Things that have irked me in the last few weeks

I spent three weeks at home in Chennai post-endsems and pre-internship, preparing for a farcical GRE, and the trials and tribulations I underwent here due to heat and boredom were severely compounded by the following phenomenons, which when named, must be preceded by a string of the choicest invectives in all possible languages.


In no particular order, they were:
1. Times of India ; Chennai Edition
This lousy paper took over thus far staunchly The Hindu households (not the religious affiliation here.) due to their marketing policy that appealed to the cheapskate preeminent in all Tam-Brahms. At the niggardly sum of Rs. 260 or so, you could subscribe to this paper and get the lousy rag throughout the year, and they threw in a diary and a couple of travel bags for free. I think we paid for the diary and the travel bags though, for who could charge anything for such trash as the TOI paper? I come home from Surathkal, aching for the crossie and the Editorial, and find this vile joke of a newspaper basking in the seat previously occupied by honorables such as The Hindu and The Economic Times. Oh, sin!
Typos are the order of the day; maintaining consistency in article genre clearly means squat to the bunch of juveniles staffing the TOI office. A pathetic attempt at imitating BT Page 3 has often ugly and terribly dressed men and women posing for a cameraman who if he had any self-respect would kill either his subjects or himself. A Tween-times of sorts is clearly a forgery of Young World, and a terrible one at that. Severely demoralizing to see this paper every morning, leading to harsh words exchanged between mother and self lead to the eventual scrapping of this (i don't want to call it newspaper).

My sister claims people in the US refer to TOI more familiarly as the Toilet paper Of India. Well done, I thought.

2. Shobha De

Excuse me while I control my urge to retch and tear my hair out.

She wrote this book called 'Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable' which was reviewed relentlessly by the media.

I quote, from the book ;

-- Your screen cannot display the content here on account of its atrociously inane nature --

In my opinion, Shobha De should be bludgeoned to bloody death by a rumpus of bibulous baseball-bat bearing baboons. The bitch.


3. Women with discount coupons:

I was recently in line at a supermarket behind a woman dressed to utterly blind, where she had about three cartloads of groceries she wanted to bill. The woman at the counter wearily lifted the last box of tissues (There were five, I think. Apparently a woman prone to much sweat.) People were waiting in line behind her, tapping their feet, clicking their tongues, making noises, whatever it is that people do to signify their irritation. This woman calmly, so calmly, takes out her Sodexho coupons and starts counting them. They're marked in denominators of Rs 5, and she has a bill of approximately 3k. I have a vague suspicion of having died and been reborn in the time she took to count to 300 or whatever.


I had a bunch more I wanted to write about, but it's already taken me three weeks or so to come up with this post I first started writing about way back in May, and it's June now.

An Ideal Man

A fascinating dialogue in Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance between three women on the characteristics an ideal man must possess.





Mrs. Allonby: (A woman after my own heart!) The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
Lady Hunstanton: But how could he do both, dear?
Mrs. Allonby: He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him.
Lady Stutfield: Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women.
Mrs. Allonby: If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe we know the use of useful things, that would be unforgivable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want.
Lady Caroline: As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments.
Mrs. Allonby: He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should always be ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us forever at a quarter to eight when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that everyone should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved quite badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he was admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.



===================================================================

So gratifying to know that nothing much has changed between 18th century England and now. :P

House To-let

Proceedings from the letting of this extraordinary house go towards sanitation in developing countries. To read more see here.

I wonder if the people who rent the place will be called looters.

Eleven things to do...

Somethings to do when you're feeling down. Not just low because of a bad day-- low on self esteem, low on energy, plain low on life. Its happened to all of us, to me enough times for me to statistically analyze it. Somethings I've found to work for me...

Disclaimer: some of the following may be hazardous to your/near-ones/dear-ones health.

Follow as is advisable.

They're not in any specific order because different things work in different cases for different people. (and its surprising how often we forget that!)

1. Music is the soul of life:

Music, music, music. Very simple. Listen to it, play it if you're so inclined (insert disclaimer). This really helps take the blues away like nothing else can. To those masochists out there who love prolonging that feeling of agony and wallowing in it, there's absolutely nothing better than (1). Mood elevators, mood thickeners, mood diluents, mood suppressants... your playlists should supply it all.

1) APC+ Chains+ Opeth+ Tool+ Katatonia+ Ayreon+ Symphony X

or

2) Death Cab for Cutie+ Belle & Sebastian+ The Beatles+ Hootie & The Blowfish+ INXS + Aimee Mann+ Tori Amos+ Bob Dylan+ Orange Juice

usually works for me depending on my kind of low.

