Wednesday 17 December 2014

Non Requiescat in pace.

Stop wishing Humanity that it rest in peace.

If it IS dead and if we are to entertain any of the fantasies that organised faith (dirty word!)* would have us believe about the afterlife, then Humanity should burn in Hell.




Definition of humanity in English:

NOUN (plural humanities)

[MASS NOUN]
1Human beings collectively:appalling crimes against humanity
1.1The state of being human:our differences matter but our common humanity matters more
2The quality of being humanebenevolence:he praised them for their standards of humanity and care
3(humanities) Learning concerned with human culture, especially literaturehistoryartmusic, and philosophy.
Thus says the Oxford dictionary.
Are we hoping the homo sapiens that perish, without a clue why they're dying now, every minute of the day because of various kinds of misguided sense of right, rage and reparation are okay with not having finished their day, with leftovers in their refrigerators, incomplete chores, with unfinished homework and unsolved long division problems, orphaned pets, distraught families and lonely lovers? Should we be hoping that the privilege we have of 'the state of being human' rest with us in shameful hibernation while we go about ripping the myth of the intelligent, cultured, loving, graceful being to tiny pieces?
No humanity, please don't rest in peace. You have no business resting.

So, which of these are we wishing rest in peace?

You have to writhe in the knowledge of all your failings while you take heart from all the things that you have made possible. Bread, Idlis, Friendship, Poetry, Music, Art, Love, Stories, Sorrow, Joy, Sharing, Chemistry, Cheese, the Renaissance, Wine, Dialogue, Faith... Stop Faith from morphing into a monster of a dirty word.
You have to wake up, make amends. You can't be let off so easily.

Let not Spiritus Mundi be marred by unsightly slouching beasts of savagery.
Unrest Humanity, don't give up.

Friday 28 October 2011

Jotting for BLS.

Bangalore Love Story - Workshop II.

A Love Story is like a large sheet of cellophane wrapping ones being. Mummifying a part of you
forever... keeping chips of heart together... One can’t tell how tightly
wrapped you are. It’s transparent, you see...

Mine is tinged with a bit of green, grey and red... it is tinged with a bit
of Bangalore.

I find most people share this tinged cellophane with me...

This is what binds the BLS team together... a ream of cellophane stories
running into each other. Overlapping. Superimposed. Becoming one.

After two weekends at the farm, I see us owning each other’s stories. We
don’t necessarily have to have shared it but we know that everyone is here
for the same exact reason you are here; to tell a story of Love, to give off
oneself.

The second workshop saw people joining us anew, who couldn’t make it the
first week. The ease with which they melded in with the “actors’ workshop
veterans" was amazing. Jyo and Bree burst into the scene with such elegance
and tenderness it made one weep. Mr.Handsome quietly brings an innocent
honesty that makes one want to tug at his cheeks like one would do to a
baby.

One can tell we are all here with the right kind of heart. The same kind of
heart. We are going to be a great team.

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above
its strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things
are lawful for itself and all things are possible.”- Thomas Kemp.



For more on Bangalore Love Story: http://infinitesoulsfarmandartistsretreat.blogspot.com/

Friday 10 June 2011

Circadian Cycles...

A character in a certain unremarkable movie made a very astute observation...
"It looks like a crime scene in my pants".

I largely agree.

Every once in, say a month, I wake up with a clear head, cheerful as if yesterday had never happened... all set to take on the day... There's this energy surging through me... I could do anything and everything... I feel oh-so-light and frothy... even pulled off a somersault once... But this is only a distraction... a fake rubber serotonin loaded bone the universe throws you just before hitting you over the head with that 'crime scene in your pants'.

Two or so days before the fact comes this false sense of well-being which is quickly over taken often by a sudden stab of unwantedness and a whole bouquet of emotions... a spectrum of  saintly, ambitious, child-like, child-ish, deviant, homicidal, suicidal, even genocidal tendencies in quick succession.

This is popular as P.M.S... Look it up...

If some one so much as breathes around me, I could take their head off... Attending a phone call feels like listening to a coconut scraper going at it with a ceramic plate... A constant frown lodged on my forehead, happiness seemingly light years away... I'll never smile again and I won't let you either... Get away while you can!

See its mostly out of my control... Its like the weather... There's no telling... Ask  the weather man...

Then, thank gravity in the heavens, the horrifying prelude ends, only to give way to the 120 hour long biological chorus, which only makes one feel worse. Worse because, its the end of the unpredictable roller coaster and it all steadily, monotonously slants downhill towards the valley of cramps and discomfort. Aching bones and backs...

Then I remember that glorious gift of the Maya and the Aztecs to woman kind - You know what...

Although there is a better cure to pain than the brown gooey stuff; Somebody once said to me, women are the most sexually charged when menstruating... Was quite convincing and I was inclined to agree...

But we are on the most readily available remedy now... So, the moment it dissolves in my mouth, I'm human again...

