RITES

There’s a silence in the courtyard.
A raven’s screech,
A wailing sun,
Feasting on its own death.
The beads on the trees are pale.
Watching the rites of dusk .
Letting its blood flow.
Rivulets of blue
Impure shrieks of the primordial.
Weeping across the silence.
Into its pores,
Its holes , where the screaming voices lie.
Like dead in a dream.
The choked grass, slave,
Hides the bones of the bleeding sun.

Is death the raven’s screech , the bones that tremble in the cold mud?
The twisted rope around a tree stump?
The wires that twist and tie men,
cutting open the obedient sky slave to the choked grass?

The dragonfly dances around me .
A shaman’s beast.
A deer curses me from behind the trees. Hate.
I cannot see it now.
Dragonflies all around me ,
Tying me with anarchy.
Whipping at my hard skin
I see my red welts glowing.

The beads on the trees are pale.
Watching the rites of dusk.
Letting my blood flow.
A twisted rope around my neck.
Choking in the enslaved grass.
Rivulets of my impure blue.
Shrieking my primordial pleadings.
I swallow the sun and never rise again.

After exactly a week of drowning ...

it seems like a sudden gasping of breath as i rose from the depths of the ocean,
where the light shivered in ecstatic shimmers, luring me into its enchanting golden feathers.
A sudden gasping of breath as i realise that its a small pond im in , with my head dunked downward in a shallow pool.
A shallow pool that wants only algae on its surface, embellishing its sheen, ameliorating its face with a curly haired frond.
Why do i wish to shove my head back in the shallow weakness, and force myself to think that it is an enchanting depth im lost in, swimming in its magnificent glory?
Its a scene badly written, every one of my torrents of contact with a person on the other side. Its always an other side,
and now how much ever i want it, its so much more now, so much distant, so much more thin.

A flake, that covers the distance between us .
a flake that i want to watch and will it, like schopenhauer did, to thicken, the ropes to shorten, the paces to decrease.

Edge of a dream

im standing at the edge of rock ..
at the edge of a quarry
and below me there's hard rock, flat plateau of rock, finely graded


and im up there, i know im supposed to do something , like how u enter a room, but forget what ur there for...
so basically im searching for some sign .. for some thing that wll remind me ..
but i see nothing except , the rock im on and the rock below me ..
u know .. one of those dreams where evrything else is justa haze
and then i walk to the edge and look down

and like any time ive walked to the edge of a height ,
i feel an incredibly desperate urge to fall ..
, so this time i just let it be .. since i know its a dream and fall..
and im going ... falling , and then suddenly im thinking ,
what if it isnt a dream and im going to die
and the fear wells up, dark ..
and then suddenly i land.. not a thud or anything , like a cat , on my feet
and everything around me is still


im at the edge of a quarry ,
and there's the rock im on.. and below me there's hard rock, flat plateau of rock, finely graded.

NIGHT ROUNDS

I wait in the orange rind darkness, my left shoulder pressed against the grime smeared walls. I watch as the 18 something director of a film , son of a high profile artist , places his silhouette in my line of vision. My right hand swivels upwards with the black mechanical contraption and a distinct clack reassures my ears, as i press the button.
A black carved sculpture frozen in time against blazing red-orange -yellow of the overhead streetlamp. The film in the contraption is black and white.
It degenerates that harsh moment into a timid image , drained of its color.
The shoot continues. A man standing at the corner of an inner lane crossing gets bumped into by 2 youngsters running by. He turns and stares into the group of people huddled behind him as the boys run in their direction. Take 1. Take 12.
The man’s arm is throbbing by now. They decide to take a break or head home, i didn’t know which.

I head off, unenthralled by this self indulgent art, an excuse to gain power, to exercise it , to finally create a 2-hr story that compensates for not having bed time stories been read to. Seeing the world through another's eyes, riding on another's imagination is the preferred pastime of the world. The quintessential characteristics of leisure. I would be privileged to join that self -indulgent lot, and shove my thoughts onto the world, unmindful of their bed time stories.