2. Retail Therapy!

Several people argue over the efficacy of this method and yet more others about the moral and spiritual ruin it will eventually lead us to but I am of the humble opinion that they can take their faces and bury it in our shopping bags. Retail therapy works like a CHARM for me and for several of my friends and acquaintances.

Here again, are two schools of thought--

1) buy expensive. Fewer items, but go for the high-end price tags. Clothes, perfume, shoes, bags, whatever makes you happy. I have a friend who buys a shirt for each really depressing day he has and he actually remembers the occasion whenever he wears that shirt.

2) quantity over quality! (this is my favourite personally.)

colorful, inexpensive, almost entirely useless products. These are a few of my favourite things :-)

a. pencils

b. pillows

c. scrunchies

d. lip balm

e. slippers

f. soap (I have this inexplicable fetish for different kinds of soap.)

Just binge. Buy whatever you want to. The cheaper, the uglier, the more useless and the more colorful it is the better. Show the world and yourself money is nothing.

3. Eat/Drink:

Treat yourself to food. Lots of it. Either have a four-course meal at your favourite restaurant or go roadside-kadai hopping. Pani puri here, (a very dubious) grilled sandwich there, steamed corn near there, watermelon juice still further down.

Other options include beer/hard liquor which I feel are downers so you shouldn't be resorting to those. Whatever works for you, of course.

4. Sleep.

No more need be said. Doing 7 hours daily? Make it 10. 8 hours is your usual? Go on to 12. Sleep it all away. There's no problem that's gonna be as insurmountable as it was after twelve lovely hours of shut-eye.

5. Cook.

This is obviously only when you’ve had some experience in this field. You might land up giving a lot of grief to your kitchen and mom/roommate if you persist without rudimentary culinary skills. Try something elaborate, with seasoning, dressing, icing, you get it. It’s very tiring (in a good way) and takes your mind off your woes!! Plus you can do (3) after cooking. :D

6. Bathe.

A lot of your personal problems (with your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your friends, your colleagues) could be caused due to B.O. Even if you're not quite Smelly Billy it never hurts to clean up a bit. You feel immensely cleaner both mentally and physically and hence refreshed after your sojourn in ze salle du bain. A few ingredients for the perfect bath-

1) shampoo. Like a Mallu would say (in a considerably different accent) you haven't had a bath till you've washed your hair.

2) nice-smelling soap. (ref 2(2)f)

3) aromatherapy candles (if you don't think that's gay. or even if you do. *snicker*)

4) warm water. (this is a MUST)

7. A walk on the shore.

For those privileged enough to reside close to the sea, a walk on the shore at sunset/sunrise can calm most moods. However it must be mentioned that this is not an elevator, this is a diluent. In some cases it has resulted rather adversely in an urge to jump into the sea. In these cases restraint is advised. Death by drowning is not pleasant and your bloated body that washed up on a shore somewhere leaves much to be desired aesthetically. Try pills for a suitably good-looking death.

8. Chocolate.

A popular favourite over generations, chocolate (as distinguished from 'candy', 'sweets' and other such trifling and inadequate substitutes) is a sure-fire mood elevator. The more it melts in the mouth the more you can feel your problems dissolving away. Mmmm. Don't freeze it, but don't lick it off the wrapper either. It has to achieve an optimal consistency.

But let's face it, boys and girls. It isn't chocolate without cocoa. It ISN'T. Don't try deceiving yourself or the multitudes.

9. Doodle.

Doodle, draw graffiti, draw dirty pictures, voodoo dolls indicative of your professor being nailed to a painful death, whatever works for you. If you have crayons or sketchpens, Get creative! Maybe you can tack it up on your wall and call it avant-garde post-structuralist surrealistic art.

you can also try making a list of all the naughty words you know. In different languages. Categorize them alphabetically and cross-index with respect to frequency and context.

10. Cry (incl. of scream, shout, wail, bawl, etc.)

A good long cry never hurt anyone. Let the vocal chords and the ocular water dispensers have a party. You'll feel better when it's done.

11. Standard Lies That Should Make You Feel Better:

a. The race is not always to the swift.

b. You can only join the dots looking backwards.

c. Everything happens for a Reason.

d. There is a God and life is fair.

e. You are a fool to still be reading this.

Cars and Babies

I wrote this awhile ago. And wanted to post after an age. It's been so long.

I think one of the most depressing things in the world is the dust dripping off a car in the rain. It forms layers and streaks across the car, forming strange patterns in the coat of dust, revealing patches of white that haven’t been seen in ages.