In the end it isn't all that bad... Just goes to show how eventful having a uterus can be... A show recurring for most of your life... Isn't always entertaining, but there it is... to keep you company through thick and thin... Instrumental to the miracle of life... Your best chum.

(WARNING to the unaware: This is a personal account... The episodes vary greatly from woman to woman...) 

Friday 27 May 2011

Feliz Cumple!

There's always a certain nervousness as the day approaches... Like the run up to a performance to a large audience... 

One would be woken by the slight tickle on the foot, a soft voice in the ear and the warm hug one always is in need of... Festive morning, with everyone on tiptoes around you trying to make you feel as special as possible within the walls of your home...

Nobody knocks on the bathroom door this day... Water will not be a concern for today... All soaked in oil, scrubbed clean one emerges to brand new clothes with creases as fresh as blossoming jasmines and the pooja niche all set up...

She looks on with pride and he with all the affection... She's happier than you could ever be for yourself... Its like its the day she was born... 

9 times out of 10, he would've forgotten... but she smooths it over for you...

Then one goes around to the rest of the family, touching feet, getting blessed, collecting that little token hundred rupee note from each one...

All your favourite things are cooked on this day... and you're smothered with hugs and kisses from time to time the entire day...

Then comes the evening, with a little rain every time. Out comes the cake and a trail of little utilitarian gifts for school that'll begin in five days... They sing, you make a wish... the same one every year... One went to bed with a sense of having accomplished growth for another year, waiting for the next one already...

But one had begun finding them quite stressful for the past few years... for one no longer lived within those comforting mud walls of no expectation. One had started to become a citizen of the big bad world...With "plans" to make, and "celebrate" the day more to give a bunch of 'there now-now not' friends an excuse to have a night out on town and spend that precious little time with you, it becomes more of a chore... A misguided sense of wanting to do the done thing that everyone does and looking for that elusive story of the ultimate crazy intoxicated birthday to tell for the rest of the year. It is somehow against one's good sense, with no happiness to be found and no wishes to be made... No wishes, because none of the thoughtless morons ever think of getting you a birthday cake... 

With the unhappiness comes the anxiety of growing older by another year and of not accomplishing anything of substance... nothing of value to show for the years one has lived...

Then comes the time when one is used to the big bad world and has their own little niche of warm mud walls...

This time around, there was that familiar knot in the stomach, the nervousness from two days before, like you are afraid you might screw up getting older, but there was no pressure... although one decided one wasn't going to let there be any pressure.

So one went about business as usual...after the rare visit to the temple and making sure the social networks weren't broadcasting around the world that it was your birthday...

One couldn't help not getting sweet stuff for the people at work place... Having a birthday during the summer can make one resentful for not getting to be the one kid not in uniform and actually getting to distribute candy to the entire school...

A regular, noisy, laced with alcohol, good natured lunch with new found friends, going on a wild goose chase for the tree of wisdom and finding it... A walk with one's greatest friend and another random person in the dark wilderness of a park and stumbling on-for the first time in one's life- Glow worms zipping around in the silvery shadows...

A regular day... more fulfilling than others... Lovely, quiet and grown up...

Thank you...

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Little Lily wants to go fishing...

Still and alert... At the edge of undulating water threatening to swallow her...

Fishing is a very demanding activity featuring a lot of inactivity I would think... I wouldn't know...
I have never gone fishing, in its literal sense..

[But one must have realised by now that this metaphor of fishing is not working as well as one would've liked and this attempt is quite sodden.]

Fishing seems passive unlike hunting and pursuing with aggressive focussed intent...

She does not see herself as a predator or a pursuer. Her inherent laid back-ness manifests itself in her choice of sport as well...She'd rather wait and watch, letting the prey come to her, in their own space, take their own sweet time.

It may not be as satisfyingly morbid as thrusting a knife deep into bleeding flesh, or shooting a poison tipped arrow at a living, moving being, or even pulling the trigger in that precise moment to do maximum damage... But one cannot deny that feeling of pleasure, of ownership, however short-lived it may be, washing over when the fish comes to you, seemingly of its own accord... The moment when the aching wait and punishing calm comes to an end...

Next comes the question of consumption...

Who consumes whom? or what...

Is there fulfillment?

Are they content... with their roles of natural forces pitched against one another...? Is the marauder penalised justly for having considered necessary to scout the edges of that other world... For lurking...
Or is the quarry tainted with the responsibility of creating a destroyer?
Maybe it carries enough venom inside it to destroy what it created.

Thursday 30 December 2010

LeaveLetter.

I am surrounded by leavers... People who leave, don't stay...they just go... walk away!
There are various kinds of leavers, my excessive mulling has made me realise.

Some leavings we have no control over... Like when someone leaves because they're dead... I suppose not many people like being dead and more than a few wouldn't want others to die... That's one inevitability that everyone has to deal with and that is probably the one that angers you the least.

Maybe it is also the fact that leavers of this kind don't threaten to return and dig up stuff that would annoy you about them leaving, which would make you want them to leave anyway...

