For Want Of A Better World

Nature's Call

2011-05-10T00:38:00.002+05:30

It was all going perfectly according to plan. The world was at peace, the beings in harmony, one part eating the other, and the other sacrificing itself to sustain the first. Green and brown above, blue and grey below. It worked, it sustained what could have gone on for eons.

Why, then, did nature create man? Suddenly, in what was practically a flash in the billions of years of the DNA code, there was this, thing, that was fast, strong, and hungry beyond fulfillment. Hacking, and burning, and digging and scraping apart all that was there until its subjugation of all around it was complete. Until the very mother that caused him to be wept tears of acid and blew away its tattered covers to sear him with the sun’s rays.

What was this grand scheme that caused nature to make something that would think up a power greater than itself to dominate and torture that which gave birth to him so completely? And when there was no other to be ravished, turn on each other in a noisy bickering that would outlast generations of his own kind?

Come to think of it, why make the parasite, too? When everyone sustains on ability, everyone survives on another, whence comes the conniving to take it all, irritate, kill, pillage, burn, destroy, and not give back? And then again, why any disease? And if disease, why medicine?

Why was nature so eager to fall over itself in making more and more weak, more and more frail, and then let the one disease that walked on its surface get away with cures? What was God’s holy plan there?

Two answers come to mind, and they both have their merits.

One

There is no holy plan. Everyone, Everything is in this, alone.

Two

Nature is the ultimate masochist. And suicidal.

Bonjour!

2011-02-24T13:30:00.001+05:30

The moment you wake up in the morning; that stretch where you cannot open your eyes fully or feel your conspiring arms trying to lift you up, is probably the most lucid instant of the entire day. Those two seconds where no one can begin to contemplate anything other than two inches of sunlight in their eyes make every morning a new day.

What decides the course of your day, however, is unfortunately not this moment. No, that moment comes about half an hour later, around the time when you're stepping out of the bathroom and reaching for that coffee mug. When the cogs of your cognition suddenly whirr into action, and contemplate the day that went past, and using some complex method that I can only imagine is akin to the one they use at my office, forecasts your mood for the day.

Now, this mood does not make your day good or bad; how can it. What it does is change the little things you do; the skip in your step, the cheeriness of a “Good Morning!” or the look on your face when you think no one around you is looking. That moment is the reason people who’re curious enough to investigate that look (for people are ALWAYS looking) will come up to you and say one of two things:
1. My, you look happy today!
2. What happened? Is everything okay?

As the evening wanes though, the course of the day pretty much takes over, and your mood finally belongs to today. Do note, the reason you say either of these:
1. Let’s go out for pizza!
2. Where the hell is my dinner?
Is not that moment; but you can be sure it helped you get there.

So, if your moments are the kind where you generally choose the latter of the two responses, probably the best gift for you would be a blunt instrument to the back of the head every morning as soon as you pop out of the, well, pooper.

Humanity Fail

2010-09-29T14:50:00.001+05:30

I feel ashamed today. Ashamed, helpless, and livid at my city, my country, the entire class of human beings claiming to be from my gender, but most importantly, at the alleged leaders of my city, country, commune who so much as dare to look at today and the horizon and tell me to my face that things are GOOD.

How can anyone claim that our country is progressing, that our society, far from being the decadent cesspool that it is, is in fact vibrant and active and climbing the ladder of success, when we haven’t yet so much as approached the first step? What good is anything we have, anywhere across the world, if we can’t guarantee the most basic of human needs: safety, to all our denizens, and especially to that half who we claim openly in our chauvinist, ribald moments as the weaker gender? What is the point of a term like that, if the corresponding term for men isn’t the slacker or helpless gender (in equal measure)? Or even, in fact, the decadent, sick or perverted gender?

I lately watched an episode of The West Wing, when the president is faced with a dilemma. A citizen of his country is shot down by terrorists, and he is asked to respond proportionally. I quote verbatim from his speech, asking the virtue of a proportional, tolerant response instead of an outright onslaught against the propagators:

“Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words Civis Romanus -- I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.”

Where is this protection today? And why is it not even guaranteed anymore even to a citizen walking across his or her own country? Why is it that the people we do finally end up punishing still don’t deter the rest from following in their path? Why do our laws not STOP crime? I know we’re supposed to accept such minor acts as a tenet and live our lives, but WHY? Why can’t we hold our government, and our people up to a standard we WANT them to be at? Why is crime of any malice accepted at all?

You may term me and idealist and my views impractical when I look towards a society free from any type of criminal act, and people with perfectly reasonable thoughts. But I’m not budging from the fact that any society where even a single act of malicious intent goes unpunished is just NOT worth being proud of. You didn’t want a society based on love, fine. You made a society of rules. Rigidly defined rules of blind, fierce justice. Why then, now that you have the rules and people who know and accept the rules that exist, can you not carry out your bloody vision?