So, I mutter goodbyes to utter strangers, and drifting through the capricious streets of the junkyard, wait for something to happen. Underneath the not-so-false facade of a photographer lies a curiosity to uncover what transpires in dark corners, littered with skeletons of ancient cars crouching in wet mud.
As I am clicking away frames of underlit nonchalance, a man comes up to me, asks me what I'm doing.
"Shooting photographs." "Are u a reporter?" "No. I'm training (they usually don’t respond favorably when I say I’m a student)."
"Oh. Ok.(an almost inaudible sigh of relief, escapes his breath)."
I keep silent, though I am curious about his reaction. I turn to him. I want a subject for my photograph, meditative and static. I snap a few of him against the sedate skeletons of movement.

We started a conversation, about the junkyard and its nightly denizens.
Tonight, it was the police. They sprung up from everywhere, in the narrow gallis , and between heaps of scrap, waiting to pounce, khaki monsters for the ramshackle dwellers.
"Its dangerous for you now to take photographs, guys may think you are a reporter and come ... its unsafe at night here."
HE soon forgot about them, in his soliloquy on the history and activities of the place.
A close community, they were, each of them dealt in different parts of a car, so if a car comes to be scrapped, each gets a bit of it.
"This is my Great grandfather's shop" its shutters almost collapsing to the ground in wizened age. He started it during the Raj. Then, virtually nothing went for scrap, the new imported cars coming into the country , but soon things started to look up. “
"After independence?" "Yes. Anyway, after that there were always cars coming in, waiting to be scrapped , and picked clean. In the middle there was tremendous business, with all the old cars dying out and the new ones entering the market, it was zabardast!"
I could see him lost in thought about the abundance of the times . That must have been when was born. I didn’t ask him.
"IN those days", he said, almost boastfully," we got a few cars everyday, but nowadays, chhe, we get one in about a week."
" Did you know, that in the 90's there used to be all these action films in bollywood, Apna movies, where anything and everything blew up sky high , and with the inkling of a car crash , it would blow up all the cars in a 100 foot radius ?"
Laugh.
"We would supply all the cars for those purposes, they would put dummy people and blow them up, we would recycle the cars and give it back to them to blow up ! Tab to achcha dhandha tha!" Nowadays , those people are using all the new cars to blow up" a short wistful pause as he examined the reasons " so we dont get any deals anymore."
" Do you know Subhash Ghai himself would get cars from us?"
My short laugh in patronising , questioning awe. I asked him if he ever wanted to do anything else , work in any other place. Whether he was educated ? Yes , he said . Till the 10th std.
" What can we do, all the families in this lane have been here since 50 years, and everyone's sons take over the business; with us poor people , where do we have a choice? But its ok. I only wish we had more cars coming in now."
"Its raining, aap ko jaana hai?"he asked. No. i said, I’ll stay. And took a few photographs of people walking the lonely drenched tar streets, lit by inadequate yellow lamps, hiccupping in the rain.

After a short inquiry into what i did and learnt, none of which he fathomed, after the end of it , he sat thinking awhile , presumably about the absurdity of professions, that vainly existed around him.

Just then, two friends of his came ambling by, handkerchiefs over their heads, warding off the needle sharp rain.
He explained my preoccupation with the camera to them, and discussed the why's and how's of it.
Soon they suggested heading out for a cuppa. So we walked down to a tapri which was closed because of the police. They curse in their Muslim Hindi, and we head to the nearest small restaurant.
We order a few chai’s and finally when we get them , suddenly the Police appear from nowhere, swarm up around me , close the shutters of the shop . The rest of the people are shut inside the restaurant . The guys I came with have finished their tea and I’m stuck there cursing my inability to drink hot chai.

