He comes home at midnight. He thinks he is slightly drunk, so he doesn't attempt to write anything down in his notebook. He puts on the earphones, a cocoon of sound, a wave against which his bobbing head can rest. The click of keys. The rasp of a finger running under lines in a book of poetry he had bought earlier in the evening among many other books. How many people had he met in the course of the birthday party to which he was invited to earlier read in the course of their day? And how distant are most of their lives from these necessities that bind him to the page, to the shape of alphabet, to the bars of words detailing music of another kind?

This is where he drowns, the continuous whirlpool that enables him to breathe, to mark off day after day from the calendar that is pasted over his skin. People whose birthday it was today couldn't believe he was as old, or more exactly, as young as he claimed he was. That is because he has become green, and black, and perhaps even more something undefinable from diving repeatedly into the wreck.

Summer solstice The day is endless

So is silence that is driving by, Leaving in fragments of time,

All rearview mirrors, A broken alphabet,

Using which I am miming This oft told story

Of gullibility and deceit.

Go here now for a bunch of links to re-hear/ re-see/ re-live all of your DD nostalgia. This where I got a link to "Mile Sur Mere Tumhara" as transported to MIT, Boston. The funny part is when ze desi geeks take out a rowboat into the Charles River in imitation of boatmen back in the Desh. Other choice bits over there include links to He-Man, Jungle Book etc. Now if only someone will put up clips of those old DD advertisements, starting with the Nirma girl with her twirly skirt.

...

Finally over at YouTube, this song as well as this one by Kannada star, Dr. Raj Kumar had me rolling on the floor. "Doooling you pick the time..."

Also in a roundabout nod to feminism (?), this Lux ad features Shahrukh Khan. Also what's up with that Angrezi inflected Hindi accent?

Let's now bring in Gabbar from evergreen Sholay. "Kitne aadmi the?" Also the "Hum agrezo ke zamane ke jailer hain" scene, the Mausi scene, and the Veeru Suicide scene.