Paint it...

I itch all over,
stains of blood hardened on the skin;
Blue black, frenzy of colours.

I bleed all over,
frozen veins exploding;
Tattered patterns of hope.

I have wounds of the soul,
transcending all creation;
Smeared hopes of attainment.

The garb pretends,
it tends to expand all in vain;
Dots mere on the canvas.

I play hither tither,
sheltered in my being me;
Fudged reflection in the mirror.....

Random Ramblings - A collection of my dreams/nightmares

This is random rambling. In fact the random is rambling. Why do I feel my head reeling at the speed of light when all around me everything moves in slow motion, I feel nauseous, hideous, completely torn apart with merely flashes of energy sustaining me through the day? The moment passes into hours to be swept in a sea of thoughts leaving me exhausted and drained. I manage to wake up in the morning, with the reluctance of a kid on school day, but unlike the kid who is also reluctant to come back from school, not wanting to separate from the friends, I rush home. Not having anything worth breathing for is worth living for.

I have to decipher and understand the meaning that is hovering around and still not knocking loud enough or not knocking at all. My veins, turning blue, red, purple, yellow, and green, hardly managing to pump anything but fluid of poisonous nature, are just like the dark falling bark pieces from a rusty old tree, looking to be detonated, exploded, compounded, and shredded to pieces just so that existence will be of different nature and most importantly in different form. Not having anything worth breathing for is worth living for.

The body is exposed to miniscule explosions of chilling nature, the impact being as though you are burnt with Ice. It’s a difficult feeling to explain just doesn’t fit into any metaphors. You breathe and then find that the lungs refuse to inflate or even deflate. They stick to your rib cage and flap about in a desperate attempt to become independent of you just so that they can fly. You are caught in the turmoil of dizzying forces, as though all matter inside has collapsed to form a solid ball which is semi fluid in nature. Green in color, contaminating and disintegrating at the same time, enough to make you cough and vomit and ensure that the more you vomit it out the more it grows in size. Not having anything worth breathing for is worth living for.

You knock a few cans around and find swept in the nature of the intoxicant itself, pure, senile (it’s an attribute of old/age), degenerating and rejuvenating. You try various colors on only to see which fits, leads to redemption and then you drown yourself in the color. You become the color itself. First blue, as pure bliss, ABHAAMAAN, then red angry and mocking the rest, then purple, turning inward with shame and fear, unable to grapple with reality, yellow with fever trying to shake off the sickening dogs wagging it’s tail forever at you, and then finally green (completely contaminated) marking various shades of jealousy (all the seven sins amalgamated) only to leave you with a feeling of being licked by a rabid dog who has seen and smelt the fear in you, the vomit on you. You try to find and then know that not having anything worth breathing for is WORTH LIVING FOR!!!

You are running at feverish pace, perspiring, perplexed at the reason and still not able to understand it fully. You tie a knot around your waist, just to brace yourself for the situation, and then rush headlong into Vortex*, spiraling ahead, just ahead to glimpse your future and then recoil at the sight of the dripping, slime covered, green creature that you have become, blotches of sun forming their mark on the face, bathing in your own sweat, swearing loudly and lamenting at the obfuscation around, all pervading darkness and still everything so clear. You try to clear the fog and then know that not having anything worth breathing for is WORTH LIVING FOR!!!

*(Ashok Banker – Thanks)

Fair & Lovely

Leaving behind a healthy household (it was health & hygienic from my comfort point of view and I can see Gols, Murs and Govi grinning from ear to ear reading this), a lavish lifestyle, and a comfortable city for all purposes, I have shifted to Chennai. Pune is the city that I will always remember for giving birth to who I am today. Pune gave me a second life. But coming to Chennai, despite mixed reactions from my friends and family, I am confounded by a myriad of feelings. I am confident to do something new, I am apprehensive about the weather and all the new people (anyone who knows me, knows well enough that I do not like new people, be it Tamizhs or Biharis), I am ready to explore and find newer avenues, some which I might not have found in Pune, and above all I have the desire the excel at my work. It’s a challenge I am willing to accept and overcome.

