This line is busy

My cellphone, unlike most people's cellphone does not link me to the rest of the world. It merely serves as a constant and nagging reminder of how unlinked I remain. I shift uncomfortably in my seats at baristas where I wait for coffee to be served, wondering how every body else has their phone stuck to ther ear. I doodle impatiently as I constantly wait for those on the other end of the phone to 'take the call on the other line.'
My phone, no matter how state-of-the-art and expensive it may appear, scarcely rings. Of course the fact that I do not give my number to anybody, or even remember it without looking at the entry in my diary, may have something slight to do with the whole thing, but in general, the disparity is huge.
Take for instance the theatre, I rarely ever have to switch my phone on silent mode, because most of the people I know in the world are invariably (see how convenient a word this is) with me to watch the film, or at the very least glad I have taken the day off and am no longer in their vicinity. Hence, no calls from home, and no calls from work. If my mom would call, there would be no point in keeping it on silent mode because it would probably be a national emergency and the whole theatre would have to be evacuated anyway.

Take for instance meetings. Most edit meetings are interrupted by at least one or more strangely coughing tunes that I am told are ring tones. The politest of editors are constantly taking a moment to excuse themselves on the phone. I, never happen to face that situation, which I presume given the panache with which such interruptions are handled, would look good on my resume. Take supermarkets, isn't anyone else being held up at the check out counter by a big broad shouldered six footer yelling 'I'll call you back, I'll call you back'? Some of these lack of calls leave me waking at night in a cold sweat... when i catch a flight, will i be the only one not needing to switch off my cell? will no one ever cast me an irritated glance in the midst of a romantic candlelight dinner? Worse, when i am buried under a building/car/tractor Reader's Digest Drama In Real Life fashion with only my cellphone just at hand and unable to dial since all my wrist bones are crushed, will no one call and save my life?

I wonder, is it merely that I have nothing to say to anyone and they have similarly nothing to say to me? Or horrors, could it perhaps in some miraculous way mean that I actually have discovered the miraculous art, unknown to mankind, of completing all that I have to say to the people I need to say it to when I meet/speak to them? Could it be that I have no urgencies in my life? No emergencies? Try as I might, excepting death or disease or injury, I canm think of nothing that carries the urgency of kingdoms waiting to fall on the worth of my message. Could it actually be, and wait for it... this actually sounds good when you read it out loud in just the right fashion... that our lives are so much more than the eternal call waiting most of us live suspended in?

Evolution as known to chocoholics

Many many years ago, it is believed by the Mexicans, the earth was created from chocolate. The earth's crust was a delicately baked and crisply definite slice of buttery Lindt wafer. Above it, it upheld a frothy, angry, creamy mass of the most arduous bitter chocolate that man had ever seen. The topmost layer was embedded with fossiled dried fruit, pieces of nuts and raisins, sealed in by a lighter milk chocolate that was fertile enough to create and nourish the entire yet to be born world.
One day, god, who unlike the gods you and I adore, was potbellied and jovial, and was infinitely smart enough to have created absolutely no evil forces to be dealt with and hence enjoyed his chocolate in piece...er..peace.... stopped chewing. In the middle of negotiating a particularly large lump of butterscotch that tended to stick in his teeth (he had also, in his infinite mercy, seen to the non creation of any cavities), god paused. Now, unlike when you and I pause, which is pretty much all of the time, and the larger part of our evolutionary status, when god pauses, the silence can be quite horrific, anything, but anything could happen.
So anyhow, god paused. The chocolate paused stirring. The wafts of cocoa stopped emanating from the nougat filled cente of the earth. The silver foil moon stopped crackling and everyone looked askance at the Lord to see what on the chocolate filled earth could cause this pause.
And for the first time since god had created the earth, he spoke. "I cannot possibly eat all this chocolate on my own," he said. "It would never end, and how infintely boring would that be." So he stopped, and pushing the soft brown earth between his fingers, using the smaller bits of fruit for eyes and the larger bits for various unmentionable appendages, god created man.
At first man could not move. And then, lest he sink back into the creamy puddle from whence he came, god pushed him to eat, and he ate from the far-from-forbidden fruit. It was paradise. And that is why they say paradise is chocolate.
And they all grew fat and round and jolly. There was so much chocolate inside and outside of them, that there was no violence, no cheating, no snitching, no swiping, no pilfering, no sharing. Life was simple and chocolatey. And then, one day, some smart alec said, let's share further. Let's send newsletters around the end of the world to share our joys with others. And the first scribes were born. They toiled and slaved, carving the words out on the skin of a extra large cocoa pod and sending it out to the ends of the world.
And thus journalists and chocolates created the beginnings of the modern world, which is why Mumbai hacks pass the parcels of chocolate round the office with so much bonhomie on diwali day.

