Two dicks in Thailand

We somehow felt like we were sitting in a shack at Goa. Even the Singha tasted like Kingfisher. Or maybe after 9 pints, a Singha is suppose to taste whatever you want it to taste like. Slowly it began to resemble someplace in India.

We felt like how tourists would feel in our country. After getting drunk. And getting duped. And getting drunk again for getting duped.

And we always thought such things only happen in India. But the word had probably spread. To a far off island in Thailand called Hua Hin.

We smelt something fishy in the air, and it was not just the Thai sauce.

It was late evening. The mood in the shack was merry for most of them. Except for Das and Me.

A local band was playing the Thai version of Hotel California specially dedicated to the two of us. After a few minutes we figured out that he was actually singing in English. We were sitting at a table right in front of the loudest conked speaker. The singer was trying his best to impress us. And we tried to pay full attention, since Das had invited upon us this torture.

For the entire evening Das had tried requesting for various numbers, starting with the most bizarre ones like ‘Countdown to extinction’ and gradually scaled down his expectations, finally settling for ‘Metallica’s Unforgiven’.

“What do you mean they don’t know Megadeth….ok..what about Metallica?” Das had screamed back at the innocent looking waiter. I don’t know if he was innocent, but to me all Thais look innocent.

It was now upto the band members to justify the difference between the cost price of the beer and the amount that the shack was charging for it.

The band consisted of some simple Thai folks who probably sang Thai folk. But unable to handle the pressure they faced from our table, the band attempted ‘Hotel California’.

The lead singer kept looking at Das to make it clear that this number was dedicated specially for him to ‘shut the fuck up’.

To them Hotel California or Unforgiven made no diff, it was all the same shit…they were both English songs, so one could easily substitute the other.

The band boys unforgivingly rendered their version of it. The guy on the guitars was the only one providing clues as to what they were actually playing.

But our minds were occupied. And our eyes roved to spot the bastard, LEON. It was 2am. We were leaving Hua Hin the next morning, back to Bangkok and back to Bangalore.

“I swear, that the bastard told me that he owns this damn place.” Das screamed over the music after 40 minutes of posing in pensive silence.

“You want mole singhaaaaa…..”a cute looking waiter whined beside us ready to uncap two more pints.

“No, we want Leon?” Das replied in as Mallu a manner, that could give any Thai chap a heart attack.

“What Leon…..I told you….no Leon…i dunno no Leon.’

“But he said that he owns this place.”

“No no…no Leon….only Singha and Tigel” the waiter made a face and left, deciding to stock up Leon beer the next time.

At that point, we couldn’t make out what was giving us that strange buzz in the head…was it the Singa, that chap on the mike, the stink of fish, the fact that this trip was coming to an end, or that Leon the bastard was absconding.

‘You can checklaa any thime you lie, buth you can nevel leeee’ The chap on the mike yowled, reassuring us that He was responsible for the buzz.

Das lifted his brow as much as he could, to prevent his headache from penetrating “Now what do we do? How do the hell do we settle this bill?” he tossed the bar bill for 4,000 baths on the table, that instantly bought down half the buzz in the head.

I waited for the drummer to finish banging his sticks, so that I could think of a solution in some peace.

We had been sitting in this shack for about 4 hours with every beer blurring our vision and adding clarity to the fact that we were nothing more than mere fools.

The shack was situated right outside The Hyatt, Hua Hin, a heavenly 5 star beach resort where Das and Me were sent on a mind expanding creative workshop.

Das is one of the best art directors I have ever worked with. His sense of design is absolutely twisted. His style is evil, that pays no regard to any copy that surrounds it. And most often rightfully so, because you later realize that his design needs more space and prominence than your two shitty bits of copy. His design is so overpoweringly stunning that any copywriter can get away with murder. And yes, he somehow manages to make any copy look good, in the odd chance when he decides to make it visible. Or sometimes if he really thinks you’ve done a good job, he’ll put your lines in the most artistic fonts that are only available on his Mac. And suddenly all those lines that looked like piss on your MS Word begin to look like they were written by Neil French.

I think I’ll shut up now. He runs his own company. I still work for a meagre salary.

So Das was sent here because of everything that he’d done so far. He was easily the most promising art director they could pick at that time. And I was sent to stop doing everything that I was.

