And the saddest part of the sentence is that full stop after the don’t. I could wish all day and all night for a comma or a semi-colon or a haywire to hang on. But at this point of time, the author regrets that I couldn’t be included. Thats it. Some shine and some don’t. Call it anything you want, like ding, like somebody hung up without even talking.

Some people shine and some don’t. Yeah.

Curious. I work in a valley surrounded by green hills, hills green with coconut palms in the day and dark and threatening during the night. That night, one hour past midnight, I was driving home. Do not ask me what I do till then, nobody knows, neither do I. At the circle where bike accidents occur every other day, I saw something crossing the road. A little black object crawling slowly across the road. I’m not afraid during night times as much as I am during day. So I slowed the bike, removed my helmet and welcomed the visitor.

The circle is a spectacle to begin with, five neon lamps wash the place with their heady glow, the place including the road is orange in color. Literally. The black tortoise finally stopped a few feet from me. I park the bike and stare at this new intrusion into my life. A new messenger. Otherwise of everything in this world a black tortoise! and it appears before me in an orange junction. I know I have to read symbols if I ever need to be an alchemist, I didn’t want this mother of all omens to pass. I wanted the universe to conspire to get things done for me.

“What are you doing here?”, I wanted to know, there was no one around to be embarrassed.

My upbringing is so conservative that, if the tortoise replied, my life would have been destroyed then. I can’t handle shocks without self-destruction. I’m a masochist in certain ways. The tortoise didn’t reply, helpfully.

I looked at my destiny’s point person for a few minutes. Once in a while when it withdrew its head like a coward into its black shell, my optimism tinted with white horror in the realization that this could be just another mortal tortoise. Then the head came out and I was hopeful again, there was some message waiting for me there, finally my confusions were about to get cleared. I’m the second most optimistic person in the world, you, who expect something worthwhile from this curious incident of a tortoise in the night time can take the cake.

Black tortoise, dark moonless night and a place that shines with orange light. What was the message? The place shined, but my eyes got accustomed, ennui set in, the message remained elusive. Of everything, a black tortoise. Black tortoise, dark moonless night and a place that shines with orange light. What could it mean. It meant go. I started the bike tired of the pointlessness, leaving the cornered tortoise to its own confusions on where to go.

I needed a purpose in life, and this was my chance. All I asked for was some order, some meaning to all that was happening and not happening, and what I get is a dark, blank, indifferent silence of the Universe. I did have faith. I believed. I even consciously disregarded the fact that there was a stream flowing quarter mile from where I found the tortoise. I denied my logic to have faith in a tortoise story, because I needed a myth to move on.

The sad part is we need myths to move on. Like that man up in the dusty Deccan mountain, with a cave full of pamphlets – one for each of us with our destiny written on it. Or else settle down with that Almanac which tells you why you are special, why the moon, Neptune and Saturn were wherever they were when you were born. Or sleep on the terrace to spot that shooting star. Or wait for the red mail van to come around the corner. Or keep searching on google till you find your niche.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do to you what Coelho did to people who shine, they anyway would have. Like faith did to my class topper, he anyway would have topped the class. And we are left praying in front of sanctums, asking for boons which no one can give. Rather asking for boons which we are never sure of. There is no destiny because there isn’t one. Perhaps we could ask for a little humility, to understand that there is no script already written, to stop searching for it and come to terms with the truth that some people shine, some don’t. The earlier, the better.

And dear Freud, you would be analyzing the state of my dreams by now. Lack of direction and self-esteem compounded by a false sense of superiority and misplaced aspirations in an underlying mosaic of negativism, lack of talent and sheer escapism. Maybe, maybe not, maybe why don’t you go fuck yourself. No hey, I’m sorry. I’m all yours to analyze my self-help guides of good living, but right now I’m not free. The truth will set me free. But right now, I’m getting fucked by the truth from all sides. Maybe the truth will set me free, some day.

It seems you are leading me
off the beaten path through a forest.
Now we’re up to our waist in wildflowers.
I don’t even know what flowers they are.
Past experience is of no help here.

I don’t know what to do or how.
You’re tired.
You ask to be carried in my arms.
Already you’re in my arms.

“Do you see how blue the sky is?
Do you hear what birds are in the forest?
Well, what are you waiting for?
Well? Carry me then!”
And where shall I carry you?…

Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Cityscape and slums, dangerous traffic and trafficking, the national highway cuts into the narrow city streets. Every highway is a tributary for the pulsating city. When life in country roads gush into the gaping black hole, the city is caught unaware, the arterial streets get clogged, the traffic is jammed. Flyovers and subways are open heart surgeries on the city, they move the fat a little further but the the terrible sounds, vast ugliness and the sickening air remains. The smell of gasoline and smoke in the traffic blocks, vehicles going slow, the dust – traffic snarls pisses us off more than anything. We feel we don’t deserve this. We asked for a trip on the national highway at super speeds, here we are wasting time in a traffic muddle. Irony. The time of the day when traffic moves the slowest, rush hour.

Then it’s the mad rush to get our vehicle off the traffic block. Maneuvering, twisting the wheel, expletives like flying kisses. We shout – what that lady in the blue car is thinking she is doing in the traffic block; what are we doing? We wriggle out somehow and take a deep breath as if one helluva constipation is all over. The sad part of the bargain is that we come to the same place, the very next day and race around in a bloody maze.