Abstractions in Romance

2010-06-22T23:10:00.002+05:30

The Scene: Midnight, in an empty bar. Shelves in the back, replete with exquisite liquor, their colour reflected from a long mirror above, running along the length of the bar counter, its wood burnished a dull gold with the light above. Man and Woman, alone, together, close, their drinks in front of them (Scotch for Him, Daiquiri for Her). French windows behind them show nothing but a full moon in the distance. No one else around.

Woman: (contemplative, staring at her glass) Tragedy never strikes when one is in the throes of sorrow. It has a knack for picking the sweetest, happiest moments to descend and skewer a heart. Is it life’s way of being merciful to man in his sorrow, or painful in his joy? (To Him, smiling) I absolutely loved our day together; it was all I ever wished for; in fact, much more. And yet...

Man: I did what I did because I wanted to. I love you, and a day in your life spent happy is a day in mine fulfilled. (Aloud, to no one) Our choices are all made long ago, even indecision is a choice we are conditioned in. Mercy, sorrow, pain, joy are all bad substitutes for us letting surprise rule our existence.

Woman: (To the glass) And still we live so, only peeling the surface of our existence, playing a fool’s game with a brilliant hope, not so that we might delay the inevitable, but to keep at bay the very knowledge that there is a limit to our actions, a limit we made ourselves, a limit we cannot cross. (To Him) Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to stay for another drink? I would if you’d only say you want me to.

Man: (Smiling genially) Oh, No! Not at all! I’ll be quite all right here. I won’t be long after you’re gone, anyway. (Blankly staring above at a point in the mirror) Reflections in space are needlessly complicated. And deceitful. They never cease to remind you that ever distant is ever smaller.

Woman: (To the glass) Hmm... At least those in time are courteous, if nothing else. They wait for you to come back once you walk away; ever clear, ever honest. The murkiness here is in you, not in time. (Downs what’s left of her drink. To Him) Well, I must be getting along! He’ll be waiting for me outside by now.

Man: And if he isn’t?

Woman: Then I’ll be waiting for him! Goodbye! I’ll miss you.

Man: Goodbye dear.

Woman walks out in the shadows. Man stares at the glass for a minute, picks it up, and finishes the drink in a gulp.

Man: (Slowly, whispering)
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang,
But a whimper.

He gets up, opens the French window, takes a deep breath, and steps out. 15 seconds later a taxi parked on the side of the road, next to a hotel is destroyed by a man falling with great speed through its roof.

Summer Days

2010-06-11T23:20:00.003+05:30

(Pubby's Note: Well, it’s been a while now, and I haven’t written anything I can put up on my blog; thought I’d describe a typical day at my summer training/internship. Also, now that I’m in solitary again, I have returned to my non-proofed narrative thinking/writing. So here goes)

This place is huge. In length, breadth, and height. And the number of people. And it’s organised. Thoroughly. From people to paper clips. There’s umpteen departments, different machine shops, foundries, core shops, and loads of other things that are all supposed to do their own little bit to add value to the whole. Some seem to work more, some less, but all of them pretty much curse one another in a tussle for one-upmanship where the only benefit they may accrue is respect from a management that they don’t respect.

My day here usually starts with a glass of water, 5 minutes on gtalk (via gmail) and 20 minutes or so of solitaire on my cellphone while I wait for it to strike 10. Then on, I move to my cabin, a deserted room that three General Managers have occupied (and left) in the last 8 months. It’s a nice room, half-white, half-wooden, with a polished desk and a monitor and mouse with well-concealed wires, and nobody’s the wiser that they lead to nothing. I like the desk, though it does cause some awkwardness when people walk in to ask how you're getting along. You can see that it’s the office they’ve been wanting for months, maybe years, one that has been callously given away to the boss’s son for 6 weeks. I try to make it less awkward, standing up when they come in, asking them not to sit on the opposite side, sometimes keeping us both standing; doesn’t really change much though.

I have 4 books in this room to keep me occupied. One is a CNC programming manual, another’s a Thomas Hardy novel, and the other two are CAT prep books. I keep to the first two. Before half an hour of perusing them is over, though, someone always drops in to ask me if I’d like to go to one machine shop or the other for a hands-on programming experience, or just to see how stuff works. It’s generally an offer you just can’t refuse, everything outside the office is way too fascinating to miss. I can pass several hours in the machine shop without a break. As I said, there’s lots going on here, and I want to go out knowing as much as possible, though I really don’t know why.

Afternoons are nice, lunch generally lasts an hour, and I get a lot of wisdom talk and those-were-the-days dialogues from dad and his friend-and-colleague. It’s fun, really, to see people can be this chilled out with 30 projects going on simultaneously.