It was a seven day workshop. The workshop was packed with every conceivable technique to disprove that creativity cannot be taught. We had different sessions that covered everything from music to art to writing, followed by assignments.

They decided to teach us everything that we hadn’t learnt in 25 years, in 7 days. Like a super crash course in creativity, so that we could step out of the workshop straight onto the Cannes podium. Delegates with different skin tones and eye shapes from every part of Asia congregated for this HR experiment.

But the worst part was that the workshop was so packed that it felt like we were imprisoned. Even after 5 days, our cameras were only filled with pictures of the resort we never explored, the rooms we never slept in, the pool we never dived into, and a few fountains here and there, and ofcourse a ready portfolio for Benetton of assorted faces from various regions. It would have been a shame to return with only these memories. Well the agenda for the agency was to make us return with ‘New Improved’ star blurbs above our heads. But we still had our personal agendas. To explore around. To come back and boast that we had been abroad. It was also our first foreign trip. Spending all the time in a resort seemed like a criminal waste.

So, after a few more of those creative sessions, we expanded our minds and then slowly our boundaries and meandered away outside the resort, to this shack, the first available tourist spot within walkable distance.

Das being the more creative of us two, had stepped out two days earlier.

“I want you to meet his guy dah I met!!. He’s my friend. Very nice guy dah!! His name is Leon!!” Das built up some excitement as we walked towards the shack, bunking an assignment of our sessions.

“Who’s he?”

“He owns this place dude, a shack right outside….it’s like Brittos in Goa,…and he’s a really chilled out chap. He’s our age dah…he’s like us machaan….very friendly and nice dah…”

However experimental you might want to be in life, you always love meeting people who are exactly like you.

So we reached the shack, and Das went inside and returned with the host of honour…Mr. Leon.

A young smart looking chap walked out staggering with a bottle of Singha and thrust it in my hand. “Hey…how la u doing?”

“Fine….thanks.” I received the bottle with not much gratitude. I was getting used to being served free expensive alcohol of different varieties for the past few days at the hotel, that this free beer had lost all its worth.

Das beamed with pride and emotion looking at this union, and added a few words of praise while introducing us to each other.

“You too flom India?” Leon asked me.

“Ya”

“I Love India.”

“You’ve been there?”

“No. But want to. Taj Mahal…..Indian women….beautiful.”

This was the sixth person who had the same (p)references when you mentioned India.

“I take you alound. And when I come to India….you take me alound…ok….deal”

“Ya…..deal” I replied imagining playing host to him. (….but what if he landed up for real. Probably he’d pile on to Das more than me. Anyway Das knew more women than me, and Taj Mahal…He really didn’t look like he was the sort who’d want to see Taj Mahal….it was probably the only trivia he knew about India…..)

“I just come.” he announced.

Leon reappeared with his 2 wheeler, a variation of Honda Street. And strapped on his helmet ready to take on the role of a tourist guide, and the 3 of us squeezed ourselves, and rattled away on his moped to town.

I was excited to meet Leon. Leon looked like a nice guy at first glance. Just like how you would picturise a Thai to be after reading up travel books….nice, hospitable, friendly, polite and other complementing adjectives. More importantly it felt good inside to have a friend in some other land, just to feel more popular.

I was feeling liberated (even though I had my nose jammed against Leon’s sweaty back) to be on this little sight seeing tour after a grueling session the whole day, rather the whole week.

The whole day I was stuck in a smoky room trying to generate some ideas with my team members. Anyway, they hated me. Ok, even I hated them. They hated me because I knew English, or they didn’t know enough of it to know that I didn’t know it too well. They all came from different countries. The organisers had teamed us in such a manner, that each member belonged to a different country. My group had a Chinese, a Japanese, a Vietnamese, a Thai, a Lankan and a Pakistani. And they expected us to do this global collaboration and come up with a campaign for Nike. Forget the campaign, we couldn’t manage to even crack communicating with each other. They had bombed 5 of my ideas, because I spoke in English. There was one Chinki Art Chick who kept saying “I don’t aglee” for anything I said. I kept arguing with her, trying every possible tone of voice. But she just went on ” I don’t aglee” and once she said “I don’t aglee” even before I said anything. That’s when I knew that she didn’t aglee with me, not my ideas. It was pointless, so I walked out.

And they continued talking to each other in sign language after I left.

