Abhinav Rege Archives

190121 – Morning Pages

The day when I actually had work, the Internet decides to act up, even at the most expensive co-working space in Goa. Here’s my cry for help!

5:42

I’ve been up for a while. I didn’t sleep ok, to be honest. That’s why I am up and about. For a change, I am stressed. And no, it’s not induced by anything that gives stress to people (money, relationships, etc). I am stressed cos I don’t have internet and for a change, I have a lot to do. I mean this is regular work (promise I have not started anything new or picked up any new projects; if only I have reduced the number of things I am doing). The fucking Internet is being a bitch. I can change my life and stay up all night and work (when thankfully the net works a tad better) but most of my works is coordinating with other people and I am at the mercy of others. I’ve tried most things I can. Sit on the balcony of the house, perch from the rooftop, sit at cafes all day long (and sip onto expensive bad coffee), given a kidney to fancy co-working spaces that are as expensive as WeWork in Andheri is. And yet I can’t seem to get reliable Internet.

So that.

In fact, last night, around 9, I felt exhausted after a while. I realized why people in consulting kind of gigs become alcoholic. It’s impossible to talk to so many people and make them understand such trivial things that you’d assume as commonsense.

Ok, this sounds like a rant.

Lemme change tone.

So, I worked so hard yesterday that I was exhausted. Most of the work I did was thinking and moving around objects on a PowerPoint and on Excel sheets. But it was tiring. It’s all the thinking that tired me out. For a change, I felt as if I have earned my bread. Lol. Earned my bread.

I have to be honest that yesterday I was so frustrated that I couldn’t even log in to a website. I had to download a 30 MB file and it took me an hour. No kidding. And all this when I was at an expensive co-working space. I was so mindfucked that I thought I would go back to Mumbai. Last night itself. But the Internet continued to give me trouble, I couldn’t even log in to a website. Even though I was a pricey co-working space. So much so that I thought I will go back to Mumbai. Anyhow, sense prevailed. But the decision is clear. If you have to live in Goa, you need to get used to the bad internet. There is no way around that. Unless you live in “cities” like Mapusa, Margaon, Porvorim, Panjim etc. But that’s not Goa. No?

Wonder how do all the other film companies, tech companies, SM companies operate? They need Internet like we need air!

No, the phone does not work either. Power cuts are frequent but that you can manage. For someone that wants to be so hyper-connected, I need to find a solution if I have to live here long-term. So that.

Ok. Enough. Moving on. I think the exhaustion was not from work but from the non-availability of the Internet!

The good part about yesterday is that I could manage OMAD. I actually did almost 28 hours. I could’ve one a couple more for sure. Rege would be proud of me. Of course, I ate fried rice and roti and aaloo and Kurkure and Lays and Diet Coke and all that but that’s ok. I deserved it. No, I did not walk as much yesterday. I told ya, bad day with work. I’ll see if I can do another 24 hours today. That means I will eat at around 10. As I write this, it’s 5:30 and I am already hungry 😀

In other news, the ankles still hurt from all the walking that happened the day before. I think I need to wear shoes when I go on these long walks. I guess the flip-flops from Decathlon are not meant for long-term use. Let’s see when I walk next. I am thinking, tomorrow evening from 5 to 8 or something.

I think this is all I have for the day. I do have a long one today with back to back calls (again) and then a site recee at a forest-resort. So no time to complain.

Oh yes. I know what to talk about. When I was moving here, I had a list of people that I wanted to meet. Funnily off that list, I have yet to meet anyone, save Rajat Sir. And no, I have not been tardy with follow-ups or something but just that everyone is so busy and no one wants to travel around Goa much. Or may be it’s me? If I were SRK and I asked people to meet me, would they not take out time? Would they not travel? Hmmm…

PS: No, I am not sore about it. I understand that people have priorities. In fact, I expect nothing from others. Just that I get fuel for my fire when I get to talk to inspiring people. And I need that constantly 🙂

Ok, enough. Over and out.

Time for #freewriting on #book2

“I wonder why would they make them forts in the first place? And that too on the top of a cliff. Who’s climbing up a rock to come attack you? And if it’s a mere watch-point to see if someone’s paying you a visit or planning an attack, all you need is a light-house or something. Why a damn fort that goes around ‘1988 meters’ around the hill as the board claims”, she spoke while reading the tourist information board outside Fort Aguada.

“I am not the Prince of Portugal or whoever made this fort. How would I know?”, he was both irked and amused. It was her idea to do the touristy thing and he did not want to say no to any opportunity to hang out with her. Was it her perfume? Or the easy going manner in which she went around? He couldn’t pin point.