Post-lunch is dreary though. I return to the manual, but sleep generally tries to butt in in about half an hour. To keep myself up, I go out of the nice, 25 degrees C atmosphere to the blasting, at least 50 outside, and take a promenade around the place. I always end up passing by the ferrous foundry, hoping maybe today I’ll have the courage to step in. But no. Needless to say, it’s the volcano of the plant; but here in the heat there’s something very wrong about it. Even when you’re about 6 feet away you can hardly see anything inside. There’s a black fog of iron ore at the entrance, interrupted only by tired people, covered with soot, with shirts torn at the seams coming out at intervals with a trolley of castings, escorting them to a salon that thinks nothing of hacking away at them at 3000rpm to make them shapely. They have a scarf around their heads and what looks like a surgical mask on. The situation is so depressing you forget the humour in two guys walking side-by-side pushing the trolley, almost clasping hands. No. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Post lunch I generally go bug someone in a machine shop. The initial shyness of approaching them just melts under the heat. The first thing I learnt here probably was that it isn’t school or college. People actually want to teach you here. Everybody’s motivated by the fact that they’ve done something in their lives, and they’re all very willing to tell you about it. Every day I hear the words, “It’s really good you’re doing this right now. You’ll get to learn a lot, if you pay attention”. I don’t know if it’s that or the fact that the guys now have someone willing, even eager to hear them about their work, and how they make a living, but our own ideas seem to give us both some gratification.

Past 6 is generally a bore. I gather my books and move back into dad’s office, where we both sit around and chat, waiting for my uncle to get free from his workplace. The wait has been anywhere from an hour to two for 9 out of the last 10 days (the 10th day dad was late by that amount).

A dull ride back home follows. It’s always Red FM playing in the car. Non-stop. I now remember not just the order of the songs, but the ads and other sound bytes meant for our “infotainment” as well. Real estate ads are annoying, and targeting just the wrong people. Listening to the government-recorded PSU employment ad is like seeing a man desperate to pass a mirage off as an oasis, even if it means drinking the sand. It’s bad, and not fooling any one. Radios need a revolution.

A BITS Tale

2009-11-21T16:00:00.001+05:30

[Pubby's Note: This post is mostly fiction, and very mildly fact. Please do not take it seriously]

A long, long time ago, in the land of Rajputana, there was a small, peaceful kingdom in the region of Gaumukh. The kingdom was called Dosamgarh, and it was a fast-growing realm of businessmen; people who liked to speak, to negotiate, to cut deals, and to gather goods and money.

This money they gathered wasn’t for their own personal needs, although the drinks they got they generally kept to themselves. The money was used to hold the three big festivals, held every year in the honour of Tukdeydev, the lord of culture, innovation and sports. The festivals were the most important affair in Gaumukh; so important that the king of Dosamgarh used to spend his entire life working for them, and his scions were the high priests of the festivals.

After a few years, though, it became apparent that Gaumukh had become a very desolate place. Most people who used to live there had either emigrated to other parts of the land, or had become denizens of Dosamgarh itself, now one of the greatest kingdoms in Rajputana. As a result, the people who used to attend the three festivals dwindled sharply, and it was clear that this state of affairs could not go on for long.

After much debate and discussion, it was decided by the Elder Council that Dosamgarh could not ensure the entire well-being, and it was vital to create another territory, which would ensure that people from all of Rajputana come to Gaumukh for the three festivals. This kingdom was to be called Depnagar, and to ensure that it functions well, the founding fathers of Depnagar were picked from among the princes and ministers of Dosamgarh; now a smaller, humbler state.

Things went fine for the first few years. The festival attendees kept on growing, the money kept pouring in, and Dep and Dosam, though they were never the most cordial of neighbours, worked along fine enough to ensure that Tukdeydev was pleased.

There came one year, though, where all this changed suddenly. Since the formation of Depnagar, the three festivals had had joint high priests, each a prince in his own kingdom. One year, the high priests of Karak, 2 learned men named Ved Vasa and Rishi Kesh, discovered an instant disdain for each other’s way of working (worship is work, after all), and decided to ignore each other’s efforts for Karak until the festival would be over.

The ensuing discord soon cut any lines of friendship the two kingdoms might have had. Both Depnagar and Dosamgarh, now huge states equal in size and power, started doing what any 2 kingdoms of equal size and power do when at loggerheads; they started seizing more power, looking for more work to do in order to prove Karak was their brainchild. It is hardly a surprise that Karak did not go as planned that year. There were at least 8 cases where Karak failed to live up to the standards it had set the year before.

The storm over the smooth functioning of Karak (or the lack thereof) spilled so much bad blood between the two dominions that it looked like they were doomed for an eternity of hatred towards each other. Only a miracle could save them now.

Miraculously though, the embitterment, did not last overlong. As it happens, it was not hate that drove away hate, but a seed of affection that saved them from perpetual destruction. A stalwart prince of Depnagar fell for a charming princess of Dosamgarh, and their secret meetings away from the leaguer sprouted the softening of many a heart on both sides of the border.

Today, the two monarchies still coexist, working once again for the three festivals, with something of the old cordiality coming back, and growing steadily by the constant presence and efforts of the young couple.

And how do I know all this? Well, my dear readers, I was also one of the princes and high priests of Depnagar. With my festival behind me and my prayers to Tukdeydev all but answered, I have now taken, what can only be described as Sanyaas, from Rajputana. I spend my days now loitering around river beds and distant lakes, in Remembrance of Things Past.

