How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
Once while being interviewed an ebullient Salman Rushdie, my last post’s buddy, said that during his Oxford days he learned more from the Friday night shows than course books. It may sound unfounded to many but not me. I too can claim with conviction that in this case I have reciprocated him, infact I have even gone few steps further in embracing the first one and almost ditching the later. Once while taking one such learning filmy-session through a 2004 neosurrealistic classic ‘Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind’ directed by Michel Gondry, a brilliant exploration of human memory and relationship, I came across the above mentioned lines. During the movie when Mary Svevo, played by Kirsten Dunst, recited these lines of Alexander pope to Dr. Howard, though totally involved watching, a fascinated I paused to take out my diary and pen it down. Later, as habitually, while surfing through the wiki pages of the movie I came to know that these arresting 4 lines are a part of a 366 lines long poetic epistle ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, a terrible tale of a rebellious love (though the word terrible was unnecessary, love as always is, in any form terrible).
To fathom out the entire poem is a colossal task and will require an understanding far above my meager intellectual capacity. For the time being the uninitiated reader needs to know only this much that Eloisa while suffering from separation and realizing that now a helpless Abelard can never reciprocate her love prays not for forgiveness but forgetfulness.
As now there is no Mrs. Lizzy around to explicate me such enigmatic verses, a seeking me tried googling it out, and not to my surprise there were plentiful explanation by many generous souls. What I found is this that the above lines are in a sardonic tone. Vestals were the virgin maids of ancient times who were devoted to the services of temples soon after birth. They were held as symbol of purity and peace. Ordinary people tangled up in the blues, as man is inherently sadistic, envied them for their so perceived peace of mind. But here Pope doubts there happiness. He argues that what other saw in them as happiness was actually there ignorance. Since they were ignorant of the world around they knew of nothing, neither true happiness nor real sadness. There life was nothing but a hollow and futile existence, as to be blameless is also to be empty, meaningless and blank, without the weight of choice and consequence. If we want only what we're given -is that happiness? No. Sometimes change can be costly, and not always rewarding, but standing costs dreams and desires.
At the any stage in our life we are nothing but the sum total of our memories. We are happy when the memory we cherish dominates our psyche. Similarly unpleasant memories make us downhearted. In a way life is all about collecting good experiences, because we will all relive them umpteen times through our reflections. But the problem with human mind is this that it is more a RAM based device, where the secondary storage is lost in the piles of recent data’s. Sometime a small bitter moment takes over the years of togetherness, as all the sweet memories are buried in the sand of time. It is only in the afterthoughts that we realize the true worth of a relationship gone bad by a small clash, but then mostly it is too hard to make corrections as there always is the ego factor. When Friedrich Nietzsche quoted “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders” he too displayed similar attitude as a poignant Eloisa. He considered the forgetful lucky as they forgot even there bitter memories but then at same time they were also reduced as creature of the moment, with no treasure of past to live upon. At times when some recent experience troubles us we too urge for forgetfulness to get over the painful part but a mere reflection will suggest that how hollow life will be without memories.
The above mentioned movie approaches the same human dilemma in a splendid manner. It is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a couple as distinct as two extremes, while Joel is reclusive Clementine is vivacious, but both of them find happiness together. However once a small misunderstanding blows out of proportion and an impulsive Clementine had all the memories of Joel erased from her mind by a surgical process ( a liberty which artistic independence allows the storyteller). An angry Joel reciprocates her by opting to obliterate her memories. As if “Look at it out here, it's all falling apart. I'm erasing you and I'm happy! By morning, you'll be gone”.
But in order to wipe out the memories the operating machine first needed to map those particular memory cells thereby enabling the holder to view them one last time while in an unconscious dream like state. It is only when Joel revisits his memories with Clementine, he has afterthoughts; and he recognize that though few moments between them were bitter but majority of them were happy and he understand that it was Clementine who brought meaning and magic to his mundane life through her vivacity. The rest of the movie take place in Joel’s mind, and from here the neo-surreal part begins. Now onward it is shown how in his mind Joel with Clementine struggles to rescue few of their memories from being completely washed, and while leaving them again he realize that these memories are all that are left behind as their life together, and once they are gone a life once lived is gone as well.
The one message that the movie pass is that if only one can stand apart and watch his whole life from a distance than one can realize that how wonderful a life it was, inspite of all the so thought mistakes committed. A second inferential message could be about accepting people as they are because they are still the same wonderful person inspite of their imperfection and if you have found happiness with a person once you will find it with them once again. All you need is to wipe the dirty spots which come in a relationship and this wiping doesn’t needs a spotless mind but a pure heart. Because in real life there is no surgical process to clean dirty spots of memory it could be done only by defocusing from those spots and viewing the larger picture which requires an open heart. And hence it is more important to have a pure heart than a spotless mind.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
There’s A Hole In My Soul
These days I have been in retrospective disposition, the first thing I do when sems are around and when I’m only supposed to struggle for GPAs. My retrospection reinforced my yearning if I could go back to the start……IF. But life certainly has no ifs and buts… My contemplation concluded that my past nine months could be best summarized by the opening lines of ‘The tale of two cities’ where Dickens starts paradoxically with “These were the best of times these were the worst of times”. Recently times have changed and I hope may be the worst is over and expect that the best is yet to shower. But such hopes just remind the cynic in me about Morgan Freeman’s “Hope is a dangerous thing my friend”.
About friends wise men say our best friends are the books we really had great time with. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher In The Rye Guy, rephrases them in his trademark rebellious way as “What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it”. I must be a fortunate being, as unlike Holden I have some really great people to hang around even outside the world of books. But there is one such friend from the world of literature whom I spared some space in my self contemplation, one living legend, Sir Salman Rushdie. Now why so? … you will know.
Despite W. H. Auden's assertion that "Literature makes nothing happen," Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, is one of the relatively few works of fiction to have made a significant and permanent impact outside the enclosed world of literature. It has led to the loss of over twenty lives apart from making its author go into hiding from the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. Above all, coinciding with the ending of the Cold War, it has played a significant role in redefining the West's image of itself, which now is no longer the threat of Communism, but that of Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic clerics used this work of fiction to reinforce their image of the United States as the Great Satan. Anyway enough of throwing light on well known facts, when right now I don’t give a damn to world affairs. This piece of plausible contemplation is solely about me and a hole inside me, where Rushdie has a role.
The formation of this hole started almost a decade ago during my early teen days. Teenage, as it is, a rebellious stage of life when you question all norms. So even I at its very inception, impressed by my thirteen year old imagination, questioned the religious hypocrisy prevalent around and begun to flirt with the idea of atheism. It’s like when we discover rationality religion doesn’t seem to impress us much, and we look forward to sundry atheist idea to support our stance. I long searched for such ideas in Osho before I recognized his other side, and my tryst with Osho ended and I switched to others. I had perplexing time understanding Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Camus’ existentialism, Ayn Rands’ Objectivism, Vivekananda’s Vedantic Hinduism. Claims like Nietzsche’s ‘the death of God’ generated waves of goose bumps to the seeker in me. It was all like a constant struggle with my psychological and intellectual inheritance, searching some short of self realization for creating a new self. Amongst all such search once I came across these lines of Rushdie repudiating the idea of God “I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” Rushdie maintains that the ‘The satanic Verses” was an exploration of the "God-shaped hole" left in him after he had abandoned the "unarguable absolutes of religion"
Unlike Rushdie without understanding it much I mugged these lines to quote to my mother who when worried of an agnostic me (she just couldn’t stand atheism in me) at times futilely tried to pour some pious sagacity in my alternative moral universe. In order to pacify her subtle worries I used to edit and carve up Gabriel Garcia’s line “Mom, I don’t believe in your God but don’t worry I am surely afraid of him”. Anyway after many fruitless attempts she understood that sometimes you just can’t save some fanatical people from themselves and in some way or other she primed herself emotionally for my surreal reality. Her disappointment was in a way a triumph for me as I used to take pride on all the GDs in which I exhausted her reasons with my fervent iconoclastic apathy towards the idea of God.
I wished someday, like Rushdie, this hole would become prominent in me too, but when have my wishes ever been answered…… never. Spirituality for the true seeker is the means to release his spirit from the confines of his materialistic existence. Now the hole in Rushdie never bothered him as he has his magical realism as a transcendental force within to fill in the vacancy. Through his aesthetic ideological imaginations he got his self conviction. He believes his ideology is superior to that of the fundamentalist and unlike them he never tries to compel it on others, but only persuades. You have to firmly believe in something at least so that you can believe yourself. Now that’s where I went astray.
I was never bothered about the hole in my soul and thus never could successfully fill it with anything… neither with passionate ambitions, neither with fragmented dreams and neither with friendship and love. Somewhere deep within this hole has rendered me hollow, devoid of any faith. It was only during these few hard days in recent past, when my pseudo self belief was badly wounded and left my ego heavily humiliated, that I fully comprehended this growing emptiness within. The emptiness which, crooked my sense of pleasant solitude into agonizing lonesomeness. The emptiness due to which, I nearly had let down my self to abysmal depths before reverting back well in time. They say it is in adversity that character is tested and true faith blossoms. May be these difficult times were a providential event to help me make out the hazard of the hole, and thus what all the provoking theories of the great philosophers failed to recognize, was flashed before by the reality, which till now only sucks. Quoting Rushdie once again “One great fact about life is sometime even the unthinkable becomes the thinkable” In what once I took pride, now for the first time in my life am worried about; that there is a hole in my soul. What I’m not sure of is “IS IT GOD SHAPED”??
About friends wise men say our best friends are the books we really had great time with. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher In The Rye Guy, rephrases them in his trademark rebellious way as “What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it”. I must be a fortunate being, as unlike Holden I have some really great people to hang around even outside the world of books. But there is one such friend from the world of literature whom I spared some space in my self contemplation, one living legend, Sir Salman Rushdie. Now why so? … you will know.
Despite W. H. Auden's assertion that "Literature makes nothing happen," Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, is one of the relatively few works of fiction to have made a significant and permanent impact outside the enclosed world of literature. It has led to the loss of over twenty lives apart from making its author go into hiding from the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. Above all, coinciding with the ending of the Cold War, it has played a significant role in redefining the West's image of itself, which now is no longer the threat of Communism, but that of Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic clerics used this work of fiction to reinforce their image of the United States as the Great Satan. Anyway enough of throwing light on well known facts, when right now I don’t give a damn to world affairs. This piece of plausible contemplation is solely about me and a hole inside me, where Rushdie has a role.
The formation of this hole started almost a decade ago during my early teen days. Teenage, as it is, a rebellious stage of life when you question all norms. So even I at its very inception, impressed by my thirteen year old imagination, questioned the religious hypocrisy prevalent around and begun to flirt with the idea of atheism. It’s like when we discover rationality religion doesn’t seem to impress us much, and we look forward to sundry atheist idea to support our stance. I long searched for such ideas in Osho before I recognized his other side, and my tryst with Osho ended and I switched to others. I had perplexing time understanding Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Camus’ existentialism, Ayn Rands’ Objectivism, Vivekananda’s Vedantic Hinduism. Claims like Nietzsche’s ‘the death of God’ generated waves of goose bumps to the seeker in me. It was all like a constant struggle with my psychological and intellectual inheritance, searching some short of self realization for creating a new self. Amongst all such search once I came across these lines of Rushdie repudiating the idea of God “I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” Rushdie maintains that the ‘The satanic Verses” was an exploration of the "God-shaped hole" left in him after he had abandoned the "unarguable absolutes of religion"
Unlike Rushdie without understanding it much I mugged these lines to quote to my mother who when worried of an agnostic me (she just couldn’t stand atheism in me) at times futilely tried to pour some pious sagacity in my alternative moral universe. In order to pacify her subtle worries I used to edit and carve up Gabriel Garcia’s line “Mom, I don’t believe in your God but don’t worry I am surely afraid of him”. Anyway after many fruitless attempts she understood that sometimes you just can’t save some fanatical people from themselves and in some way or other she primed herself emotionally for my surreal reality. Her disappointment was in a way a triumph for me as I used to take pride on all the GDs in which I exhausted her reasons with my fervent iconoclastic apathy towards the idea of God.