If it’s not enough that the owner didn’t care to clean his car, it worse that he chose to let the rain do its inefficient job for him. He should have atleast had the consideration to not take the car out in the rain.

It’s heart-breaking, really. To see half the layers gone. To see the dust all collected at the bottom of the fender or door. To see patches that were less fortunate than their neighbors. And to see people sitting inside their car listening to music when there’s dirt dripping off their side. I mean, how more icky can that get?

I love when a plump kid trips and falls. Not that I want it to get hurt or bruised or anything. I just love the way the fall sounds. And the way the stout little kid will sit up, completely bewildered. It’s even better when a concerned mother is around (preferably stout too). She’ll come running from wherever she was, and exclaim at the child. As far as I have observed, that exclamation frightens the child into tears more than the physical abrasions. Oh my god, she’s screaming at me for something, I must be hurt. Let’s scream before she starts yelling again, if only to shut her up. Scene ends in stout feller and stouter mother outdoing each other at screaming.

You Should Rule Mars

Mars is a planet that shines brightly and loops wildly around the solar system. You are perfect to rule Mars, because you are both energetic and independent. Like Mars, you seems attractive and bright to others - but you're difficult to pin down. You are a great thinker, but you only think in the present and ignore the future. Full of enthusiasm and inspiration, you are into your own thing... and rather insensitive to others.

What Planet Should You Rule?

Oh Crap! So i'm not actually from Venus! Boo hoo.

'Portnoy's Complaint', Philip Roth

I don't particularly believe in writing reviews- A lot depends on the writer's personal taste and his capacity to appreciate or scorn literature and it could be very misleading to a reader of entirely different views. However, this is a book that made me want to write about it. Ladies and Gentlemen(or the Very Few Fellas That Read This Blog), I give you Portnoy's Complaint.



This book is funny as it is wild. It's popularly touted as the most outrageously funny book about sex ever written, and while I strongly suspect there might be several others, this book is outrageous in the amount of introspection it generates. I thus boldly propose that there is a bit of Portnoy in all of us, and whether you choose to acknowledge it or not is upto you. I hasten to clarify that this is not a book about Mike Portnoy, bless him.

It is a monologous narrative, from Alexander Portnoy, Male with Penis, Jew (because those are the only entities he chooses to acknowledge) to his psychiatrist Dr. Spielvogel. Acknowledged by many to be semi-autobiographical of the author, Philip Roth, this book is a dark, funny one.

The book begins with a definition of the symptom, lending the reader his first taste of what's to come:
portnoy's complaint: A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic implulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.

This book could be described as Mind versus Penis, but there are so many more overtones and undercurrents to this that to do so would be grossly innacurate at best. This book is a struggle of a widely read, scholarly man in the highest circles of responsibility, between attachment to his strongly Jewish roots and his desire to be of the more refined class, of his natural parental gratitude and love and his supreme hate of his surroundings and upbrinding, of his intellectual bent of mind and its forever grappling with incurable sexual longing (He hates being with The Monkey because of her lack of intellectual assets, but cannot tear himself away either)

It is tragic and funny simultaneously- tragic because of the events that occur and funny because of Portnoy's reaction or the lack of it. The protagonist lives in a Jewish home with a severely Jewish mother, who cuddles and cossets young (and old) Portnoy, leading to some of his earliest and most embarrassing memories, along with a perpetually constipated father whose stories of attempted bowel movement are hilarious and yet most touching, and a rather unattractive sister only made bearable by marriage. His Jewishness and his relationship to his parents has inexorably influenced the way he has grown up, with them tempering almost every action he takes, much to his disgust.

His outlook is described clearly in

'..how much longer do I go on conducting these experiments with women? How much longer do i go sticking this thing into the holes that come available to it-- first this hole, then when I tire of this hole, that hole over there... and so on. When will it end? Only why should it end! To please a father and mother? To conform to the norm? Why on earth should I be so defensive about being what was honorably called some years ago, a bachelor? So what's the crime? Sexual freedom? In this day and age? Why should I bend to the bourgeosie? Do I ask them to bend to me?..."

and

'Good Christ, a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!'

This book moves seamlessly from the present to the past and back, loses track in the middle, reaches conclusions to parts started earlier in the book in later sections, etc. The narrative disintegrates in parts of the book, but it is a monologue, and a highly confused, intelligent and irritated man's monologue at that, and it's bound to jump like crazy.
Personally, I found it relaxing. :)


I would recommend this as a read to anyone who's not of a very conservative bent of mind. The masturbation scenes in themselves are likely to give you a stitch in the side.