In Search of Lost Time

2009-10-26T01:49:00.006+05:30

For more months than I can care to count now, life’s been a series of hard, unrewarding toils, trials and tribulations. An extended spate of failed endeavours, half measures, backstabbing, exhaustion, the occasional exhilaration, jugaad, meetings, rage, hopelessness, helplessness and what all.

Recently there’s been this obsession with the idea of all these efforts culminating into one giant release at Waves, which, apart from being the most kick-ass thing we could hope to organise in less than half the time an annual cultural festival should be done in, shall also be a confluence of bedraggled coordinators finally letting it ALL out, enjoying to their wits’ end, staying perhaps buzzed, drunk, stoned or just energetic at the festival where they helped bring about so much. Whatever had happened in the months previous, let it slide; these three days will be the stuff to tell your children when they enter college, if not their children in turn.

Until a couple of days ago, my plans were the same; get baked, stay baked, watch the events, observe the crowd, enjoy the food, sleep blissfully for 2 hours each night, and end it with one LONG sigh, and moist eyes (to taste).

Certain thoughts of a contemplative nature over the past few days though have made me edit my blissful plan to something much more practical and realisable. The current plan is as follows:
Wake up, take a bath, sit in room, stay in room, venture out for occasional snack.

And here are the reasons for it:

The whole plan sounds a bit too much like Bing’s comic strip about the 11:30 rule in campus going away. The DoTA server may start an hour late, but beer rain, superchix, and world peace in one night (or for that matter, three) are a little too much to ask.
I’ve often stated (and if I haven’t, it’s only because the only time this can be said is a bad time to say it) that it’s the gap between expectations and reality that hurts more upon observation than the reality itself. Better not to hope for stuff than to set high hopes and dash them like a beer bottle against a rock on the beach.
How will all this help in the end anyway? Getting baked and listening to good music doesn’t make you happy; it either just blunts the edge of pain or enhances the happiness already there. It won’t at all help me fix one of the worst personal crises I’ve had in my life, and which I haven’t had much time for over these months. It’ll just delay it by another 3 days, after which I’ll have to deal with it.
The fall thing again; all this enjoyment, if realised, shall end with the BIGGEST case of Post-Waves Blues ever; and that won’t really help with point 3 above.

So why am I still working for all this? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s become a habit by now. Maybe because to drop out now would be just like treachery. And maybe because somewhere deep down, I like doing something that doesn’t let me watch TV series and movies on my laptop at night. Whatever the deal, I shall see it through, so until then, Adios!

Ramblin's

2009-08-30T00:17:00.004+05:30

So this was a nice Sunday evening on the 20th of March, 2005; and I was at a Barista in Ansal’s Crown Plaza, Faridabad, waiting for my friends to show up for my birthday treat. I was in class 10th at the time, and had been listening to modern western music for over a year and a half, and rock music for about 6 months (the modern western music consisted mainly of the exploits of a certain Marshall Mathers and the like).

[Ramble: The first rock band that I had heard, properly, was Nirvana in their album Unplugged In New York, which gave me an entirely different idea of "proper" rock music; my exposure to Linkin’ Park and The Offspring telling me it was quite the contrary. I hadn’t heard even one classic rock band at the time (I had heard discrete songs of these bands, but never an album or any such thing), and the genre, as is quite clear, was new to me.]

So anyway, the friends I expected to show up came along, 4 out of my circle of about 5, and we basically had a merry time. This was the place where that display picture of mine on Orkut, the one that has annoyed many of you on many occasions, was clicked from my new cellphone.

30 minutes passed this way, over coffee and talk, when the 5th out of my circle, then the ever-radical who had just picked up the guitar, showed up. Immediately after the standard greeting and the hug he realised he had forgotten to get me a present. This was class X, as I said, and while birthday presents had never really given me any real pleasure, I didn’t ask people not to get me any then.

Thankfully, our default present at the time wasn’t a deodorant, it was music tapes (CDs being too expensive). So Kartik rushed immediately to the Planet M store about 50 minutes away and returned 15 minutes later with 2 tapes in his hand. He came up to me and said frankly, “Dude, I had 300 bucks I spent on these tapes; but I can only give you one of these as a present. So pick.”

Create this scenario in a group of music fans, and you’ll see a situation no political lobby can beat. So 4 were trying REALLY hard to make me pick what was clearly then the more popular option, i.e. The Offspring - Americana

Kartik, however, was pitching very strongly for the other option, the one I finally ended up picking. I did this among doubts that he wanted The Offspring album for himself, but somehow, because I had heard they were good, I picked this album, an untitled 1971 release which is more popularly known as Led Zeppelin IV.

We spent the rest of the day alternating among different food joints, an arcade, and Planet M. We spent an hour at Barista seeing Kartik’s various failed attempts at getting a proper sound out of their guitar, and an on-key tune from his strumming.

[Ramble: Sitting in campus today, my mind suddenly sprang back to that day. Out of the 5 of us, I am here in Goa, one of the guys is still in the same parts, one in NDA, one in Canada, and one in Chennai finalising a recording deal for his band. I wonder how things would have been if I had picked the other tape. Would The Offspring have been my favourite band now instead of Zeppelin? It’s possible I would’ve heard more modern bands, perhaps Radiohead, RHCP, and less Hard Rock and Folk bands. Maybe I wouldn’t have found blues and jazz so cool, or Woodstock for that matter. And hey, if the Butterfly Effect is to be believed, I might have been five thousand miles away from here, doing something completely different, and perhaps writing this same blogpost from the other side, as it were.]