There are others who have been forced into leaving by how annoying you are... Some leave because they Love you too much... Some because they Love something else more than you... It is the call of duty to some and the habit of flakiness to others... Some are afraid they'll get stuck in one place forever, others are there far too long and are forced to eject by the consequences of their own steadfastness.

There are those who leave just to come back. Like your father does when he leaves for work and returns home in the evening. You know they'll be back, sooner or later...

Memories of leavers are much easier to hoard and cherish than the objects themselves. One can afford to be delusional and smooth over the short comings and remember just the good parts. It makes one's life seem quite bearable in hindsight...beautiful even... 

One might seem like the victimised waitor... But one does realise one is as much of a leaver as the next person...

Being self centred makes one an unconscious leaver...

One leaves when it is uncomfortable... One also leaves when one gets too comfortable...

One also leaves for the sake of leaving... Because there's somewhere to get to...

Monday 23 August 2010

The Me, Next...

July 2008,


Lucidity often heard of, not unknown but fleeting...

The fracture elusive
But with its painful evidence omnipresent
Where? one can't tell
It becomes the person with the 'ality'

Coining big words to mean, to forget the
Next instant
To describe what it is like
Strung by a springy cord
Swinging between
scorching dying deserts and Edens of everliving waters
The nucleus and the fringes
Love and Indifference
Within a lightening of a moment.

Groping in blinding light
To grasp one true emotion
to hold on to reason (of theirs)
But All is true- as true as the scarlet
Traces on this hand and the smile in ones eyes.

Truth is the problem
The unstoppable powerful elation and the dreadful bottomless concavity
Abyssmal sometimes turned upside down to be the dizziest of heights.
Terror, stillness, silence, chaos
All in one moment at one time
One imagined that would be Amore
But that's not it...Its something else...
 I am afraid to be a widow.

Sunday 22 August 2010

To smell, they say is as good as it is to taste,
To savour, and to experience all that one has to offer and more
At a level that is notches above the physical,
Spiritual almost...

To submerge into the richest
And the most secret depths of the mystery of
The object or subject...

To find answers as passionate as the questions
That you are forced to confront,
When you Smell...

If only I could smell you now,
I think I would find the perfect answer.

Or would I...?

Tuesday 15 September 2009

In and Out of Minds...

15 September 2009, Tuesday, 17:30

This is what happens to you when you watch amazingly cool movies one after the other and listen to Radiohead...
You have real cool potential... your cool quotient maybe super high for some pathetic low lives, dangerous for other pathetic low lives with normalcy a priority, or just plain incomprehensible for the abstractedly challenged...

But to you, you’re not abstract enough, not that much of a rebel... a were-person living on the fringes of all those worlds that you wish to be part of... problem is, there are too many of them...

One had rejected the fact that one belonged to a certain gender... tried to be as neutral as possible while not knowing exactly why... it was cool alright but it wasn’t about that... One felt it Right, so one did it... Probably helped free a few souls, inspired or just set a certain example in eternity which may or may not be cited.

Somewhere towards the end of the teens one began discovering the woman in oneself. The woman came with an instruction manual. More of a suggestion manual actually... you might want to grow your hair longer than a crew cut; you should get rid of that Neanderthal unibrow, you have big beautiful eyes, why don’t you try some Kohl...? Poor mother of mine... had no clue what had hit her... there she had a perfectly asexual child with unusual aspirations and a disgust for baby pink who she was proud of and it turned into something resembling an evolved and mutated form of the giggling neighbour girls... Nothing to be afraid of mother... I’m still Me, inside... just experimenting...

It is strange that I’m speaking in Brad Pitt’s voice in my head...

Now I know I am an Individual. I do not need a tag... I can let go of the long wavy hair that I was getting so possessive about... I do not need to be what I should be...
Is what’s inside really all that matters?

Let’s experiment...

For several years, these long dark wavy strands of protein have been skirting the periphery of my vision... they are quite a bother, frankly but I Love them... but the thing about these long dark wavy strands of protein is that they grow back...

Within the past twenty four hours I’ve watched two very cool mind numbing movies about two men who played themselves into an endless merry go round of things too twisted to fathom...minds made them believe things that didn’t exist...their own minds... funny I should pick these two movies out of tens of others...uncannily resemble each other to an extent that one doubts co-incidences... reminds me of what I thought I was capable of at one time...

Revisitations...

Puts me in a state of mind that I can’t explain... happens once in a while... things have snapped me out of this blissfully semi numb, semi sense-overload state to my mundane self, solving problems, having conversations, answering a phone call, replying, listening, reading a message – *CALLS to Maharashtra & Goa @ just 50p* festive season offer valid for 30 days HURRY –

I’m not mad at these distractions... somehow today I’ve learned to get back to my blissful state... yes, Its slightly altered but that’s the process of being... changing and evolving... I like it...
Seems like I’ve lived a long time... a little over two decades... and I have a long long time to live... I will be altered, evolved; I’ll still be Me inside...

I have been docile too long... could find myself under all this dark, wavy strands of protein...