“Chintan! Come on! It was a genuine question”, Rujuta looked at him.

“I know, I know. I also do not know genuinely who or why”, Chintan looked into Rujuta’s eyes.

This was the first time since Prakash died over 5 years ago that Rujuta had let her guard down to spend time with another man. If Tarana heard about Rujuta finding comfort in the company of Chintan, she would probably run to the printing press to get the Shaadi cards printed! Unlike other 70-something-year olds, Tarana was the one egging Rujuta to go sleep with whoever. She couldn’t see her daughter go from a happy-go-lucky, living-in-the-moment, hedonist young girl into a middle-aged woman that found no joy in nothing she ever did. They often argued about it and both of them were head-strong enough to not let the other dominate. But with Chintan, it may change.

Rujuta looked back at him with the swag of the Rujuta when she first met Prakash. The stare lingered on for a moment tad more than what’s between two good friends. She knew she was inviting trouble. Chintan was still a married man, even if he was separated and he carried way too much baggage about proving to his wife that he amounted to something. Things that Rujuta could fix easily. She knew what men were made of.

Chintan was not sure where this was headed. He was used to getting easy attention from the fairer gender and he knew that he knew the art of charm. People like that are dangerous. The ones that are good and they know that they are good. To Chintan, Rujuta felt special. She was unlike other women and definitely unlike his wife, “that bitch”, he muttered. Even the fleeting thought about the wife made him sore.

Their who-blinks-first bout was broken by a photographer who had walked up to them and said, “Sir, how about a picture of madam holding onto the sun in her hands.” He pushed an instant photo into Chintan’s face.

Rujuta played along and feigned excitement, “Wow, that would be so nice. Can I hold it over my head also?” She cupped her hands and held them over her head.

The photographer knew he has made a killing and he can sell them at-least 5 prints in 5 poses. Little did he know who Rujuta was and what her body of work with photography stood for. Especially since Prakash died, Rujuta had taken her work up by several notches and now was one of the most sought-after photojournalists in the world!

***

Fuck an idea. How about teach all these photographers the wonders of Instagram and get them more work? Worth thinking about. #parkedIdea. Will revisist someday.

For the time being, over and out.

170121 – Morning Pages

Nothing special to report in this one. This is more like a journal of how I spent my yesterday. You can skip reading this.

6:53 AM

Had a pretty ok yesterday. Compared to the day before. Worked some. Wrote some. Tried a new coworking space in Goa (Felix). No, the internet did not work well. Neither did the phone. So it is as good as Clay, just that Felix is free for the whole of Jan. So I can save some money. Will go again today and report. Oh, while working, a friend told me to play music from video games. He had a convincing argument – video games are designed to help me level up (difficulty, experience, immersion) but for some reason, it did not work for me. I’ll try again today before giving up. Nikhil is an advocate of electronic music. However, I did listen to (and enjoyed) this lo-fi version of a track that talks about how friends need to come to Goa once a week at least. Fuck I really want to write, make films.

Lol.

Irony.

Goa.

Friends.

Anyhow, I also managed to do OMAD! Yay! Realised that when I am busy and I don’t have options, I don’t eat a lot. When I work from Nicky’s place, I am in a cafe that makes amazing food. And thus I eat like a pig. When am Clay, the kitchen shuts at 5ish. And I don’t eat a lot. At Felix, the kitchen is non-operational and surprisingly, even if I was hungry, I did not feel like eating. So that helped. And yes, once I was back, I promptly had Maggi (lol) and some 20 kinds of chips.

Then, I sent an SoG after a while. Read it here. Need to move from Mailchimp. I also sent a Letter to Bade Log (Bade Log is some 10-12 people are senior and I know they care for me). In both, among other things, I talk about Living in Public. These morning pages is an attempt in that direction!

Finally, as I was waking up, I even had a dream. This one was funny. It had my parents, M&m, and me on some sort of a video call. No, my folks haven’t ever met M&m but it was funny to see them in one frame. Guess this is the acceptance my brain needed that M&m are an integral part of me? After all, when dreaming, we reinforce things that our subconscious is thinking of.

So that was yesterday.