The fat , moustachioed owner stands on my right , tells me to take my grand time , glaring down on me , trying to stick some attitude to the police. And the policeman to my right , glares at me with my camera bulge in my jacket, and tells me to get going. So there I am trying to down hot tea, scalding my innards, with two adamant hulks by my side.
I finally finish the tea (I wanted to drink it up, tasted pretty good, too), thinking that I’m pretty much up Shit Creek. I fish into my pockets for some change, when I realize that all I have is a 100 buck note.
Damn, I think to myself, now I’m up Shit Creek, and this time without a paddle.
Suddenly out of nowhere one of my companions materialized paid our money and started walking away. Quickly I followed him into the by lane night. The yellow street lamps echoed his unhappiness. HE started cursing the police.

“Assholes, we do nothing, and they come kick our asses!”
“The rich people up on MG road pimp around and they don’t touch them, we are here doing nothing wrong, and they bring us down.”
“IT’S ALWAYS THE POOR WHO IS VICTIMISED!”

I didn’t talk too much the rest of the way, pondering over the reality of that statement. That’s the way it is I guess, the strong rules the meek, the rich push the poor around and those with power dictate those without.
Blatantly true, it is the unwritten law of the species called Homo sapiens.

the movie reception

The known movie. A vacant evening. The movie theater.

The urge to be punctual is defined by the desire of doing something complete.The experience needs to be wholesome .

This is in an age touched by the multiplex and the mall having inhouse theater complexes.This is not the time of the single screen theatre. The single screen theatre is the real satisfying movie experience. It entails no choices, no eating, no lazing, no hanging out, no people-watching, no elevator climbing, no frilly conversations conducted in a lazy drawl on an anonymous chair under fancy lights. IT is focused. It is a single unadulterated way of drowning into an imaginary world.

We drive into the arena and are owned by the space. We have to pay to be owned. But it feels grand .Like paying to be at the colosseum,paying for a performance that has the potential of changing our lives. This is one of the last vestiges of the pure experience we have pilfered out from the hordes of multiplexes.

The movie is Gladiator. Since the intention was generated before the arrival into the theater, our stomachs were full and hands empty, devoid of the trappings of popcorn, chips or samosas that shall pass our time till the actual thing.

One thing I have noticed about a movie theater before a screening takes place is the hushed tones, the low voices, afraid to wake up the sleeping giant that shall jump into our lives and take control of it.

The semi- darkness lulls people into a sense of subconscious fear, awe, silence.

It is like the little child pulling his blanket over him before his dreams take him to unknown lands, anticipating the absurdness of situations,the semi reality or extra reality of it, the chance that it could be virtually anything that he may see ,any place that he may be in, any time .He is ready to accept any situation , any dream for what it is , a pure gift that cannot be scathed with one’s own imagination but taken as it comes.

So are we.We sit on the seats searching for a comfortable position , since we forget the nature of our bodies , of its movements , its needs once the reel begins its journey and wish to be comfortably held till the end. Already the semi darkness has made the world around us anonymous, smeared their faces with darkness so that we cannot feel guilty to selfishly drown ourselves into this self contained realm of the movie. Is it a guilt that emerges due to the feeling of voyeurism, the dirty peeping into other people’s lives,

or that leisure is a sin , or that we have trespassed into another territory , not our own .

IS it not guilt at all? What is it about this darkness that lulls us into a sense of security that seems to allow this indulgence?

The fans start whirring , an irritating push into our own homes . We look around to make sure there are other people with us in this escapade. Having made our silent observations we sit back to enjoy the “Gladiator”

The old man Caesar at a certain point says,” Come now, let us whisper as friends in this winter darkness “and we are left pining for a cool blast of air in our faces , a slight shiver that will envelop us in its entirety. The colloseum is just light particles reflected off a wall , yet why can we almost smell its dust and blood?

The interval is an unwelcome break yet pacifying , as it lets us back into this real world assuring us that we shall be back again and not be forever lost in this ancient magnificence.