But all this is a part of a long list that will take time for completion. I would, for now, settle down to observations and one of the curious things I observed was the Fair and Lovely phenomenon. I have had in my life the pleasure of interacting with a few unique people and observe from close quarters their personal grooming process. A lot of the middle class young men (I am stating this at the risk of generalizing) seem to be pre-occupied with two things. The hair, the length of it and the gloss of it and the skin the gloss of it and the fairness of it. A comb in the pocket and a tube of Fair & Lovely on the dressing table. I have seen similar skin tone in South Africa and found that among the “blacks” an amazing sense of pride in their skin color exists. I saw a hoarding advertising for a product called “Dark & Lovely”. This to me sums up the entire colour skin debate sparked off a few hundred years ago. While the most oppressed in the matter have moved on and started taking pride in their skin tone as a sign of struggle and liberation, some here have bought into the advertising imperialism / colonization and have become rampant consumers of a product whose results are at best unfounded and imaginary.

To me the most surprising is the fact that those who can afford this product are educated young men!! The drivers for consumption of this product could be many viz. getting a fair girl for marriage, attaining a supposed social norm. I might never be able to find the underlying cause, but one thing I do know that trying to change who we are in order to attain what is socially acceptable is not just trying to lie to oneself but also a small step towards a Unitarian society, where independent thoughts and new ideas seize to exist. Once that happens, we would be mere puppets in the hands of the nefarious social engineers. Like a herd of sheep being led by the mountain goat.

A Counter Suggestion/ No Smoking - A Review

Going back to originality. Its an assertion of your independence.

Your basic character, your soul, your reason for existence aches for independence, it aches to free itself from the clutches of bondage, of interdependence, of LOVE. Reading through an article, which was reviewing a movie, the author suggested that one should fall in love to understand the beauty of interdependence, of making decisions to live in a world which is better for you.

I counter-suggest!

Fall out of love once to experience what it means for your pensive, aching soul. How the energy sapped being released from the prison of interdependence, of making decisions, for a seemingly better future, rooted in compromises, suddenly bears its grinning and independent, Howard Roarkish face. So astute, orange hair flowing in breezy weather, resolved to make something happen or not be active at all. To angrily mock the rest of the world at their fucking ignorance, feigning surprise at mere hints of revelations.

Fine, when YOU surface, YOU are weather beaten, unable to stand on your legs for lack to interdependence, YOU find YOURSELF stuck in corners, standing at the traffic signal unable to comprehend that very familiar path walked often. YOU reach inside to the guttural corners of the body and scream out the Rock version of Emotional Atyaachaar, drowning every pore of your body in the misery pervading all around ready to destroy and get consumed wholly by lack of interdependence.

Then it hits YOU in the face. The mind numbing voice which screams and calls for help. YOU climb out spitting pieces of the anti-jaunt YOU had last night. Listen to the voice and steady yourself to walk again. YOU look at the clear path and become responsible for your actions, YOU don't have the option of blaming someone else. Of saying “It was our decision.” YOU go to the quarry or start architecting, either cases YOU breath/smoke and don't irk anyone else.

Originality, the finer victim of the grand dance of interdependence, is allowed to breed and more importantly produce results, some tragic and some grander, in all, all decisions for which the price is nothing but the liberation. The society can scoff at the results and the image in the mirror grows proud every moment for all YOU have done for YOURSELF. They dart when results are favourable and point when not so aphrodisiac-al. YOU choose to ignore and acquire for yourself.

Isn't that the aim of most religions – self actualisation!

So fall out of love, get liberated, become original, and self actualise. MASSAGE THE EGO.

Happy New Year

I am not one for New Year Resolutions. They are like a prostitute's promise of virginity. They last only for a night. With a tinge of blood spilled, all innocence is lost and all promises are forgotten. You move on, the virgin moves on and, hanging in mid-air, remains, the promise of virginity. Despite all this, I have made a few Old Year resolutions (they were made throughout the year of 2008) and like the lover, estranged, comes to the bed next night, seeking virgin promise. I have come back to fulfill a few of mine to keep the momentum of breathing going. Here is a list of the promises I made to myself and known only to me are the ones on the road of fulfillment :-)

1. Learn to Play guitar
2. Get a tattoo
3. Learn Boxing
4. Climb a few more mountains
5. Watch all the kind of movies I like to watch
6. Watch as many plays, go to as many concerts so on and on
7. Travel extensively -
   
8. take a 3-4 day trip once every 2-3 months
9. Have a month long holiday every year for traveling
   
10. Trek as often as possible
11. Photograph extensively
12. UPDATE THE BLOG REGULARLY
13. ................
14. .......................
15. .............................
16. ................................

nth. Make a movie

Here is to never losing our virginity.

I Make A Promise

I make a promise;
When tears fall
& roll down the cheeks.

I make a promise;
When moonlight flickers
gently caressing green leaves.