I wished someday, like Rushdie, this hole would become prominent in me too, but when have my wishes ever been answered…… never. Spirituality for the true seeker is the means to release his spirit from the confines of his materialistic existence. Now the hole in Rushdie never bothered him as he has his magical realism as a transcendental force within to fill in the vacancy. Through his aesthetic ideological imaginations he got his self conviction. He believes his ideology is superior to that of the fundamentalist and unlike them he never tries to compel it on others, but only persuades. You have to firmly believe in something at least so that you can believe yourself. Now that’s where I went astray.
I was never bothered about the hole in my soul and thus never could successfully fill it with anything… neither with passionate ambitions, neither with fragmented dreams and neither with friendship and love. Somewhere deep within this hole has rendered me hollow, devoid of any faith. It was only during these few hard days in recent past, when my pseudo self belief was badly wounded and left my ego heavily humiliated, that I fully comprehended this growing emptiness within. The emptiness which, crooked my sense of pleasant solitude into agonizing lonesomeness. The emptiness due to which, I nearly had let down my self to abysmal depths before reverting back well in time. They say it is in adversity that character is tested and true faith blossoms. May be these difficult times were a providential event to help me make out the hazard of the hole, and thus what all the provoking theories of the great philosophers failed to recognize, was flashed before by the reality, which till now only sucks. Quoting Rushdie once again “One great fact about life is sometime even the unthinkable becomes the thinkable” In what once I took pride, now for the first time in my life am worried about; that there is a hole in my soul. What I’m not sure of is “IS IT GOD SHAPED”??
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Don’t tell anyone anything
“Religion is the opium of the masses” believed Karl Marx. I agree with him on this more than anything. People need stuffs like such to derive sense out of their meaningless life. I see no plausible explanation for why else man created God, if not out of this selfishness. But then as if it was not enough he started celebrating God, in order to fill his empty life with occasion to cheer about. And the more deprived a society was the more it turned towards this establishment called God.
Except for the Greeks I see no society who held theology on rational terms. Greeks idea of religion was a way of seeking elucidation for the inexplicable phenomenon around, with having men as the centre of creation. Be it Hercules, Aphrodite, Apollo, Atlas, Poseidon, Venus in each of their Godly figure you will see a human being. All the other civilizations have done the reverse. In them mysticism have overtaken rationality. Egyptian shaped their supernatural being in lofty monuments and natural phenomenon, Muslims worshiped the shapeless God, and Hindus outsmarted everyone by outstretching their imagination far too than simply excess.
We people just love crowd, be it of humans or of deities we just love them. When I look back to my old city Varanasi I find there was an incessant struggle between God and Man. In fact it was a city where the population of God challenged that of Humans. The more the numbers of Gods we created the more were our moments of celebration. You will hardly find a Godless week in our calendar.
Today too is one such day. In fact it is one of the tallest among such days, called deepawali. Most people all around with their fake smiles are at their phoniest best, cheerfully wishing each other success. I too received many such phony greetings full of promising prosperity and reciprocated them back too in same gesture. But such days of celebration are the saddest in the life of an atheist like me. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of being a nonbeliever. You just don’t feel the joy in all this; neither can you even pretend to be joyful properly. So at the end you feel too isolated and out of place as if you just don’t belong there.
I was never this down throughout this year as today. Tried calling few close friends, some too old some new and promising, yet just couldn’t speak my mind to any. Instead of what I intended to share, I just repeated those phony wishing and ended. All this is just taking over me. I wish if i could hide somewhere out of this. But man is a social animal anyway. No matter how bad I am at it, I too have to play my part. The guy Holden Caulfield, from catcher in the rye, was awfully right when he said “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do you start missing everyone.” Holden, if only I had met you earlier to committing this mistake.
Except for the Greeks I see no society who held theology on rational terms. Greeks idea of religion was a way of seeking elucidation for the inexplicable phenomenon around, with having men as the centre of creation. Be it Hercules, Aphrodite, Apollo, Atlas, Poseidon, Venus in each of their Godly figure you will see a human being. All the other civilizations have done the reverse. In them mysticism have overtaken rationality. Egyptian shaped their supernatural being in lofty monuments and natural phenomenon, Muslims worshiped the shapeless God, and Hindus outsmarted everyone by outstretching their imagination far too than simply excess.
We people just love crowd, be it of humans or of deities we just love them. When I look back to my old city Varanasi I find there was an incessant struggle between God and Man. In fact it was a city where the population of God challenged that of Humans. The more the numbers of Gods we created the more were our moments of celebration. You will hardly find a Godless week in our calendar.
Today too is one such day. In fact it is one of the tallest among such days, called deepawali. Most people all around with their fake smiles are at their phoniest best, cheerfully wishing each other success. I too received many such phony greetings full of promising prosperity and reciprocated them back too in same gesture. But such days of celebration are the saddest in the life of an atheist like me. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of being a nonbeliever. You just don’t feel the joy in all this; neither can you even pretend to be joyful properly. So at the end you feel too isolated and out of place as if you just don’t belong there.
I was never this down throughout this year as today. Tried calling few close friends, some too old some new and promising, yet just couldn’t speak my mind to any. Instead of what I intended to share, I just repeated those phony wishing and ended. All this is just taking over me. I wish if i could hide somewhere out of this. But man is a social animal anyway. No matter how bad I am at it, I too have to play my part. The guy Holden Caulfield, from catcher in the rye, was awfully right when he said “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do you start missing everyone.” Holden, if only I had met you earlier to committing this mistake.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
IGNIGHTING POSITIVISM
SCENE: Philo and despo, hopeless and desperate, sauntering empty streets.....almost half past midnight.
Despo [desperately]: Shit man!! My four years of engineering life is all about total failure.
Philo [inquisitively]: Why? What happened?
Despo [lamentably]: All this long I had been single and searching. I never had an opportunity to edit my relationship status on FB. That sucks man!!
Philo [assertively]: Worry not. Look it this way, even they too are as much a failure as you.
Despo [incredulously]: How come that is??
Philo [Philosophically]: Simple dude. Not a single one of them had us.
Despo [appreciatively]: Right..infact great. I never looked at it that way.
Moment of realization...
Despo [desperately]: Shit man!! My four years of engineering life is all about total failure.
Philo [inquisitively]: Why? What happened?
Despo [lamentably]: All this long I had been single and searching. I never had an opportunity to edit my relationship status on FB. That sucks man!!
Philo [assertively]: Worry not. Look it this way, even they too are as much a failure as you.
Despo [incredulously]: How come that is??
Philo [Philosophically]: Simple dude. Not a single one of them had us.
Despo [appreciatively]: Right..infact great. I never looked at it that way.
Moment of realization...
Despo delightfully spend some additional time to rejoice the new vision.
Despo [thankfully]: Thanks buddy. I really feel better now.
Despo again [statistically]: I have just calculated it over. You know what; both of us together have made the life of approximately one thousand girls over here a total failure.
Both [cheerfully]: Yo man…!! Give me a five.
Despo [thankfully]: Thanks buddy. I really feel better now.
Despo again [statistically]: I have just calculated it over. You know what; both of us together have made the life of approximately one thousand girls over here a total failure.
Both [cheerfully]: Yo man…!! Give me a five.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sailor of a Lost Ship
The serene silence prevailing around has taken me far from the instantaneous. The tranquility has given the inner voices a rare opportunity to knock at my consciousness. And with no face around to think of or to please to, the thoughts have taken a reversion, back to my inner world. As a child baffled by the intricacies of this sophisticated world of adults, this inner world happened to be the place where laid all the answers. When people irritated by my persistent ‘why’s’ fobbed it off, letting down my ravenous curiosity, it was the place to keep my optimism alive in discerning the world and shaping an individuality to fit into it. But childhood was altogether a different time. Then even with limited knowledge of the world around, I knew who I was and who I wanted to be.
Somewhere in the subversive progression of growing up that pristine childhood was murdered. Now even equipped with a considerably far erudite intellect I have no answer to such a plain question as now that consciousness seems to be drained of its sparkle, yes it is not the same. I am not certain of the person I have become. Even after an obstinate commitment to the pursuit of my identity I don’t know for sure who I am, what am I running from and to, and why. With nowhere to go in particular, I am ready to go anywhere. What is the reason I am travelling around? Why am I focusing nowhere while exploring miles? I have no answers.
I have poignantly contemplated through several sleepless nights as if looking for some kind of morning light to shine in through this confused darkness. Waking up at different times at different places as different person I have discovered that the surreal identity which I thought I was does not exists. I have been incessantly parting from one individuality to become the part of another, relinquishing one thing to espouse other again and then again. My amorphous individuality is now just a puppet in the hands of emotional symptoms which have imparted some confused beliefs to it but I don’t know when and why.
I have no fix set of words to classify myself. Nowadays I am an amenable me. Guided by the immediate my speech ranges from laconic to loquacious to even garrulous, my nature varies from reticent to extrovert, my stand fluctuates from pragmatic to naïve to gullible. I am now a masked man with my real face lost among the various masks with which I cover the nakedness of my empty soul. My self is a mere assimilation of the various patterns drawn on my empty soul. I was never a follower; I have drawn my own conclusion of situations. I have taken what I have gathered from coincidence. May be life itself is a series of coincidence one following the other. Or may be it is not all that meaningless. May be it is a sequence of systematic events which at the closing stages integrates into an exquisite drawing. One never knows.
May be I was destined to get what I am after only if I knew. May be I will end up reaching nowhere at all. I can never identify it for sure. May be this life like ourselves, is not something to be identified but something to be created. Anyhow, I the sailor of the lost ship have to keep faith in something at least, to find the tantalizing harbor of my aimless voyage and the direction leading to it. But where should an agnostic like me look for faith?
Now I can sympathize with the feelings of “The Grateful dead” of truck’in when they lamented the everlasting lines
“Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been”
Somewhere in the subversive progression of growing up that pristine childhood was murdered. Now even equipped with a considerably far erudite intellect I have no answer to such a plain question as now that consciousness seems to be drained of its sparkle, yes it is not the same. I am not certain of the person I have become. Even after an obstinate commitment to the pursuit of my identity I don’t know for sure who I am, what am I running from and to, and why. With nowhere to go in particular, I am ready to go anywhere. What is the reason I am travelling around? Why am I focusing nowhere while exploring miles? I have no answers.
I have poignantly contemplated through several sleepless nights as if looking for some kind of morning light to shine in through this confused darkness. Waking up at different times at different places as different person I have discovered that the surreal identity which I thought I was does not exists. I have been incessantly parting from one individuality to become the part of another, relinquishing one thing to espouse other again and then again. My amorphous individuality is now just a puppet in the hands of emotional symptoms which have imparted some confused beliefs to it but I don’t know when and why.
I have no fix set of words to classify myself. Nowadays I am an amenable me. Guided by the immediate my speech ranges from laconic to loquacious to even garrulous, my nature varies from reticent to extrovert, my stand fluctuates from pragmatic to naïve to gullible. I am now a masked man with my real face lost among the various masks with which I cover the nakedness of my empty soul. My self is a mere assimilation of the various patterns drawn on my empty soul. I was never a follower; I have drawn my own conclusion of situations. I have taken what I have gathered from coincidence. May be life itself is a series of coincidence one following the other. Or may be it is not all that meaningless. May be it is a sequence of systematic events which at the closing stages integrates into an exquisite drawing. One never knows.
