I wish I had a choice; there must be another way…

There isn’t, life is like the bits of shaving cream that’s still there after you are done, equal parts of white lather and tiny pieces of hair. It all gets flushed at the end.
What does it matter? Life? Live it or lump it.

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

- The Beatles

Hey guys,
I got this scan of a hand out for UR Ananthamurthy...it's too big to mail to you guys hence I am going to post it here...anyhow...happy studying..and lets hope this paper ends well fast.

Take care and best of luck.

New song posted above, I will follow you into the dark- Death Cab for Cutie.

An experiment in free association?

"Love of mine, someday you will die.
But I will be close behind.
I will follow you into the dark."
"The hint of a spark", a spark that you could catch and then keep safe in your pocket.
"Knuckles bruised."
Bruised, black and blue.
The pain, I can ignore. Will these love scars she asked?
How could I answer. Scars, I thought? Does it matter.
"Vacancy Signs."
The emptiness. The emptiness, cloaked viscous reds and blacks.
"Fear is the heart of love."
Fear, how? The same fear with it's unmistakable, ravenous stench.
The same fear that threatens to overcome you?
Overcome me?
"We will hold each other soon."
Sleep for now.
But what then?
We hold each other, clasped hands and matted eyelashes.
"I will follow you into the dark."
But what then?
Would it change anything,
the emptiness, the scars, the fear?
Would it?
Would anything change any of that.
Will you follow me into the dark?

My mom and grandmother are in the other room watching television. Other than the irritating and eternally disturbing sounds emitted by the weird K-serial that they are watching. I do not know get why they like it so much.

Well, actually I think I do..

The heroines in there serials are surprisingly (well maybe not that surprising) like the women that society would dish out as the ideal woman. Truthful, God-fearing, Liable to sudden spurts of "goddess-like" cranial abilities (liberally dressed with devotional music) that is more often than not succeded with a dash of her nauseatic pati-vrata-ness. Not to mention the evil witch like creauture who is diabolically attractive (the heroine is often plain, dark so on and so forth), supremely crafty and often undoubtedly arrogant.

Now the question arises why would anyone want to watch something that seems like a truck load of rotten balderdash. The answer is quite simple as it is intellectually numbing. Women who watch it like my mother and my grandmother are the ones who can identify with such a situation. But more shockingly they want to, and their imaginations allow them to do so.

According to my rather tattered Reading Gandhi (yes, valorizing that man is part of the DU curriculum) guide he is known to have said, "As nature has made men and women different...True, they are equals in life, but their functions differ. It is a woman's right to rule the home, man is the master outside it. Man is the earner, woman saves and spends. Woman looks after the feeding of the child..." It's this opinion that in embedded into our hegemonic conditioning of the mind that leads to the birth of such serials.

This valorization of the "INDIAN WOMAN" who cooks, cleans, fights domestic battles with caustic rage and is at the same time an inch above the unstoppable barrage of glycerin-induced tears that has appealed the most Indian minds. It's not very different from the parallel load of Balderdash that is trashed out onto through the likes of star world and zee cafe- why we have the eternally confusing Bold and the Beautiful (weren't you married to her and you? huh? What? Somebody switch it off) and of course it's mutated offspring, The OC, Fashion House..other names thankfully fail me. My point being that even though the K-serials belong to the same genre of trash as the above specimens they are different on one very important level.

The characteristic aegis of sellophanated morality.

I mean what's with that? Reminds me off that joke.

Dad, what is sex?
Son, in India we don't have sex, we have love
Really, but dad someone must be, look at the population?!?

If one can move away from the strangeness of my friends sense of humor one will notice the truth in this ironic reflection. I mean what is with this shroud of morality? Who cares if Shilpa Shetty kisses Richard Gere, it's not like you would not jump to the opportunity if it presents itself to you. What's with the banning of FTV? Whose morality is it tainting? What is with homosexuality being illegal? Are you really going to put Karan Johar in jail if he goes live and says 'I AM GAY' ?

Aargh, ramblings...I must stop..