I make a promise;
When muscles twitch involuntarily
going into spasm.

I make a promise;
When from the corner of my eyes
I see hope clad in black.

I make a promise;
Rocking slowly in the balcony
night breeze promising to carry me over.

I make a promise;
When I close my eyes, see you
& remember me making a promise.

Pune International Film Festival - 2009

Its over, and just like all times its leaves me gloomy as the days of sensibilities are over and now no more do I have the luxury of returning to the celluloid and soaking a wealth of information, emotion and forms of depiction. I have been a regular at the PIFF since I came to Pune in 2004 attending by now over hundred movies, some so moving the memory still remains and some so weird I am still trying to defragment the meaning after so many years.

There have been times when I have stood spellbound in the hall well after the projector has stopped twittering and there have been those occasions when I have left in a hurry purely to avoid the felling of nausea. The Pune International Film Festival, organised every year in the month of January, has brought to me a better understanding of the world. Indian films, and by that I mean the Hindi film industry, with its dance around the tree or dance in the cloud or dance in the valley of flowers, hero saves the day, beats up all the bad guys, rosy flavoured all happy ending and they lived happily ever after, is purely a walk in the paradise and definitely a make believe world. While cinema like that has its place purely for entertainment value, I have always felt that cinema that does not say anything comes from a person who does not wish to say anything or has nothing to say at all. Love is an emotion in Hindi films that has been so vastly abused that it has become overrated. It has lost all its meaning amidst the beautiful locales and enchanted forests. Expressions have become borrowed and that too from formulaic successful mainstream films.

Amidst all this comes PIFF to bring in fresh modes of expression, fresher dramas and above all stories that are complete in terms of human expression and human behaviour, not merely a slice of a human being. These stories look complete in many respects and depict the way a human being behaves rather how a super-hero reacts. There has been the real life depiction of the Italian mafia father who commits suicide after knowing his son is a cop and is disappointed at the way his father had abandoned him when he was a kid. The chemistry between the cop and felon is so palpable that you almost feel like reaching out and caressing the teary eyed cop when he first confronts his father (Salty Air).

There has been the depiction of the rebellious 37 year old protagonist and 21 year girl in a Turkish community in Germany who decide to marry each other to get away from the repressive and tradition rich family of the girl to merely live out as roommates, who continue to experiment and explore with the world around them with drugs, alcohol, sex, tattoos and body piercing (all forms of expressing their angst at the primarily dogmatic society), until the world comes crashing down on one night of drunken, jealousy driven murder of one of the lovers of the girl. Driven away from the stigma of the stories in the newspapers the girl goes away to Turkey and the guy gets imprisoned. Turkey again is no easy dwelling for Sibet who gets frustrated with the tied down life only to end up on the streets of Turkey, raped and beaten nearly to death. You cry and feel like burning up the world when you see how this world treats people who just wish to live their own life without following traditions. Cahit comes to Turkey after his release from the jail to find Sibet happily married with a kid and gives up all hope of finding his one true love to go to his ancestral village to settle down (Head On).

There is the depiction of Gulnabi in a village in Karnataka, which has not known any kind of communal tension until a Hindu village damsel decides to run away with a Muslim. Gulnabi (Gulabi as she is known throughout the village) owns a television set and runs a theatre called Gulabi talkies to which everyone flocks for watching movies. After the eloping incidence, Gulabi who was not directly involved in the incidence has to leave the village along with other Muslims leaving the Television set behind for the village to enjoy (Gulabi Talkies).

There is the graphic novel animated screen adaptation of Persopolis, showing a girl growing up in the oppressive regime of Iran only to be taken over by a more oppressive revolutionaries who frown upon the idea of a woman not wearing a headsarf and her burqua and how she find the true meaning of her roots when she goes to Europe to study. Its her trails and tribulations but mainly of an advancing economy suddenly stopped in its track by archaic concepts of a state, where expression of oneself has no place amidst laws of modesty and proper behaviour. Where a girl running on the road is asked to stop and walk slowly as the movement of her hips is considered immodest and distraction for the men around her (Persopolis).

There is the beautiful love story, which brings to screen the torrid love affair that begins with a one night stand between a French woman and a Japanese man in post WW2 Hiroshima and how all adversities (purely of their emotions and their past) do not stand in their way of finally uniting and deciding to stay together (Hiroshima, My love).

I will miss what I did not get to see,
I will savour what my eyes could feast,
And I will wait till next January.