27 September 2008

Joy






This blog began a few years back with an intro to Joy. Joy the photographer now covers the party scene for his new-age newspaper. He roams around the streets of Madras, looking for any life at night which can be fit into captions like “DJ Sunny and two pretty faces”. I've always wondered if the pretty faces were happy or pissed to be called thus. He used to ride a ‘readied’ Yamaha RX100, with a quick throttle and no head lamp. Joy can write a book titled Priorities and make a lot of money. But he’s the closest any postgrad has come to illiteracy. Books are Joy’s preferred sleeping pills.

When Joy was a kid, he had a teacher come home to drill hindi through his resistant skull. Joy and his brothers had enough love to dig a trap-pit meant for baby elephants outside their home and wait for the teacher. Much to their disappointment, the teacher didn't turn up that day. Before we admire how fate saved the teacher, Joy heard news that the Hindi teacher, just before she left to drill Joy's head, slipped and fell in her bathroom and died.

Joy has been to Thailand once last year, for 4 days, after tricking the clicking community in madras into one of Joy's patented deals, where the other person gets screwed and feels thrilled about it. When gopal and gang planned a trip to Singapore and Cambodia, they put in a couple of days at Thailand. Joy would have none of it. He stubbornly refuses to believe that there exists anything left unseen in that country. He feels that he's seen every foot of Bangkok and Pataya. So he plans to visit me in Vietnam and sells it like it’s made of love.

In Saigon, he doesn't want to waste time... brushing aside night life as what he covers for the next morning's bread and butter. He wants to go to a conflict zone - or create one if none exists nearby - preferably ethnic in nature, where you can get one mongoloid and one of something else in the same frame. He also makes me feel bad, like it’s my mistake that he's coming here on the first three days of a working week. Like I made the week start on Monday. Besides his Pulitzer-driven interest in ethnic conflicts, he also wants to meet tribal people, see the countryside and study rural life in all of 3 days.

Joy eventually decided not to drop by! Presently he’s in Singapore (for the first and last time), admiring the internet speed at home, while the other boys are out for the night.

6 comments:

. said...

About time.
An ode. To Joy.
And other such well meaning emotions: )

Wanderer said...

mundo :) which otherwise unrelated life have you followed closer after 3 mute days at a beach?

K?K! said...

Joy... i haven't met him
Heard about him... yes, i think
i would call it spontaneous - his life that is - like an extempor... may be?
what do u say?

. said...

I know we all love happiness and joy.
But, sometimes we must move on to other emotions, and type other parts of our heart out.

Wanderer said...

influencer mundo

Wanderer said...

k?k!, spontaneous would be accurate. he's like the guys in gajini, memento... memory of 15 mins but with a disinclination towards writing and reading.