So Leon rode us through the narrow streets of an unknown land getting us acquainted to his little town. And we keenly watched out for every little difference in the topography that separated it from our country. The people were different. The pigs looked different. The huts looked different. And yes even the chicken looked different.

“I take you to malket. You get good stuff, like cheap stuff…and also some good stleeet food.” Leon announced the itinerary for the evening.

Das was keen on eating frogs and beetles. Though I’m quite sure that they served it back in the hotel, but it was so sophisticatedly disguised that it stole away all the adventure associated with it. It’s not quite the same, like eating them on the road, served along with some risk.

So, we rode past everything. Everything looked interesting around. Even the Pepsi hoardings looked different endorsed by some Thai star. He had a funkier haircut, funkier clothes and a crazier pose. The art direction was supreme with barely any copy. So good that in India it could have only been possible in a scam ad. I thought to myself that the Chinki Chick was justified in not ‘agleeing’ to whatever I had said. Right now for some reason, everything around me seemed like it was art directed by her. Das got a mini orgasm with every hoarding that passed by and blamed copywriters for not letting him do designs like that, and burdening him with useless lines. I blamed him for not being able to think of copy as a part of design. And we ended the argument by jointly blaming our clients.

The other fascinating thing was that they sold beer everywhere. In all kinds of shops. Just so ordinarily. Ya, we had seen a lot of scenic things around, but this was above all those attractions…getting beer anywhere and at anytime. Like typical Indian tourists, we felt the need to be excited about anything we saw, and compared them to our own country and condemned ourselves for being so uncool.

But Leon zipped past all these subjects of no importance to the market that was the pride of the place.

A market that sold dicks. Ya, a market dedicated to dicks. Like a dick bazaar.

Apparently in Thailand they worship dicks. And as a tribute to this organ, the craftsmen adapted them to key chains, pendants, bracelets and other variations so that they could occupy more prominent positions in your body.

We went touring this bazaar that stocked replicas of this in various forms, shapes and intimidating sizes.

The entire bazaar was filled with it. It was amusing no doubt, but going stall after stall verifying the reproduction and comparing it to the original was sickening. Some seemed too unreal that it put you in doubt and contemplation for the next few minutes.

“What is this dah..it’s funny shit man!!” Das gasped looking at the range.

“How much?”

“400 baht” said the shopkeeper.

“No…No…bring it down”

“No cannot……this made of steel ok…”

I guess it was improper asking him to bring it down. The conversation was idiotic that you could not help but be amused.

“…you go fol wooden one…I give cheap. …You can put this on your neck….”

And he dangled a garland  around Das’ neck. The shopkeeper beamed with pride, and gave Das an impressive look like as if he had just transformed him into Brad Pitt or Jackie Chan maybe, with this additional accessory.

“Vely nice..”  the man sighed.

Das took it off and returned it.

“No..No…we cannot wear this in our country.”

“No..No…it looking good.” the man put the garland back on his neck. I don’t know what was he not understanding…the concept of our country or our English.

“How bout this…it got 100 of them ok…nice.” He removed another garland that had twice the number and put it around my neck.

I stuck my neck out reluctantly to be garlanded with this embarrassment.

Das laughed forgetting he had one on his neck too.

“They’re dicking around too much daaaah….” Das whispered and we cracked up silly.

We haggled around for sometime. Just to keep them happy Das and me bought ourselves a key chain each of these humiliating curios.

(Pic above: Leon, Das and shopkeeper)

Leon was disappointed with our lack of interest in this subject, object…whatever you can call it.

“You get mole ok….down this load” and pointed to a narrow street. “You want to go. I take you ok.”

“No. No. Is it the same like these?”

“Ya. but mole valiety…ok. you like it….ok…mole good looking….”

We were just not interested in seeing anymore innovative forms of these, trying to picturise how could they ever make it look any better.

“No…isn’t there anything else?’

Leon hung his head down feeling ashamed that the people of his town only specialized in this craft.

“No…it’s nice. It’s just that we don’t have much time left.” we tried consoling him.

“No…I know…you no liking it. ok…no ploblem..I now take you for some good food.”

“Ya…that would be good.”

We returned to the parking lot. And we were shocked to see that Leon’s vehicle had a flat tire.

I immediately sucked in my stomach to balance the blame.

“Oh no!!” Leon panicked.

“Oh shit!! We’re sorry Leon”

“No. No….that’s ok.”

