Ramblings

The Way Of The Dragon

Ek machchar aadmi ko hijra bana deta hai. The import of this Nana Patekar one-liner hit me today. I was doing my daily quota of yoga, practicing some breathing exercises to achieve a relaxed state of mind, when all of a sudden there was an ominous buzz near my left ear. My peace of mind was shattered. I jumped up, ready to “strike down with great vengeance and furious anger”, not unlike the scripture-spouting Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction. Pure bloodlust took over. I employed the Five-finger Palm Exploding Mosquito Technique, honed over the years in the sultry confines of the city that inspired The Calcutta Chromosome : A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery. But, try as I might, the critters managed to give me the slip. It was like Val “Iceman” Kilmer trying in vain to get Tom “Maverick” Cruise’s F-16 Falcon in his sights. Nana was right, I was behaving like the proverbial eunuch. It was then that I decided to put my recently-attained knowledge of yoga to use. I paused, went into the crouching tiger position, inhaled through my left nostril and exhaled through my right nostril. Repeated it 21 times. And then, it happened. Like a bolt of lightning, the words of the original dragon — Bruce Lee — flashed through my mind. “You need emotional content”. Lee’s words to his teenaged pupil in Enter The Dragon suddenly made complete sense. I opened my eyes. An ear-splitting “hia-a-a-a-a-a-a-aa” escaped my lips and I was upon them like a Neo on amphetamines. “Thakur, yeh haath nahin guillotine ka blades hain!” Within minutes, my palms were smeared with blood — my own, which the bloodsuckers had drawn from me — and the anal-retentive anopheles had ended up as mangled masses of insect matter. Jo hit hai, woh fit hai!