I know hindsight reflections are annoying to some people, but once it started , I couldn’t help thinking this thought through.

An Ode to Apeejay

2009-06-16T11:45:00.005+05:30

For some reason, I feel extremely reminiscent today. What with my recent decision to always think in the narrative made on a trip to Vaishno Devi, I guess this post had to come sooner or later (given the number of buses I travel in every day), although the topic that I write about today came as a surprise even to myself.

It’s been about two years since I collected my passing certificate from My Schoo l, and in those two years, I have visited that most hallowed of places only once. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to visit it, but there always was something that kept me from going back. If I have to put a name to it, I would say it’s an insecurity that I’ve had ever since I passed out. School always, and especially in my last two years, was a place where I went to have fun, meet my friends, roam about aimlessly in the middle of Chemistry or English class with one classmate or several. It was a time when I was both an extreme recluse and part of the most active friend circles at the same time, valuing both these traits as not just habits, but as leashes of existence that I held onto, afraid of losing what I thought I actually was (something I don’t think I have a clue to as of now either). It was a time of uninhibited joy when I was around my buddies, playing footsie beneath the benches, making fun of our Physics teacher, arguing with the Math one, and generally laughing around with the English and Computer Science ones. Even in the evenings I didn’t let go of my quarter-home, and conversations over the phone continued for hours, things like parents discovering a relationship, cutting school to go watch a movie, helping someone get over a break-up (they HAD to be bad, there was just no other way), settling arguments between friends about a bad word he might have said to her when angry, and everything about people else that I find innocent and hold dear in life.

So now, every time I sense that familiar feeling of a hook being attached to my heart and pulling me towards those familiar corridors, there is a heavier dead weight attached somewhere near my right ventricle that tells me it is all over, that those classrooms are inhabited by new people, many of whom I haven’t even seen or heard of before; that cleaning over the summer term has wiped away my pen marks on the glass window of class XI A forever; that the several notebooks that I filled with my writings, sitting alone on the last bench, and which now lie in my room were all for nothing as the person I wrote them to is too far away; that there shall never be another group walking out of class XII to sit in the library in collective protest of Mr. Kataria’s assignments because even he has moved on; that the scribble shirts that we wore on our last day were in fact the last memorabilia that we shall ever have to remind us of the 14 years that our parents kept telling us matter the most in life. That even though we may meet again, it is never going to be the same camaraderie we once shared on those sacred staircases, feeling like the Golden Gods of our establishment in our blue-and-grey.

So I can’t even begin to imagine what my seniors at college are feeling right now, everybody has their levels of attachment to what they hold dear, but while they say goodbye to their home for three-and-a-half years, I’m still finding it difficult to move over the school I left 2 years ago.

(For someone else I stumbled across who’s leaving her school right about now, check out Ria’s blog at: http://ria-air.blogspot.com/)

Apocalypse

2009-05-20T23:47:00.002+05:30

It all started with a gust of cold wind and the rain. The rain was a sign. It was a true sign of things that had been and things as they would be; soon.

The rain had barely ceased when a series of spikes starting running the length of the land, over and over again; as if Atlas himself was trying to find a soft spot in order to impale the very globe he had been carrying for years now.

All this time the Berber was circling the area, searching for the right spot to begin his evil operation. An unknowing descendant of the North African tribe, this man was more a ZooZoo than a Zizou. Finding the spot in the rear, he started with a cursory inspection, gauging the length of the stalk.

It is time I mention where he was. The story is set in a lush field somewhere far, far away. In the field lie millions of tall plants. Make no mistake, these aren’t any redwoods, but they’re longer than your average sapling. This land of beautiful, black fauna was meticulously grown by the Farmer, who spent day and night nurturing this field, away from home, often relying upon sheer strength of will to watch his plants grow.

The farmer was away at home, to spend a few days with his family, when news reached him that his undefended field, the very meaning of his existence, was under threat from these vile creatures. He had left it undefended, for who would want to destroy a thing of beauty, a joy forever?

It was too late for him to do anything, though. With his harrow and shears in his hand the giant Berber inched ever closer. The plants, now smooth and yielding because of the rain, fall about his fingers as they move through the wavy confines.

And then it started. He cut, he hacked, he slashed with a crescendo never seen before in the world. As he sheared his way through the field, first this way and then that, he was the figure of efficiency himself; smooth, knowing full well the consequence of his butchery. One wonders how this man and others like him sleep at night; knowing full well their deeds of the day.

When it was over, the land lay barren, the stalks reduced to a tenth of what they had been barely fifteen minutes before. The farmer reached late, too late to do anything but weep, lament, and start anew the labour of his life.