“No…it happened because of us.”

“No. No…so what? Anyway the tyle too old.”

‘No …we’ll pay for this.”

“No. You my guests…. I cannot make you pay.”

“No. We’ll pay. Please.”

Me and Das took turns in pleading guilty.

We pushed the vehicle to a nearby mechanic.

And Leon conversed with the mechanic in Thai and he got on to repair  the bike.

“Anyway, the bike need lot of lepailing, the blakees no wolk, the chain no wolk…all gone” Leon comforted us.

We sat there on a bench, sipping a local beer and seeing Leon’s bike slowly take a new shape. Leon kept us distracted by ensuring a supply of strange dishes from a nearby cart. We had no clue of what we were biting into, or what was going to bite us.

First came a new tube.

Then new tyres.

Then a new chain.

Then new brake pads.

And then a new seat cover.

We patiently watched Leon’s bike getting a makeover. Das and me gulped our beers and burped together. We looked at each other in horror wondering what the total of this bill is going to be.

The bike mechanic answered it for us.

“5,000 baht”

Leon dug his wallet before we could reach out for ours. And gave us an innocent look.

“Oh no. I am not callying so much money. You give me ok . I give you back when we leach the shack. ok. ”

“No problem dude. I mean we’ll pay for all of this.’

“No. No. please dont. I get angleeee…….. NO”

“Ok”

“No ploblem? Is it ok?”

“No. No. No problem.”

“I give you in shack.”

“Ya cool. No problem.”

We paid up. Das and I split the damage and we rode back on his machine with new improved pick up. Back to the shack.

Leon disappeared inside and returned in a few minutes.

“Oh Shit!! The cashiel not thel. You come back in one houl or …or you can sit hele and have a beeel. no ploblem no….ok?”

“No. thanks but I think we’ll come back after dinner. We have to go. Today is the last day, so they have this special dinner…..”

“Oh! Ok. Today is last day. Ill miss you guys…”

And Leon hugged us tight, and we parted…and returned in a few seconds and hugged again emotionally bonding over all the ‘Bs’ he’d introduced us to….the Booze, the Bazaar, the Bugs and Beetles, and his Bike, leaving behind one ‘B’ for us to discover later. The ‘Bastard’ that he was.

**************************************************************************

We were probably the only two customers left in the shack. It was closing time. Even the band started surprising us with numbers that could actually be worse than their previous ones.

“I’m a bigger ass than you.” Das confessed after a final swig.

“Why?”

“I lent Leon 4,000 bahts on the first day I met him.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“Ya, the bastard said that he was running short of money. He said that he had no change to pay back a customer.”

“4,000 bahts is not change. It’s close to 5,000 bucks you fuck…..”

“Ya…I know Dah. But what to do? I just gave it to him. I was drunk dah.”

“Ya, so what do we do now?”

We had spent the entire evening scanning every face around to see if it looked like Leon’s. Even though most of them looked like Leon, none of them owned up.

The guy on the mike sang the worst composition of the evening in Thai that could only translate as “Pay the bill and get the fuck out, you jerks”.

We were too drunk and we still needed to save up a little bit of our senses to walk back to the resort.

The bill on the table was staring at us waiting to be settled.

“4,000 Bahts.”

Das put his hand in the pocket to pull out the cash. And I dug into mine.

But all that came out was a couple of keychains….a cheap wooden one and another in steel, that was downsized.

We chucked them on the table and Das mumbled under his breath.

“huh….two Dicks.”

A day with Jim Morrison

I was standing there staring at the board in front of me ‘PERE LECHAISE CEMETERY’. A burial ground for the rich and famous in Paris. I was still wondering how I ended up being here on a hot tuesday afternoon. An arrow on the board pointed out, ‘YOU ARE HERE’.

And I was thinking to myself “WHY?’

Everyone in advertising dreams of going to Cannes, atleast once in their career. And almost everyone when they do go, also end up extending their trip to cover more of Europe in as less Euros as possible. We were no different. Rajiv and I.

Rajiv, the only servicing guy who managed to make himself worthy enough for this trip of a lifetime. But Rajiv is more like the creative types. Sees good films. Listens to good music. Reads good books. And mostly speaks good english. Appreciates good food. Has an enviable collection of music. And has posters of inspirational people on his bedroom walls. For him it was genuine interest. For me, it was more of an occupational hazard for being in creative. I have always wondered why we needed to expose ourselves to such great pieces of work, for doing the crap that we do. Otherwise, maybe we’d be feeling much nicer about what we were doing.

