has become only habitual to assume that after 4 years. However, when what is today, does not remain tommorrow, it is then that change sets in, bringing with itself uncertainity. Perhaps the tommorrow will be better, perhaps it would be worse, but it wouldn't be the same. The smug, self-assured look is difficult to maintain now, as the mind wanders and speculates on what might happen. It is as if, a rug has been pulled from under your legs. You were standing on the edge anyways, but you are off your balance now, atleast for a few seconds till you get your bearings. The only difference in my case here is that my search for my bearings is taking me much more than mere seconds or minutes or hours.

As the feeling seeps inside, the thoughts slip outside. One by one. No one is in a hurry here. But it accumulates, the baggage of experience, stuffing till the seams are on the verge of bursting. Then perhaps the seams actually burst. What do you say when that happens? What do you say intellect loses control and comprehension, when intuition rules and hope cheers. I say to the hopeful, first let it sink in, let me wait till I feel complete again.