19:00

All cleaned up... dripping water everywhere...
The little yellow handled pair of Cartini scissors that I so cherish cutting shapes with... hope it’s up for the job... its blunt from use... it is very small, the blades just an inch and a half long...

Rapunzel... Rapunzel... Let down your Hair...

I feel tremors in my hands... must be the adrenalin... I can hear myself breathe loudly, my heart ounding,,,the mundane conversation of two housewives downstairs... can hardly type... makking so many mistakes...

Snip... Snip...

It is not as easy as I thought... it’s like hacking away at hard wood timber... it is too much for my little pair of yellow scissors... it is messy, looks like a mistake, but I persist... I can slowly feel it rising inside me... a strange glowing ecstasy...finally the severed pony tail falls to the ground... it has a red string tied keeping it together...

I’m shaking all over as I pick it up and feel this part of me...fresh, moist smelling of some fruit...I feel good...I look in the mirror, I don’t look too bad... I’m happy...

Freedom at last... from this thing I had gotten into my head to do... Now I only have to clean up this mess...
My silver anklet just broke...

Saturday 18 October 2008

Rantings of a Fool...

It’s easy to wander off... sometimes... but sometimes you just can’t do it... but this time, I needed a crowd so bad to be by myself that I wandered off as if in a trance... with the skin off my eye almost peeling off and too much light entering, I could hardly keep my eyes open... my stomach in a mess with ten days of compulsive tea drinking and not having had anything to eat... I wandered off escaping my ‘duties’ to the rest of the world...

Haven’t been able to be myself, by myself for a while... been strangely content and happy in normal terms... not much to complain a propos, nothing to mope about, nothing to shut myself from the world for... had someone who seemed to care... someone to be with... Not a nice feeling if you are me... I’m like the mythical dragon of good and evil... one part must lie dormant for the other to live... Both are me... extremely happy, optimistic, cheerful, lively and dark, brooding, hateful, depressed, lonely... I may choose but I may not always be at ease... human nature manifests itself twistedly...

Found myself at the ticket counter at the movies... a little too late... all movies had begun... the least I had missed of were the X-files and an obscure one I hadn’t heard of... I had to decide in which dark hall did I want to hide myself... picked it off the top of my head...
It felt good... to be going to watch a movie by myself... again, after a long time... no one you are with, no obligation to anyone... you can watch what you want and like it without feeling guilty for either having picked the movie or pulling yourself through something you don’t want to watch...
By myself... I like me by myself...

No one to make small talk with, no dumbass that doesn’t get the joke, no comments to be put up with, no one to jolt you out of the happy numb place a good tryst with polyester celluloid puts you in...

I enter the dark hall following a circle of torch light. A shocking divine pair of the brightest pair of cobalt blue eyes on a very human Daniel Craig is what I see first... and after it frame after frame of an endless ocean in all its emptyness and Blues skirting the story in so many layers that you forget that the sea is just a location setting...

I have this ambiguous talent of driving people away...far away... from me just when I begin to see them as good friends... it must be that... me starting to open up and the sight of the real me must be so ugly underneath all the independence, the quirkiness, the fun, smart exterior that people just bolt... funnily the bolters are always those who have professed their undying, unending Love to me, platonic and otherwise and how they think what an amazing person I am and how they have never met anyone like me... one leaves, another comes... like clockwork... at this rate I reckon i’ll have circumnavigated the world by the time I’m 50 with the people I’ve repulsed...

The boy looked so darn familiar... He looked so much like Him. The only difference being this one was blonde and Much cuter but with the same cocky innocence and blankness I first knew him by... it could be the maternal instinct that both him and the boy on screen evoke that gives me a sense of resemblance... leopard print fur jacket, blue eyeshadow, gelled hair standing on their end in a swipe, snapping his fingers, swaying singing the chorus, “When you were young” pretending to be Andy while she danced next to him as Bryan... I weep... The song, the image of something gone by... so precious, two young people who could’ve been, of happiness, of incorruptibility, of contentment, of being what you believe, what you want to be, of nostalgia... I weep... I smile through it... could hear something break deep inside my aortic pump...

Must be the feeling of an independent me that’s so strongly appealing to me that sub conciously I want everyone to leave....sometimes conciously as well... I’m actually relieved when someone stops talking to me... like I’ve been unburdened of the responsibility of being a friend, good, accountable and tied down by this identity of being a certain individual’s friend... the feeling of relief that washes over you when you realise you’re alone again is unbelievable... great, but shortlived... but oh, it’s real...

I am in Love... with the state of being me... whatever I am feeling...its me... I Love the movie... must be the state I’m in... but somethings make a certain impression only at certain times... I may not have felt the same way about it if I had seen it at any other time...I’m glad I did when and how I did... Makes me so emotional, so sad...I don’t want to let go, don’t want to be happy anymore... I’m happy being sad...Maybe that’s all I need.

I saw him again...Sitting where we always sat together... but this time I'm not next to him... wanted to cling to him and never let go... that would’ve made me happy and we can’t have that kinda thing happening now, can we?