Rajiv, for the way he was, it was a perfect way to spend his afternoon. And for me and my fucked up luck, this seemed like a perfect way to spend mine as well.

We had arrived in Paris the previous night from Cannes. And thrown our luggage at a cheap hotel, since this part of the programme was not being sponsored by the office. The only good thing was that we no longer had to bother collecting every single bubblegum bill or make the French understand that we needed food bills for the booze we drank. We were here on our own money, and all we had to do was blow it, without keeping a tab. And in Paris, all you need to do is take a cab, the metro, have a cola, some peanuts and take a piss at a public lavatory, and yes you’ve blown it all.

We made grand plans of taking a detour to Norway and do whale hunting, or hire Harleys and take off on some beer trail, or go to London and pile on some unlucky friend we had spotted on facebook. After all the google searches. After all the free reading up of lonely planets at bookstores. After all those advices from lucky art directors who had managed umpteen trips to Europe to shoot some undies indoors “Oh you must visit Cinque Terre in Italy, it’s breathtaking’……we were now at a cemetery, ya breathtaking of a different kind I guess.

All it took was one call from the office “There’s a pitch, so the two of you better get back to office.”

Ok, they were kind enough to grant us 2 more days.

So here is how we spent a good part of one of those two precious days in Paris.

It was Rajiv’s idea. Like this one visit would make up for all those places we didn’t.

I was here only because Rajiv woke up about 15 minutes before me. And blamed me for ruining his day by waking up late. And he took complete advantage of the guilt I was going through and tricked me into this. Before I knew where we were headed, I was bundled off into a metro and we were here…in front of a cemetery.

A little gate lead us into this exhibition of graves. A big board that resembled a BDA site allocation at the entrance gave us a rough idea of whose corpse lay where. We stood there, staring at the board trying to locate Rajiv’s favorite dead men.

“Jim Morrison is here.” he pointed after studying the board for about half an hour.

“Oscar Wilde is here” he pointed at the other end of the board, after staring at it for another 29 minutes, leaving just another 8 hours and 1 minute for our flight back home.

“Who is Oscar Wilde?’

“What the fuck are you saying? You don’t know Oscar Wilde?” Rajiv asked like it were the first question in the copy test for any copywriter.

“Ya, I have kinda heard of him. He writes, right?’

“You are pathetic dude. He is considered as the God of playwrights and poems.”

“He can’t be God, now that he’s here.”

“It’s not funny chooth.”

“Ok. Don’t get wild.”

“I told you it’s not funny.”

“Hey relax bugger, that one was not a joke. It just happened.”

“Shut the fuck up”

“So he wrote poems!!”

“Ya. Poems. Any student of English Literature ought to know his poetry by heart. He’s that fuckin great.”

“Ok” I tried to look as ashamed as possible. Rajiv had become a different guy ever since he’d stepped here. This should have ideally been an excursion with his classmates of English literature. But destiny had made me his companion.

I took a snap of the board so that we could use it to navigate our way through this morbid maze. And we proceeded in the rough direction of where Jim Morrison was resting. Detailed maps were on sale for 20€, but not worth it for locating a couple of dead men.

I had heard of Jim Morrison. I knew two of his songs decently well enough. ‘Road house blues’ and ‘Riders on the storm’. Oh one more…’L.A. Woman’. They were nice. I liked the first one more than the others, maybe because the local bands played that more often. But I knew that I do not qualify as a true fan unless my favorite number of his is something that nobody’s heard of. I had a rough idea of how he looked. I had seen his pictures on the walls of many advertising folks. A skinny shirtless chap who had just one picture of his in circulation, where he looked like Steve Tyler from far, with maybe a smaller mouth and of course younger. Somehow to me, most people with long hair looked like each other. I knew that he was an important man to like if you were in advertising. Even the most cynical of them found him deserving enough to be included into their drunken discussions.

But all this information wasn’t enough to make me feel for him. Now that I was here, I had to make this visit purposeful for myself. I decided to become his true fan by the time I reached his grave. I plugged in my ipod and started listening to every other number of his. Ya, the ones that only get picked up in shuffle, and last till you manage to reach the skip button. I had no time for it to grow on me. I had to fall in love with it instantly. It was getting difficult. You know…I had a (I hate the pun but)…..deadline. I kept skipping to get a quick update of his discography. Most of them sounded good. Or maybe at that time, I just had no option but to make them sound good, for my own good.

