Innards and all

A friend who read this blog wrote separately to say, “Smart writing, but where are the innards, man?”

He wanted me to write about my not long ago car crash, the trigger for my relatively late-in-life urge to blog--what the hell. The crash that has brought my daughter closer to me, and also brought her an urge to start her own web page. The crash that has driven my wife to yoga.

I was alone in the car. That is a good thing.

He wanted me to write about the pre-crash scene. The lead up to the crash. The mystery of it. He wanted the passion of driving what he called a “5,000 pound bomb”, his allusion to flammable qualities of a car, though mine doesn't (didn't?) weigh that much.

Well, there was Selma the fire-eater at a place called Sweet Chilli. There was a guy whom I met after a lifetime whom I last met many years back at the Human Rights concert in New Delhi. It was when the audience booed Tracy Chapman (she was already big in the US, but the audience was impatient for Bruce Springsteen), they ignored Youssou N’Dour, they warmed up with Sting, briefly rocked with Peter Gabriel, and by the time Bruce came on, I had left with my then wife and her kid sister as said sister had to be reached home. (Those who don’t like Bruce told me I did the right thing.)

The guy I last met at the concert, I also met previously during my university days when he was asked to “fuck off” by a dear friend as he lay with a slashed wrist, penance for not getting the girl he wanted because the guy I met the evening before my crash (and also at the Human Rights Concert) had the girl.

I took the friend with the slashed wrist to hospital. He lived.

This is enough innards.

Have you seen innards? I have seen innards. Not just innards of animals we eat or innards of innocent road kill, but human innards. Road kill, as well as those killed by other humans as premeditated murder in some sort of war or rioting or bomb blasts. Or, some act of nature, like a flood, or earthquake.

But my passionate friend wants the innards of my soul. The stuff that comes in italics. As in, “Where are the innards, man?”

For that, you will need to try my books. They are italicized-innard books, at least the novel I have published, and a novel on its way. Even some non-fiction on its way, as I have grown to believe that brand of journalism must come with a sense of barely controlled outrage, as a former editor of mine used to say. Innards-journalism, as my friend might say.

Innards is what I know. The innards of society, politics, economy, and political economy--son et lumiere. It’s what you get when you sign up as a journalist and choose to walk beyond air-conditioned offices and sound bites into the churn of India.

There is a book with a white-and-blue jacket I wrote in 2005 called Tin Fish. You can see it on the sidebar. It’s a poster of the book. The jacket is actually orange-and-green and a bit of white. When I copied it onto this page, the orange of the sneakers and my name turned blue. The tiny white-on-orange penguin is now a white-on-blue penguin.

Who can tell how things will turn out?

It's the same with innards.

But enough quibbling. Let’s change the subject. Did I tell you the story about Shrek’s ears?