Today, am going to try something daring. I will move my blog from blogger to this domain. There are some 2000 posts. Let’s see if I crash this one. I have Abhinav, Advait, and Arpit on standby ;P. You’d know tomorrow morning 🙂

There is nothing large that is clouding my head to be honest. Except work 😀

Not sure what else to report on. Except I liked how I spent my day yesterday. I just need to add some friends and family during the day and I can continue to live like that. Of course, I need to identify something meaningful that I can spend my time on. May be writing it is? It gives me joy and it allows me to reach more people. I need to merely figure out how to get better at it!

Enough.

Onto #book2 #freewriting piece for the day. There is no mood per se today, unlike yesterday. So, let’s see what comes up. It’s 7:41 and I have a 27% battery. I will write till 8 (or till the battery runs out).

You know how it is when you are traveling on a train in India? The night has fallen and the scenery is rushing past you? In distance, maybe in some other coupe, someone is playing some really old, corny music that wafts to your ears. You know that you know the track but you can’t keep your finger over it. It irks you but it also comforts you. Everything about the journey is discomforting. The thunderous speed with which the train moves. The bright lights in the middle of nowhere that rush past you before you could figure what they were shining on. The slow dance the metal box is in as it moves forward. Tired eyes of strangers, over-friendly travelers that try hard to break the monotony with small talk. Wait, they are passengers. Not travelers. The only thing that comforts you is that faint music coming from that other coupe that crane your ears to latch onto.

To Sita, it seemed all the more strange. Her experience with popular Bollywood music was very limited. She was raised in a strict community where even the women were expected to learn how to fight. And no, not fight to save in case of an emergency but fight to go on the offensive and be at the frontline. Fight to become an assassin. Yes, they were told that all their training that they literally spilled their blood for may never be used. While they were ready to kill and get killed at the drop of a hat, they were told that they like almost everyone in their community, would die of old age. The unlucky ones that did die early on were the ones that were called to literally throw away their lives when they turned 18. What a waste. You train since you are 4. You spend 14 years learning how to wield weapons in a strict community. And as you turn 18, you need to fight a group of 4 other assassins that have been tasked to kill you. These 4 could be your parents, best friends, even your own wife. They don’t show no mercy when they attack you. And on your 18th birthday, you need to keep yourself alive in a melee that lasts an entire day. That’s your rite of passage. That’s your license to live from here on. Only to hope that you’d come useful in that unknown war that not even the seniors in the community knew when it was coming.

Sita knew she was the best of the lot. Maybe that’s why she was chosen to be sent on this journey. By herself. When you were called, you had to make the journey by yourself. Nah, they were not scared of those petty wayside robbers. They were more scared of the ways of the world outside the boundaries of their commune. Out there, the world moved too fast and it had no honor and no respect for traditions.

Unlike other kids, Sita had shown literally no emotion ever. Even when she bled for the first time, she was bereft of any fear or confusion. She did not even ask a question. She reported it matter-of-factly to her brother, who was 2 years older. The brother was aghast and did not know how to respond. When she skinned her first goat, her face was as stoic as that of a priest deep in meditation. On her 18th birthday, it was the other 4 that tapped out. It had never happened and no one knew what punishment to give to those 4. One of those was her own father. The community had probably found its future leader in Sita. And if not the leader, then the warrior that will lead them into the war. Whenever that war happened. Whenever she would be required to make that journey. The journey she was on. The journey where she sensed familiarity with those popular tracks. The journey that would not take her where she intended to reach!

***

Ok, I enjoyed writing this. The time is 8:13. And the battery is 9%. Did not realize when 8 AM came and went. Flow, baby! While reviewing, realized that it has come out nice. Need to work on sentence formation and grammar.

Over and out for the day.

See you guys tomorrow.

Also, I send this link to some people on WhatsApp as a daily update. In case you want to get this as well, lemme know.

160121 – Morning Pages

In this one, I talk about the anatomy of a bad day in Goa, all probably induced by unavailability of Internet and a phone network.

7:39 AM. Yesterday was a weird day. Regular day, if you know me well.

After I don’t know how many days I was spaced out. To a point that I did not even speak with the most cheerful people I know – Noops and Nicky. The Internet won’t work at all. The regular phone and SMS won’t work. Tried to avoid crap but I could not. The hands were literally shaking before I loaded myself with carbs. Skipped two events where I could’ve been at – a poker night and a Pecha Kucha evening. Missed the launch of a friend’s music video. Thought I would start a Clubhouse but the damn connection won’t happen. Locked myself out of the house (thankfully, I could reach the key from the window).

The saving grace? I went for a walk. Did some 12K steps. In like 2 hours. The slowest ever.

