Sellophane

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..

"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?

If A+B=3
And B+C=d
Then he said that he will love her
Promises were soaked in the shadow of a blur
But what if B+C=E?

Messed up limerick, wouldn't you say?

This would read:

If A plus B equals 3
And B plus C equals d
Then he said that he will love her
Promises were soaked in the shadow of a blur
But what if B plus C equaled E?

Now I want to write limericks, good fun. Thanks aaki.

I am tired.
But then I am sure you are too,
what exactly are you looking for here?
Yes you, over there,
with your crown of expensive cigarette stubs
Reading assimilated poetry in a morbid asylum
What exactly are you hoping to find here?
No, I know this doesn't rhyme
And I know, this doesn't really quallify as a 'poem'
But then does it really matter
These half-choked out sentences
in the midst of red pills and blue pills.
Do they really matter?
What if you die tommorow?
What then, eh!
How many people are going to weep
over their great, insatiable loss?
Is that what a poem is?
A bunch of rhyming lines
shoved into each other,
dripping with carefully specified crimson blood
and exceptionally salty tears?
I didn't mean to write a poem
And I don't know how to stop
Guess I might not want to stop,
Think of this as a roller-coaster ride
that refuses to dips itself into a pool of crimson blood
or the daffodils of broken, torn and lacerated relationships,
What was it that floyd said 'And silence that speaks so much louder that words'
Well it's over now isn't it

Reference to Floyd, Last Stanza in the song by Pink Floyd- Sorrow.
'There's an unceasing wind that blows through this night
And there's dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight
And silence that speaks so much louder than words,
Of promises broken'

Dear Diary

I haven't written anything in a really long time. The words seem to have rusted in my veins. Any attempt to write anything seems so futile that I stop before even commencing. I wish I had something grave and interesting to write about. However I seem to be wasting my life by somehow just rotating in concentric circles and hence never quite touching the center.

What am I really doing with my life?

After achieving the mythical 80-something in the monstrous boards I have now been admitted into one of the reputed colleges of the city. The need to question and understand the dynamics of one's own self had never occurred to me. Everyday I meet so many people. Everyday I talk to so many people. And everyday I blur them into the edges of my memories.

When was the last time I met myself?

How do you frame the question whose answer in turn would and in all probability has already defined you? How do you chose the right phrases for such a question? How do you take the thoughts that spring from the crevices of your mind and twist them enough to fit them into the framework of dots, sentences and question marks?

I know the question lies embedded somewhere in my mind like a fossilized dream that refuses to reveal its identity. I try to string random phrases together but the daunting task of scratching letters onto the caustic white paper seems too much of an effort.

Dear diary...today was just another day. Nothing of importance really happened.


Image: Hot Chick with tattoo, found it on the net.

I lie flat across the grassy slope enveloped by the fragrance of an emergent mist. Above me the illusion of a thousand shimmering stars etch themselves across the patchy suburban sky. Inside me I can feel the echo of a fossilized dream pulse. It is in these purple and golden hues of hidden memory that I seek the answers to questions that are tattooed underneath my skin. I do not have to construct these questions, they are a part of me, engraved onto the very consciousness of my being.

It is this question that makes me human. This question is not forcibly constructed and imprisoned in the framework of words, punctuation marks, paragraphs and margins. It can't be scratched onto the electric white paper by a tyrannical hand. It is more than that.

It expresses the desire of a comma to connect yet separate thoughts, ideas and hence lives. Within it pulse the melodies of forgotten memories that remain unsaid like exclamation marks basking in the glow of silence. It is a question that dares not end with the illusion of a question mark but the smile of a new sentence, a new beginning, a new memory that a full stop promises.

As i lie stretched out in a suburban park, where the sound of children's laughter and the occasional rustle of an unknown creature in the undergrowth seems to envelope me like a memory of a forgotten lullaby. It is then that I realize the nature of this question, that seems so thoroughly drenched in my memories. It is around this question that I have randomly arranged the jigsaw pieces of my memories.

I have realized that my life is but a blur of memories. Memories that are painted with broken colors of not just that past but also the present and the future. These memories define my life and allow me to live the present and envision the future. These memories pulse beneath the skin, the bone, the muscle and the sinew. These memories define the path for immense oblivion that the unknown, unnamed and unanswered question promises.

I felt the tender kiss of the breeze on my skin as I reveled in the understanding of the question. As the star light dimmed into the hazy concoction of blurs and memories that I had created, I realized that words no longer clutter my eyes and questions no longer cluttered my mind.

I close my eyes and let my mind wander into the world of memories where smiles traces into the dust are more alive than the blood that gushes in my veins.

-------

I wrote this in the summer, also the Image is by Francis Bacon if I am not grossly mistaken...

Thoughts captured in pretty red capsules. Swallow them whole. With diet coke or a cup of ice tea. Consume over-spiced potato wedges and think about stuff you don't really care about. Buy a case of blank CD-Roms and then fill them up with useless, forgettable junk so as to systematically preserve and then forget these things. Laugh like a baboon at jokes that you don't really find funny.
I need smokes.
It's amazing how dependent I have become on these cancer sticks. And that too in such a short time. Well not really, is five years short for a eighteen year old. Smokes of randomized precision bathed in nicotine.
Plastic Thoughts and Gelatine Trees.
One messed up dream.
Dead goldfishes floating in the stale murky waters of a thousand minds. Long Distance Phone calls. Dire Straits and acoustic solos dried and kept to toast alongside an empty expired packet of malboro cigarettes.
What is the purpose of a purpose?
An aim, something to achieve. But why? What's the point? We are goldfishes here.
How would you die?
Would you float or sink?