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Saturday 12 July 2008

"Please! Can I Love you? Not like I'll stop loving you overnight, but I could work it slowly out of my system!

I'll love you come what may!

Even if you hate me!"

Promises of loving you forever, being there forever, holding your hand at all times... Promises... Those you believed...

But forever came too quickly...

Forever was when you didn't live up to his principles, his idea of ethics...

Forever was when you laughed at one of his delusional ideas purely out of lack of expressions or because you actually thought it was ridiculously funny...

Forever was when you disagreed...

Forever was when you were yourself...

Forever was when you weren't perfect.

Forever was too short...

A million 'forevers' in a lifetime

Heartchipped a million times, not heartbroken because you're too strong and ready to give off another chip to another disappoinment, another failure, another broken promise...

It was surreal when he appreciated the way you did things, admired who you were, heaped praises on your crappy hand-writing, criticized you and your egotistical self didn't mind, held up a mirror to you and for the first time you looked into yourself and didn't hide and slink away... Shared his secrets, his unusual ideas, talked to you about things he was passionate about with so much zest and animation... Lay his self wide open for you to look into another life...

You wouldn't believe how somebody could make you feel like the Sun of the system, how you finally found a Friend! With no prefixes or suffixes...

How you knew, how previleged you were to have this, share this relationship with another human being... not a boy or a girl, but a person...

How you hesitated, unbelievingly, searching for motive, cynically at first because this was the first time you received that much attention...

How you felt worthy, finally...

You finally stated giving in and opening up.

Because you knew it was different...

Different because it was true

And you believed everything he said like you always had and ended up with just another jolting reality of hollow words.

But you trusted this time because you knew it was different...

It Evidently wasn't...

Forever was too short and it came too quickly.

I repulse myself...

I wish I wouldn't judge judgment.

Sunday 29 June 2008

The First Time I Flew...

Remember the time when Ross dashed off to the airport to tell Rachel that he Loved her... or When Jim Carrey did the whole Mega airport protocol breach Climax song and dance in Liar Liar to get his wife and son back... or the time when Shahrukh Khan makes that heart wrenching speech just when Rani Mukherjee is all the set to go away forever...

...or the more recent Imran Khan-Genelia caper with the entire security running helter-skelter holding everything and everyone up...?


It has always been extremely fascinating to me, the glamour of the whole airport experience coupled with the tension, the invariable businesslike sterness of everyone at the airport juxtaposed with romance of flying miles away and the ever pining Love which will always win...


Yes, the hopeless romantic that I am, I always wished a take-off would get held up for me, the security would be breached and torn through for me and at the end of the whole spectacle, a round of applause from the by-standers amidst tears, relief and laughter...


I could write a very sincere second rate romantic movie...

Hmmm...


Anyway, the first time I entered an airport as a passenger, or rather "a guest" as my airline preferred to refer to us as, the possibility of anything exciting and romantic seemed remote... With the flight late by over 30 minutes one early December morning, I had to settle into one of the chairs in the waiting area incharge of my luggage as well as my father's while he went away hunting for something to occupy/entertain him...and he sure does have a talent to generate entertainment, which is a whole different blog all together...rather a book...


So, I'm sitting there, looking at the skies which decided to have some clouds over just that day after over two perfectly clear scorching weeks and also at the family with the troublesome kid, the young couple, the old gentleman catching up on the news while the lady is trying to set her strappy grandson's wildly curly hair straight with him nodding in sleep every once in a while, along with keeping an eye out for my father so he won't do anything embarrasing, while managing to read a couple of pages of the bulky book I was lugging around, when something struck me... the airline that my father and I were travelling by, of course had very well turned out women in bright eye catching uniforms as hostesses, but the men they employed were strikingly goodlooking as well... Right from the man at the gate who helped me unload the luggage from the taxi to the pilot of the aircraft... The women seemed to have been created at an assembly line with identical heights, hair-length, complexion or maybe it was just my imagination although I didn't care much for the women, the men held most of my attention...I swing that way, you see...


Finally after around an hour of more delays and announcements, we were ready to board... I walk through what seemed like a ceremonial canopy towards the tarmac, stopping to stare up at pleasant handsome faces while going through the formalities and procedures of getting into my first plane ride...


I climbed into the bright red bus taking us to the aircraft, clutching my boarding pass in one hand and my bag in the other, I take one of the few empty seats next to my father, when suddenly my father realises a good friend of his is on the bus, about to board the same flight as us... So, like any well-behaved child, I gave my seat up to the elderly gentleman.


In the scramble to get up, I shoved my boarding pass in to my bag carelessly and frankly didn't think the boarding pass had much to do after I'd gotten this far... I was wrong... I didn't realise you needed it to 'Board' the plane... so I'm trotting off when another of the extremely goodlooking employees I was earlier talking of, asked me for my boarding pass and I didn't have it... And I couldn't find it!



"Oh! You need that?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"I got past the security and everything. That man at the entrance checked it"

"But I'll need to see it now, to board you"

"I can't find it now! I think I've lost it! I had it a minute ago! It was just here!"

