Friday, August 19, 2011

The Heart is a Butterfly

Much like Mansoor Khan , erstwhile Bollywood director of films like Akele Hum Akele Tum , Qayamat se Qayamat Tak etc I want a organic farm of my own in the hills of a South Indian hill town where the local tribals, garbed in shawls and monkey caps ,with folded hands would call me "Ayya" when I go out for my morning jog when the mist has yet not been conquered by the late sun of the hills. I will make my own cheese, honey, jam and bread and sell it to charcuteries and patisseries in the city. In the thin mountain air I will contemplate life and live the simplistic life of a self sufficient hermit.

I want to buy a large hiking/camping bag the kind European bag packers use when they go to Thailand and Indonesia , and I want to go to the south of France and hike around till I can finally advance from reading to speaking French. I want to grow out my beard so rough that people mistake me for a hermit or a Sikh. I want to make stop overs at Budapest , Spain and Italy and Poland. I will seek out and become an apprentice to a master vintner who has seven words in his name two of which are "de la". He must be the kind who actually puts the dirt in his mouth to see if the grapes are ready for plucking and can tell the time by the position of the sun. It would definitely help if he has an unwed daughter who, complete with her own subplot, yearns to a female matador.

I will then go to Argentina and learn jiujitsu and participate in underground cage fights with Brazilian Army Veterans and FARC runaways. Cage fights, not the kind where you fight to death , but definitely the kind where people bet on who wins and who ends up with a broken femur. I will train under a team of fighters whose Master takes a liking to me because of the "kindness" I show in the ring. I will develop a rivalry with his son who can never be good enough in front of his father and compete with him for the affection of the only female fighter in the team. In the after fight celebrations I will learn how to appreciate the local beer and the joys of a rare horse steak. Of course this will mean I will finally get to learn enough spanish to be able say something else than "una cafe con leche, por favor" or "ne habla mucho espanol" or "donde esta el banos" . I will be a polyglot who will be able to say polyglot in several languages.

Several months later , I will end up in a small village in Okinawa where I start learning Kendo & Kyudo under a Blind Sensei (obviously). At night when I stand famished and exhausted, under a flickering oil lamp, with the omnipresent silence of the countryside, he would tell me what I did wrong that day and slowly segue into the story of how he lost his eyes, a tale that would bring tears to my own and unravel parallel to my present situation with me as the protagonist instead of the master.

I will end my cliche-ridden exploits in Korea where a chance interference in a street fight to save an orphan from a organ trafficking ring will land me an apprenticeship with Kim Jee-woon, director extraordinaire and slowly I will come to the stark realization that the Serial Killer problem as shown in Korean movies is very much real and I will race against time to save an orphan (the same one as before) from a gang of competitive and techno savvy serial killers.

...and then I will be a man with stories to tell.

2 comments:

Srini Iyer said...

someone's hacking into my dreams ;)

Angelus said...

Lets pack our bags,go on indefinite leave (seeing as we both are on bench), buy a one way ticket to Prague and see where the road takes us..