I'm doing 40 things
Saw it too late!
Kapitan Niemand's Life List
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1. open the doors of perception
19 cheers10 people -
2. find the perfect squid butter pepper garlic
8 cheers1 person -
3. own an island
9 cheers268 people -
4. be happy
4 entries . 13 cheers21,140 people -
5. turn on, tune in, drop out
4 cheers6 people -
6. Travel in space
5 cheers502 people -
7. become immortalized as a flavor of ice cream
11 cheers28 people -
8. Win the Nobel Prize :)
1 entry . 3 cheers79 people -
9. fly
4 cheers1,857 people -
10. Scale a Himalayan peak
4 cheers2 people -
11. open a restaurant
1 entry . 7 cheers496 people -
12. raise happy children
16 cheers57 people -
13. Do nothing
4 entries . 5 cheers147 people -
14. be a scuba diving instructor
2 cheers13 people -
15. split
4 entries . 2 cheers27 people -
16. own a swimming pool
2 entries . 2 cheers14 people -
17. write another book
6 cheers68 people -
18. go to burning man
3 cheers1,397 people -
19. go to the Rainbow Gathering!
3 entries . 2 cheers41 people -
20. Get a tattoo
2 team members . 1 entry . 2 cheers19,569 people -
21. Swim with dolphins
1 cheer7,136 people -
22. get a dog
2 team members . 7 cheers3,729 people -
23. Buy a Volkswagen
3 entries . 3 cheers15 people -
24. buy a water bed
5 people -
25. make a short film
3 entries . 4 cheers599 people -
26. yell "theatre" in a crowded fire
13 cheers6 people -
27. hold my breath underwater for 4 minutes
1 entry . 1 cheer9 people -
28. meditate
1 entry . 2 cheers2,552 people -
29. grow weed
3 entries . 7 cheers160 people -
30. Read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books
3 cheers134 people -
31. dive the great barrier reef
1 entry . 3 cheers230 people -
32. Get a Nanocube
1 cheer2 people -
33. Learn how to whistle really loud with my fingers
4 cheers909 people -
34. learn a foreign language
8 entries . 6 cheers1,095 people -
35. watch the IMDB.com Top 100 movies
5 entries . 1 cheer1,005 people -
36. Have my photos published
3 entries . 2 cheers14 people -
37. go fishing with my dad
6 cheers21 people -
38. get an international driver's license
1 cheer13 people -
39. check in to the Taj
1 entry1 person -
40. identify 43 things that make me happy.
17 entries . 2 cheers19 people
Recent entries
Jatayu, the Phoenix!
7 months ago
London is cold. Colder since the tragic events in Mumbai and the deep sense of helplessness that jars and permeates the mundane remainder of life, exaggerated manifold, by the distance I am from the city I call home. I grew up in South Bombay. My earliest memories of P and me are as a young couple in the monsoons in those streets – the pattering of raindrops a vivid memory now scarred by the images of bullets indiscriminately spattering those roads. I had my first beer with my friends at the Leopold Cafe, still a young teenager, at a table now riddled with shrapnel and stained by the blood of those who went after me.
Mumbai is no stranger to terror, and as a citizen of it, neither am I. A faded memory of an evening in March 2003 comes back to me. A month after I had started work as a young advertising executive, I was waiting for the local train that would take me home on my daily commute from Parel Station to Kanjurmarg. The train was crowded when it arrived, and since I had left office relatively early and recently afforded myself the simple luxury of a First Class Pass, I forsook it for a pav vada (the staple station snack for many of the 6.6 million commuters on the suburban rail) and a lukewarm Fresh Lime Soda. I took the next train, which inadvertently stopped when I reached Ghatkopar – and still remember the haunting premonition that was rung in by the sound of a hundred cell phones around me. The first class compartment of the train two stations ahead of us at Mulund had been blown apart by a terrorist bomb. It was a day after the 10th anniversary of the serial blasts that rocked Mumbai. I went to work the next day, as did everyone else – as much a display of defiance as a reflection of the commercial reality underpinning the DNA of every Mumbaikar.
I will go to work tomorrow as well. But a piece of me has been torn asunder – by every bullet that riddles the roads I grew up on and the blood that still dries on the station I went home from for so many years. Tales of horror and heroism are now trickling in from the Taj, whose Ginger office I worked at – of the young men who barricaded the rooms of the Chambers where corporate India’s deals are struck – a human shield no match for the grenades being lobbed outside its doors. The General Manager of the hotel, Mr. Karambir Singh Kang, helped the security forces and commandos with their plans to break the siege, helpless to save his wife and children, still trapped in the burning suite six floors above. When Mr. Tata, whose great-grandfather raised this heritage even before the Gateway of India, told him today how sorry he was, he apparently responded, “Sir, we are going to beat this. We are going to build this Taj back into what it was. We’re standing with you. We will not let this event take us down.”
If men like him can muster such resolve, humanity still has hope. Jatayu will fly again!