I'm currently reading American Pastoral, also by Roth, and am looking forward to reading more of his Zuckerman novels.

Two Thumbs up!!

Keys

I don't get it when locks aren't numbered in order. People like to number their locks according to their keys, with little itty bits of paper stuck underneath the keyhole to indicate the number of the key. All this is very well, when you're taking the pain to stick paper at the keyhole you might as well stick paper on the key to give them uniform numbers.

I mean, ten locks in a row of cupboards(which are, by the way, built specifically with 3-feet tall people in mind and to give anyone over five feet acute lumbar spondylosis). It would be nice if you had one, two, three... ten. Drawer one, key one, lock one. Drawer two, key two, lock two. Nice and orderly and symmetrical. Common sense. But no, drawer one has key AB9980, and lock 437. Drawer two has key UN8894, and lock 789. No method in the madness whatsoever.

So when you're searching for a key, you're kneeling by the drawer, squinting at the miniscule numbers printed in bad handwriting on the lock.

Damn, I think this is 843. Does anyone have key number 843?

Random moron in the vicinity: That's the lock number. What's the key number? Look up the corresponding key number on the chart.

(I struggle up, find chart, match 843 to key number.)

Does someone have key number AB6682?

Random moron 2: Nope, I have GR9983.

Moron 3: GH1121 here.

Gah.

(I kneel again, to squint at the number correctly)

Crap. It's 834, not 843. Fuck this shit, man.

Absolutely random moron that should be burnt and killed: I think AB6682 is for the next drawer, check the lock number???

(I lean all the way to the next drawer to see the lock there, getting dangerously off-balance and fall midway)

(after brushing dirt off) Lock number 325.

Same dipshit: No, I don't think it's right. You'll have to check with the chart.


SOME common sense, you silly dipshits. I mean, what's the idea? 325, 834, 879, 526, 429? And don't even get me started on the key numbers. I mean, you do want people to find the keys and use the damn shelves right? or have you got potfuls of gold inside?

*yawn*

<thoughts floating around a random cross-section of people in little bitty bubbles over their little heads>
A: I wish I could earn a little more tomorrow than I did today.

B: I wish I could look a little more beautiful tomorrow than I looked today.

C: I wish he'd smile at me a little more tomorrow than he did today.

D: Is she going to eat that last fry?

E: (blank)

Me: I wish I could sleep a little more tomorrow than I did today.

The only thing i really want to do in my life is sleep. As long, as comfortably, as soundlessly, as undisturbed, as cozily, as warmly as possible.

I'm not lazy, I say. Sleeping is my one true passion in life.

Like right now. There is nothing I will not do to be able to curl up with a cover and a pillow. My eyes are barely open because it's too much of an effort to keep the lids fully open. I prefer to let a bare minimum of light come in and disturb the sanguine sleep-suspended nerves in my eyes. Besides, keeping them thus positioned lends a blurry image wherever you look, thus not taxing your brain or your eyes too much, letting them stew in intoxicating indolence.

My brain is one-track, it feels like tapioca someone put in a bowl out in the sun to cook. there are dull echoes all around of "sleep". Like someone came and bellowed about a month ago in the Silent Valley and it's still doing rounds. It's not "sleep!" or "sleep?" or "sleep." It's just "sleep". Distant, but persistent, dull. Like an incantation right at the back of my head to induce it, as if it needed any urging. Sleep comes, at all times, at all places, in all situations. It needs no external influence, and meets with no internal resistance.

Frost was an ass when he wrote "the woods are.... miles to go before I sleep." Needless torture, IMHO. Why postpone pure eternal undisturbed sleep for walking miles when you can have it here and now? I mean, bliss and paradise and utopia are all of what man's looking for in life, right? Why fight so much, catch so many flights and run around all over the place sweating and breathless and altogether so BUSY when you can quite comfortably turn off the lights, pull the covers over your head, a hand over that extra pillow and pull it under your chin and go to sleep NOW?

People, they are stupid. They have sex, do business, drive cars, play guitars, drink beer, smoke weed, play chess, poke hypodermics into their ugly arms, watch television, reflect light off their heads, do whatever the shit it is they do to keep themselves happy. I'm not blaming them, hey, they do what they know, the chess players, they're as stupid as the fornicating machines, to me.

The problem is, this, good man, is a fucked up world. There is starvation and exploitation and torture and madness and evil and fundamentalism and capitalism and conservatism and pollution and the big hole and every where you look there's another problem right around the corner, waiting to screw you over just when you thought you managed to get away from it for a little while.