Here I'm starting to panic... What if they don't let me on the plane? Will my father leave me behind?

I was more worried about my father's wrath than anything else...

I thought I'd dropped it on the coach, or worse, on the tarmac...

The next moment the tarmac is swarming with security men, flight attendants, cleaners, all the help they could find to look for my elusive boarding pass... with the real cute security incharge barking instructions in code into his wireless set, the crew in readiness, the entire flight is kept waiting just because of tiny me...


The flight attendants taut with tension, sweating buckets, on the brink of breaking into tears, trying to confirm that I Was on the list, yelling Lima-Echo-Kilo-Hotel-Alpha into his handset was just too exciting for me... I stood there enjoying the show, grinning and giggling away, while my father, thoroughly embarrassed was utterly clueless for once!


After scrouging through every place I'd stepped foot on in the airport, a defeated FA asked me to check one more time in my bag... So, there I am with the contents of my bag, which consisted of months old coffee bills, chocolate wrappers, used face tissue(I do not like to litter), flowers from temples, candles, et cetera spilled on the tarmac me squatting next to it and rummaging through it, as you often will see me if you know me... Resigning myself to the premise that the Pass was one of those things which mysteriously disappear never to be found again, I prepare myself to be denied my first flight and more than a earful from my father, when I flipped through my book one last time... and There It Was!

With Surprising nonchalance I flicked it out, "Oh, Here it is..." and handed it to the by now very exhausted flight security incharge... I looked into his brown eyes which could have turned me to cinders if his job didn't require him to be polite to me... With obvious effort he gave me a smile and led me into the aircraft where strangely I was expecting a big round of applause by the rest of the waiting passengers as I walked down the aisle to my seat...

It was one beautiful experience for me soar above the city, and watch my shadow cast way down below on the changing landscape...

Although I had to face much embarrassment at the hands of my father and brother who take far too much pleasure in pulling my leg and put up with being called "Boarding Pass" for several weeks thereafter, I believe I had my moment in the airport... the one I was so fascinated with...Not in the same way that I would've liked it to be... But I still did have my very memorable yet embarrassing "15 seconds of fame" (rather undue attention) story... :)


Saturday 3 May 2008

Hunger... Something that governs more or less everything... More, than less...

Effects everyone... probably except Baba Ramdev and his kind... Affects everything... of course keeping in mind the various forms of hunger, not just the base one in relation to the complicated system involved with the functioning of the human body... which was what I was a victim of last night...like most nights... and days... and afternoons... and evenings... dawn, dusk, twilight, midnight, you know the vein...

But being indulgent and proportionately lazy, I decided to fall back on the one of the popular consumerist invaders of the Indian food culture... Home Delivered Pizza... Although a big fan of anything with cheese (Even Shahrukh Khan dancing to promote his band of golden helmetted warriors) the Indianised versions of the Italian eat do seem a bit dubious and over ambitious, but whatever... If it can be eaten, then I eat.

I have ordered Pizzas before... I'm sure two sixth of urban population has ordered a pizza over the phone... And I believe I am quite proficient at this business of ordering for stuff- not that I'm spoilt, keeping the fact aside, even If I am. But this one pizza , made me earn it...

No... Its no longer as easy as picking up your phone, dialing a number and asking the polite stranger at the other end to send some life sustaining food and beverages to your doorstep... No it isn't, as I found out for myself... You have to be prepared for a deluge of pleasantaries and other lines learnt by heart and shot off at you at speeds MIGS will have to reckon with... Quite bewildering... enough to make you forget what you were making the call for... If that wasn't enough you have to deal with questions that seem obscenely personal, bombarded at you in a very indifferent manner, but then you realise its just an appropriately food related question which sounded wierd just because all your attention wasn't directed at the one point of concentration- the painfully polite person, following his training and rattling off amusingly flowery small talk, in the tone of the Impaled in a hurry to give up on Life...

Sometimes I'm lost for words... I don't know whom to pity... The order-taker, Me, my poor rumbling stomach or the neighbour I see drying clothes through the window...

It took me 9 minutes to place one order... While another person could've done it nine times over in the same amount of time... Is it a shortcoming on my part? I don't know... but the "event" did have me pulling my wavy locks off in frustration... yes... it was frustrating enough for me to blog about it... Funnily enough, a customer care personnel called me a moment ago to enquire about my Pizza experience... If only you knew, woman...

You know what else is Blog worthy...?

A strange request... A very, Very Strange request... From a member of the kind of Adam... For a curious article of feminine use... Not even a transvestite could want it... or need it... and I thought I knew him very well and nothing about him could surprise me anymore... You can't trust anything anymore and I'm not one to prod... Hell, if I could spend this much time over an epic order for pizza, then I'm no one to have problems with anyone else's quirkiness... or maybe he was just stashing away for a lady friend on a rainy day... I would say, that's very considerate... But I'm extremely amused... at the embarrasment I can cause just by the default of belonging to a sex.