"Gliddy glub gloopy
Nibby nabby noopy
La la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba
Nooby abba nabba
Le le lo lo
Tooby ooby walla
Nooby abba naba ....whats up"
-The Banshee

"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." Robert De Niro(Taxi Driver)

I don't normally wake up on sundays at 4AM, but I did. (Take into account that I had dozed off to sleep at around 6PM the last day, or night whichever.) But, no this is not about my zombie-like, odd sleeping habbits. It's about the glorious sunday vocation of atleast a few milliom people across the globe. Reading the sunday newspaper, I don't normally indulge myself in the hedonistic delight of such amiable activity for the simple reason that I think the indian media constitutes a bunch of hypocritical, uninformed bunch of morons. (Minus a few exceptions, most notably my dad. Sorry, Pa' but you know it is true). But for some obscure reason I did sit down to read the newspaper in between hurried snatches of Basheer.

As usual, the expected blasphemic excitement about the "arrival of papparazzi onto indian shores", the usual fussing over trivial matters..but the editorial, once I moved on from the rather strange but characterstic article by Sanghvi, I brushed onto a brilliant aricle by Karan Thapar. Well, maybe not so much an article as a subtle querry. And out of severe blog-addiction I really had to paste this here...

DONT YOU AGREE PERTIE"S RIGHT?- Karan Thapar

Are we hypocrites or ignoramuses?” Even for Pertie it was an odd way to start a conversation. He likes to shock but this was simply perplexing.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Although my tone may have betrayed my utter incredulity I hope my words sounded no more than curious.
“The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has banned Fashion TV for showing semi-nude or skimpily-clad women sashaying on ramps. What did they expect them to wear? Overcoats and gum boots!”
“Why are you so het-up?” I tried to sound calming. “Surely you don’t watch the channel?”
“That’s not the point.” I could tell I had failed. Pertie was ready for a scrap. “Do you know the reason they’ve given? That it’s against good taste and decency! Tell me, what makes our dhoti-kurtawallahs believe they can identify taste and decency even if it slaps them in the face? For most of us they’re living proof of bad taste and indecent behaviour.”
“Come on Pertie!” It was my last attempt. “The point the Ministry is making is that in India we find it hard to accept such displays of female flesh. You know that’s true. So why are you quarrelling?”
“Because it’s not true, that’s why.” But this time Pertie spoke so softly, albeit confidently, I was silenced by his deliberate control. Clearly he knew what he was about to say and I didn’t dare stop him.
“Look at the temples of Khajuraho. Buy a copy of the Kamasutra and flick through its pages. Just go to the Delhi Museum and see our erotic miniatures. We’ve given the world some of its most graphic, its most striking, representations of the naked female form. Of sex. Of multiple intercourse. And you’re telling me that semi-nude and skimpily-clad women are offensive to Indian taste and decency?”
“That’s cold, inanimate art. Stone sculptures, oil paintings, pictures in a book. Not warm, living human beings.” I thought mine was a good riposte but Pertie clearly disagreed.
“There’s nothing cold and inanimate about Khajuraho or our miniatures,” he shot back. “But I’m making a wider point. Look at the sari and how it’s worn. No other dress so deliberately and so alluringly reveals the female midriff. In fact, it doesn’t cover the stomach at all.”
“What’s the point you’re making?” Actually I suspected I knew but I wanted to hear it from him.
“That the traditional Indian dress for women is designed to accentuate and focus attention on the female form. On the very centre of her body. On that part of it men dream about.” Pertie paused so I could absorb what he had said. “Are you telling me this is an accident? That it’s not part of our wider culture and our way of appreciating female beauty?”
Until then I had never seen the sari as Pertie had spoken of it. Now I couldn’t deny that what he said made sense. But I was flabbergasted that Pertie — Pertie of all people! — should have understood this. Of course, he still had more to say and was anxious to get on with it.
“Why do you believe everyone thinks the sari is so beautiful? Surely not just because of its colours or patterns? The answer is that it frames the female form to perfection. And why do you think foreigners look so awkward in one? Because they’re not used to the amount it reveals. The dress covers and hides. The sari is a window to what lies beneath.”
I can only say I was overwhelmed. I have seen the sari often but I have never seen beyond it. Pertie, to coin a phrase, had seen through it. In fact, it seemed as if he’d seen it not simply as it is but as it’s meant to be.
“But how does this make us hypocrites and ignoramuses?”
Pertie smiled. It was a slow deliberate stretching of the lips as he silently but proudly acknowledged his triumph and simultaneously signaled I was even dumber than he’d assumed.
“Look,” he said, “either the Ministry is denying the truth about India’s cultural fascination with the female form, in which case its hypocrisy, or it’s ignorant of it and that makes them ignoramuses. It’s really as simple as that.”
I was silent with admiration.
“I don’t care about all this tosh regarding democracy and freedom of expression. All governments censor. That India does too is no big deal. But to end up censoring your own values is bizarre! It’s madness.”