But come, friend. Rest your head and go to sleep.
Herein lies the truth. Look no further, paradise is possible here and now.
Because once you're asleep, you're in BLISS. You've got sunshine in a bag. You're away from all the shit, and it feels SO good. You've got a small cozy world of your own once your eyelids close and it becomes dark outside. This string quartet starts playing inside and you can do whatever you want.



Stop searching forever, happiness is a nap away.

today is the trippiest day of my life.

Current Mood: intimidated
Current Music: robert miles- children

its strange how one never knows what life ever has in store for them.
its strange, how much you come to want something which you just cannot have.
its strange how you ignore palpably the most obvious things in life.
its strange how you refuse the best things in life, thinking they aren't.
its strange how you regret after it's too late.
its strange how you know you'll regret, people tell you you'll regret, you predict you'll regret, and then you finally regret. whoever talked of warnings?

yeah. life's strange.
========================================

======================= Death is not everything. It's more cruel not to be able to die.

written on September 02, 2002, at 10:02.

seven phases of bitter butter.

If thou must buy butter, and find that it is bitter, thou shalt take the bitter butter and add some better butter to make the bitter butter better.

--- I talk Shit ----

And everything started with that damn guard who went off to get that damn fag.

waiting woman.

This tearing loneliness inside…

This strange inconsistency between belonging and not belonging…

This mindless yet continual awareness of knowing you’re not doing what you want to do… but also consistently reminded that you do not know what you want to do…

Having to deal with people asking you every time about how you’re doing. Having to deal with people not asking you ever about how you’re doing.

Pushing a strand of hair behind your ear and resting your chin in your hand…. Staring vacantly into the sky or at someone… Wanting to rest that gaze on a face that understands.. feel the touch of a hand that knows what it’s like…

Waiting forever for the truth… waiting, for anything… for something different, something the same, anything…

A thousand years of this moment…

Your Personality Is Like Acid

A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict. One moment you're in your own little happy universe... And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Sense

He lay in a cloud of something that melted into his being, swirled him around, drew a veil over his thoughts and made as simple an action as moving his hand impossible. Thunder crashed outside his cloud, and rain poured everywhere. Rain fell to the earth in great sorrow-filled drops, collectively soaking their sorrow in tellurian salt. He didn’t notice, and didn’t care to. He lay in his cloud like he was floating on a giant waterbed, weightless and immobile. His body was light and free, his soul shackled by chains of iron to the unnamed. His eyes were closed because the reality his world inside offered was more compelling than any pittance of reality the outside world could offer.

He spun in a greenish ethereal mist, high above the earth, diving in abandon to the depths of the ugly city, rising up unscathed to court the angels watching above, danced through the clouds playing peek-a-boo with the sun and finally stood swathed in the silver light of the moon, letting his shadow fall long and strange on the world below. It had lied to, loved, hurt and bewitched him.

Her smiling photo lay cracked and shattered on the floor.

She emerged from the photo, in a million real colours, and smiled at him. Her fingers brushed past his, tempting, tantalizing. She was in black and white now, and earth and green then, blue and silver next, her eyes sparked like clear water and her hair danced light on her shoulders when she moved. She reached out to him, and oh, so tantalizingly close but he could not reach out to her… he was free, and bound, but wait… now, she was an animation, she was a queen in a tiara and an azure silk gown and she danced, oh, how she danced, it lifted his shattered heart to see her dance so fast, faster and faster but oh the real her would never again dance like this, it broke his heart, spinning so fast she was a blur….

The blur spiraled into a ghost town that he could see from his green mist above. In pitiful age worn poverty struck colour he saw the houses and the roads, the people and the shops. His mother and his father, colours mismatched and hues faded. A cotton sari folded neatly on an armchair. There was sound now, painful, painful sound searing through his soul, voices that were never meant to be raised, words never to be uttered, all resounding inside his head, secrets never meant to be revealed, all in agonizing clarity and absolutely distinct, unmistakable.

There were sobs, then vision was blurred, everything was distorted, he could taste the salt, even now, the salt, not in the dal, not in the fresh rotis, he could taste the wheat, now he could taste the alcohol, he could taste it now, acidic, warming, burning. He could see again the courtroom, forbidding and decisive, endless time in the courtroom, an eternity, and disappointment crashing down like thunder, thunder, and rain washing away the tears but leaving a void, emptiness and a hollow racking dry sob that wrings everything out of you….