Appreciating English numbers is an occupation by itself. First you spend time in figuring out what the words are. Then memorise them. And since they don’t necessarily believe in rhymes or a regular meter, it’s that much harder to remember them. Then after that, you practise them and start to like them more. Eventually you google the lyrics only to find out that whatever you’ve been singing all along, is all wrong. You then undo the lyrics in your head and rehearse the right ones. And since you have spent considerable time and effort, you now try to understand what they actually mean. But each of them come with a unique context. God knows what! There’s a hell lot of trivia attached to every line. You then research the context and try connecting the words with the context. It still makes no sense, because it’s mostly written by the writer when he’s smashed on weed. So you need a good dose of it yourself to get closer to what the damn thing actually means. Somewhere you give up and get back to your initial interpretation of what this was all about. I know that this may not be true with most of them, but with me it’s mostly like this. Maybe I’m trivialising it, but yes, it is all about the trivia. Hindi numbers have no such problems. They are either about love or not finding love, and in case you get stuck, all you probably need is a legal drink. Nothing more.

Rajiv walked ahead purposefully scanning every epitaph on the way. And I was trailing behind getting acquainted with the man that I had to mourn for. I really wanted his death and his music to affect me. I had to get a rush when I see him lying in his grave. Because I knew Rajiv was going to get it. And his day will be made. I had to make mine too.

I decided to become a Jim Morrison fan after returning. A late Jim Morisson fan maybe. Coming to think of it, I don’t even know where they buried Kishore Kumar.

On the way I saw many other graves of kings, queens, mathematicians, actors,  dentists and archeologists and taxidermists and other miscellaneous french people who seemed to have graves, sometimes as big as a three bedroom bungalow.

There was one bombshell who’s statue towered above the rest, appropriately drop dead gorgeous. One look and I immediately felt sad that she was no more. I was wondering why it should take such an effort for Jim Morrison. In my head, Jim Morrison still seemed to be the most famous celeb in that place because he was the only guy I had heard of over there. So I assumed that he’d have had the grandest cremation out here.

I fantasized his grave to be the showstopper. One that the others would die again for. I imagined a huge statue of him, welcoming you with outstretched arms, with huge speakers around, belting out his numbers, and hoped that one of them is Road House Blues so that I could sing along. I was losing it, but was imagining it in the best possible way just to keep myself motivated.

Ya, there was Oscar Wilde as well. But Morrison seemed easier of the two. Even if you don’t understand it all, you could settle with just liking the tune of his song.

We had now walked for about 3 hours. We had no clue where we were going. I kept referring to the snap in my camera, but it was as good as searching for Kakinada in the world map.

But Rajiv kept walking in a particular direction like Morrison’s spirit was calling him. The cemetery seemed endless. It looked like every famous man in the world who was dead, was buried here. I was wondering if there were a lot of creative clashes among the spirits at night. They would feel so helpless that they can’t even kill each other over it. I derived a little moral of the story for myself ‘No matter how rich and famous you may be, at the end of it you die.’ I decided to craft that better after getting a lowdown on Oscar Wilde.

We saw no human being or rather no human being who could speak English. The only ones who knew, were probably six feet under. So we walked like zombies hoping to meet someone who could lead us to the grave of grave importance.

We rarely met anyone on the way. And even when we did, it was useless. If they had the 20€ map, they wouldn’t know English. And if they knew English, they wouldn’t have the map.

But Rajiv looked like he was prepared to die searching for his grave. At every pit stop he’d give me anecdotes of Jim, just to create a mystery around this dead soul.

“You know Morrison used to pass a bowl among the audience where they could do anything in it like spit into it, piss into it, pour beer, tap their ash or do whatever they pleased”

“For what joy?”

“And he would drink it at the end of the show.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“Fucker. That’s how much he loved his fans.”

Just like Morrison, even I found this hard to digest.

I had bought a little guide to Paris and peeked into it to see what all I was missing, sitting here in this burial ground. Thankfully there was nothing in it that I was passionately attached to. But even if there was, I could do little about it. I had no clue how to get out of here. And the only way to was to have shelled out 20€ at the beginning. I was trapped in the middle of a million crosses.