I really liked this poem....It's in our course, but oh! what a mindfuck...

Harlem - Langston Hughes


What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a rasin in the sun
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it sags
Like a heavy load
about to explode?

This is Vereschagin's painting Apotheosis of War (1871), it came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism.
Do any of us wonder why??

***

Listening to Gypsy Kings cover of Hotel California, maybe it's the song. Maybe it's something else I am really sad now. No, it's not your usual brand of self-pitied sorrow that stems from some random, unimportant event that you will forget about in a day, maybe a week or maybe even longer. No, I can't trace back this melancholy back to someone or something. It's just a general emotion that has pervaded into me. It's a mixture of everything maybe, the inevitability of my exams, doubt. I just read something in I's blog, maybe it's not meant to be read in such a manner but I somehow can't feeling the twang of it right into my core. It's this sweet smelling potion that we are concocting here, and we need to keep mixing nectar into it? Not because you want to, but because otherwise the potion spills. But what if, I decide to let the potion spill. Do something that I want. Place the I above the them. Maggie had partial duties, a duty to Philip and one to Lucy. She also had a duty to herself, didn't she?? What if??

Memory.


I miss her, I really do.
Last coherent conversation we had.

Hanedin: So you are leaving, eh?
R: Ya, I guess this is it then...
Hanedin: So, you got any piece of advice for me?
R: Just stay away from that girl man?! She is just wrong for you?
Hanedin: Haha, do not worry. Fuck I ain't getting back together with her.

I watched as she hugged him. Let us call him X for convenience sake. I watched as she hugged X and I hurriedly suppressed what could have been the surprising string of jealousy. No can't be I said to myself

(Er, I did go out with her, i.e. the girl I was told not to go out with, now I don't know whether I did the right thing or not.)
She left, now the obvious question arises...was I in love with this girl. Well, no not really. R however was the only person who understood me. Sigh, I was really attracted to her though, I always wanted to kiss her.
I had to meet her the last day, the day she left. I wish I didn't now
the inequality of needs. I needed her, she never did.
Somethings are just not meant to be.

PS: R ----> NOT RADZ!!!

This is one of the most amazing works that I have found on the net over the years, it's called Her cozy little room. It's been made with a ball point pen, and was described by the artist as "a silly little doodle I made when I was bored". Sigh, if only I was ever that bored. Anyhow the artist in question be Blem. Do visit her site, she is quite amazing.

Harumpf, sleep less night. And all groggy eyed. What with the university exams racing towards me, I decided to stay up and finish not only George Elliot's mill on the floss but also a couple of here-and-there-but-actually-nowhere-really stuff from Modern Indian Literature. After that I decided that I will watch 300, the copy of which I was downloading from Torrent.

Well things did not really turn out the way I did plan them to. It's 8:36 right now, it's bright, cheery and energetic morning...yech. All I want to do is sleep.

Due to a number of reasons such as it being a wonderful night (Van Morrison clouded my intellect, it's a marvellous night for a moondance), the excitement of finally watching 300, the insanely stupid but tragic life of Maggie Tuliver, late night shifa phone calls all did their bit in the achievment of the non-completion of my goals.

So, I decided to characterisitcally procastinate. However that is when I realized that the file I downloaded was in the form of a BIN/CUE file. Yes, long sigh. Which made me download 4 different forms of software, one daemon tool, one ISO cracker...I still haven't been able to watch it...

Maybe, I should study or something??!!?

(This be written by Aaki
Sigh, apparently it be for me.)

Walking through IIT with him (he of the bright eyes and eighteen years' worth of dreams), I traced my fingers along cold railings that worked upon my body like some ancient balm. It was a green campus yesterday, and flowers that seemed to be hurting from an excess of colour glowered at me from every direction that I cared to look in. There was anger in the air; the flowers seemed to diffuse it.

