Amit Goes Blogging

Indian weddings are very cordial and flamboyant affair. Careful planning and money go into making them successful, which means avoiding a fiasco. The close relatives of both the parties undergo countless difficulties to ensure that the wedding is highly spoken of for years to come. Also, the larger the turn out, the greater is one’s social standing. In the olden days, when parties entering an alliance lived in the same town or village, the marriage procession proceeded from the boy’s house to the girl’s place amid a lot of fanfare. The wedding expenses are on the girl’s side and the boy’s relatives make it a point to manage a large turn out at the wedding and make things cumbersome for the girl’s side. These traditional pranks put the patience and sociability of the bride’s family to test.  I shall share an incident of one wedding party that had some great plans of putting the bride’s side to test. The girl's family lived in a city and the boy's family was from a small t...

We not only buck undesirable influences but also override the most coveted influences of personalities.  I have always been careful to avoid making promises, even to myself, lest the natural course of events be interfered with or resisted. The state of holding to a promise is very much like grappling with the vow of celibacy alongside mounting frustration. Promises made in storm are, indeed, forgotten in calm. The purpose that drove us when life seemed meaningless changes altogether when we find meaning in our lives and vice-versa. A little feeling that stirs the heart to bind itself to promises for life soon gives way to some other feeling and we feel betrayed by our previous circumstance. We mark out our lives based on what goes flitting past us. One fine day, all the spirit of the good old days sublimates into thin air. With the spirit gone; the energy gone, we wake up, as it were, from a dream, and find ourselves completely wavered from our conviction.  We move from...

A dimly-lit lounge, bartenders pouring shot after shot into my dangling glass, plush sofas, and gristly bottoms heaving over the leather and hairy hands rubbing against me is what I call loneliness. After years of anticipation and effort what I ran into was always a bunch of males, a sorrow I have cried out my heart at umpteen times but to no avail.  It was loneliness when I had the love and care of my parents who did everything possible to make me see their love, no matter, how contrary my experience was to the truth. And, now when it's my turn to express my love and care, they are unable to come to terms with it. Crashed expectations raise the dust of loneliness before my eyes once I retire home from work!  I have been lavished with great love by the near and dear ones; some of them epitomized selfless love as is only heard of these days. But they are very far now and also old. My love made many unsaid promises to them. Those promises are still with me in their unfulfilled s...

It happened too soon! I never thought my enthusiasm, like a moth, was jesting with fire. My aspirations of being a writer were throttled by macabre stories that have left my heart aching. Only a callous heart could make merry at such painful experiences and treat them as material for some sensational writing. On hearing them, I felt I was punished for venturing into life with a writer's ambition. But, life was much more cruel to her who related her agony to me, a split fraction of which has taken away the chimerical peace of my heart. I would have happily suffered hundred whips on my back and would have been still be hopeful of the good times. But, not anymore. Why God did not appear on the scene and save her from that butcher! She was pricked, tortured and dragged through the mud. All this because she loved that inhuman wretch. The wretch used her, abused her, cajoled her and again abused her. And, love made light of it all and would have happily offered itself again for the worst...

That god forbidden instinct took hold of him in his drunkenness - the instinct to gamble! After a successful term at the college, his well-imposed academic constraints yielded to the influence of ignoble company of gamblers and hooligans. As it is he was drunk in the glory that education conferred upon him in that small town. That fateful evening paved his downfall. Goaded by a friend, he made his way to the gambling den. The previous evening had adumbrated the doom when he lost Rs. 4000 at one sitting. Gambling is like a bee sting: leaves you with a pain and also leaves the sting buried under the skin. And, another gambling session seems to be the only cure to both. The only wisdom about gambling is avoiding it. But, 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread'. My foolish friend staked again that evening to recover what he lost the previous day. After hitting a few chances, he started losing out on four bets at 10k, 20k, 20k, 20k and at the closing was under a debt of Rs. ...