After meandering here and there, we finally found a tribe who also happened to be searching for Jim’s Soul. Thankfully they were the ones who valued their time a lot and had invested 20€ for this search. So we hung around like friendly tourists and followed them wherever they went.

And in a few moments, we managed to reach where Jim Morrison lay peacefully. Until then.

It was nothing like I had imagined. He was tucked away into an obscure corner. An insignificant looking grave with the inscriptions “James Douglas Morrison’ with a few dried up roses on the marble, and some assorted cigarettes tossed around by his fans, for Morrison to smoke up incase he woke up at night.

There was another big monument of an unpronounceable French chap that blocked half the view. You had to kind of lean over from the side to get a glimpse of his grave. You could barely read the inscriptions on it. Rajiv put on his zoom lens and took a gloomy picture in grey.

I felt cheated. I had walked the whole afternoon. This wasn’t enough for a 3 hour old fan. I started doubting his popularity. Surely his fans could have done something better after all the piss that he drank. But Rajiv looked composed. He shut his eyes and murmured a prayer. There were three other fans around him, who did the same. Between their meditations, they kept looking at each other. Noone was sure that having coming here all the way, what were they exactly supposed to do now. They took pictures of each other. In all combinations possible.

Rajiv asked one of them, a funny looking oriental guy, “You’re a Doors fan?”

I paid attention to the reply only to know if there was another idiot who was here for the same reason like me, ‘just like that’.

The chap placed his hand on the chest and said “Truly brother. Truly. Jim Morrison all the way.”

And leaned over and loudly sang a verse of his number and screamed ‘You rock dude….you fucking rock’. His voice was so croaked that I could almost see Jim Morrison turning in his grave. He then pulled out his cigarette pack and casually chucked half a dozen sticks on his tomb to pay homage.

I looked at Rajiv to see if he would follow suit. It was a challenge to his fanaticism. He took out a pack of Gold Flake Kings and dragged out seven sticks. But then it was the last pack. He took a good look and decided that he needed it more than Morrison, maybe. He waited till his challenger turned away, and quietly slid back 5 into the pack and quickly tossed two for Morrison. He was emotional, but was Indian for far too long to get carried away.

With this, I thought the condolence ritual was over.  But no, we just hung around. Like people at a funeral, who just feel obligated to hang around. Nobody seemed to be wanting to leave. Like Morrison might just rise again and start giving them a posthumous performance.

So we waited like unsatisfied fans who refuse to leave even after the rock show has come to an end…hoping that the singer might suddenly get back on stage and scream ‘You want more.”

The moroseness of the situation was getting to me.

“Shall we go?”

“Wait man!!”

“For what?”

“Don’t be so insensitive dude. Hang on.” Rajiv barked back.

“For what? He’s dead man.”

Everyone around me glared at me like I killed him.

Rajiv walked around behaving in a strange manner. I then noticed carefully. The guy was actually humming a song for his idol, who lay beneath the stone, deaf. For a second I wanted to swap places with Morrison. We had spent over 4 hours in this stupid graveyard. I was getting sick of this. I had just 2 days in Paris. In fucking Paris. The only way to come back to Paris meant winning a Cannes. Every minute was precious. I didn’t know where to go. But I atleast knew that i didn’t want to be here anymore, listening to a madman closing his eyes and singing back a song to a man who wrote it. It was like torturing him back to life.

I waited patiently for about half an hour waiting for Rajiv to finish his cover versions.

“Ok. Let’s leave.” Rajiv announced finally parting himself from the departed, and walked away from the scene as fast as he could.

“Where now?’

“Oscar Wilde.”

“Do you really really want to go? Do you actually love his poems so much? I mean, can I not just gift you an entire collection of his poetry or whatever else he wrote.”

“You can go wherever you want to but I’m going to meet him.”

He made it seem like the two of them were going out for a beer.

“Ok man. Can you tell me a poem he wrote….like a kickass one. So that even I feel like meeting him.”

“OK, have you heard of Athanasia…..

O that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught

Of all the great things men have saved from Time,

The withered body of a girl was brought……”

“What does that mean….?”

“It means……..” Rajiv lead the way to introduce Oscar Wilde to his latest fan.

By the way, Happy Birthday Rajiv.