(Author's Note: In case anyone's wondering; I got a haircut today; and I DID NOT WANT TO)

Rerentre

2009-04-28T02:27:00.001+05:30

I'm back. Blogger's way better than wordpress.

New Blog

2009-04-17T01:12:00.001+05:30

My Blog has been shifted to: http://longsentences.wordpress.com/
this includes the last post, so please leave any comments there :)

till then, farewell blogspot!

One Night

2009-04-16T22:05:00.001+05:30

There were just the two of us there that night, singing us songs of love and loneliness, songs we had never sung before, songs that probably no one had heard either. We didn’t know, it was all just there in the air, somewhere. Maybe between the sullen bartender and the glass of pink champagne, which looked more golden than pink. Maybe it was because her hair kept brushing past its surface, or maybe it was my face, I really couldn’t tell. All I could think to myself was that she was here today and that I had another blunt in my raincoat, right where I kept my wallet.

And then they kicked us out, and the blunt was gone, and the wallet was gone, and it started raining and I found out that they had taken my raincoat. I remember I was cursing them and trying to break down their door and that was when I heard her laughing. I think she was also shouting something about us being on the other street but then why would I go and try to break down a door I didn’t want to break down and so I went to her to tell her that only, she just took my hand and led me down the strangely bending roads to my place.

And so we were at the door, where we always paused to look at one another, knowing in that one glance what would happen tonight, tomorrow and until who knew when? I knew she was there just to use me and that she was there for me to do with as I pleased, and she knew I would do only what pleased her, because the only thing I wanted to do to her was to make her happy so that she would stay sometime longer, let me wake up next to her, to get a conscious whiff of her perfume to remember her by.

But in the morning she was gone, just like every other time. I looked around, helpless, as I always did, not knowing how I’d go on for the rest of my life without her, not realising that I had done so in the past. She was gone, and I knew she would be, but then there was nothing I could do about it. I knew she wanted me to be that way, and I liked sitting there thinking about her, alone on my bed, with the remains of the night like confetti for my desperation. Her absence, just like everything else about her, was an object of worship.

But then her memory started dwindling and I couldn’t remember what it felt like, being around her, so I got out my kabuki and I did what I always did because the buzz meant that I could feel what I wanted to feel and see what I wanted to see and I tried to see her but she still didn’t come back. I could see her just off the corner of my eye but I couldn’t get her to come to me.

The crack wearing off, I stayed there all day with a happy hope of sustenance that was held there by nothing but every second passing by on the watch I kept staring at. But then I knew what was going to happen when the god I never believed in made the hour of 8 strike. A joker may give false hopes and happiness to those around him but alone with himself he cannot but sever his connection with gaiety and look around him with a sheet of yellow creeping up on his vision like a dash of scotch in the bottle of cheap vodka he empties each night.

And so it was that it just took me like a second to get the cogs of my cognition out of the rut they were in and I moved from my sick hibernation to the very same place she had led me to yesterday, or at least I thought it was. It didn’t really matter. She wasn’t going to turn up anyway, she never did. But then the rum was good, and for some reason didn’t burn my throat. And the lady at the other end was pretty. So I just sat back, relaxed, and let my sick mind unfold...

Ellipses

2008-11-25T22:26:00.001+05:30

It’s a desert out here. Nothing but dust, cigarette butts and smoking ruins. As I sit here on the mountaintop of a grey, fast dwindling existence, I try to remember how it was that I ended up here, like this.

Growing up, there always used to be this one motto:
“Sticks and Stones won’t break My Bones;
My Mom says I’m Quite Healthy”
You could do whatever you wanted to; go wherever you wished, as long as mom said you were allowed to wish so. Running around the neighbourhood as a young, obedient little tyke, it wasn’t long before I realised that there really was no reason why mom should tell YOU to stay within the 4-street block and go out herself every single day, especially when those little ragamuffin friends of yours were so quick and so consistent in pointing this out. I took my first step outside the block into the alley way one day and it was the first time I got pummelled by street toughs. So, mother was right; but this had to be a one-off thing. Why would she scream at me then, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was afraid that she might be wrong. Had to be a one-off thing...

I think a lot of your habits depend upon how early you get introduced to stuff. Take porno; if I’d caught my older brother watching it when I was 8, I would’ve started watching it myself pretty soon. It wasn’t porno, however, that my friends passed around. I was in High School at that time, and Hash was pretty cheap. I remember my girlfriend telling me not to get involved with “bad stuff”, but once I was out of conning mother for money, I had to turn to dealing off the streets to keep me fixed. The cops caught me one day, and mom had to come save me from Juvi. But that was just coz I had gone to take a leak and kept my scooter with the stuff on it in plain view; it wasn’t coz of any “bad business”, it was just stupid me.

The neighbourhood falling apart around me and my record soiled by my previous arrest, I knew none of the bosses would have me. I had to make a name for myself. I got a lead on a supplier and started my own “dealership”, though I had to keep it low, I had no turf of my own and had to make do with scavenging off of the others’. My buddy Kyle warned me I’d never last long. We’d known each other since grade school and always did everything together. But it was his dead body in the sewers that told me he was right; but only that one time.