Culprits.

My self-confessed sibling had now taken his chappals off, and was balancing them quite expertly on his right hand as we ambled alongside each other. We looked around, looking for stray peacocks or such and such signs, barely discussing anything that I would regard as particular. But then, quite as swiftly as it had been broken, the camaraderie established itself again. We started speaking to each other again. My aching need to quell a self-induced loneliness began to talk in disjointed sentences, and he sought to contribute to the melancholy with his genius when it came to knowing all kinds of strange animals ever since he was a boy of four.

And then, maybe because he requested it, or maybe because we were running out of even-lined things to say, I twirled about in the sunlight, and began to sing--a song in a quivering voice that spoke of ill-practice and little range.

Desperado.

You sound like a jazz record come to life, you know, he said dreamily, and then he made me promise to sing for a movie that he knew he would make in the future. He sounded so sure that I wanted to believe him. One could always make a documentary of sorts, I suppose. But it would be somewhere along the time I know I would have lost my voice completely. Shoulders shrugged, but consent delivered, we walked on towards any road that could take us to a place where we would find our peace for today. I would not know why we supposed any road would do that, though. Maybe sunlight disillusions the easiest of pessimists into believing that all can be translated into a dream at the end. I cannot be sure about this too, you see. I had rather speak for myself, but I believe I would be more accurate if I were to furnish an account of the man who walked with me—he of the bare feet and an open mind. Yes, perhaps I can answer for him. Then I can perhaps escape the business of filling my own questionnaires, you know.

A peacock finally crossed us, its colors sitting sedate in the shadow of a bush, and it was a lovely three in the afternoon. Ruined professors sat along lawns, in pairs or crowds of three, and possibly talked of History. How are we ever to know? I would have liked to eavesdrop and know for sure, though. One likes to be sure of such things sometimes, you see, even when it does not warrant any particular reasoning, or does not seem to be worthy of consequence, to be sure. One just likes to know sometimes.

The peacock elegantly bowed to us and vanished behind the bush whose shadow had lent him an air of darker color than the bright blue he was generally supposed to be, and Barefoot pointed to me the bower where he had his first kiss--that tree near a hostel complex that had stood by and watched as he and his lover had felt their first intimacy come to life only about a few years ago. How many more first kisses had that tree seen, I thought to myself, as we moved apart from collected encased memories of at least a hundred couples. I put an estimate at hundred. I think its safer to spell it out as a roundabout of such, because then one can always fool oneself by forgetting the number of zeros that were attached to it earlier when confronted with the real figure, I think. One can always then quote the real figure and forget that the earlier estimate had been a zero less, or zero more. Or some such thing. It is easier on the nerves that way. At least for me. I shall only speak for myself as regards the way one ought to deal with estimates.

(This be written by Aaki
Sigh, apparently it be for me.)

Afternoon wore on, and I felt myself in a trance and gave myself up to imagination, though I had only sunshine to thank for the distraction, and we had just eaten Appams at a friend's home. Appams, according to me, are not romantic enough to induce a trance, I suppose. I hesitate. I had rather not say, actually.

All around us, Great Neem Trees were raining their leaves upon the ground springing metaphors in my mind. To me, they were leprechauns that liked to give out fake gold coins, if only for a laugh. There they shimmered, those leaves (those gold coins,) at a distance, as we made our way to an inviting hillock where noone would disturb us. I did not want any kind of intrusion into the happy occasion of me smoking my first ever cigarette.

Indulgence, I said, as we sat down, and he got up again. Dropping his bag and packet of cigarettes, he ran to fetch a box of matches from somewhere. We had forgotten the matches, you see.

The hillock housed an ancient tree, with the trunk of a Banyan, leaves that spoke of Kachnar and flowers that answered for Bougainvilleas. Two women sat at a distance near the foot of the hillock, probably speaking of a math problem that they had their heart stuck on, I would not know, really. I thought of dreaming about a black-and-white checked snake that might come my way. One has to content oneself with imagery when one is alone. But then suddenly all at once, one of the girls opened her hair. The shiny mass of it tumbled about the girl, and the other girl (her hair still neatly bound by hairpins I believe) rested her head on her shoulders, speaking of a bond that made me smile. One must invent stories when one waits for cigarettes. If crawling snakes fail, stories of two lovers ought to suffice.