Blank Screen Anxiety

I have discovered a new disease. Years from now, when people are agedly bent over their walking sticks in the park in the evenings and ask "Alzheimers'?" you'll be going, "No, GJ's" and shaking your head. It is not a very intellectual disease, which is what I suspect Alzheimer's to be, because I reckon if you don't have any you can't lose it and hence it probably might just pass me by... no, but this one strikes you in the middle of those conversations that are finally for you going well.
There are various kinds of cocktail parties. Those at which you have turned up over or under dressed and seem to have a piece of cellophane in your throat that deliberately garbles all the parts of speech that would have sounded oh so perfect if only it wasn't there. This party oftentimes ends with you reviewing Eliot's Cocktail Party in your head and convincing yourself that the reason you don't say much is because you mean so much more when you are not actually saying it.
But there are those parties, dinners, lunches that actually go well. You are dressed just right and the food is fine. You are the right level of drunk, and have just around enough money in your pocket to pay for it. You know how it is when friends sit around and chat over a meal or drinks? You're all picking at the peanuts, passing the celery sticks around, swigging at the beer, talking about everything from memories to dysfunctional families, to being the black sheep, etc etc, and suddenly some wise guy comes up with the stone in the puddle.
"Did you catch the Kurosawa retrospective at the Third Eye?"
There is invariably a split second of silence in which I catch my breath and hope someone else will burst out laughing the instant I do and go "Kuro WHAT...?". But that invariably never happens (please note my OCD word has moved on from quintessential to invariably). While I wait, those around quickly recover any damaged poise. They haul the keeling ship upright, look the dastardly conversationalist in the eye and say, "Oh, no, I've been too busy this time, but have you watched XYZ?"
The conversationalist will invariably say "Oh, not really. In fact, I haven't heard of that one... I wonder how...". And the Defender of the Fallen will say " Oh, that';s because it's one of his early films. Made underground, before he caught the critics' eye with UVW. Very few actually have.."
The Perpetrator and Defender then invariably have a long drawn out conversation that excludes most other gaping members even if they number not more than one (invariably me) in bold, striding tones of voice that include words such as 'angle', 'perspective', 'objective', 'protagonist', 'cultural metamorphosis' and 'fascinating' the latter spoken in at least three varying tones of voice.
Please note that during this large pause in time for the rest of us, these two by-now partners-in-crime will never make eye contact with the rest of the team, some of whom may have at various points weakly tried to join in the conversation and failed much like the last refugees in the camp trying to clamber into the by-now speeding truck. They fall back to the table and pick at the crumbs, wistfully thinking about and envious of the fantastic intellectual spread the rest of them will be enjoying by this point in time.
After this the dinner or round of drinks is effectively ruined, having set two of the team above the rest and their resumed jocularity a pathetic dry piece of bread tossed back at snarling humanity in sympathy. I hate this breed of interrupted intellectuals at the dinner table.
but the worst of such scenarios is yet to come. Having been thus humiliated at many an informal cocktail party, there is one lesson I still have failed to learn. I invariably return to my little den that night and vow never to not know Kurosawa again. I google him, I stalk him in the entertainment listings, I shemaroo him and sniff him out in friendly DVD home libraries, and arm myself with conversational tidbits that would stun the most stalworthy... but the topic just never comes up again. I wait, I tap my toes through time, but no one at any part since then brings up Kurosawa. Fed up with the load of brain luggage, I weakly attempt to introduce him into a party where they are discussing Warhol. A few glares and a couple of refugee like scrambles later, I am back in the tent, this time reading Warhol, and eternally waiting with blank screen anxiety in the midst of words beyond my depth, for the topic that never turns up.