And as I emerge from this spectacle that I lived in with eyes wide open , I am thrown either into the blazing sun or the coarse night. Now these two elicit different responses from me. The blazing sun almost pushes me back, just as it is difficult to accept the morning after a snuggly sleep, and whacky dreams. It is a rude reminder of one’s life and its reality.But the darkness is something else. It is an attempt not to let the vision go , to travel home in this daze , yearning to still be in this dream so I can take it home into my bed and sleep with it , churn it into my own life , my own dreams.Frantically hold onto that thin thread that connects that vision inside with the external world- darkness , semi –darkness, silence, losing oneself in an image.The world around me glows with a romantic sheen, the wet, grey tar resembles the gritty fields of Germania, with packed mud.

Nothing should break this fragile eggshell realm of disbelief of the real. And so I refrain from saying a word, wait till I am sleeping and then only release myself into the calm void.

high art

a protest ,
art of rebellion,
against man ,
mural of black birdshit on white walls.

Primordial Rites

I walked into a stageful of people. I could hear their faintly thudding hearts , an Ameliesque beating that nervously tingled with the sweat of anticipation, vaguely walked around with their half covered legs. The tiny perforations on the ecstatic speakers trembled and shivered ,finally giving way to incessant periodic orgasms.

And the rite of engorging, cultish, human worship began.The half-murmuring, lip biting,jarring chants rose and fell in accordance to the reigning will of the masked speakers.

A drum beat , first slow , sickening thumping of feet on the ground, a rhythmic pump of life, a ancient ritual where the shadows glowed behind the savage bodies,and shook and raged as the yellow flickerings licked at them , murderously stabbing at their giant forms , a primordial emanation of smoke and the night seeped into the shadows as they quivered in virile splendour.

One , revelling in his own endowments and ecstasies , reeled all the chains of perception and bound them to him as he intruded upon the rigorous chanting of the fertile night.

The stage was darkened, with hanging emanations that looked like strange glowing creatures.

A disorienting mosaic of chequered tiles merged and spread in the vile semi-darkness, a dull dichotomy.A table at the edge of this cliff , had a book that blast forth a square of veined light upon a side , where colour pushed and squeezed and grazed and quaked against each other, an entangling of slithering forms . As the people stood in it , it carved upon their curved muscles a piece, or as if , they breathed it from their lungs , and it moved and coursed in unison with their spasming bodies.

Then the smell of fermentation clouded over the beings , in its wringing embrace and watched as the guild let their membranes of deemed fortification split and tear and blast in a copius flow of reservation.They were white and amber , vain liquids , slitheringly shining in the tungsten lights.The Ritual of Mock Freedom had started.

In joints of scattered people ,an escapade was hatched , as dark and ugly as brainwashing ideologies , an untying ,loosening of the knots of sanity , wreaking a helpless mind , subjugating a will to the endorphinal anarchy of battle.

The Fermented and the Anarchised leapt on the battlefield ,now heaving with the blood of the loin, returning to the stage , a shuddering urge possessing them , a bloating of enzymes in the blood , coursing through it .

The beat became fast and thick , a reveberation of the sensual instincts, the seduction of the fecund , the blade and the chalice, the unity of soul and the achievement of that higher moment with eternity.
Then as it began , it abruptly ended and the trance of pulsating sound , sight and instinct , condensed upon the simmering heat of the glassy forms , and the frost of the morning joined it in its placid journey to another reality.

sweet dreams

HEre I am liSteninG to "Sweet dreams are made of these, who am i to disagree, travelled the world and the seven seas, everybody's lookin for something "
The sound of MArilynMAnson reminds me oF his white face , black lipstick and horrendous ,almost sadistic mask hiding from the normal world reaching into fake gory realms which still have a foundation in reality...
Hiding away from the real world safe in his realm of craziness.
well but he is right ..everybody's lookin for something .