Ha ! but the lure of the city, despite its cruel hand. There once was an army man who loved the smell of napalm in those humid Vietnam mornings, he used to wonder how he will survive after the war gets over. I cannot survive a day without the city, today I was bumper to bumper for two long hours. Ironically the road is called ‘the Bypass’. Tomorrow I’m going again – with dreary eyes, with nowhere else to go, like a loser, like a bit player in someone Else’s nightmare.

That tree said
I don’t like that white car under me,
it smells gasoline
That other tree next to it said
O you’re always complaining
you’re a neurotic
you can see by the way you’re bent over.

Allen Ginsberg

The Volvo journey from Bangalore to Trivandrum is something I really enjoy on the national highway, especially the movie they play in the bus. I get to hear the audience react to each scene and dialogue. I note down the stuff I would need to avoid when I make a movie (not now, but after selling all my dad’s property). The other day,(after several rounds of offerings in the local temple), its a girl (my lord) sitting next to me. *How stuff works : Girl in the next seat-start conversation-bus falls into ravine-LOST (second season)- DHKMN – found – final scene – you, baggy jeans,100 cc bike,Pooja Bhatt*. So I start the conversation in T minus three seconds.

She : “blah blah”
Me : “I started the conversation, so i should talk more”
She :”blah blah…..you ought to do an MBA, otherwise you are a worm”
Me : “see..can I talk for the next five minutes?”
She : “blah blah….MBA should be in finance man”
Me : “Its 5:20 now, can I start talking at 5:30 at least?”
She : “Investment banking sucks man..they think girls are dumb…blah blah”
Me : “If you had so much to talk then you should’ve started the chat”
She : “…its not quant…its different….stats man stats….”
Me : “I’m deaf in both ears, I understand the words that come out of your mouth – not”
[after being mercilessly defeated in the conversation game, I say "bluha bluha" to myself so that I don't hear what she is saying]
By the time the movie started I knew everything about her except how she got that cute scar on her right elbow *Maybe fell off a cycle or something, wish it was a cliff or something*

It was a Dilip starrer movie, *He’s ok – just* but I made all kinds of noise *like everybody else* when the hero was introduced. And then she said,

She : “I hate malayalam movies”
I felt like the Volvo bus just ran over me.
Me : “hey but Dilip movies are fun” *I’ll never marry you now. Not only that – I’ll definitely kill you*
She : “but these are not my kinda movies…blah blah”
Me : “Its my kinda movies, I’m gonna watch now”

I sat there planning the murder, then I felt I was missing something. I knew I was being irrationally prejudiced, I could look foolish with such a wild guess, but I had to ask her that question.

Racing along the National Highway, you see these sad houses. They look dark from the highway, sad houses in the rain. Beautiful spaces covered by walls and filled by boredom. Husband is a wall, wife another, the son and daughter are walls, mother and father. They silently fight for defining the little space within; call it home. Our basic instinct is to break those walls and search for the sky, but when the lightness becomes too unbearable you want a confine, you need that comfort and warmth. Little houses by the national highway, each has a story.

Across dinner that night, I pop the question.

Me : “btw, you didn’t tell me – which school?”
She : “Holy Angels Convent”

The two eggs in my curry became ducks and ran out saying “quack!quack!”. I started laughing uncontrollably.

She : “what happened”
Me : “forget it…I get crazy on the national highway..hehe”

The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor. Voices said, we all live in a global village.

But I knew there was no village, no stop. National Highway. We all live in the National Highway. Every moment is a chosen disturbance, in which we press the pedal on some Interstate, some Autobahn,some national highway.

Is there a promise at the end of the highway, we really don’t know. We are highwaymen searching for hope,and yes, a little money for dope.

I’ve been on National Highway for a long time now. National Highway 7, the longest and 47, the shortest. Interstate 10, the murky one and Interstate 95, the speedway. The highway has grown on me over the years. Every week I see the spot opposite the fishing harbour where I first saw the sparkle in an eye, the spot where a truck ran over my friend from college, the spot where I first stayed away from home and we drank both day and night by the river, the spot where a colleague and his immediate family went under the wheels of a tourist bus. I see these places every week and am I expected to feel what I feel. It is a struggle to accept the highway without emotion. Perhaps, this,is life on the National Highway.

Everyone on the National Highway dreams of a final stop called ‘Settling down’. It is more than an excuse for the sorry state of our affairs, it takes the load off. I am not responsible for anything around me; I don’t belong here; No,this is just a pitch stop; I have great ‘hidden’ potential; If I want I can leave this place today; I won’t live here for the rest of my life, so I don’t need friends here; Give me two years, I will settle down somewhere by the sea in the mountains. Then Christmas comes, Easter, Happy Birthday comes, vishu, diwali comes. Year after year, all you see is the national highway, perhaps the geography changes, then one fine day, the cruel highway takes you, the way it killed my friend – out of the blue, like a clown does.

The connection between poverty and peace.The connection between womens empowerment and peace. The connection between mutual trust, accountability, participation, creativity – the four pillars of the Grameen Bank and peace. Long overdue but still one of the best Nobels ever. Because credit is a human right. Because every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life.