Left with nothing but the custody of her two children. Nowhere to send them, nothing to feed them. Yet, they had survived, grown, and she had died happy. Back then there was nothing, but they had the future that held everything to live for… but now, now was the future, and the future now held nothing…

He smelt her perfume on his skin, on his lips, on his neck, he felt her hair… he felt it, yes, so soft, smooth, and baby skin, fresh roti, the wheat in their fields, the earth, the salt of the earth…. Freshly mown grass. Green, green freshly cut grass. Gunshots, twenty one of them- each piercing the still air- Mother, can you hear them, they’re sending their son to you, he’s joining you now, leaving me alone now, all alone, weary, lost, Mother, I am numb, hear me, hear me, what am I going to do now… they give me the flag, I feel it, it is heavy, Brother, I don’t want it, but the flames are high now, they burn hot, and they dance, she dances too, she dances in fiery red and orange, in my arms, she dances alone, she spins, she dances in white, she will marry tomorrow, he’s a rich man, good family, but will she dance like your fire, brother, there is now rain, rain, it fuels your pyre. How, I don’t know. I’m all alone now, always have been. The white of my clothes is drenched, soaked in rain, but your fire does not go out, you will not come back to life… I can’t feel too much now, the rain is stripping me of tears and leaving me hollow with an ache… oh this agonizing ache, this pain… mother, you sing, and my brother, he talks… oh, she laughs, so sweetly she laughs… I can hear nothing else… The visions are faster now. I smell grass… a flower… discontent, betrayal, and I taste… her lips, dal, salt…bitter, bitter blue pills, mother… blood…

The cloud slowly begins to dissolve, the fog fades as the green mist spins faster and faster. He himself spins faster and faster, the links on his soul breaking, shattering, flying into nothingness. The shadow is long, but getting shorter now. His senses shut down.

The last to go, a million, myriad colours of light in my head, in my eyes, visceral, blinding, revealing, realizing…this is where… heaven or hell, life or death, love or hate… body or soul… this, this light... nothing else, only light everywhere… no sensation, only light…. Then… only dark.

top ten reasons people do what they do

10. It's part of an endless chain of action and reaction.
09. They acknowledge their actions are a miniscule part of the larger balance of a greater karma.
.
.
.
.
.
02. They're hungry.
01. Arbit.

Apocrypha, Part I

NOTE::

The characters or the theme bear absolutely no resemblance to my friends/family/acquaintances. The following story is entirely a part of my imagination. Please excuse the profanity.
Thanks.


The changing colors of the television screen reflected off the polished metal-and-glass display case and caught her eye more often than the television screen itself. Her eyes defocused often behind her glasses as she drifted in and out of the reality in her apartment on the 9th floor. The glazed look the defocusing lent her face often made her friends and family suspect she was on drugs and they often secretly discussed how to get her off them. She was slightly surprised when her brother hinted strongly about the inadvisability of drugs at such a vulnerable age, and assumed he was soliloquizing. She suggested a good rehab center and advised him not to tell their parents he was on drugs. He’d stared at her blankly. Too far gone to be helped, she’d shrugged, and had walked away leaving him confused and scratching his head.


A woman in a pink salwar-kameez was shrieking about the current cold wave killing hundreds in North India and she focused on the television screen, giving credence to the fact that the woman may actually know what she was talking about. Most people around her didn’t know what they were talking about, or doing. It seemed to be the latest fad, doing things blindly on impulse, without thinking, leaving the brain in cold storage to be used by generations to come. Maybe they were compensating the children of the future for the gas deficiency by leaving them their unused brains. She really couldn’t account for the fact that most of the people she came in contact with had had lobotomies with magnificently concealed stitches, otherwise. The woman in pink, for example- she looked like a normal person, quite warm, with a pink Cashmere sweater and silk scarf to match- without severe cerebral paralysis or some other such obscure mental disorder, and yet she continued forming words with no meaning while the cameraman zoomed into a shot of a shivering, waist-upwards naked pre-teen boy who had probably been dragged out of the comparative warmth of his hut to stand in the biting cold winds to provide the real-time TV effect for the millions of viewers huddled up in blankets with warm coffee.


Suddenly the woman in pink metamorphosed into an impossibly round, fat-bottomed, tragic little politician who was made fatter if such a thing were possible by the multiple sweaters and shawls that looked expensively warm, who spoke in a high, pathetic little whine about how his hands were tied and how much he was trying to do for the people who were suffering from the cold. She nodded firmly. His hands were tied inexorably to the woolen gloves that held a steaming cup of coffee. The phone rang somewhere in the vicinity and she reached out to pick it up.