------------------*-----------------------------*----------------------------*------------------
I ran over a cat a year back and i still shudder at its agonising squeals.
.
THE water takes 7 minutes longer to heat now than last month .

My room has water seeping in from the top coz its a real old house.1972.

My grandfather met JRD Tata on a plane in the 50's or 60's and he offered to give him his home cooked parathas instead of the bland airplane food.

Recently read that JRD TAta started the aviation industry in INdia.

To be able to really draw , now wouldnt that be something !

-----------------------*-------------------------*-----------------------*----------------------

I happened on a street unknown to me and followed my whims of direction.
I am so faraway from the world i dont expect to arrive.
The lights had the weight of a dark cloud.
Tangible, not visible.
I held it at the edge of my fingertips , rolled it over the edge,
it curled into faint wisps and was gone .
THe squat granite menhirs on which it once beat did not glow with its iridescence.
THE FURIOUS RAIN DOES NOT MAKE THE SKY LOOK UP ONTO US

just an anecdote for the moment...
When you copy from a single source its called plagiarism, when you copy from many sources its called research!

When asked the difference between America and the U.K. in 1953,Winston Churchill , with a cigar hanging out of the corner of his loudspoken mouth, deadpan said,"They're the same country divided only by language!"

Smile.

She sits in her lavender posture reading a book opposite me on the brown textured sofa.She sits rigid, like discipline.Like the prescribed rules she's taught the world.Unbent .Unbroken. Glasses on her nose ridge , she looks old and beaten.Beaten by a stubborn reluctance to change.Beaten by routine.
She soon starts talking about everything ,I hardly listen.
Cant stop and listen to her world of tiny details and routine monologues.
I wander with the flute and santoor that are resonating hoarsely from my disturbed speakers.They are vainly competing with the mosquitoes buzzing in my scrunched ear.Sounds like Marlon Brando's great Godfather.Bass on high and mode on POP, and it starts sounding like music.
I wander in instrumental ecstasy,until the mossies attack again .I attempt to catch the damned mosquito with my front paws.This I realise is on par with trying to get snot off your fingernail,
because the bloomin' mosquito is quick for his age.Not that i tried ascertaining it before trying to put that loquacious soul to rest.So now I'm cursing these Mafia men.Soon they'll be a horde of his finest marksmen swarm upon me with drawn proboscis' -loaded with the safety off.

HArk! I hear a typewriter.Rat-ta-tack-chack-tat seems to flow with the tabla and flute.
A menage-a-trois of unconventional instruments .
She stops and listens.Never has the typewriter sounded less annoying .
We smile at each other.
The world needs more typewriters.

an ant lesson

Ants crawl up the naked wall,
Dry cracks thunder down
And strike me in my wordless bed.
Struggling for breath ,I see
Their careful colony,
Through the pin-prick raining cracks,
Then black and quiet they turn to me.
March into my eyes.
My despairing cracks slide back up ,
With them my frayed nerves.
Now,black and quiet ,I breathe.
Finally tomorrow will bring words on my careful page.

(the lesson of careful precision and slow construction taught by the worker ants inspires a habitually spontaneous, temporarily dry poet to let the words flow again)

2 rooms at the back of the house!

Ah! the sweet smell of a dirty old room reconverted into a studio , with paint peeling off the walls , water seeping into them.Ah!the feel of a fancily textured red and grey floor, with cement stuck onto the floor during renovation then scraped off with a tiny scraper leaving a floor reminiscent of a jagged abstract !
Well,this is it . What I've always wanted .Space and freedom to really make a mess of a place ..or make it look good..depending on how one looks at it.If you're anything close to my mother ..definitely this place will be the biggest garbage dump within a five mile radius,minus the flies ..plus the ragpicker.Yeah ! ME.

