A Last Jump and a Raised Fist
The Week That Went By #4
I realize I am just an indisciplined man when it comes to this. This — sitting in front of the screen once a week and typing.
Why do it, when I can watch the new season of ‘The Bear’, or swipe through Biden bloopers, read another behavioral scientist write another book of cognitive biases that we humans fall prey to…or play badminton (yes, more on that in a future post).
This Sunday, though, felt compelling enough.
Across two evenings
Last week Rajeev (name changed) passed away. He had been a celebrity of sorts in the city, singing and dancing at events and shows across the city (and country) for close to three decades. He had recently turned fifty.
I didn’t know him personally. The only time I had seen him on stage was when I was 13–14 years old. He was strikingly good-looking, and had a stage presence comparable to an international rockstar. That image of him jumping on stage in a shiny silver vest had stayed on with me.
I remember how my cousins, all females, much older than me, tried to hunt down his phone number in the telephone directory as soon as we got back home. Oh! Those good old days of phone directories and prank calls.
Then a couple of weeks back, after almost twenty-five years, I saw him again at a live-music bar. Besides the hairline moving back a few inches, he didn’t look any different from how he had on that open-air stage in the winter of ‘99.
On requests from the crowd at the bar, he smilingly got on the stage. It seemed like he could still jump like a 20-something. And he quite literally did, as he performed ‘Jump’ with max fidelity. His lovely looking wife, who I could bet, was into some serious health protocols, and their daughter (17, and an incredible vocalist herself) watched on from below the podium. They must have seen him a thousand times doing this, but still seemed as starry-eyed.
Standing next to me, my friend whispered that Rajeev doesn’t drink or smoke. Another friend later said, “he only ate boiled food”.
As he got off-stage, my eyes followed him for an extra 10 seconds, trying to compare and contrast the two versions of him across decades. He met my eyes, and nodded in acknowledgement. He didn’t know me. But it was as if he were saying thank you for cheering on from below the stage on that foggy Christmas Eve ~ 25 years back.
Just a week later, in the morning, the whatsapp groups which had long become dormant started buzzing. Rajeev had passed away. ‘Massive cardiac arrest’, they wrote.
The two evenings spread across these intervening decades flashed in front of my eyes.
Civil War
I watched ‘Civil War’ this weekend. This Alex Garland movie is at the intersection of modern dystopia and road-trippin’ America, two of my favourite sub-genres.
Alex Garland is also the author of ‘The Beach’, the book (and the movie by Danny Boyle) that let loose a million backpackers on Khao San road looking for a shot of snake’s blood.
In one of the scenes from the movie, a group of journalists on their way to D.C stop at a deserted ‘Winter Wonderland’ set in the middle of a highway passing through a typical suburban American town. There they come across a militia sniper in camouflage who has his rifle pointed towards the upper deck of a townhouse.
One of the journalists (J) asks the militia (M) —
J: Who are you shooting at? Who do you think they are?
M: No idea
J: Who’s giving you orders?
M: No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us, and we are trying to kill them.
J: You don’t know what side you’re fighting for?
M: Oh I get it, you’re retarded, you don’t get a word of what I say.
The movie never discloses why the country got engulfed in a civil war. That was never the point.
There was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump a few days back. The bullet missed him by an inch.
Leaving a bloodied ear, and a historical fist-in-the-air shot in its wake.
If it was just an inch to the left..?
See you, sooner, I hope!🤞