“Yes.”
“Hello? We’re stuck in the rain. We’ll be an hour late. I just called to tell you so you wouldn’t get worried.” Her mother said.
“Thank you.”
“What? Oh. Yes, Yes, I suppose. We’ll bring dinner.” her mom said, a little disconcerted.
“Thank you.” She hung up.


‘She gets stranger day by day.’ her mother would be telling her father who had stopped listening to anything his family said about fifteen years ago. Not because nothing they said had any intellectual relevance any more, but because he had more or less lost the ability to comprehend anything beyond his opinion. Her brother was the universally accepted angel in the family, the boy wonder who had a smile and a kind word for everyone… everyone that mattered. He had been born with the unnatural capacity to identify people and things that were of consequence to him and his material future. She, closer to his age and able to see things her parents turned a blind eye to, knew that ‘universally accepted angel’ was a misnomer and ‘unacknowledged ass’ would be a better description.


And herself? The Strange. Always sarcastic, critical, smart-ass, uncaring, selfish. She smiled to herself when she realized how hollow the words sounded in her head. They often had no meaning any more- sentences were rarely much more than words strung together, and words had never been too much more than letters combined to sound good. Of course, there were exceptions. Just as the words fuck off sounded so perfectly rhythmic, in resonance with the emotion that the word generated, poodle was such a silly-sounding word, and she felt, even had a derogatory connotation to the dog in question. Of course, she’d come to lose any feelings generated with describing herself that way. It was just how others described her, and given the amount of intelligence she credited others with, it was probably pointless to take their description. Until a while ago, she rather felt happy about being categorized cynical, critical and uncaring. It rather distinguished her from the other positive, encouraging and altruistic personalities that her immediate social circle seemed to be made up of.
But again, once she realized they had no idea what they were talking about, she realized she probably wasn’t critical or cynical at all. After all, they were just tossing words around probably because substituting ‘effing bitch’ in place of all the adjectives above would be politically incorrect. She didn’t like being called selfish, though. Even though it seemed to others to fit well in with her character, she thought selfishness characteristic of a degenerate organism. Parasitic behavior was inexcusable in a higher evolved body like man, and every action that was selfish was one step closer to unmasking oneself to reveal the unicellular organism within the human exterior. Of course, that was debatable. Man was taking definitive steps towards de-evolving back into an animal.


She reflected with a grin that the docile sheep was the preferred morph. And not all men were becoming simple sheep, but often wolves in sheep’s clothing. Ha. At least the sheep had the guts to be its brainless fluffy self. Was intelligence and being one thought quicker than the next person the most critical thing in the world? Couldn’t simple redneck values or emotions exist that weren’t classified by supercilious neo-Freudians into belonging to the id, ego and superego?


She turned the television off and headed directly to the terrace. It was dark and wet as expected, and was extremely windy. She blew air out steadily and watched the raindrops distort her white, cold breath. The feeling of standing eighteen floors elevated above the road traffic and watching her breath-dissolved drops fall down into eternity below was exhilarating. She leaned back slightly into the open sky and watched the dark rain clouds as the drops hit her face and hair heavily and streamed down her body, drenching her slowly but to the bone. The wind was strong and blew her wet hair away from her face and body, fanning her cold breath out into a mist above. She blew out again and stood submissively against the wind, her arms at her sides, her knees slightly bent, her face tilted back to feel the cold rain sting her, drench her body completely so wet that she could no longer feel her clothes on her skin. Her lips formed the golden words up to the sky above.

Fuck You.

what, every arbit post has to have a title?

Bah.

What a lame thing this title is. I mean, I'm here to bitch. And be philosophical. and you want me to title my bitchings? I mean, yeah, up yours.

Things i did today.
1. visited Patti (good thing)
2. stepped in dog shit. (bad thing.)
3. listened to drops of jupiter 11 times. (.. thing.)

I'm back to college in 3 days man. I can't believe this!! It hardly feels like I got here today morning. And I know you're saying, ah with a been there done that but GO AWAY! I don't care!

It's not fair them asking me to come back. I know I'm wanted back at college but surely the poor dipshits can do without my presence until maybe, ah, next semester?

That's how long a soul vacation I want.

Breathe.

mood: antagonized.

that's enough!!

How continuously thoughts run through the mind....