May be I was destined to get what I am after only if I knew. May be I will end up reaching nowhere at all. I can never identify it for sure. May be this life like ourselves, is not something to be identified but something to be created. Anyhow, I the sailor of the lost ship have to keep faith in something at least, to find the tantalizing harbor of my aimless voyage and the direction leading to it. But where should an agnostic like me look for faith?
Now I can sympathize with the feelings of “The Grateful dead” of truck’in when they lamented the everlasting lines
“Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been”
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Inspired Folly
Last ten week long summer vacation, which I spent away from home and thus which lasted as long as decades; and yet ended so soon, I re-read Salman Rushdie's Midnight children and was once again caught by his "Magical Realism". The genius in him manipulated the fool in me to think of writing something of my own. Yes, after spending a considerable time of over an year with “Plausible Contemplation” I have begun fooling myself into thinking myself as a “to be author” of some accord (howsoever miniscule).
Thus I thought of starting with a short story, deciding not to stretch it over more than five pages, but the creative juice in me kept on overflowing and thus the “to be a short story” transformed into a “novella”, which fueled by the enthusiasm of having written something creditable was further elongating itself into a novel just before the long vacation regrettably ended. The dreary routine which invaded my life after it dried all the juicy emotions and thus the work ended in between.
Now the only valuable purpose which the curtailed work of a once an enthusiast fool could possibly serve is to augment the number of post on his blog and thus I have decided to pursue the intelligent decision. So below are few extract from different incomplete chapters, which now I could just imprudently dream to complete one day.
Thus I thought of starting with a short story, deciding not to stretch it over more than five pages, but the creative juice in me kept on overflowing and thus the “to be a short story” transformed into a “novella”, which fueled by the enthusiasm of having written something creditable was further elongating itself into a novel just before the long vacation regrettably ended. The dreary routine which invaded my life after it dried all the juicy emotions and thus the work ended in between.
Now the only valuable purpose which the curtailed work of a once an enthusiast fool could possibly serve is to augment the number of post on his blog and thus I have decided to pursue the intelligent decision. So below are few extract from different incomplete chapters, which now I could just imprudently dream to complete one day.
Chapter 1
Tick tock tick…....as the clock’s hand budged alongside its elliptical fringe my heart throbbed at an accelerated pace, fuelled by anxiety. With departure of each fleeting second the hour of embarrassment was arriving nearer and closer. Silently, like a ghost, its shadow looming over me, from the depths of uncertainty, larger and clearer. In fact I already felt embarrassed like a shy lamb, but only in private. In a little while a recently earned dignity would be thrashed publicly by ignominy, and shame will infiltrate inside through the bruises. And worse….entire school will witness that.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
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Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
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Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
Chapter 2
Once father told us that as a youngster he wished to be a businessman, however, due to lack of support from his father, which I distrust, and, more importantly as I consider, lack of proper tenacity he took law as a safe route of life and enrolled in one of the best Law school, to learn the very basics of twisting and breaching law and to gain consummate skills in finding loopholes in the lengthiest constitution ever written. The astuteness of a once aspiring businessman and the skilled interpretation of a bright law grad formed a deadly combo, and within a short span of years my father surpassed the entire sexagenarian veterans of his field, in terms of both riches and the respect it brings. After every win photographs of him, flanked by his senile counterparts long parched of success; quenching their thirst of fame by sharing trivial side positions, emerged in newspapers, which hailed him as a champion lawyer. But the profession which showered him both fame and fortune, and the way in which it brought them, prohibited my conscience from giving him the reverence a father ought to have.
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At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
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At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
Chapter 3
In the privacy of the faceless crowds at its shore there lies solitude, so profound that you can truly listen to your inner voice. An exalted I, preferred to converse with an amiable Ganga only to witness my excitement leveling; and when poignant, I yearned to embrace a caring Ganga, only to perceive my melancholy getting dissolved in its flow. It once had the divine motherly offerings of eternal wisdom and edifying solace. Truly living to its claim, it was a confluence of death and life; It offered those looking for salvation every opportunity. I had always got what I had pined for. I have died and reborn various times at its bank. I have witnessed the cremation of my ego at Manikarnika, and resurrection of my internal sagacity at Dasaswamedh. At that time I wished never to grow up….. a childish wish, a wish that was soon denied.
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Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
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Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
Chapter 4
I’m such a cynical observer of many things around that sometimes I doubt whether I’m hopeful of anything at all. How passive an attitude I carry. And even after realizing its shortcomings and trying hard to overcome them, I am yet to convalesce from it. My pathetic attitude is sturdy enough to wrestle with my conscience this long……and thus the recognition of the weakness did not made it shrivel like vampires in the light of day. Truly, Old habits die hard. I still remember the day I instigated this attitude recuperation expedition of mine. It was a day later, after the shame was inflicted and the subsequent wisdom was injected …….. I’m glad my time keeping disability hadn’t blurred this remembrance.
That day was the last working day for St. Xavier’s Academy before winter vacations. I could have bunked and evaded the blaming eyes, for one full fortnight, long enough for their ephemeral memory to be drained vague of my crime. And I would have surely pursued that, only if not for the transformation I felt within ….. the transformation which reduced my so thought crime to a mere peccadillo, in my psyche. An impulsive transformation which had such an influence that once it entered the subject it changed the subject entirely.
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The success of the new attitude thrilled me and strengthened my faith in the newly espoused ideology and infected me with the weakness (or disease..?) of optimism. That was the time I was least cynical of anything and everything. I was intoxicated by my optimistic hallucination …….but as like all drugs it’s effect was time bounded and unfortunately I was destined to be sober soon. Mark my words: Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you……… be it commitment to God, principles, things or the most precarious of all – a person. But let’s talk of things only as they come. Let’s stay intoxicated for the time being and not worry about the imminent hangover grievance.
An inebriated I returned home that triumphant day eagerly expecting the return of my unyielding admirer from her sudden unexpected disappearance, to tell her the details of my triumph and no more to slap her alone for our joint carelessness. I found her gates still locked together which meant that even on a triumphant day I have to live admirer-less. Since I have to wait for her arrival to take the story ahead let me make use of this standby time to draw the cloak of anonymity from my steadfast, unyielding admirer who had at a triumphant day made me admirer-less, Isha-less.
That day was the last working day for St. Xavier’s Academy before winter vacations. I could have bunked and evaded the blaming eyes, for one full fortnight, long enough for their ephemeral memory to be drained vague of my crime. And I would have surely pursued that, only if not for the transformation I felt within ….. the transformation which reduced my so thought crime to a mere peccadillo, in my psyche. An impulsive transformation which had such an influence that once it entered the subject it changed the subject entirely.
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The success of the new attitude thrilled me and strengthened my faith in the newly espoused ideology and infected me with the weakness (or disease..?) of optimism. That was the time I was least cynical of anything and everything. I was intoxicated by my optimistic hallucination …….but as like all drugs it’s effect was time bounded and unfortunately I was destined to be sober soon. Mark my words: Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you……… be it commitment to God, principles, things or the most precarious of all – a person. But let’s talk of things only as they come. Let’s stay intoxicated for the time being and not worry about the imminent hangover grievance.
An inebriated I returned home that triumphant day eagerly expecting the return of my unyielding admirer from her sudden unexpected disappearance, to tell her the details of my triumph and no more to slap her alone for our joint carelessness. I found her gates still locked together which meant that even on a triumphant day I have to live admirer-less. Since I have to wait for her arrival to take the story ahead let me make use of this standby time to draw the cloak of anonymity from my steadfast, unyielding admirer who had at a triumphant day made me admirer-less, Isha-less.
Chapter 5
Looking back, I don’t think our friendship started on the day when we first literally spoke to each other, through eyes and hands, our tongue still oblivious of artistic motion of language. Because at then it felt as if we had already known each other since long. But how?.... may be by some mutual extrasensory magical power that we might have developed from that day in the maternity ward of the hospital, when I was few hours old and she was being brought in this world in a neighboring room. But wait if we actually had some mutual extrasensory magical power than why we would have waited for that long. Because if physical proximity was all that was required for our clairvoyant talent to experience each other, then we were far closer on those cloudy winter afternoons when our respective pregnant mothers together attended the routine womanly congregation, seeking comforts of sun basking and fulfilling basic necessity of gossiping, while performing involuntary act of knitting sweaters for the upcoming offsprings. So there is a possibility that while our mothers were engrossed in their comforts and necessities, I and Isha too were active in discovering each other, inquisitively but inconspicuously.
Anyway let me come out of the supernatural world of mystical possibilities and limit myself to the surreal world of realism and certainty (err…or uncertainty??). Leaving aside how we were introduced -mystically or ordinarily- I move on into the world we lived in together as friends and later something more than that ….. something terrible. Once we had a beautiful and carefree world of our own, where trust was as profuse and free as air, where joy gushed at liberty as perennial river, where childish shades of imagination painted reality white and chaste as clouds, where at times we felt so together that I was her and she was me, and when who was what seldom concerned …..as there was no I and her, simply we.
We wasted the majority of our early days collectively. I read her my comic books and she read out her observations and dreams. A dreamer she was, she dreamed ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if...….’. A precocious realist I was and held ‘Isn’t it already funny that …...’.Her sweet voice tirelessly filled my ears with the narratives of all her microscopic and senseless girlish observations, as if that was an absolute fact, a serious matter of life, a matter as grave as death , to correspond. Always confused with no indication of ever concluding, her naïve dreams usually made less sense to my pragmatic head but still I listened with no sign of fatigue and no loss of interest or patience………if you have that kind of orotund noise around you it makes you playful about life.
Anyway let me come out of the supernatural world of mystical possibilities and limit myself to the surreal world of realism and certainty (err…or uncertainty??). Leaving aside how we were introduced -mystically or ordinarily- I move on into the world we lived in together as friends and later something more than that ….. something terrible. Once we had a beautiful and carefree world of our own, where trust was as profuse and free as air, where joy gushed at liberty as perennial river, where childish shades of imagination painted reality white and chaste as clouds, where at times we felt so together that I was her and she was me, and when who was what seldom concerned …..as there was no I and her, simply we.
We wasted the majority of our early days collectively. I read her my comic books and she read out her observations and dreams. A dreamer she was, she dreamed ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if...….’. A precocious realist I was and held ‘Isn’t it already funny that …...’.Her sweet voice tirelessly filled my ears with the narratives of all her microscopic and senseless girlish observations, as if that was an absolute fact, a serious matter of life, a matter as grave as death , to correspond. Always confused with no indication of ever concluding, her naïve dreams usually made less sense to my pragmatic head but still I listened with no sign of fatigue and no loss of interest or patience………if you have that kind of orotund noise around you it makes you playful about life.
Chapter 6
So once again, this time accompanied, I was at the ghats, but this time neither
to die nor to reborn……simply for breathing a gentle wind warmed over the holiness of ganga by the departing half orange sun; and gulping delicious banarasi lassi on Abhishek’s pocket at ‘Pehelwaan Lassi mahal’, a lassi shop ran by a man thin to the point of emaciation. Earlier I used to question what fanatical idea amused this skinny vendor to label his shop as ‘Pehelwaan’s shop’, a wrestler’s shop, before grandpa silenced my query one day.
The history behind the label: Once upon a time a renowned and elderly professional wrestler, waning with time, decided for a new profession before going moribund. Lassi being his darling drink swayed him into opening a lassi shop. Despite being uneducated he had gathered ample managerial sagacity from wrestling organizers regarding brand marketing, and hence titled the shop on his well known moniker ‘Pehelwaan Ranabahadur thakur lassi mahal’. The strategy worked and he lived economically joyful ever after before the day he died of his third and final heart attack while laughing. The shop was then for a while managed by his only daughter, who after marrying to a non-wrestler handed over the responsibility to her husband. The son-in-law embarrassed to run a shop on father-in-law’s name shortened it to ‘Pehelwaan lassi mahal’, retaining the tag pehelwaan for himself. Although with a brand name shortened by the heir’s embarrassment, the inherited shop thrived, and the son-in-law lived even more joyfully before succumbing to his very first heart attack. First one on third and second one on first; the thinning resistance was a result of change in legacy ………wrestler to non-wrestler. As if to exemplify this shifting legacy even more distinctly there came a visual evidence, a skeleton of a child, as the next heir to the dwindling legacy. The wrestler’s daughter and her non-wrestler companion collectively spawned this current owner, a man thin to the point of emaciation, an all skin-andbone wrestler, a haddi-pehelwaan.