And I have my own bone to pick with the service industry, which isn't making my life as easy as it evidently intends to...It just adds to the troubles of life... amusing, new, intriguing ones...

Thursday 24 April 2008

Yesterday, I watched a movie.


A Momentous, monumental, memorable movie... (pardon the mediocre misplaced mindless, needless superfluous alliteration-here I am trying to sound smart, although I do know what Superfluous means)


It was called 'The Awakening' and awaken me, it did and quite effectively too, to the vast possibilities and immense power of the media of celluloid.


Possibilities and Power of entertainment, education and irony... unexpected but very plausible...


Entertainment I did find in the most unlikely fashion and maybe a better person would be a teeny weeny bit ashamed, but I'm not that better person and I'll tell you its quite an entertaining, if not extremely tough and thus admirable job to keep you laughing through 130 minutes and for the next two weeks, with of course hospitalization because of internal lacerations from broken ribs.

Its amazing how anyone can get away with any kind of sub-standard dung with money and connections... and of course the necessary tools... but I think this venture had purpose, a cause, maybe some kind of good intentions.... but still good intentions can't buy you pardon for wasting precious film reel... There have been other ventures that I know of, undertaken just on a whim of some rich kid who wanted to do something just because he/she could with all the money that had been weighing them down... Yes, the world is plagued with talentless wretches and also with talented wretches who won't do anything with what they have just because they have been waiting for the right opportunity, or believe some thing's been holding them back... I know such people too... I live with one...

Although, I'm not advocating anyone, but from personal experience, I can say that talent depends a lot on the economic aspect of the individual to gain exposure and acceptance and be appreciated... Poor quality also happens to tag along a beginning talent. This of course being on the external technical side...like a movie which has been a pauper's dream, a talented pauper at that... Okay ... now I am advocating and taking sides... its only because I cannot afford to be impartial at this juncture, on this topic... although I can be, (I'll be anything you want me to be and convincingly)
I choose not to.... I have too much of the 'common man' in me and am a tad bit too emotional for that...

If only vision and talent could be Willed to you by your Grandfather and the family attorney could get it to you without it having to go through the escrow...

Still... That was one of the best movie experiences I've had... Made me think a lot and laugh a lot more... :)

Thursday 17 April 2008

Criminal Instincts

April 5, 2008

Violence found a curious and unlikely expression in me...

I threatened my doctor today... with homicide...

Yeah...but there wasn't much of a hint of terror than a minor change in the setting of his eye brows. They went from severely knotted to slightly knotted... you'd think he got such agitated patients and threats everyday... but have to hand it to the man for keeping his cool and having a li'l chat with me... at the end of it, all that feeling of confused anger, guilt and violence was Justified and I finally felt good about it... Yes, good about wanting to kill somebody... violently... giving them a bloody end...bludgeoning them to death... This is a warning to everyone... DO NOT PISS ME OFF.
Of course the incident which made my 'Hulk' emerge was not a trivial one... it isn't easy to have tubes going in and out of you and keeping up a calm and relaxed countenance... I'm only human after all. Although I had turned into something other than a fully evolved human being for a period of a day or two, I'm happy I went through that... I found me telling myself that this could possibly be the worst thing to happen to me... and I don't need to fear anything... but then I realised Life has a lot more to offer, there might be worse things out there...there are...I know as a matter of fact... Anyway, I'm a slightly altered person, I'd like to believe... not better, but altered...

Although the events leading up to that afternoon were baffling enough...and I'd say, almost a fitting prologue to my out and out psychopathic killer character...

I set a woman's head on fire.
At church... yes, at the holy abode of the Mother of the Infant Messiah, my evil, evil subconscious acted up...
Note 'Subconscious'.

It was quite an innocent accident, if you'd like to believe my saying that...
Me, devoutly praying with a burning candle in my hand, eyes tightly shut in reverence did not expect anything but the Light of the Almighty, leave alone a blaze right in front of my face fueled by a woman's thick curly head of hair...
The woman in her zealous prayer had backed up a little too much, right into my candle.
but I did manage to put the fire out in between giggles , sincere apologies and bursts of laughter and save most of her locks... I half expected to be taken at task and be beaten up by the crowd but that did not stop me from enjoying and taking pleasure in the fact that I set somebody's head on fire... that's the pitchfork wielder in me... Quite a feat... Can cross THAT off my list now...

Hey, I'm sorry for the woman, and I apologize sincerely for my reckless act of candle flailing(although I held it quite straight)...but that wasn't something I planned... which blots out much of the sick sadistic glory I felt...

Now that I look at the cycle of events... Its just been sweet justice... sweet for who, I don't know... but Its been quite something...except for the woman I'm sure... Reinforcement of the maxim, As You Sow, So Shall You Reap... What Goes Around, Comes Around... Cry Me A River... and everything Justin Timberlakesque... Yes, I believe him.

Monday 18 February 2008

Sunday 9 December 2007

9,46,08,000 Seconds in pain, ectasy and restlessness...