Getting on the treadmill

This is the blog of a writer with nothing to say. Of course, when Seinfeld had nothing to say, he minted a million bucks out of it. This, please note, is not that kind of nothing to say. This nothing to say comes from a piercingly sharp inability to figure out the world around one in a manner that is say, different from the average writer-journalist-author's published inability to do so.
What this translates to is that I am excrutiatingly unable to write anymore.
Hence the name of the blog. Spot Jogging, which is what I spend my life doing. I jog, so that the editors at my newly launched newspaper and those around me can blissfully sustain the notion that I am moving my ass long enough and hard enough to earn the salary that I draw. It also means I work up quite a sweat while doing so, evidence of course of this long and hard and splendid ability to be productive. However, blogspotters please note, this also implies that I have, am, and probably always will, go nowhere.
The mind does not progress. Right now I am at this inane phase where everytime I draw out my keyboard to write, my fingers automatically type out the word 'P-O-L-I-C-E'. There is no reason for this. I have never dialled the police, and have caused no one to, it is not remotely on the scene of my beat, but yet, there exists an unthinking urge to type it out. Not once, but repeatedly, irrespective of whether a word document is open to receive this ritualistic offering of my hunted subconscious.
The second issue is the word 'increasingly'. I increasingly feel the urge to use the word in all my sentences. This is increasingly followed, by a gap of a few words, by 'quintessential'. I increasingly find great peace in typing the word 'quintessential'. I try, much to the chagrin of my already much chagrined boss, to introduce the word into headlines, tag lines, captions, credits, if that were possible would be 'quintessentially XYZ.' I find great balance in the word, the way the rounded q, u, e, and s balance the straighter letters, if you er... get my drift.
Point being I have nothing to say anymore. I am not a lifestyle journalist. I do not get the undercurrents of fashion. I do not spot a bias cut pink tulle sequin embossed skirt and go 'Ah', illuminating my life for an incandescent second like a much starved christmas fairy light being bestowed a precious watt of electricity, even if only for an instant. No, I do not.
I am not a page 3 person. I don't spot celebrities. In fact, at most, I can be accused of mistaking myself for one at embarrassingly inopportune moments, such as when I walked out of Spaghetti Kitchen in a huff muttering about the rude lunchers who were staring at me, only to be told by a bemused ex that Katrina Kaif had been seated at the next table. I would not know a celebrity even if I turned into one.
Politics is a problem because I have an issue with names. I scarcely get the names of my own team members right. I muddle them up, and frequently substitute vowels for consonants. I would create havoc in the political sphere. The one political copy I was given to edit, I married off Jaya Jaitley, then a sitting MP or soemthing or the other, to Arun Jaitley. She smiled weakly at me when I apologised, as if unsure if this migth actually aid her political fortunes as opposed to the linkage with George Fernandes.So politics is out.
Economics would be a cake walk... except that I have never filed income tax returns and have no clue how to manage my money. I would not be able to recognise a mutual fund from a mortgage and the juniors on the team will now not let me even provide the headlines for any sensex 8000 stories. I guess that's a hint I should steer clear.
Crime.. I'm still trying to catch an mtnl let alone an underworld connection.
What do I do? I'm jogging. But I ain't going nowhere.