Though the legacy of the proprietor declined with subsequent generation but the quality of lassi persistently sustained against putrefying effect of time, and pluckily survived the challenging impact of market globalization, which as per grandpa in case of lassi would be coca-colaization of Indian thirst.
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Brother Paul is the public relation officer in St. Xavier, a fool-of-a-man semi-reverend though. Too old to be a brother as he lost his way up the echelons of priesthood by frequent imprudence in priestly matters. He was a self made brother who owed his lack of success to nobody. Anyway his unmatched temper, which graciously refused to loose itself on the unintentional as well as intentional insulting sarcasm from others, landed him to a job in Public relation office. An office where the wing legged has been rebuked plentiful times since kindergarten, in front of his worried parents, by semi-reverend brother Paul, for putting his naughty legs in and over numerous monkey business.
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Son-of-an-owl is surely an idiot on all measures but one; this ungrateful son has got brains enough to trick the owl, his father. The owl had inherited enough money to make it work for him instead of working much himself. He owns a lot many petrol pumps in and around the city. The owl never wanted his riches to spoil his son-of-an-owl after a limit, and therefore provided Vibhor with as little pocket money as possible but the son was free to full his bike’s tank at any of his owl’s pump free of cost. Now there was the loop hole to exploit and was exploited. Vibhor got his tanks filled to max at one pump only to sell it to acquaintance at significantly lower price before reaching the next pump for a refill. That alone would not have made his pocket deep if the owl had only two three pumps or if the son played this trick once in a while, but blessed was the owl and an industrious was his son.
to die nor to reborn……simply for breathing a gentle wind warmed over the holiness of ganga by the departing half orange sun; and gulping delicious banarasi lassi on Abhishek’s pocket at ‘Pehelwaan Lassi mahal’, a lassi shop ran by a man thin to the point of emaciation. Earlier I used to question what fanatical idea amused this skinny vendor to label his shop as ‘Pehelwaan’s shop’, a wrestler’s shop, before grandpa silenced my query one day.
The history behind the label: Once upon a time a renowned and elderly professional wrestler, waning with time, decided for a new profession before going moribund. Lassi being his darling drink swayed him into opening a lassi shop. Despite being uneducated he had gathered ample managerial sagacity from wrestling organizers regarding brand marketing, and hence titled the shop on his well known moniker ‘Pehelwaan Ranabahadur thakur lassi mahal’. The strategy worked and he lived economically joyful ever after before the day he died of his third and final heart attack while laughing. The shop was then for a while managed by his only daughter, who after marrying to a non-wrestler handed over the responsibility to her husband. The son-in-law embarrassed to run a shop on father-in-law’s name shortened it to ‘Pehelwaan lassi mahal’, retaining the tag pehelwaan for himself. Although with a brand name shortened by the heir’s embarrassment, the inherited shop thrived, and the son-in-law lived even more joyfully before succumbing to his very first heart attack. First one on third and second one on first; the thinning resistance was a result of change in legacy ………wrestler to non-wrestler. As if to exemplify this shifting legacy even more distinctly there came a visual evidence, a skeleton of a child, as the next heir to the dwindling legacy. The wrestler’s daughter and her non-wrestler companion collectively spawned this current owner, a man thin to the point of emaciation, an all skin-andbone wrestler, a haddi-pehelwaan.
Though the legacy of the proprietor declined with subsequent generation but the quality of lassi persistently sustained against putrefying effect of time, and pluckily survived the challenging impact of market globalization, which as per grandpa in case of lassi would be coca-colaization of Indian thirst.
-------------
Brother Paul is the public relation officer in St. Xavier, a fool-of-a-man semi-reverend though. Too old to be a brother as he lost his way up the echelons of priesthood by frequent imprudence in priestly matters. He was a self made brother who owed his lack of success to nobody. Anyway his unmatched temper, which graciously refused to loose itself on the unintentional as well as intentional insulting sarcasm from others, landed him to a job in Public relation office. An office where the wing legged has been rebuked plentiful times since kindergarten, in front of his worried parents, by semi-reverend brother Paul, for putting his naughty legs in and over numerous monkey business.
--------------
Son-of-an-owl is surely an idiot on all measures but one; this ungrateful son has got brains enough to trick the owl, his father. The owl had inherited enough money to make it work for him instead of working much himself. He owns a lot many petrol pumps in and around the city. The owl never wanted his riches to spoil his son-of-an-owl after a limit, and therefore provided Vibhor with as little pocket money as possible but the son was free to full his bike’s tank at any of his owl’s pump free of cost. Now there was the loop hole to exploit and was exploited. Vibhor got his tanks filled to max at one pump only to sell it to acquaintance at significantly lower price before reaching the next pump for a refill. That alone would not have made his pocket deep if the owl had only two three pumps or if the son played this trick once in a while, but blessed was the owl and an industrious was his son.
Chapter 7
Rakesh is my distant cousin and is a fine prototype of those kinds of people who were almost rendered destroyed by love before they were pulled back from the edge of the abyss. A year ago Rakesh was madly in love with a Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, who sadly belonged to a different caste and thus was decidedly objectionable to my distant uncle (who happens to be his father). After winning a prolonged battle against many talented contenders in wooing Menakhsi, Rakesh was immediately tangled in an even longer one against his father and his traditional ideology. Poor impatient fool hadn’t taken even a momentary hiatus to get pleasure from his conquest of Menakhsi, and notified his father of his yearning to marry her. Uncle as expected reacted callously to this unscheduled notification and presaged “If you marry her it’s either you or me in my house” Even after knowing that eventually it will be he who has to vacate Sarada Niwas, howsoever hard Sarada devi, his mother, tried to keep him in, Rakesh dared to go ahead with his plans. He foolishly dreamed of starting a fresh life with his Menakhsi, but sadly the dream girl Menakhsi had a realistic approach to life and thus she refused to be a part of his imprudent dream, and decided to break the relationship discovering his injudicious side (as she put it). She said she won’t marry him anymore because he was crazy and he surely was crazy because he still wanted to marry her. Thus the dream of commencing a fresh life shattered the present anyhow existing life of Rakesh the warrior-fool. Thus Rakesh was pulled back from the edge of the abyss by his own imprudence, which helped him turn to the faithless part of his venetian blind love. But anyway once a fool always a fool; Rakesh like many of his kinds tried to commit suicide too. Once when Uncle and sharada aunty were busy shouting to each other, in an attempt to make him listen from behind the close doors and realize how wise for him their harsh decision had proved to be, the warrior-fool Rakesh entered the arena and asked Sarada “Keep quiet for the time being and once I am gone yell as much as you… ” and was knocked down to ground vomiting white foams before even completing his request. The lion hearted warrior-fool had swallowed a rat killing concoction. He was instantaneously rushed to a hospital where the life reviving drugs overcame the concoction permanently, and after returning home with time his good sense overcame his foolishness…..for the time being.
The day when finally Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, was knotted to a NRI each and all bachelor of Mahrauli wept invisible tears except Rakesh. No don’t think otherwise, as I told once a fool always a fool; Rakesh lived to his name, his tears were blatant. An indifferent parting Menakhsi, as people say, was an epitome of stately cheerfulness each time she cried. When the dream girl was parting cheerfully flanked by invisible fond tears, blatant unreciprocated tears and howling feminine tears my uncle was eventful offering sweets to lord Hanuman at Sankat Mochan, thanking the monkey God for insuring his reputation by taking Menakhsi overseas, far away from Mahrauli.
The day when finally Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, was knotted to a NRI each and all bachelor of Mahrauli wept invisible tears except Rakesh. No don’t think otherwise, as I told once a fool always a fool; Rakesh lived to his name, his tears were blatant. An indifferent parting Menakhsi, as people say, was an epitome of stately cheerfulness each time she cried. When the dream girl was parting cheerfully flanked by invisible fond tears, blatant unreciprocated tears and howling feminine tears my uncle was eventful offering sweets to lord Hanuman at Sankat Mochan, thanking the monkey God for insuring his reputation by taking Menakhsi overseas, far away from Mahrauli.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Chapter 8
Although it was late and her gates were locked yet I had my own ways to meet her, if only she was not dead asleep. I went upstairs to check if her lights were still on which fortunately were. After making sure that all, counting shyamlal, were engrossed in deep lifeless comfort I moved ahead to make my way. Within next few minutes I was successfully done with crossing the long verandah soundlessly holding slippers in hand, unbolting the heavy door by integrating countless minute pushes of dx length each and covering the lawn along the inside boundary in crouched position to avoid being caught in a suspicious move inside my own residence by an outsider. After maneuvering my body meticulously and skillfully to her window I once again made certain no one was witnessing my illegal moves……… no not illegal just a little bit naughty.
Now after all this prolonged waiting only a five feet wall was all that stood alienating me from her glimpse. I unhesitatingly began to scale it. While I was half way in my endeavor with one leg lying on the top of the wall and other searching for a hole or crack in the sidewall to fit into to push myself up, I for the first time saw the most beautiful face in my life carrying the saddest expression I ever witnessed. She was sitting with her back facing me and till than was oblivious of my very existence but I was able to see her face in the mirror on the wall facing both of us. Yes no point for guessing, she was not Isha and till than I didn’t knew who she was, yet I forgot to be afraid of my incongruous placing. Her cavernous eyes shedding teary falls were too mesmerizing to let me think of even life or death let alone the fear of being caught like a lizard on the wall opposite a long time friend’s window. She was simultaneously weeping and writing something in a diary. Captivated both by her seraphic beauty and my meddlesome curiosity I was thrilled and the unprecedented thrill was sweeping my consciousness away. I could have hung there like that forever, or at least until some newspaper man or milkman would have spotted me in the dawn in that unlawful gesture on lawyer Saabs periphery, but my fervent empathy which had started reaching her, obliged hers to reach mine and she turned back. I initially became transitorily glad to be able to look straight into her deep eyes as if that was all I wanted, but then very soon I was startled and brought back to the consciousness of my unapproving condition. She read my embarrassment and thus realized hers too and immediately swept her mellow cheeks dry of the glittering tears.
I horrendously waited for her next reaction but she didn’t reacted for a long time as if she was profoundly bothered with something too momentous to mind my petty naughtiness. That inflated my curiosity even higher. I didn’t knew what to say as I had never talked to an angel before and that too a weeping one.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Add world: Behind d Screen
manvendra2610: abe saurabh
manvendra2610 is busy.
saurabh: haan bhai bol
saurabh is idle
manvendra2610: bhai kal hai mega launch website ka...!! yaar ek kaam kar
saurabh: kya bol?
manvendra2610: http://www.kampus.co.in/ ye url apne blog pe daal le..
saurabh: ok..
manvendra2610: okay...ab thanks kya bolu..
saurabh: arre..bilkul nahin bey
manvendra2610: haan wahi soch rahe the..
Sent at 11:18 PM on Friday
Sentence correction exercise: Bellow is the choice between next right and wrong move... so go ahead !!!