Bush declared war on Iraq. Everyone knew he was wrong, everyone else looked the other way and let him go about it, but for guys like me there was just one option.

We were all sitting on the ground. The Colonel got up and started shouting, like he always did, “MEN!!! It’s a desert out there! Nothing but dust and smoking ruins!...”

So, they were right all along, eh.

Return

2008-11-20T00:55:00.001+05:30

After a long sojourn, I sense a feeling of satisfaction in me when I state that I’ve finally regained a measure of my old self. Socially Deceased perhaps being the always unattainable idyllic phrase, perhaps Socially Withdrawn is something more akin to what I’ve achieved. It took some time because I have allowed myself to distance myself from people by associating with them more professionally than personally, and such a shift comes with its associated penalty. I do not think any better of my life, but I do feel a sense of emancipation when I sense prison bars being lifted from the confines of my mind and turning into an absolute, impermeable cage a fourteenth of an inch from my skin.

I shall not pretend to fully understand why, after all this, I’m posting again; but such as it is, I believe an explanation was required to the few who read the last one. This shall not be the last post here; in fact, there shall be many more in the time to come. I shall endeavour, however, to limit the ones where I show my ‘soul’, you may call it, in the gratuitous and obscene nakedness that it is.

Inconvenience of this nature caused is regretted, and henceforth, shall be nonexistent.

Fare Thee Well

2008-06-10T11:35:00.002+05:30

My life is a sham. A sham in which I fool the people I associate with into associating with someone who is not really me. A sham in which I fool myself into being someone I'm not, to the extent that I don't even know which side of me is real anymore. On my behalf, I don't do this consciously; but at the end of the day I can't deny that that is exactly what I'm doing. I use language that changes with the person or group I'm conversing with; I lie about or hide my past (the one I care about) in order to make it seem more in agreement with the current state of affairs; analyse things no one really cares about and write stuff nobody has read to tell people that I have an identity that, I guess, is not really me. I read and get inspired by literary and philosophical greats in a world where I believe strictly in their ideologies that I know I don't even loosely adhere to. I steal words and expressions from people I am close to and use them on other people to get alternately even closer to or to further distance myself from them.

It is true that in the recent past, I HAVE actually developed something akin to an identity, but it is not something I'm proud of, not something I would like to have called ME. I find myself increasingly reverting to my old existence, and the best thing I can do is come out in the open with it and then hide in my own personal coccoon, where I may work on annihilating both sides of the coin that I believe my life to be.

Now that I have told you all this, I'll never be able to face you.
Ladies & Gentlemen of the world, I now declare myself, to 'borrow' a friend's expression:
SOCIALLY DECEASED

Progress, Part II

2008-06-04T22:04:00.004+05:30

Okay, the key to the solution is one premise, the premise being that a lot of people feel the same way at certain points in their life. By feeling the same way, I mean a feeling of insecurity towards the state of affairs in the not-so-distant future and a complacent sense of security when one looks back in the past, particularly the Dark Ages, where progress was at a standstill, compared to what it is today. The present seems all right, liveable, even enjoyable; but the future? Who knows what that might bring? So many things could go wrong; a nuclear winter might just happen, democracy might be thrown away for despotism, George Bush might not get his head out of his ass and supply some oxygen to his asphyxiated brain. But take a moment to think what the people back then were wondering when thinking of their future. Issues such as the king might be murdered, a gang of bandits might just ravage their town, no rain for the harvest, whatever. All I’m saying is that the future shall always seem uncertain, despite all the progress we make.

And yet we DO progress. And every new stage we reach, we think its just as good or even better to live in. To state an example, if it weren’t for the impending apocalypse, won’t you like living in the present better than living during, say, Indira Gandhi’s rule? Just like that, every age that has past us has been fraught with it’s own insecurities. We might look at a timeline and point out that such-and-such period of time was a golden age in history, but the fact of the matter is that the people living in those times were scarcely in a position to know that. For that matter, the Renaissance was probably one of the most turbulent times to live in.

But at the end of the day, the future will always be revealed to us in a way that will make us accept it: slowly and surely. Take, for example, the computer, probably the most revolutionary invention ever. If people at the time ENIAC was made had realised that it might result one day in almost eliminating unskilled labour from industry, I don’t think they would have embraced it with open arms. As such, I doubt anyone at that time envisioned such things as cell phones or CNCs, thereby resulting in a present world where Silicon, not Oxygen or Hydrogen or Carbon, is the most important element in our life.

Now think about living in a stagnant society, as proposed in Progress, Part - I. Imagine, for a moment, your life BEYOND the peaceful 3 seconds for which you let your imaginations run wild when you DO think of it. You are now living in a world where society is stagnant. There is absolutely nowhere to go and nothing more to be learnt. Your entire civilisation can in fact be condensed into an encyclopaedia which will be absolute forever. You can’t even CONCEIVE of something original, not even a rubber band to better tie up your hair if they're in your face, because its the small things that lead to big ones. For all intents and purposes, you’ll have something in your hand that you KNOW you can better, but you are stopped by the laws of the very society you embraced so eagerly. So next time you feel troubled contemplating the future, just think that it could have been much worse. You could have been living in the past.