Like you're standing inside a room and you're continuously being pelted by these small elf-like things with balloons filled with coloured water and each time one hits you you're suffused with a different hue and sometimes multiple ballons strike you simultaneously and if you're lucky the colour's good but sometimes you land up looking like a moron... absolutely confused... stop, halt.. goddamn you, STOP throwing those balloons at me I have enough to deal with here you! I said stop it! Dammit... you thing, you... you, stop throwing thoughts at me! I don't want to THINK!!!!

The Accent Effect

I remember this conversation as of three years ago. And it still makes me grin.

My 14 year old cousin had come down from the States fully equipped with halter tops and a strong East coast accent which was often difficult for even her family to interpret. For us lower mortals, it was virtually a lost case. For quite a while, I got by with sign language after which I began to recognize the sounds.(the words were still tough.) My grandmother had given up on talking to her and used my aunt as translator. Gotta admire my cousin's determination though. Not once through the whole month did we understand a sentence at the first trial.

My grandmother's house, where my relatives were staying, is in the same apartment complex as mine. And we had a parallel line telephone system between Patti's house. That was when BSNL lines took four months to turn into anything more concrete than an empty promise. Patti didn't get too many phone calls (didnt. Now she networks much better than I do. But I digress.) so we drew an extra line from one of the two landlines at home and connected it to a phone there. So what often happened was phone calls for me/sister/father at that number used to get picked up at Patti's and had to be transferred back here- or if we picked it up here as well, the line had to kept down there, blah blah. Following is an excerpt of one such instance.

Note: The following conversation is to be read with appropriate tamil and East coast accents.

Three rings. I leave the sofa to get it, before which the rings stop- indicating the line was picked up at Patti's. I pick up.

Cousin: Hel-ll-oh.
Innocent caller: Yallo? Yallo?
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
I.C: Yallo? Yallo? Yallo?
Cousin: Hey, who IS this? Hell-oh!!?
Prabha: *muffled laughter*
I.C: Yallo? Ramakrishnan aiyya veeda? Yallo?
Cousin: Who's that? Who's Ayya? Mo-oom, do you know any Rama Ayya? * Rama Ayya- rahma ah-yah
I.C: Yallo ma? Enna ma neenga? Naan plumber peysaren! Yallo! Yallo! Ramakrishnan sir irukkangala?
Cousin: No, mo-om, some guy got the wrong number, he's asking for a Rama Ayya. Hey, you got the wrong number.
Plumber: Enna wrong number aa? Enna ma solligara? (Woman, what the hell are you saying?) Yallo medam eez Ramakrishnan saar?
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
Plumber: Yallo? Yello? Yallo-yello?
Prabha: Hello? Hello? (I couldn't resist gatecrashing the Hello party.)
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
Prabha: Hello? Hello?
Plumber: Yallo? Yullo?

And on that lovely note the plumber slammed the phone down.

The only one in the family who wasn't too happy about the relation of the tale was Papa. :-( He lost a good plumber.
And yes, we disconnected the parallel line system and got Patti a separate line. Which is now always busy, I must add.

a little too ironic

Its like rain on your wedding day
Like a free ride when you've already paid
The good advice you just didnt take...
Who would have thought... it figures....

Isn't it ironic... don't you think...

Oh, I do think.

Come back home after four months.. (I know I came back twice in the middle, but for inconsequential periods of time)... eight days gone past.. and the only thing I can say I've done worth its while is is visit the doctor...

How come it happens this way each time... you plan and plan and fervently hope your plan works out next week, or next month... time crawls by unendurably...then somehow, bam! you're in the next month, and... excuse me, isn't something missing...?? Your plan? Shot to pieces!

Male 1(18) and I had big plans of hanging out in December, watching movies, shopping, walking the streets, eating out, spending hours at Besant Nagar beach, catching up on four months... M1(18) catches a flu, and now won't return any phone calls. A flu one week ago and the guy can't return frickin' phone calls?

Female 1(18) and yours truly have been planning sleepovers in December since what seems like eternity. So much information (Read gossip) to exchange. Especially since this particular woman is the person I've been relating practically everything going on in my life to since... seventh grade?? F1(18) is still at college... and after a brief stopover of three days at home where she will have multiple things to do, she departs to some obscure bullshit place for a family vacation. *teeth grinding* Have fun.

Male 2(17) and I kept in amazing touch while at college. Quite surprising, considering the circumstances and level of communication between us before leaving to college. I think we both naturally assumed we'd talk a lot more once back in town. And meet often. And yet, this strange constraint of a self-built wall. Aah.. yeah.. lunch... sometime next week... umm... I guess...

~
Meet the man of your dreams
then meet his beautiful wife...
~

A little too ironic, I think.