Now that you have been (spending/wasting) so much of your (precious/idle) time (following/ criticizing) my (fabulous/moronic) blog, it would be an (intelligent/excellent) investment to hit the above link and have some really (great/smart) R.O.I. And my (angle/self-interest) in this move is may be Ur greater number of clicks hand me some more such (stuff/stuffs) and I too could make some bugs in future as my R.O.I. on the time (spend/wasted) emanating my (blog/sort of blog)
saurabh: abe manu yeh sahi rahega bey...??
manvendra2610 is busy.
saurabh: haan bhai bol
saurabh is idle
manvendra2610: bhai kal hai mega launch website ka...!! yaar ek kaam kar
saurabh: kya bol?
manvendra2610: http://www.kampus.co.in/ ye url apne blog pe daal le..
saurabh: ok..
manvendra2610: okay...ab thanks kya bolu..
saurabh: arre..bilkul nahin bey
manvendra2610: haan wahi soch rahe the..
Sent at 11:18 PM on Friday
Sentence correction exercise: Bellow is the choice between next right and wrong move... so go ahead !!!
Now that you have been (spending/wasting) so much of your (precious/idle) time (following/ criticizing) my (fabulous/moronic) blog, it would be an (intelligent/excellent) investment to hit the above link and have some really (great/smart) R.O.I. And my (angle/self-interest) in this move is may be Ur greater number of clicks hand me some more such (stuff/stuffs) and I too could make some bugs in future as my R.O.I. on the time (spend/wasted) emanating my (blog/sort of blog)
saurabh: abe manu yeh sahi rahega bey...??
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Laugh reflect and ignore
I vividly remember that crazy man. I came across him last summer on my return journey, from my maternal grandmother’s place, in the jam-packed environment of sleeper class, which in summers is like India in a nutshell, so many inhabitants to support so little room to sustain. This man sitting adjacent to me carried a facade as grave as funeral, which materialized unfittingly on his rather funny face; and he projected a depressed spirit evocative of an insolvent stockbroker, which again was erroneously placed on his frail shoulders.
It was a night journey and the reserved people rested flat on their respective berths with the waitlisted one invading the bordering unexploited spaces. An aged couple, waitlisted ones, invaded the majority portion of my side birth. Not knowing how to ask them to relinquish the annexed territory for me to slumber off, I reluctantly lay awake as a minority, surveying the shadowy trees pacing behind and tracing the path of adjacent tracks luminous by the moonlight, speculating how they at places converged together and at places emerged apart.
Suddenly this desolate man left his seat and walked across the aisle beside us towards the door. I happened to glance at his comical face which on that night faked seriousness and was by then wetted by tears. The counterfeit toughness was moistened by unrestrained emotions, summing up the inherent humorous potential of the face to its artistic pinnacle. I may appear to make fun of his melancholy but I swear the first thought which comes to mind seeing something as funny can never be sympathetic. Though I am deprived of judging people yet at that time I was convinced that his emotions were superficial, and not deep enough beneath the wet comical face to sympathize with. But then I heard the unlocking of a door followed by a thump. And then through the window we saw him rolling down the embankment.
While I was shocked taut by the incident and ashamed of my doubts, the aged male invader rushed to pull the chain, with an agility that bellied his age and the female companion contributed her part by disseminating the news at a piercing voice to all the incumbents of our and the immediate neighboring coaches . (Sure this grandpa generation must have been lot fitter in youth than what mine young coco-colaized generation is)
No sooner the chain was pulled the train stopped within few hundred meters -the only instant service provided by the Indian railway lived to its credit- and no sooner the news was spread all the Indians who heard it charged hurriedly to the door – unfailing to seize such once in a life time adventure in their typically unsporting Indian life. Commanding my shaken senses, I too joined the great Indian escapade.
The echoing sound of engine stabbing the death like silence of night vanished and the rumbling commotion of energized masses acted as surrogate, though a feeble one. An equally worried and thrilled crowd ran in the direction where the desolate fool was last seen progressing down the steep rocky gradient. I too was running with the mostly lungi wrapped crowd; a few moments earlier with nothing to do I had found a purpose worthy and thrilling enough to run for it in a deserted landscape.
Soon the rolling fool was in sight lying motionless in the middle of the unfarmed weeds. I expected him at least three-fourth dead if not deceased. But then to my surprise or better say to the collective surprise of the crowd the hopefully dead fool roused surreally defying death, and even more, he ran away deep into the darkness leaving us behind shocked, puzzled and frightened.
Different reasons were floated down by different scholars in the rest of the journey, of which the most logical one seemed that he ran away fearing the furious crowd, which discovering him alive contrary to their hope might push him to death . May be escaping death by a whisker made him realize the worth of life and he learned to love life in the face of death.
Some scholars forced by curiosity forced the CRPF to investigate his luggage which later was found to be a mainly a collection of love letters and memoirs. The same old story: Attraction to some lady…. worship of the lady…. declaration of the passionate devotion…....a virtuous rejection…….renewed wooing and few oaths of eternal fealty which when unsuccessful leads fools to the permanent solution of the time bound suffering.
Quixotical moral of the story: “Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you”
A rather practical and useful caution: “Beware jumping from an Indian train is poor option to die; it may live you crippled for the rest of your life to try anything as such.”
P.S. : The narration is a mischievous amplification of a real life confrontation witnessed by a good friend of mine. The ‘I’ in the passage is he through my eyes.
It was a night journey and the reserved people rested flat on their respective berths with the waitlisted one invading the bordering unexploited spaces. An aged couple, waitlisted ones, invaded the majority portion of my side birth. Not knowing how to ask them to relinquish the annexed territory for me to slumber off, I reluctantly lay awake as a minority, surveying the shadowy trees pacing behind and tracing the path of adjacent tracks luminous by the moonlight, speculating how they at places converged together and at places emerged apart.
Suddenly this desolate man left his seat and walked across the aisle beside us towards the door. I happened to glance at his comical face which on that night faked seriousness and was by then wetted by tears. The counterfeit toughness was moistened by unrestrained emotions, summing up the inherent humorous potential of the face to its artistic pinnacle. I may appear to make fun of his melancholy but I swear the first thought which comes to mind seeing something as funny can never be sympathetic. Though I am deprived of judging people yet at that time I was convinced that his emotions were superficial, and not deep enough beneath the wet comical face to sympathize with. But then I heard the unlocking of a door followed by a thump. And then through the window we saw him rolling down the embankment.
While I was shocked taut by the incident and ashamed of my doubts, the aged male invader rushed to pull the chain, with an agility that bellied his age and the female companion contributed her part by disseminating the news at a piercing voice to all the incumbents of our and the immediate neighboring coaches . (Sure this grandpa generation must have been lot fitter in youth than what mine young coco-colaized generation is)
No sooner the chain was pulled the train stopped within few hundred meters -the only instant service provided by the Indian railway lived to its credit- and no sooner the news was spread all the Indians who heard it charged hurriedly to the door – unfailing to seize such once in a life time adventure in their typically unsporting Indian life. Commanding my shaken senses, I too joined the great Indian escapade.
The echoing sound of engine stabbing the death like silence of night vanished and the rumbling commotion of energized masses acted as surrogate, though a feeble one. An equally worried and thrilled crowd ran in the direction where the desolate fool was last seen progressing down the steep rocky gradient. I too was running with the mostly lungi wrapped crowd; a few moments earlier with nothing to do I had found a purpose worthy and thrilling enough to run for it in a deserted landscape.
Soon the rolling fool was in sight lying motionless in the middle of the unfarmed weeds. I expected him at least three-fourth dead if not deceased. But then to my surprise or better say to the collective surprise of the crowd the hopefully dead fool roused surreally defying death, and even more, he ran away deep into the darkness leaving us behind shocked, puzzled and frightened.
Different reasons were floated down by different scholars in the rest of the journey, of which the most logical one seemed that he ran away fearing the furious crowd, which discovering him alive contrary to their hope might push him to death . May be escaping death by a whisker made him realize the worth of life and he learned to love life in the face of death.
Some scholars forced by curiosity forced the CRPF to investigate his luggage which later was found to be a mainly a collection of love letters and memoirs. The same old story: Attraction to some lady…. worship of the lady…. declaration of the passionate devotion…....a virtuous rejection…….renewed wooing and few oaths of eternal fealty which when unsuccessful leads fools to the permanent solution of the time bound suffering.
Quixotical moral of the story: “Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you”
A rather practical and useful caution: “Beware jumping from an Indian train is poor option to die; it may live you crippled for the rest of your life to try anything as such.”
P.S. : The narration is a mischievous amplification of a real life confrontation witnessed by a good friend of mine. The ‘I’ in the passage is he through my eyes.
Friday, April 10, 2009
But Then Why I….?
Semester exams are going on and hence consequentially and inevitably I am in a melancholy temper. When in blue doldrums, I prefer introspection. Among all and sundry thoughts that I revisited one contemplation provoked me the most, which was “How my life changed from what it was to what it became, rather than what it was trying to become.” Here are few such changes which I regret having been accustomed to. The underline squabble is I say I am adapted to it, but then why I lament.
My ‘changed’ Life:
How it changed from a carefree childhood to a meticulous grown-up life,
but then why I find there is more anxiety around.
How it changed from sharing grandma’s space to having room of my own,
but then why I miss her stories in insomniac nights.
How it changed from innocent friendships to purpose based contacts,
but then why I long for a listener to share thoughts.
How it changed from everyday katti-milli to a matured band of associates,
but then why I am tangled amid tacit ego-clashes.
How it changed from endless cycling in neighborhood to just small walks,
but then why I feel more tired by comfortable rest.
How it changed from saving pennies for monthly comics to host of novels,
but then why I sometime lack my reading interest.
How it changed from gully cricket amid neighbor’s ire to electronic games,
but then why I miss the obstinacy to win contest.
How it changed from the early morning sky to mid-day waking patterns,
but then why I feel so weary to glimpse the sun.
How it changed from raju’s small provisional shop to big shopping malls,
but then why I find it jaded to enter the shop.
How it changed from long awaited festivals to just any of other holiday,
but then why I feel nostalgic reminiscences of past.
How it changed from playing I-spy during power cuts to escaping faces,
but then why I complain of suffering from loneliness.
How it changed from infinite inquisitiveness to excellent information base,
but then why I ask question whose reply doesn’t matter.
My ‘changed’ Life:
How it changed from a carefree childhood to a meticulous grown-up life,
but then why I find there is more anxiety around.
How it changed from sharing grandma’s space to having room of my own,
but then why I miss her stories in insomniac nights.
How it changed from innocent friendships to purpose based contacts,
but then why I long for a listener to share thoughts.
How it changed from everyday katti-milli to a matured band of associates,
but then why I am tangled amid tacit ego-clashes.
How it changed from endless cycling in neighborhood to just small walks,
but then why I feel more tired by comfortable rest.
How it changed from saving pennies for monthly comics to host of novels,
but then why I sometime lack my reading interest.
How it changed from gully cricket amid neighbor’s ire to electronic games,
but then why I miss the obstinacy to win contest.
How it changed from the early morning sky to mid-day waking patterns,
but then why I feel so weary to glimpse the sun.
How it changed from raju’s small provisional shop to big shopping malls,
but then why I find it jaded to enter the shop.
How it changed from long awaited festivals to just any of other holiday,
but then why I feel nostalgic reminiscences of past.
How it changed from playing I-spy during power cuts to escaping faces,
but then why I complain of suffering from loneliness.
How it changed from infinite inquisitiveness to excellent information base,
but then why I ask question whose reply doesn’t matter.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Every dog has its day
Before we begin, an important information for you, this post is not written by your moronic blogger Saurabh. He realized lately that how lacklusterous his last few post have been and how readers (who I suppose are hardly any) are exasperated. So he begged me to write something interesting in a guest column. As we are long time friends, meeting every morning at the tea shop sharply at 4’o clock just before we go to sleep, I couldn’t say no to him and so reluctantly accepted. So, here I go.
Hi all humans out there,
Firstly let me introduce myself. My name is Tiger and I am a stray dog. Few people also christen me Tommy but I abhor that name as it sounds identical to the name of an exceedingly inefficient housecat created by William Hannah and Joseph Barbara, unable to settle square with a little mouse called Jerry. Also it reminds me of an aged Tommy lee Jones who himself declares that there is ‘No country for the old men’. I prefer being called ‘Tiger’ as it projects my youthful vitality and sex appeal; you can snoop to my gorgeous bitch friend as testimonials.
