Day Trippin'

Dope Tale 1: Big fat Baby (starring Tushar and Arjun)

Arjun is playing lead while I play rythm. The strains of Free Bird echo in the air in a hell-raising solo. It is late in the evening and the bored few people in the crowd want real music, like bhangra beats and raunchy Telugu film songs. We play the last few chords and sing the last few words.

"I am as free as a bird now
and this bird you cannot chain"

Song over. We win first prize. Dedication time. Arjun dedicates his to his sweet mother and I dedicate mine to my sweet Mary Jane. We exit the sparsely lit hall hurriedly, guitars slung casually over our shoulders. The massive paintings of eminent personalities on the walls stare down sternly, as if they know exactly what we are going to do.
Arjun has a reefer in his pocket. It’s a fat baby, a real beauty. He fondles it as if he is making love to it. There is a nasty expression on his face. He holds it up to my nose and the strong smell of herbs wafts to my nostrils. Ah, the smell of fresh buds late in the night!
He lights it and takes a deep drag. Another one, another one and another one. My turn. I take a puff. Downdowndown it goes. I cough it out in a paroxysm of chokes. Another try. Another rejection. One more try later I succeed in filling my lungs with the smoke. I lift my head and wait for moksha. We are sitting under a peepul tree and I feel like a Buddha. Any moment now and I will start giving gyan.
We start walking and soon cross the college gates. I feel a tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach. It radiates outwards towards my extremities. I feel rubbery. As I walk my arms and legs feel disjointed, as if they will fall of any moment now. If you’ve seen that iconic scene in Terminator 2 where Arnold shoots the liquid metal man just before he collapses into a heap of molten metal, well, that’s how I feel. As I walk my leg comes of at the joint, then the knee and finally the trunk falls of. But I am still walking. My arm is swinging wildly by my side ready to drop of any moment.
My throat feels parched and dry and I am hungry. Waves of well being ripple through my body. A gentle smile appears on my face and gradually turns into a giggle and then a guffaw as Arjun goads me on with his one-liners. They are genuinely funny. I am laughing like a madman in the middle of a road with traffic all around me and drivers yelling abuse.

“Ye ra lanjakodaka” (why you son of a whore)

I don’t care. I yell back.

‘Nee amma ni denga’ (screw your mother)

I am chilled out. I’ve just won first prize in a music competition and celebrated in style. My prize is a book by Swami Vivekananda, ‘Lessons in Moral Fortitude for India: How Today’s Youth Can Build a Stronger Tomorrow.’

Dope tale 2: Stadium Rock: Its all in your mind (staring Tushar, Kazaa and Judas Priest)

It is dark. The only light in the small hostel room is the flickering of a computer screen. Kazaa is lying on the mattress beside me. He has just puked his guts out, fortunately not in the room. Demi has ditched us badly, but we have the keys to his room. Kazaa and I are in a stupor. The night weighs heavily on us and silence reigns supreme. The only sound that disturbs the otherwise deathly silence is the collective sound of a thousand IIT mugoo’s reading in their rooms, their brains clocking away the miles furiously. Kazaa and Demi are not your average IITan. They like having a good time and hate studying, always late and last in class. Their whole gumbal (group) is like that.
Judas Priest’s frenzied riffs spill forth from the computer. It’s the stadium anthem ‘You’ve got a another think coming’. Kazaa and I have smoked a thin baby. She’s potent and has cast her spell on me. Hell no, she’s seduced me.
I am rocking along with Priest. My favourite Judas is lead guitarist Glen Tipton. As the number gets more intense I am up on stage with Priest. Hell, I am Tipton. Dressed in figure hugging spandex and black doc martens I have a devil’s head flying-V slung across my shoulder. 100,000 watts of pure sound pump from the giant marshall amps and the stadium strobe lights throb pulsatingly, emitting an effulgent 80’s vibe. Vocalist Jake ‘the ripper’ Owen is shredding his vocal cords to bits and the time comes for the lead riff. I am prepared. The drummer is pounding the skins and the bass lines are going haywire. When the moment comes I let fly. My fingers know all the notes, they rip across the fretboard effortlessly. Updown, up and down. Fastfasterfastest. The only sound in the stadium apart from my lead line is the frenzied screams of delirious fans down below. The mosh pit is a surging sea of humanity as headbangers body surf their way to the front near the stage. The throbbing lights are connected to my guitar in such a way that I can control them merely by playing my instrument.
Imagine being up on stage with a million raving fans screaming and the entire stadium at the tips of your fingers, literally. When the climax comes I synchronize my last note with the last pound of the drums and the last deep woof woof of the bass and an air raid siren of a shriek from Jake. It ends in thunderous applause. I go backstage and smoke more weed with Priest.

Dope Tale 3: The Doors of Perception (starring Tushar, Nietzsche and Aldous Huxley)

It’s late in the night and I am alone in my room. The door is locked and my folks are sleeping in their room. I rolled a joint in the bathroom and have smoked it in my balcony. Now its just me in my room, my universe.
My room is me, in a sense. It reflects a part of me, what I am, what I want to be. A corner is occupied by a large shelf piled with books. These are the titles I’ve been reading since age 10 and earlier. They reflect the evolution of my reading. A writing table beside the shelf has my notes and music system. The cupboard has clothes strewn every which way and my cassettes and CD’s, backpack, tent, khukri. A bed completes the roundup of furniture in my room.
The weed is taking effect. Sleep dissipates as the mind goes into overdrive. Nietzsche’s ‘Thus spake Zarathustra’ is lying on the bed. I start reading. Its too dense. I can’t understand a word the great philosopher is trying to expound. Nietzsche is difficult enough to read when you are sober, not to speak of when your brains are fried by burning herbs. I put it down.
I pick up ‘The Doors of Perception’ by Aldous Huxley. It starts with a quote by William Blake:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it were, infinite”

In 1951 Aldous Huxley was part of an experimental group of people who took the newly discovered drug mescalin. The book is about Huxley’s experience for the 7 hours he was under the influence of the hallucinogen. I haven’t got a chance to try mescalin, but ganja can broadly be classified in the same category of ‘mind expanding’ hallucinogens. The book became a must read for the 60’s hippie generation. Jim Morrison got the name for his band from Blake’s quote quoted in the book.

We act on and are acted upon. We think, do, love, hate, cry. We come into this world alone and leave it alone, only richer for the memories we take into the afterlife. The memories of those we loved and those who loved us, those we thought loved us. Dreams turn to dust and dust will cover our graves when we die. Memories are the only reminders I have that my life was lived, punctuated through its short banal existence by intense bursts of joy, sorrow, pain, suffering. My friends are now all gone, scattered like dust in a whirlwind. Memories are all I have of them. I remember we once sat under a peepul tree and talked of living, loving and loathing. We shared our secret desires, ecstatic fantasies and petty longings. We shared smiles, traded stories and cradled hope. All I can cradle now is a memory of what they were, what I thought they were.

We are trapped within ourselves, our universe consisting of our thoughts and experiences.
How do I immerse myself wholly and completely in another person without becoming the person? What she tells me is what I think she tells me. I am who I think I am. Do I think I am me, or do I know I am I? Who am I? Do I know, can I know, should I know?

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it were, infinite”

There is a small window in the wall. The wall is the boundary of what I can see. If I were to open the window I would be able to glance into the vast open outside the realm of my being. I long to go through the window, and yet am afraid, afraid of what I might find. I might find that I am not who I think I am. And yet, I might find the true me out there.