diary excerpts

Some noncontroversial – some might even say ‘politically correct’- excerpts from my diary circa 2003.

9th June 2003 (at 23 years and newly landed in Dubai, where I lived till 2007)
As is start another edition of my diary, I look back reflectively at all my previous attempts at maintaining one. I cannot help but think, ‘is this diary also doomed to become unused after the initial enthusiasm has died down?’ I guess, only time will tell but ‘enthusiasm’ is the operative word here. If I can remain enthused about penning my two bobs worth, then perhaps this diary shall fare better than its predecessors.

10th June 2003
I marvel at Rahul Phondke’s wit! I find it incredibly difficult to write good humor and here we have this gentleman dishing out absolutely hilarious articles week after week. I wonder where he gets his inspiration from. One is reminded of the legendary Pu La Deshpande. Pu La’s wit is still a part of many a Maharashtrians’ life. Not only did he bring smiles; nay guffaws to many a face, he also very adroitly tackled societal issues with his satire and irony ridden pieces. It is one matter to be able to see the funny side of life; it is altogether another matter to be able to put these thoughts into words and elicit an equally mirthful response from ones audience. One can also, in the same breath mention P.G. Wodehouse and Ogden Nash as humorists who played a significant role in making their respective generations more appreciative of the funny bone.

13th June 2003
A few nights back, I chanted the gayatri mantra after a few OMkars and the effect was dramatic. For some time after this chanting, my mind was as fresh and clear as I can ever remember it to be. My cognitive faculties of retention, understanding, reflecting and reasoning were working at their best. In fact, I became conscious of this heightened awareness after a paragraph of ‘The Master and Margarita’, a novel by the Russian Mikhail Bulgakov. Till that moment, I was struggling to fully comprehend the meanings within that text. After the chants however, everything became crystal clear and the book made much easier reading. It is perhaps the alpha waves that these chants generate that makes the difference.

14th June 2003
What a difference a day makes. My experiences at Kish have been so astonishing that my thoughts of yesterday seem from another time and place, in all senses of this phrase. Till yesterday, I was writing in the comfortable confines of my home at Sharjah. Today, I am writing under the dull light of a large shared room in the deserted Kish island of Iran. I am sharing this room with two Pakistanis (who could do with a bath and shave), two Goans and a Kenyan. My meeting withy Mohammed Shehuna (the Kenyan) was strange, to say the least, but it was only the merest indication of things to come. Under circumstances that are too involved to discuss here, he was forced to deposit all his cash at the Kish Airlines counter at Dubai airport. I lent him some of my money and this gesture brought tears to his eyes. I was moved by how touched he was by my gesture, which in all honest, did not require much effort on my part (An interesting aside, I never got this money back from him). He has an interesting Arab, Yemeni, Canadian background. He says that he’s represented Kenya in football.
Kish Airlines is solely dedicated to the task of getting passengers from UAE to Kish Island for visa change and then to take them back to UAE. My hotel booking was also done through Kish Airlines. I’m being put up at Farabi Hotel, owned by – whom else – Kish Airlines. This hotel is more like a hostel, with shared accommodation, single beds side by side, large rooms with 5-6 people per room, pathetic food and a very shady under-life. One doesn’t even need to scratch the surface – it is so ‘in your face’ – to realize that pornography and prostitution thrives here, right under the purportedly strict Islamic code of Iran. Of course, the superficial prudish elements of Islam are followed. All women are required to cover their heads, and everyone is expected to dress modestly. So shorts are strictly prohibited. But the undercurrents of a strongly ‘un-Islamic’ culture run deep and strong.
The island itself is very small. Our plane was a dingy little contraption. Once we got in, everyone sat wherever they pleased. No one was required to take their designated seats. As we left Dubai and headed sea-wards, Mohammed told he that the next mass of land that we would see from the plane would be Kish, in the narrow Persian Gulf that separates UAE & Iran. Apparently he has been to Kish before.
Kish island from the plane looks very ‘desertish’ and dry. A sparse network of roads is visible but what hits one the most is the typical desert topography – the brown, parched earth with patches of palm stumps trying desperately to add a dash of green. As the plane descends to land, and as we rush towards the ground, I look outside to try and spot the airport and the tarmac. But till the last moment, it feels like the plane is going to land in desert sand, when suddenly a patch of black flashes and the plane touches down at the Kish Airport landing strip. The airport itself is unimpressive. There is no reason to expect more. It was made solely to service visa change passengers from UAE. No other airline flies to Kish.

23rd June 2003 (names in this one have been changed)
Preeti Desai will be getting engaged to Abhijit Kulkarni in July and married later this year. I still remember her telling me about her new crush, Abhijit. This was barely a month back, and now she is on course to get married to him. Of course, I also remember her proposal to me over e-mail. I do think that she really liked me and she would have chosen me over him had I accepted her proposal. On my part, I really admire her, and feel that she is as perfect a blend of beauty and brains (and modest too) that one can hope to get, but in my present state of flux, I find it hard to commit. Besides, I’m abroad now and long distance relationships rarely work.
She wanted, before she committed to Abhijit, to be sure that I was not available.

04th July 2003 (this one is really abstruse. I must have been in SOME state then, or maybe that’s a bit of mescaline talking)
There is a whole world in my head. Memories jostle for space with sensory perceptions and imagination matches fantasy stride for stride, to conjure us my reality, the collage of my thoughts. Emotions, those chemical processes triggered off by memories or sensory perceptions - other chemical processes - or even imagination, indicate the frailty of my mind. How easily does a thought trigger off an emotion, how quickly it changes my mood, from overcast to euphoric, from sublime to gross. These emotions play with the fabric of my personality, bleaching it at places, leaving stains somewhere else. Emotions play havoc with my thoughts and thoughts trigger emotions. It is a circle controllable only by understanding by emotional triggers and not suppressing them, rather, by giving them a name and putting them down in words. A nameless dread is far worse than a known fear, and a fear that is known seldom remains because once put in words, once understood, it is easy to realize that this fear is nothing but a play of the mind, the product of the interplay of reality and fantasy in the fecund and fertile fields of my mind. Emotions lose their control of your psyche because you cease to become attached to them. A mere silent observance of emotional responses, but observances as a third person, is enough to give us the source of that emotion.