I am young and lazy and I hate incompetence. I try to bark on fellow dogs and bitches a lot, on the benefits of being dynamic, that sucks a lot of my vigor and so I became lethargic. They don’t seem to be bothered for my words, but I confidently believe every dog has its day and till then I ought to keep barking. I remain wakeful the whole night barking devotedly unless and until it perturbs the night watchman and my fellow stray mates.
Mother used to say that dogs and human had a long term friendly relationship since the very early civilization. But somehow you people were the first to discover fire and wheel, while we were busy in guarding and hunting for you and in some of our private roadside activities. These two meager discoveries made you supercilious and disdainful; you people began projecting us as a loyal servant than a sincere friend. That really agitated our community. Mama told that once there was even a plan for mass uprising among dogs during early 1950’s, but the very gratifying human act of giving priority to a bitch called ‘Laika’ as the first native of earth in space, greatly placated the agitation. Other times too there were some minute aggression when our dog friend Pluto was shown as a subordinate to a mouse called Mickey, but again human creations like Scooby-doo, 101 Dalmatians’, Turner and Hooch, White Fang etc helped a lot in pacifying the probable revolts.
Many of you human feel its misfortune being stray dog. Unfortunately they don’t realize how much contentment it is being a stray dog. Agastya Sen of English august fame recognized this and stated ‘I wished to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life. They are assured of food and because they are stray they don’t have to guard the house to earn their foods.’ He is an intelligent man, an IAS officer do I need any more evidence. In my opinion an IAS job is very similar to that of a stray dog. I have seen many stray blue light vehicles wandering here and there on government fuel without having to return anything significant in return as service.
Contrary to what you humans might think about us I think it is pity hard being human. Must be even harder being students. Daily I see many of them coming to the tea shop which is place of my night halt at 3:30 A.M. There eyes tired with the one night study routine and there talk filled with the frustration about the system they are put into. Its pity to see young kids strained into smoking by the profound quantity of work load.
Though my mother is not sure about the whereabouts of even my own father but she says that once during the time of my grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa in late 60s there was a movement in dog community to make provision for essential educational training for each and every dog. This campaigning started somewhere in US, crossed the Atlantic and spread away throughout Europe. The consensus of dog’s of Middle East and Africa was not sought of as there dogs were still waiting for similar provisions for girl child educational training. But when it reached India we vehemently opposed such provisions. We send our delegates to US and Europe along with few NRIs of brain drain stream, under secret missions, in order to explain them how Indians are doing fine in spite of low literacy rate. It took time and effort but our mission was successful at the end. I thank God my ancestors succeeded.
Friends I would have loved to share few interesting incidents of my life worth sharing, but an impatient Saurabh says I have this limitation of space. I think he is afraid I have not been of much help to the blog, but after reading the prior posts I think, so is not he. In case if he allows me another chance I hope we can continue till then bye and take care.
Bark N Snarl fully yours
Tiger
Hi all humans out there,
Firstly let me introduce myself. My name is Tiger and I am a stray dog. Few people also christen me Tommy but I abhor that name as it sounds identical to the name of an exceedingly inefficient housecat created by William Hannah and Joseph Barbara, unable to settle square with a little mouse called Jerry. Also it reminds me of an aged Tommy lee Jones who himself declares that there is ‘No country for the old men’. I prefer being called ‘Tiger’ as it projects my youthful vitality and sex appeal; you can snoop to my gorgeous bitch friend as testimonials.
I am young and lazy and I hate incompetence. I try to bark on fellow dogs and bitches a lot, on the benefits of being dynamic, that sucks a lot of my vigor and so I became lethargic. They don’t seem to be bothered for my words, but I confidently believe every dog has its day and till then I ought to keep barking. I remain wakeful the whole night barking devotedly unless and until it perturbs the night watchman and my fellow stray mates.
Mother used to say that dogs and human had a long term friendly relationship since the very early civilization. But somehow you people were the first to discover fire and wheel, while we were busy in guarding and hunting for you and in some of our private roadside activities. These two meager discoveries made you supercilious and disdainful; you people began projecting us as a loyal servant than a sincere friend. That really agitated our community. Mama told that once there was even a plan for mass uprising among dogs during early 1950’s, but the very gratifying human act of giving priority to a bitch called ‘Laika’ as the first native of earth in space, greatly placated the agitation. Other times too there were some minute aggression when our dog friend Pluto was shown as a subordinate to a mouse called Mickey, but again human creations like Scooby-doo, 101 Dalmatians’, Turner and Hooch, White Fang etc helped a lot in pacifying the probable revolts.
Many of you human feel its misfortune being stray dog. Unfortunately they don’t realize how much contentment it is being a stray dog. Agastya Sen of English august fame recognized this and stated ‘I wished to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life. They are assured of food and because they are stray they don’t have to guard the house to earn their foods.’ He is an intelligent man, an IAS officer do I need any more evidence. In my opinion an IAS job is very similar to that of a stray dog. I have seen many stray blue light vehicles wandering here and there on government fuel without having to return anything significant in return as service.
Contrary to what you humans might think about us I think it is pity hard being human. Must be even harder being students. Daily I see many of them coming to the tea shop which is place of my night halt at 3:30 A.M. There eyes tired with the one night study routine and there talk filled with the frustration about the system they are put into. Its pity to see young kids strained into smoking by the profound quantity of work load.
Though my mother is not sure about the whereabouts of even my own father but she says that once during the time of my grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa in late 60s there was a movement in dog community to make provision for essential educational training for each and every dog. This campaigning started somewhere in US, crossed the Atlantic and spread away throughout Europe. The consensus of dog’s of Middle East and Africa was not sought of as there dogs were still waiting for similar provisions for girl child educational training. But when it reached India we vehemently opposed such provisions. We send our delegates to US and Europe along with few NRIs of brain drain stream, under secret missions, in order to explain them how Indians are doing fine in spite of low literacy rate. It took time and effort but our mission was successful at the end. I thank God my ancestors succeeded.
Friends I would have loved to share few interesting incidents of my life worth sharing, but an impatient Saurabh says I have this limitation of space. I think he is afraid I have not been of much help to the blog, but after reading the prior posts I think, so is not he. In case if he allows me another chance I hope we can continue till then bye and take care.
Bark N Snarl fully yours
Tiger
Friday, April 3, 2009
WISH YOU WERE HERE....
Once upon a time, not very far from now, in a small city there was a group of ingenuous friends. They were friends even before they vaguely knew what friendship really was. It was not their similarities which bonded them as one but in fact it was the respect for each others differences which tied them…some times these differences clashed causing fiddling spars but it was at all times a brief one, reason “ they didn’t knew how to exist without each other..”
Sooner the differences mixed and formed a common color which identified each of them. Their backgrounds and circumstances may have influenced who they were...But their friendship was most responsible for what they became. I speak so cause I happen to be one from that posse.
I never realized when but we almost made it a custom to squander our evenings meeting on the banks of Ganga (sounds more possessive than Ganges) away from the ghats, where we were all left alone by ourselves. Particularly I and Abhishek were most addicted to that tranquil corner away from the clamor of the city at a place where no one could hear us and no one could observe us.
Well at that day it was Abhishek who instigated, I who straight away agreed and Varun who had no other choice but to amalgamate. That was mid-summer time and the stream was partly desiccated leaving behind lumps of sand. Three of us were sitting by the river-side with our backs on sand and feet in water, feeling the unruffled breeze after a long scorching day spend partly indoor at Abhishek’s home and then at a countryside dhaaba, taking hot tea in mid summer afternoon.
“So in what direction is the wind blowing?” asked Abhishek.
I took some sand in my hand and let it fall freely, observing its drift I replied “eastwards”.
“Then you better come and sit on my right” said Abhishek “else the smoke will exasperate you” and lighted his cigarette.
“You know Abhishek there is this excellent thing in you” said Varun.
“Tell me out what do you find good in me”
“It is the way you care for others” concluded Varun and then jointly laughed with me.
“Chalo! at least someone realized my goodness” said Abhishek blithely.
“But there is a bad point too” it was me this time.
“Ok tell me the hell whatever it is?” voiced Abhishek sounding interested.
I pointed the smoke while shifting to his right. Now when he was to justify his so called manhood I became a Kid.
“Listen kid! It’s your first year in college. Let see how will you disapprove it later on” replied he.
“Let’s first see will we be like us that long” pointed Varun.
I didn’t bothered to react to any of them. I doubted Abhishek’s query and found Varun’s prophecy pointless. After that for a long while no one voiced a single word. Each one intoxicated partially by the smoke, second hand and direct, and fairly by their thoughts delved more into it. I have this awful habit of filling a gap in a conversation by my own voice but that day due to no particular reason even I too preferred to remain silent. May be, lying there, we were mesmerized by our sense of alienation from other people or may be we knew each other long enough that we didn’t needed words to convey our thoughts. Whatever it was, for a long while, we remained just like that.
It’s almost two and a half year since then and never again we three got a chance to sit there together. In fact none of us three has seen other since a year. What Varun forecasted, unfortunately seems to have happened. We are no more us. Today in the evening I recalled all this while wandering alone desperately. I am yet to form an opinion on smoking. But I wish I could go back to that conversation. I wish we could get those silent moments back to voice them. I wish we had never changed. I wish we had never grown and I wish you people were here today.
Sooner the differences mixed and formed a common color which identified each of them. Their backgrounds and circumstances may have influenced who they were...But their friendship was most responsible for what they became. I speak so cause I happen to be one from that posse.
I never realized when but we almost made it a custom to squander our evenings meeting on the banks of Ganga (sounds more possessive than Ganges) away from the ghats, where we were all left alone by ourselves. Particularly I and Abhishek were most addicted to that tranquil corner away from the clamor of the city at a place where no one could hear us and no one could observe us.
Well at that day it was Abhishek who instigated, I who straight away agreed and Varun who had no other choice but to amalgamate. That was mid-summer time and the stream was partly desiccated leaving behind lumps of sand. Three of us were sitting by the river-side with our backs on sand and feet in water, feeling the unruffled breeze after a long scorching day spend partly indoor at Abhishek’s home and then at a countryside dhaaba, taking hot tea in mid summer afternoon.
“So in what direction is the wind blowing?” asked Abhishek.
I took some sand in my hand and let it fall freely, observing its drift I replied “eastwards”.
“Then you better come and sit on my right” said Abhishek “else the smoke will exasperate you” and lighted his cigarette.
“You know Abhishek there is this excellent thing in you” said Varun.
“Tell me out what do you find good in me”
“It is the way you care for others” concluded Varun and then jointly laughed with me.
“Chalo! at least someone realized my goodness” said Abhishek blithely.
“But there is a bad point too” it was me this time.
“Ok tell me the hell whatever it is?” voiced Abhishek sounding interested.
I pointed the smoke while shifting to his right. Now when he was to justify his so called manhood I became a Kid.
“Listen kid! It’s your first year in college. Let see how will you disapprove it later on” replied he.
“Let’s first see will we be like us that long” pointed Varun.
I didn’t bothered to react to any of them. I doubted Abhishek’s query and found Varun’s prophecy pointless. After that for a long while no one voiced a single word. Each one intoxicated partially by the smoke, second hand and direct, and fairly by their thoughts delved more into it. I have this awful habit of filling a gap in a conversation by my own voice but that day due to no particular reason even I too preferred to remain silent. May be, lying there, we were mesmerized by our sense of alienation from other people or may be we knew each other long enough that we didn’t needed words to convey our thoughts. Whatever it was, for a long while, we remained just like that.