My phone tells me that I am averaging 2000 steps this year. Lol. The older Saurabh that I was, even in a wheelchair, he would average more than that! Finally when I was walking about, luckily the phone worked (still no data) and I made some phone calls. Spoke to two new people on LunchClub and CoffeeMug – at both places (and all such calls), I am asked what am up to with these random networking calls if I am in Goa. Need to find a funny answer to this. Spoke to an old boss. He told me that am like shit. Sigh. No, no. It’s ok. Everyone has their opinions. I know where I stand.

Another thing happened. As if stars align or something. Or maybe one thing led to another that lad to me. Gehani and Pradeep pointed me to two interesting tweets about the media and entertainment business. Need to think hard about those. They look like things that I can put my head gainfully to. For life. Lol, yet another thing. This has to stop, Mr. Garg. Let’s see. In fact, the content in those tweets is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately. I know that I am not singularly great at creating content. But I know I can give a launchpad and wings to others for sure. So that.

These two tweets helped reinforce two beliefs. One, you must have a network that makes a piece of news that you can’t miss reach you. That clearly happened. Two, how the fuck did I miss these two tweets? Need to get back to being active on twitter!

Oh, AD gave me the responsibility of writing the first draft of the Founder Thesis book. Yay! If this happens, it would be the second non-fiction book that I would get to publish this year (apart from SoG Book). 2021 is already looking up. Just need to see how do I make money from these ;P.

Guess that’s that for how the day was. How I felt. How I am gonna cope up today. I HAVE to find a solution to the Internet thingy. Either I move houses (no, I can’t get Internet installed here – this is a temporary house) or I need to start going to a coworking space in Goa that has good internet and mobile phone access (the phone network at Clay sucks. Maybe at Felix it works better?) I’ll try Felix today and will report back.

No, I don’t like that this is becoming an open journal of sorts. But then, I like that I have someplace to go dump my thoughts.

Oh, I also need to think about what to do with WoW. Do I move it on SaurabhGarg.com? Or do I leave it on blogger? I am very very sure that Google will either sell or shut Blogger (they have made some changes to the product but they’ve merely fucked it up. Plus they are not even in the same league at WordPress and countless others). And I don’t want to lose all that I have written over the years. Will check with Rege or Arpit.

So that.

Coming to #book2. I am in the mood for some dark shit today. Let’s see what I come up with :D. The names are fictional (I mean the entire book is fictional but I am using random names right now).

“The ropes have to be as taut as you can make them go. Here, use this hook to pull more”, Kiran handed over what looked like a well-used, aged, pirate’s hand hook to Sita.

“The fuck is this?” Sita balked. It looked as if it was ripped from a real pirate.

“I use this as a grip when I need to clasp onto something. The pirates were geniuses.” Kiran replied and continued with this work. The way he was going, Sita knew this was not the first time he was doing something like this.

Sita held gingerly at it tried to pull the rope that she was wrapping over layers of plastic, tarp and jute.

Kiran continued and spoke matter of factly, “make sure it is as tight as you can. When we tie it to the anchor, it cant come undone.”

Sita merely nodded. That’s all she could do. She was merely going through the motions. The night that started as a celebration had taken a dark turn and now, it did not seem to be ending. When she boarded the train from her village 2 weeks ago, she did not know that her life would change so drastically. From a simpleton in a secluded village deep in Maharashtra, she has had alcohol, slept with a man that was not her husband, and now, become an accessory to a murder. And she was the reason for the fight between her husband and the young man she got carried away with. Such loss for such a small incident. If only Kiran understood why she did what she did, all this could have been avoided.

Kiran beamed, breaking her reverie, “wow, that looks good. I am almost done with the head and the torso. We just need to tie a big rock to his legs and then we’d be on our way.”

The plan was to dump the dead body deep into the sea but it had to be wrapped to prevent the parts from flailing and they had to put something heavy on it to ensure that it doesn’t wash ashore. Way too many amateurs were caught by the cops when bloated dead bodies arrived at the short unannounced. Kiran and Sita were not getting caught for sure. They had packed the dead body in three layers – plastic, tarp, and jute before typing it up till it resembled a mummy. There was no way fishes were going to gnaw and dismember various parts. With the two rocks that Kiran had identified, there was no way it was going to surface. And the spot where he was going to dump it in was known to have rocky terrain underneath. Like it had done for so many others, the sea would keep their secret.

Little did they know that while the sea wouldn’t rat on them, the young man they were busy with would be missed from the house of Paul’s and the impending search would unleash an inferno ono them and everyone else at Caravan Serai that the entire Arabian Sea wouldn’t be able to douse.