I wrapped myself in a tight embrace along by myself, and waited for the man in the bright tee shirt and awkward jeans to come back to me. Suddenly, I loved the Sun as it sprinkled in through the magic tree. It was an image that I knew I would make a postcard of and mark to myself, that would be opened in about ten years from now and felt again, just as it was supposed to be. Probably just as how it was.

(This be written by Aaki
Sigh, apparently it be for me.)


***
Do you know how gorgeous you look right now, he said, quite out of breath as he looked down at me.

He had come back.

I had watched him as he was coming back--running towards the hillock chasing an imaginary football, perhaps. Football and women were all that he would ever chase, my imaginary sibling does not believe in taking trouble otherwise. This is conjecture. Don't get me wrong—I usually leave character sketches by themselves. I would rather not judge, you see.

I watched him no more as he seated himself next to me, all ready to begin a lesson on cigarettes that I had never cared to know about. Menthol sugar was handed to me, and the elegance of what was about to begin sought to interest me enough to look at him, and then look beyond him to a particularly tall Neem tree—that leprechaun that was shimmering its golden wisdom all the while the matches were searched for, imaginary footballs were chased, stories were intertwined.

It lit, the strange boy handed the cigarette to me, adjusted my fingers to the way they ought to be, and I inhaled strange tastes and smells. I billowed smoke caring nothing for it, and I spoke as much. You don't look like a whore or a stupid inexperienced girl when you smoke, you know? He said that I smoked with the elegance of a woman. I think I believed for a minute, and then I reverted to concentrating on the smoke in my mouth, my insides churning with the strange taste of it, it making no music as it was supposed to. It should have, what did they show it in the movies for? The long cigarette wrapped around long fingers, the long fingers trapping the long cigarette, smoke lighting up the dark, creating the romance of a fog when there earlier had been none.


I gave up, cigarettes are wasted on me, I said, giving the rest of it to him. I cannot feel anything.

You do not feel anything because you do not want to feel anything anymore, he retorted mildly as he lay down on the grass, his bag his pillow, he stretched under the tree and felt the magic of the confusion that the tree was for himself.

Suddenly was I angry, suddenly I made a reference to some of the anger, and got up and signaled for him to come along. It was nothing, and it was everything. I think I feel too much. I do not quite believe anybody will agree, though.

Walk forgotten, I walked alone, my man following with the cigarette I had forsaken, apologizing for things that had never happened.

Later that night, he told me he loved me. I coiled myself around the cigarette that was still leftover in my bag, and smoked in the emptiness of my room. I wanted to feel something, feel anything.

But then, Cigarettes are quite useless for companions anyway.

I be looking for a new template, I bumped into this brilliant template called London Calling on some site, sigh short term memory and all, however I did not like the pinkness present in it. As a result I have realized I will be designing my own template...

Anyhow till then, :D

Toto Funds the Arts, Delhi Chapter, invites entries for its flash fiction contest.

The winner will get a cash prize of Rs. 3000 and two runners-up will be awarded Rs. 1000 each. A public event will be organized for the winners to read their stories along with an established author.

Submission Guidelines

1. You cannot be older than 30 on June 1, 2007. Include a statement confirming your date of birth and that the story is original and unpublished.
2. The contest is limited to young Indians residing in Delhi and NCR. No NRIs, please.
3. Only one submission is allowed per person.
4. The story cannot exceed 500 words.
5. Entries can be either sent by e-mail to tfadelhi@gmail.com or by snail mail to:

TFA Contest, D/377 2^nd Floor, Defence Colony,

New Delhi 110024.

6. The deadline is 20 April 2007. Please mention your name and contact details separately, not on the entry itself.

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program

I liked.
Er, I was told it's the free less complicated albeit less effective sibling of photoshop.
I still don't know what to say about that because I am quite a dork when it comes to photoshop, I like GIMP though...good fun.

Only defect I could think of was the tad complicated installation process (please note, here I am assuming that you are an absolute idiot), it requires the installation of GTK+ Runtime Environment before you can install the GIMP from the installer.

Sigh, fifteen minutes of boredom and I create a rather strange picture of Jimmy Page..good fun though.. :D