It’s almost two and a half year since then and never again we three got a chance to sit there together. In fact none of us three has seen other since a year. What Varun forecasted, unfortunately seems to have happened. We are no more us. Today in the evening I recalled all this while wandering alone desperately. I am yet to form an opinion on smoking. But I wish I could go back to that conversation. I wish we could get those silent moments back to voice them. I wish we had never changed. I wish we had never grown and I wish you people were here today.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
How Unfair…?
Keeping my promises alive, here I’m back with a new crap under the tag ‘figment of back bench poetry’.
First you look so beautiful and then you complain why do I stare,
First you speak so sweetly and then you complain why I long to hear.
First you laugh so merrily and then you complain why I give you cheer,
First you cry so childishly and then you complain why I charm your tears.
First you err so innocently and then you complain why I love to bear,
First you forgive so certainly and then you complain why I do not fear.
First you believe so naively and then you complain why do I care,
First you grew so gracefully and then you complain why I love your flair.
First you smell so pleasingly and then you complain why I feel your air,
First you love so fervidly and then you complain why I ask my share.
For all your fascinating complaints I’ve only one reply ‘How Unfair…?’
I believe it’s never too late to become what you might have become. Hope I superseded the previous one.
First you look so beautiful and then you complain why do I stare,
First you speak so sweetly and then you complain why I long to hear.
First you laugh so merrily and then you complain why I give you cheer,
First you cry so childishly and then you complain why I charm your tears.
First you err so innocently and then you complain why I love to bear,
First you forgive so certainly and then you complain why I do not fear.
First you believe so naively and then you complain why do I care,
First you grew so gracefully and then you complain why I love your flair.
First you smell so pleasingly and then you complain why I feel your air,
First you love so fervidly and then you complain why I ask my share.
For all your fascinating complaints I’ve only one reply ‘How Unfair…?’
I believe it’s never too late to become what you might have become. Hope I superseded the previous one.
Absurdity of life
Its 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s been a couple of contemplating hours since I completed reading ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus. It contains a strong notion of Camus’s philosophical notion of absurdity. Just before ‘The Stranger’ I had finished ‘English August’. That too again advocated the meaninglessness of existence, through its protagonist Agastya Sen, an I.A.S. trainee having extreme lack of interest in his life as a civil servant, on a year long philosophical itinerary to discover himself, while detached from the worldly affairs around. Similarly the plot of ‘The Stranger’ swirls around Meursault, a man who is psychologically disconnected from the world around him. May be because I have read too much about absurdism these days or/and may be because semester exams are nearing and may be because I have little reasons to believe life holds something meaningful for me, the cynic in me is intensely engrossed.
Coming back to Meursault, Events like parent’s death, marriage proposal and death sentence which could be very crucial for others, do not matter to him on sentimental level. He is honest by not hiding his lack of emotional indifference. He implicitly challenges societies accepted moral standard which earns him a reputation of being an immoral character, a threat to society. In reality Meursault is neither moral nor immoral- he is just amoral. He is an atheist who simply does not makes the distinction between good and bad. Aside from his atheism he makes little assumption about the character of world. However when he is sentenced to death after a murder trial ( His emotional indifference to moral standards works against his case and he is sentenced to death for a murder done in self defense) his thinking began to broaden, in due course of events he concludes that the universe is just like him totally indifferent to human life. He decides that people's lives have no grand meaning or importance, and that their actions, their comings and goings, have no effect on the world. This realization is the culmination of all the events of the novel.
Few of the lines from the Novel reflecting the underline idea are-
1. “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”
---Spoken by Meursault, these are the opening lines of the novel. They introduce his emotional indifference, one his most important character traits. He does not express any remorse upon learning of his mother's death; he merely reports the fact in a straightforward manner. He implies that it does not matter that his mother died at all. Here Camus introduces the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence, a theme that resounds throughout the novel.
2. “When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t.”
---With characteristic emotional indifference, Meursault answers Marie's question completely and honestly. Always blunt, he never alters what he says to be tactful or to conform to societal expectations. Meursault's assertion that love “didn't mean anything,” asserts his belief in the meaninglessness of human life.
3. “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
---These are the last lines of the novel. After being insisted to turn to God in the wake of his death sentence puts Meursault into a blind rage, he fully accepts the absurdist idea that the universe is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He realizes that the universe's indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world “so brotherly.” He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less lonely.
Due to the effect of this feeling of absurdity, in which right now I am deeply convolved in, even a dazzling sunrise witnessed after months seems so forlorn. It is giving me the identical mournful solace which is a part of my daily evening’s schedule. I wonder how to spend the day, I know the gripped cynic in me is going to make this whole day miserable. I can figure out approximately how long this day is going to be, and unlike Meursault I have no silent companion to share my calm desolation and make me feel less lonely. I only wish this feeling will evaporate with the heat of the day as most of the optimist resolutions made in night for the next day are gone with the morning blues.
Coming back to Meursault, Events like parent’s death, marriage proposal and death sentence which could be very crucial for others, do not matter to him on sentimental level. He is honest by not hiding his lack of emotional indifference. He implicitly challenges societies accepted moral standard which earns him a reputation of being an immoral character, a threat to society. In reality Meursault is neither moral nor immoral- he is just amoral. He is an atheist who simply does not makes the distinction between good and bad. Aside from his atheism he makes little assumption about the character of world. However when he is sentenced to death after a murder trial ( His emotional indifference to moral standards works against his case and he is sentenced to death for a murder done in self defense) his thinking began to broaden, in due course of events he concludes that the universe is just like him totally indifferent to human life. He decides that people's lives have no grand meaning or importance, and that their actions, their comings and goings, have no effect on the world. This realization is the culmination of all the events of the novel.
Few of the lines from the Novel reflecting the underline idea are-
1. “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”
---Spoken by Meursault, these are the opening lines of the novel. They introduce his emotional indifference, one his most important character traits. He does not express any remorse upon learning of his mother's death; he merely reports the fact in a straightforward manner. He implies that it does not matter that his mother died at all. Here Camus introduces the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence, a theme that resounds throughout the novel.
2. “When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t.”
---With characteristic emotional indifference, Meursault answers Marie's question completely and honestly. Always blunt, he never alters what he says to be tactful or to conform to societal expectations. Meursault's assertion that love “didn't mean anything,” asserts his belief in the meaninglessness of human life.
3. “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
---These are the last lines of the novel. After being insisted to turn to God in the wake of his death sentence puts Meursault into a blind rage, he fully accepts the absurdist idea that the universe is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He realizes that the universe's indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world “so brotherly.” He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less lonely.
Due to the effect of this feeling of absurdity, in which right now I am deeply convolved in, even a dazzling sunrise witnessed after months seems so forlorn. It is giving me the identical mournful solace which is a part of my daily evening’s schedule. I wonder how to spend the day, I know the gripped cynic in me is going to make this whole day miserable. I can figure out approximately how long this day is going to be, and unlike Meursault I have no silent companion to share my calm desolation and make me feel less lonely. I only wish this feeling will evaporate with the heat of the day as most of the optimist resolutions made in night for the next day are gone with the morning blues.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Poem-Shoem: The begining
I have written these most outlandish lines which I regard as back bench poetry, named after the serene corner in my classroom where it was emanated. Back bench is the place where the ingenious and creative inhabitants of class breed their flair and so do I.
When commotion of emotions throb my heart,
My brain said: Beware we can’t handle it at all.
After all love’s notion is an ephemeral thought,
Let’s be realistic and let not poignancy stand tall.
Your heart’s delusion and our goal shouldn’t differ,
Ask it eminence or happiness what does it prefers.
That’s it dear. You can’t take it anymore. But caution this is just the commencement of a fresh sequence of crap in this blog. There are many others waiting to supersede it.
When commotion of emotions throb my heart,
My brain said: Beware we can’t handle it at all.
After all love’s notion is an ephemeral thought,
Let’s be realistic and let not poignancy stand tall.
Your heart’s delusion and our goal shouldn’t differ,
Ask it eminence or happiness what does it prefers.
That’s it dear. You can’t take it anymore. But caution this is just the commencement of a fresh sequence of crap in this blog. There are many others waiting to supersede it.
Monday, March 9, 2009
WHY NO GIRLFRIEND(s)?
Till then the interview was going slickly. I was confidently jabbering the dexterously practiced retort of all archetypal interview issues. But only till then.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a girlfriend? ME: No sir, not exactly.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Are you in the process of stalking some girl? ME: No sir, absolutely not. I mean there are girls who are friends (to be true precisely acquaintances), but not exactly what we mean by the term ‘GIRLFRIEND’.
INTERVIEWER: What according to your lexicon does girlfriend means? ME: Ahh…. (Paused a while to google all my raison d'être) …Sir a girlfriend is a regular female companion whom one trusts and shares all his thoughts with, and has some emotional intimacy.
INTERVIEWER: And you don’t. Are you biologically exact? Authenticate. ME: ……………………………I was blank. (Still sticking to the adeptly trained methodology I managed to smile, vacantly however).
It is long time since ‘then’ and I am still vexed figuring out what authentication that moron exactly anticipated. Coming from a place where apart from very close pals (definitely male) you can’t let slip to anyone else that you are even vaguely interested in girls, to a situation where having a girlfriend helps in enticing a respectable job certainly qualifies as a great alteration for me. Bothered by that echoing WHY within me I contemplated for some plausible reasons that why I don’t have a GF (let’s cut the chestnut short).
Sigmund Freud proposed that any mental muddle is caused solely by psychological rather than organic factors. (I wish I could tell this to that moron that nothing is needed to be verified biologically). So I started my interpretation from the phase of very creation of psyche, childhood. I have no sister and though I was turned sophisticated in a co-ed discipline I never had many friends till 10 years of age given my highly introvert nature then (currently it is simply introvert, somehow I have administered to do away with the adjective ‘highly’). So till then there was nothing like the notion of girls. There were just women and students. Though there was a girl in my neighborhood but she was always poised excessively feminine, too old to qualify for girl.
Things changed a bit in teenage. I became less reclusive and made some very manly kind of people ‘my dear friends’. They (or we) preposterously thought it was not the attribute of a real man to mingle up with girls. (Thank God I didn’t turn into a Shivsainik). We idiotically trusted Mark Twain when he wittily quoted “If your wife doesn’t like the smell of your cigar change her.”
Anyway the feeble believe, of we the neophytes, succumbed to our matured hormones. But being reclusive to girls that long, I never realized exactly when I developed the shyness towards this gender. When I realized that few of so understood other half of my class have grown-up into pretty young things (PYT), I was too diffident to initiate an association. I dreamed to talk with them forever but didn’t cause I was scared my words could turn into a meaningless babble. I was scared they might not like me, and that would have hurt.
Providentially, a new PYT, from a more urbanized environment, got admitted in my class and concurrently got interested in me. Despite the fact that there were many interested and few more eligible candidates she chose me. I think she liked the fact that I was the one who showed least curiosity in her. Oblivious of my shyness she naively thought I was different. In a way I was. Initially the inanity was intriguing and the fantasy of deeming that we were in a perfectly special world was captivating.
But soon I realized that it doesn’t exist and also the entire intricate emotional commotion drawn in in these short of affairs took over me. It seemed more of mess then bliss. And thus the only GF of my whole long life till now seemed a person in charge of my freedom, and I hate to be owned. The association wrecked then and there with all the culmination drama implicated. So we moved ahead using ideas as our maps. Initially it saddened a bit but sooner the sadness was overcome as the senses roused.
Then and there I realized the meaning behind the T-shirt wisdom ‘Love is like a beautiful flower, even the most attractive one will die someday’.
Since then lots of times I came across PYTs and one of the time in college I was profoundly fascinated but given my past experience and my present resolution to shed off the emotional part in me I practice patience and let the desire dry out on its own (My shyness helps keeping patience). Sometime I have to linger long but in most cases soon someday I spot that concerned PYT with some dim-witted fella and at once the longing departs.