Image: Alfred Stieglitz- Equivalent Series

"
...I can place myself anywhere in
space or time.
I can summon the dead.
I can perceive events on other worlds,
in my deepest inner mind,
& in the minds of others,

I can

I am"-

Jim Morrison

Stubs
Memories that hide in the dirt,
hide from the booze in a broken bottle and burn the ends of an untouched cigarettes.
Memories that pierce the veins and rust my thoughts.

As time crawls over my tattooed skin and dissolves in a languid nosebleed,
I find myself frozen in the shadow of her grin.

An image that spins in my head.
One I can't forget or encase in the precise fumes of a cigarette A dream is stubbed before it burns...


(c) Hanedin 2007

[Kaya and Hanedin are on top of Hanedin's terrace looking upwards towards the starry, patchy sky. Their Nicotine enhanced fumes clouding their vision while cars race against time trying to catch the glare of their own headlights on the black asphalt. It's just another conversation, like so many others. SOAD- Aerials playing]

Kaya: What do you want in life? What makes you happy?

Hanedin: What do I want in my life? That's easy. To do my BA with really amazing marks and then hopefully do my Masters from somewhere really brilliant, preferably abroad. Then get a well-paying job or even better be a successful writer and hence be reach. While I am at it, I want to meet a girl who I can love and be loved in way that would make me want to be with her for a really long time, say five years. And if it's not to much trouble to the genie hiding behind the fucking dustbin I might as well become really thin and get like six-pack abs, play soccer to really fucked levels, play the guitar really well and so on and so forth. What do I want in life? That ain't so tough...

Kaya: So in other words you little aquamarine freak, you want a really amazing life, perfection. That's what you want. That's funny man! Pass me the cigarette.

Hanedin: Why? Why the fuck do you say so?

Kaya: Hanedin, the eternal advocate of randomness and chance decides to be human and want perfection just like everyone else...

Hanedin: I want to be happy. Don't fucking slobber all over my cigarette, the prospect of nicotine fumes coated with your fucking saliva ain't so endearing.

Kaya: Oh ok, lay off Hanedin! So what this is going to make you happy. A life like so many million others? A girl, a house, a car? What happened to all those dreams man. The mansion with the huge lawns facing a lagoon or a beach or a mountain. What about the animals you always wanted? The big hairy dog, the monkey, the geese, the cat, the horse? What about them man! You can't just fling your dreams underneath a glass porsche. It ain't cool man.

Hanedin: What's going to make me happy Kaya? Why am I not happy? Why the fuck am I here? My life's just a progression of random thoughts and cracked dreams. I don't want to push anymore. I don't want to be happy...It's too hard

Kaya: Give me a drag.

Hanedin: Look at the stars. They are so fucking amazing. It's like someone shot the sky and poked holes in it and the light's just leaking out of the otherside. I want to go there man. The otherside of the sky.

Kaya: Don't stop pushing, I think it's Rocky where that lisping freak of nature said something really smart- life's messed...it pushes you, bites you, lacerates you. But you got to survive man, that's what life's about. Surviving. Hey light another ciggie, this one's almost gone.

Hanedin: The stars, the moon, god, fingers that smell of cigarettes, teeth scraped yellow with excessive nicotine. Hell all of it, it's just one big mirage? How do you know it's not? How do you know we aren't just the phantom of someone's goldfish in someone's goldfish-bowl? Maybe all of this just doesn't really matter. Maybe this world I am trying so hard to figure out is just a showpiece that someone who we think is god placed in his living-room to increase it's aesthetic qualities? Why should I care about anything at all? Anything? Do you know for sure this is all real?

Kaya: I don't? But then do we really have a choice? It's life...Live it or lump it.

Hanedin: Fuck it's getting chilly up here, lets go downstairs, you probably need to call home and tell your mom that you are going to spend the night here anyways.

Kaya: Don't worry I messaged her, ya let's go downstairs, this is one trippy place though! We should come here more often...

Well honestly I don't know.
It was the weird random word that I was supposed to type in to certify that I am a human and not some bot that spams people.
Hanedin. The closest word to it in the dictionary was Hang. Hang the act of suspension, the process in which all thoughts seem to develop. As they are suspended in the self created little word of infinity.
Hanedin..Is my word..It's my name
Why?
Well one name is as good as another...
Hanedin...I chose it's meaning. The act of suspending thoughts inside a little bubble that boxes out reality and all it's distant cousins.
It's funny how all these heavy sounding words seem to have no meaning at all.

King Crimson- Epitaph

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh.
But I fear tomorrow Ill be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow Ill be crying.

I am not that good maintaining blogs. Get to bored with 'em way too soon.
I was reading this really good porn story or erotic literature whichever you prefer...I stumbled onto this really weird
and startling reference..it goes:



"It doesn't really Eric, do you know anything about the battle of Agincourt?

"History little brother. Well during the battle, in 1415, the French,
believed they would win a victory over the English, and several of
there generals decided that whenever they captured an English longbow
soldier they were going to cut off his middle finger, as without the
finger it would be almost impossible to draw the renowned English
longbow and they wouldn't be able to fight in the future either."

"Yah and so ...?"

"The English longbow was made of the English Yew tree. The act of
drawing the longbow was known as "Plucking the Yew", or pluck yew. Well
the English defeated the French; and stood on the top of a hill above
Agincourt, waiving their middle fingers at the defeated French, yelling
see we can still pluck yew.

Over time "pluck yew" was changed into "Fuck You" and is often used
with the single finger waive. ‘Flipping the bird’ came from the fact
that pheasant feathers were used on the ends of the arrows. That's
about it."

I found it damn interesting. If it's true then it's scary, if it's not then kudos man...that's some imagination you got there...

Listening to The Door's people are strange...


Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name

Bloody Brilliant.

Today was the day that R said "I don't like to read." This has such interesting possibilities.
And here I conclude yet another first entry in yet another new blog.