(Special thanks to Abha Jeurkar, who bore my rambling nonsense for an hour and helped me come up with this post.)

Music and Feelings

2008-04-27T00:58:00.005+05:30

There are so many things that distinguish one sort of music from another. The emotions they want to express might be the same, but they can create such different feelings which, while they’re being conveyed, also give the genre its characteristic, well, feel.

Take, for example, telling a woman that she looks beautiful, or that you love her:

Soft Rock – Soft rock is about expressing the feeling of comfort that you have with the girl and the kind of comfort you want her to feel. Examples: You’re Beautiful – James Blunt, Southern Girl – Incubus

Hard Rock – The feeling isn’t as much love as much as making love; hard rock songs tend to convey feelings like the night spent together was wild and completely worth it. Examples: Trampled Underfoot – Led Zeppelin, American Woman – Lenny Kravitz

Soul – Here the songs are slow, more like ballads, what are typically classified as ‘love songs’. These songs involve crooning words of love strung together as a method of, well, ‘wooing’ a girl. Examples: Are You Lonesome Tonight – Elvis Presley, any Pat Boone song

Funk – Well, not to undermine these songs, but funk romantic songs involve conveying your emotions while the two of you are on the dance floor, generally to a hip-shaking beat (otherwise they’re quite similar to Soul). Example: Call My Name – Prince, Pussy Control – Prince

RnB – The music is informal, the lyrics are regular sentences spoken musically – until the main beat drops in for the chorus and it gets all warm and perfect for you to say it over and over again how beautiful she looks to you... Examples: Ellie My Love – Ray Charles

Jazz – Jazz just lets the music create a light-hearted, happy feeling inside and lets the title of the track tell you what it’s all about. The fact that it’s a compliment is just an added bonus; a lot of times jazz just overrides the emotion for the feeling that it wants to create. Example: The Way You Look Tonight – Sonny Sitt & Red Holloway

Metal – Things such as liking a woman are too trivial for a genre like metal. The best you can hope for is a song where the guy kills the girl in a fit of jealousy and starts growling about a psychopath’s existence.

So, to sum up, Feelings, more than Emotions, are more or less unique for every different genre. A more thorough analysis would prove that it is the feelings itself that are the only classification factor for different genres of music. If a person chooses to represent a certain emotion and express a certain feeling with it, he or she shall inevitably create music of that particular genre 9 out of 10 times. This is also why certain people prefer certain types of music over others – because of the feelings associated with them, which they can relate to at a subconscious level. These feelings are represented by a type of music that they can appreciate at a more conscious level.

Thought

2008-02-04T01:00:00.000+05:30

Why are we so intent upon wiping thought from everyone’s mind? Why must everyone be ‘In the Moment’? And more importantly, Why, once we’ve been ‘brought back’ against our will, must we insist upon ourselves staying there, trying desperately to create small talk, so that we don’t relapse into thinking again?

Is that the subsistence of our thought? To occupy our mind only until someone else saves us from such an unrequited pursuit? Why do we, as a generation find it easy to talk and toil, but the intricacies of thought are too much for us to handle?

A person is sitting alone thinking, having her food, next to a group of people, fairly loud and fairly acquainted with her. Why is it that when someone from this group of people espies her in all her solitude, that her solitude must be broken by any means possible? Why must it be assumed that she is thinking of someone and that said interest s romantic? Is love simply assumed to be the only thing that causes us to think, thought otherwise being an abnormal activity?

But then, wouldn’t that make love an exception, something that wouldn’t exist in an ideal person? But if love is just another form of humanity, a feeling that more often than not expresses itself in a person, then asking such questions, questions that steal thought and brand it as something abnormal, something to be looked askance at, is probably just as bad as molesting someone’s mind – an activity that nobody else can observe, but the stigma, the THOUGHT of it never stops presenting itself.

Progress, Part I

2008-01-27T13:17:00.000+05:30

Progress seems surreal at times. Barely some 60 years ago, nobody had believed things like coloured televisions; men on the moon; a day that starts with a hurried shower, an omelette scrambled for breakfast, a cell phone, laptop, PDA grabbed and teleported to the office in the fastest cars money can buy; where said devices replace the ‘real’ world in an ever-more difficult race to keep in touch with it. Friends would be met in a virtual universe, in a ‘game’ where they are pitted against each other to take their lives again, and again, and again...

Oh, the advancement of mankind! Why can’t we all just lay back, relax, live in a calmer world, without the perpetual overhearing of cell phone conversations of people passing by, the constant fear of people reading our text messages or the steady drain on our money over getting a fast internet connection? Why do we live in a world whose quality has so deteriorated over the ages? Where people just don’t have the time or decency to wait anymore and everything must be fast, Fast, FAST!!! – Fast food, fast work, fast sex... Seriously, we’d be better off living in a world that doesn’t waste its time on vicious circles and Catch-22 situations and useless progress, for the sake of progress itself.

Wouldn’t it?