But after all this learning still sometimes there is a nagging in some corner of my heart, which wishes if things were little different, if a decent and gracious lass would have taken some interest in me. See that’s the matter we never learn, we never change.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a girlfriend? ME: No sir, not exactly.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Are you in the process of stalking some girl? ME: No sir, absolutely not. I mean there are girls who are friends (to be true precisely acquaintances), but not exactly what we mean by the term ‘GIRLFRIEND’.
INTERVIEWER: What according to your lexicon does girlfriend means? ME: Ahh…. (Paused a while to google all my raison d'être) …Sir a girlfriend is a regular female companion whom one trusts and shares all his thoughts with, and has some emotional intimacy.
INTERVIEWER: And you don’t. Are you biologically exact? Authenticate. ME: ……………………………I was blank. (Still sticking to the adeptly trained methodology I managed to smile, vacantly however).
It is long time since ‘then’ and I am still vexed figuring out what authentication that moron exactly anticipated. Coming from a place where apart from very close pals (definitely male) you can’t let slip to anyone else that you are even vaguely interested in girls, to a situation where having a girlfriend helps in enticing a respectable job certainly qualifies as a great alteration for me. Bothered by that echoing WHY within me I contemplated for some plausible reasons that why I don’t have a GF (let’s cut the chestnut short).
Sigmund Freud proposed that any mental muddle is caused solely by psychological rather than organic factors. (I wish I could tell this to that moron that nothing is needed to be verified biologically). So I started my interpretation from the phase of very creation of psyche, childhood. I have no sister and though I was turned sophisticated in a co-ed discipline I never had many friends till 10 years of age given my highly introvert nature then (currently it is simply introvert, somehow I have administered to do away with the adjective ‘highly’). So till then there was nothing like the notion of girls. There were just women and students. Though there was a girl in my neighborhood but she was always poised excessively feminine, too old to qualify for girl.
Things changed a bit in teenage. I became less reclusive and made some very manly kind of people ‘my dear friends’. They (or we) preposterously thought it was not the attribute of a real man to mingle up with girls. (Thank God I didn’t turn into a Shivsainik). We idiotically trusted Mark Twain when he wittily quoted “If your wife doesn’t like the smell of your cigar change her.”
Anyway the feeble believe, of we the neophytes, succumbed to our matured hormones. But being reclusive to girls that long, I never realized exactly when I developed the shyness towards this gender. When I realized that few of so understood other half of my class have grown-up into pretty young things (PYT), I was too diffident to initiate an association. I dreamed to talk with them forever but didn’t cause I was scared my words could turn into a meaningless babble. I was scared they might not like me, and that would have hurt.
Providentially, a new PYT, from a more urbanized environment, got admitted in my class and concurrently got interested in me. Despite the fact that there were many interested and few more eligible candidates she chose me. I think she liked the fact that I was the one who showed least curiosity in her. Oblivious of my shyness she naively thought I was different. In a way I was. Initially the inanity was intriguing and the fantasy of deeming that we were in a perfectly special world was captivating.
But soon I realized that it doesn’t exist and also the entire intricate emotional commotion drawn in in these short of affairs took over me. It seemed more of mess then bliss. And thus the only GF of my whole long life till now seemed a person in charge of my freedom, and I hate to be owned. The association wrecked then and there with all the culmination drama implicated. So we moved ahead using ideas as our maps. Initially it saddened a bit but sooner the sadness was overcome as the senses roused.
Then and there I realized the meaning behind the T-shirt wisdom ‘Love is like a beautiful flower, even the most attractive one will die someday’.
Since then lots of times I came across PYTs and one of the time in college I was profoundly fascinated but given my past experience and my present resolution to shed off the emotional part in me I practice patience and let the desire dry out on its own (My shyness helps keeping patience). Sometime I have to linger long but in most cases soon someday I spot that concerned PYT with some dim-witted fella and at once the longing departs.
But after all this learning still sometimes there is a nagging in some corner of my heart, which wishes if things were little different, if a decent and gracious lass would have taken some interest in me. See that’s the matter we never learn, we never change.
MONEY MECHANICS
Society today is composed of a string of institution from political, legal, religious, social class, familiar values and occupational specialization. These institutions have a seminal significance in determining our perspective. Yet of all the institutions we are born into, directed upon and conditioned there seems to be no other system as grossly misunderstood and taken for granted as the monetary system. How money is created? What policies administrate it? And how it truly affects us is unfamiliar to a majority fragment of society. With 1% of population controlling 40% of wealth and 50% of population leaving at less than $2 a day one thing is sure there is something wrong with the system.
Understanding the system is like understanding why our life is what it is. What is money and how is it created? Gone are the days when gold was reserved in exchange of money circulated. Today money is piece of paper, circulated by federal reserves of different nations, carrying different domination. These pieces of paper are passed on to government in return of treasury bonds. The government hands it to banks and other financial institutes where they become legal money carrying value. And thus money is created.
Treasury bonds are by design instruments of debt. When fed receives them they create money out of thin air. In other words money is not coming out of the assets of the bank. The bank is simply inventing it. Perhaps except them only God can create something of value out of nothing. The government actually promises to buy back the bonds and takes money as a loan. Thus money itself is created out of loan.
Now the banks pass this money to people, charging them interest on it. This interest multiplies the actual sum many folds over the future. Suppose for eg the bank sanctions a loan of 1 lakh at an interest rate of 10%. So ten years down the line this money is compounded into 2.59 lakhs, and it keeps on increasing. Thus this 1 lakh of real money adds 1.59 lakh of virtual value. In fact in U.S. only 3% of money is in physical form rest is the compounded interest and treasury bonds.
Now see it like this when bank passes money to market it passes principal. But when it asks for the Amount one needs to pay principal + Interest. But from where comes the money to cover the interest that is charged. Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The only basis of money creation is credit loan so if all the persons are able to pay back all the loans and debt there will be no money in the market. In fact if there were no debts in our money system there wouldn’t be any money.
What it also means is that mathematically default and bankruptcy are literally built in the system as there always will be deprived receptacle of society that gets the short end of the stick. Physical slavery necessitates people to be housed and fed but economic slavery requires people to house and feed themselves. It is the biggest scam ever done and is an imperceptible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of bank and interest is its prime ammunition.
Understanding the system is like understanding why our life is what it is. What is money and how is it created? Gone are the days when gold was reserved in exchange of money circulated. Today money is piece of paper, circulated by federal reserves of different nations, carrying different domination. These pieces of paper are passed on to government in return of treasury bonds. The government hands it to banks and other financial institutes where they become legal money carrying value. And thus money is created.
Treasury bonds are by design instruments of debt. When fed receives them they create money out of thin air. In other words money is not coming out of the assets of the bank. The bank is simply inventing it. Perhaps except them only God can create something of value out of nothing. The government actually promises to buy back the bonds and takes money as a loan. Thus money itself is created out of loan.
Now the banks pass this money to people, charging them interest on it. This interest multiplies the actual sum many folds over the future. Suppose for eg the bank sanctions a loan of 1 lakh at an interest rate of 10%. So ten years down the line this money is compounded into 2.59 lakhs, and it keeps on increasing. Thus this 1 lakh of real money adds 1.59 lakh of virtual value. In fact in U.S. only 3% of money is in physical form rest is the compounded interest and treasury bonds.
Now see it like this when bank passes money to market it passes principal. But when it asks for the Amount one needs to pay principal + Interest. But from where comes the money to cover the interest that is charged. Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The only basis of money creation is credit loan so if all the persons are able to pay back all the loans and debt there will be no money in the market. In fact if there were no debts in our money system there wouldn’t be any money.
What it also means is that mathematically default and bankruptcy are literally built in the system as there always will be deprived receptacle of society that gets the short end of the stick. Physical slavery necessitates people to be housed and fed but economic slavery requires people to house and feed themselves. It is the biggest scam ever done and is an imperceptible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of bank and interest is its prime ammunition.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.
Nothing from me.
This speech is commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. I think is one of the best pieces of wisdom that would fit in 15 minutes. Like many things I deeply admire, I felt like sharing this one with people I feel connected to. You know this feeling when you come back from watching a great movie, and then you really want your friend to watch it too, just because you liked it so much. Its similar to that. So if you haven't already been through with this speech, please read it now. You won't repent these 15 minutes, you'll cherish them, hopefully!
So lets get started with the iconic Steve Jobs' words:
<< I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
>>
P.S. Anyone interested in watching the video may collect it from me.
This speech is commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. I think is one of the best pieces of wisdom that would fit in 15 minutes. Like many things I deeply admire, I felt like sharing this one with people I feel connected to. You know this feeling when you come back from watching a great movie, and then you really want your friend to watch it too, just because you liked it so much. Its similar to that. So if you haven't already been through with this speech, please read it now. You won't repent these 15 minutes, you'll cherish them, hopefully!
So lets get started with the iconic Steve Jobs' words:
<< I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
>>
P.S. Anyone interested in watching the video may collect it from me.
Friday, March 6, 2009
IN THE NAME ONLY
Well it’s been a long time coming. Almost three months. Somewhere in the middle of all the bedlam I was eventful contributing my own chaotic ingredient. In all these creative mayhem I happened to indulge in various new stints. One of which was producing a movie written and partially directed by me. And due to lack of actors I even got a role in it. The movie was 6:42 mins long, with a budget of 23 Rs only and my part was somewhere around 30 secs now that explains all your querris. About the script writing part here is the abstract that we submitted along with the mini movie.IN THE NAME ONLY
‘In the name only’ opens with an unknown man writing an entry ‘democracy?’ in his diary. Then the scene shifts to the office of cabinet minister Kashinath Tiwari where he is busy working on his biography aided by writer A.K. Joshi. They are joined by Kashinath’s political right-hand Ramakant. In the subsequent scenes it is disclosed that though Kashinath has never been to college he asks Joshi to put in writing the contrary and other such bluffs to exalt his image. While choosing an apt college name Ramakant advises sticking to a Hindi name which will support their Hindutva agenda.
In flashback it is revealed that Kashinath used to work at a tea stall where he came in contact with a contemporary materializing leader of a Hindu outfit. During a conversation the leader was impressed by his aggressive remarks and envisages in him the potential of a latent demagogue and hence seduces him to join his outfit. With time the leader’s calculation was established and along with Kashinath he reached to the corridors of power. The stature of Kashinath as a politician rose as he played the self proclaimed savior of Indian cultural and religious values.
The scene returns back to present where Kashinath is attending his son Munna’s call. Ramakant apprises Joshi that Munna was a University topper to which Kashinath reveals that that too was the game of power. The viewer is acquainted with the story of how Munna’s copy was swapped with that of a scholarly student Manohar, in a series of flashbacks. The writer Joshi is appalled to hear this story.
The picture now returns to the opening scene where it is disclosed that the unknown man writing the diary entry was in fact a disconsolate and poignant Joshi himself. After making the entry he takes out a letter addressed to him as ‘Dear daddy’. The letter is actually a suicide note by his son, who turns out to be the same boy Manohar.
Through this short film the creating team wants to communicate the message as what kind of people are running our politics, how the Indian demagogues have baked and elevated issues like religious and cultural discrepancies to assuage their self ambitions, how they are bluntly practicing favoritism and nepotism exclusive of hesitation. In the movie what starts as a normal working day in Joshi’s life in minister’s office develops into the day when he realizes how the politician has played with his son’s future and in a bigger picture with that of nation for meeting their own goals and how still as an individual he is helpless to still work for them, and how still are we the citizens susceptible to sordid politics.
P.S.- You may wonder why at all I posted this crap. Well it was out of sentiment spawned in me by affirmative reaction of enthusiastic fans. You know sometime even a thinking mind plays an emotional fool... and I am not even a thinking mind. Now I really feel sympathy for Rakesh Omprakash Mehra.
P.P.S.- The movie made it to the finals of 'Cognizance 09' in eastern India. :)
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