15,76,800 Minutes of sorrow, selflessness and desolution...

26,280 Hours of silence, hope and oblivion...

1,095 Days of hate, sacrifice and tears...

156 Weeks of agony, joy, acceptance and expectations...

36 Months of anger, hunger, anticipation, rejection, deliberation and satisfaction...

3 Years in Love.

Living with a beating heart which beats not to keep you alive but for a whole different reason...
How Ever unworthy the reason may be... Love that might seem wasted...but was not,will never be..

Torn to death a million times with the realisation of the futility of your situation... But every shred of you is alive... scattered, but alive... Alive because you are aware... Aware of how you adore him with all your being... ''I'' doesn't exist anymore... "I" does all for him... "I'' don't want anything but his happiness, as "I" can't have him...

To dissolve oneself to the consistency of the Elixir that flows forever in the name of Life...
You didn't know You were capable of so much Love... You're amazed by your immense capacity to Love and to give so much off of you that you are just a hollow but yet so full and complete..

Suddenly you find yourself... you feel yourself coming together in his arms... you are whole again! just to melt away again in his careless hold... Your fingers meshed and hand entangled with his, you can't tell one from the other's... total submission to that one moment when you feel all the trials and the countless little heartbreaks were in waiting for this acknowledgement...

When the entire universe seems to be tiptoeing around you, to let you have your moment of Absolution...of silence, of belonging, of contentment...

The moment passed and you are left with just the feeling of whether it was or was not... Were you dreaming or were you dreaming...

You probably were dreaming...because you are again left with the hollow filled with your futile Love and emptiness. And the futility of it all makes you want to burst out with laughter...venom...tears...laughter...blood...life...laughter...death... survival...laughter...

Saturday 1 December 2007

The Backstage...26/11/2007

Sitting in the solidity of absolute darkness... I wonder if I should be Breathing...
I feel the heaviness around me...Moving even one muscle would mean crashing mercilessly against a rock that you're set in...
Like you're one with the dense overpowering engulfing absence of matter and light...Quite ironic though,because you ARE the matter... the presence of matter is so omnious that the concept of it would be ridiculous.
Imagine a Giant hand dropped you into a bowl of liquid jelly mixture like in one of those unnecessarily,pointless violent depictions in shows like Tom and Jerry...and its been hours in the freezer... the only difference being, there is no flexibility. You can't wobble like you would if you were inside set jelly- Mango flavoured,bright yellow[Sllurrrrp...]...
No movement,
No fun,
No sensation,
No perception,
No Colour.

Friday 9 November 2007

"I am the way into the City of Woe
I am the way to a Forsaken People
I am the way into Eternal Sorrow
Sacred justice moved my Architect
I was raised here by
Divine Omnipotence
Primordial Love and
Ultimate Intellect
Only those elements
Time cannot wear
Were made before me
and Beyond time I stand
Abandon all hope
Ye who enter here"

A certain gentleman called Dante Alighieri called my attention to something that was niggling in the back of my head with the verse or 'Canto',we may call it, that follows this magnificient introduction soliloqui as if it were,of a personified Hell. This is what the sign on the Gates of Hell proclaims.
Well,after attributing the brilliance of Hell to myself in my oft surfacing grandiose illusions, contemplating on the imagery, admiring the simplicity,the niggling thought in my head found a statement...more like a word...
Mediocrity.

If one were to read the Third Canto or Division of 'The Inferno' from Dante's Epic poem, 'The Divine Comedy' , the ultimate definition and consequence of mediocrity can be found. Consequence, I say because the concept of hell is Payback afterall... and its through the eyes of an Eleventh century devout Roman Aristrocrat taking a guided tour of hell,quite progressive for his time really...( or have we regressed?). Whatever the case might be...we are still on the same page,him and I...

This particular part of the poem speaks about the Vestibule to Hell... the entrance...not really the real realm of Hell,where the Opportunists,those who were only for themselves in life...neither good nor evil or what I would equate to being mediocre,are the first souls in torment.

In Dante's scheme, the punishment matches the sin.These souls took no sides with good or evil,so they in turn are given no real place in the afterlife.. the Dilly-Dallying angels who took no sides when Lucifer attempted to take over are also found here... The fate awarded to them is that they "chase a wavering banner while swarms of Hornets sting them as they run over a maggot-covered ground"...
Ha..Ha.. that should be funny...! pardon me but the one thing that ticks me off is mediocrity... and the fact that it makes itself apparent in me sometimes...
Take a stand in life! You are either In or Out.. Are or Not... being on the threshold isn't much fun...with all the balancing you'll have to do...especially with things like giving El Diablo a hand or decisions about people in your life or what You want...and hanging others' lives in the balance isn't the most contributing to their lives...
Although my take on mediocrity is more earthly relevant, I'm all thumbs to Dante darling...
Your fate is funny Mediocrity...Can't help laughing my guts out...
You can hang around without an identity,belonging nowhere...
I'm off to the Seventh Level of Hell-The Circle of the Violent...