After Goya ,modern painting begins.-Andre Malraux

Francisco De Goya , painter of the great consterning spanish troubles,the haughty queen and his beloved Cayetana ,and brought with him this inexplicable theatrical atmosphere to life;harrowed,troubled,jarring .
This movie although incomparable in my view in lighting and techniques of dramatic storytelling washed away the tactile facts of Goya in the rendition of his mystery and eccentricity.His theatrical using of the sets and constant subtle shifts in atmosphere and lighting dreams ones way through this spectacle. The flavour of Goya,his dark deliberations ,line this gallery one walks down , sensuous and rich ,pulsating with the heart of his paintings.
Here's what i think of the first scene . Tremendous skill and thought with the set design , lighting and props.
Goya - the movie.

A sickly green grey of loose, strewn, disturbed earth.darkness streaming away in twisting , meandering tributaries, silting the earth to laterite. a slow red of the spanish arena smeared in the dirt. rufous red.a guttural oppressed red.A gnawed out ,glistening,bull-head blood.

A sunlight pale yellow-pink washed mercilessly through the stagnant glans and graceful curve of its horn. a foliage reflected green stirred with yellow spilt rays .Sinuous rills of a tangled rope ,a silent adulterous adventurer,tasting the intoxicating, coagulating shadows and the dutiful open sun in the same delusional breath. Deaf shadows of the sun tame the ephemeral light.

A hacked sense lays lamely in a shivering pan like bulls feet , a passive critic of its surroundings.It rises relentlessly, strenuous, delirious red; clenching lest it burst into scarlet.
Lays its tired head on the headless bull and recedes to its heavy ,dragged ,permeating stench.

It hangs there, old and weary from death, insides emptied and ghoulishly faced Goya emerging from its smooth organs a weary traveller in his undistinguishable double-faced reality.He wakes in startlingly real white sheets ,panacea to his ugly contours.The red of the bull red earth splashed on his wall.An effortless spiral of life in frost carved by his own hands.

He turns, his breath laboured, breathing with him is a blue enveloping aura; overpowering the red walls ,glowing them in a ghostly black Cayetana walking slowly out of his heaving room.He follows ,forelight surrendering to backlight, and his screened image walking behind the translucent wall to a ironically white corridor leading to his yearning past.Hallway to his longing .
He stops at a side door.A room with chequered black and white tiles being scrubbed by a devout servant , with two dead geese dripping into a yellow bucket alongside two red apples and grapes in a bowl .Slowly he walks on.

Thrust out in the open bustling road , his frightened eyes rise with a measured defiance with the neighing horse of hallowed convention.Cayetana. Ah!Sweet Cayetana gracefully walks away with his weak pleading questions . A yearning for one, deep and delirious once again finally uttered on his undessiderated deathbed.

poet

Poet

Rivers die...
streams of its remnants
caressing the last of the gurgling sand.
Sad bubbles relinquish themselves to hungry air.

Naked poet at the water's edge,
whispers no more..
But his footprints on the glassy surface,
lie unwashed by the sand.

His are the fossils of the dying waters.
His are their apparitioned tombs.

Stranded ,a relic.
Gathers dust.

(the poet as a relic in modern times , pondering over corroded vestiges of the original world ..)

Did a quiz on www.quizfarm.com http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=23320 this is what they say i am... Well they arent necessarily right ..but i agree with the short intro..

You scored as Postmodernist.
Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.
Postmodernist 100%
Modernist 75%
Existentialist 63%
Cultural Creative 56%
Materialist 56%
Romanticist 38%
Idealist 25%
Fundamentalist 13%

reach for the sky.... 

shattered sky 

sun stain'd glass 

gate crashed Joe satriani -lived upto "GUITAR GOD"

Joe

Where Guru Dutt shot his films...prabhat studio...FTII poona

Inside the lair... the ramps and ropes above are where the lights were placed so they could be moved according to the huge sets built below.... Relic of an ageless era in filmmaking

graFTII! 

Before going down the stairway to hell she asks, "ARE THEY READY FOR ME?

Keep walking ....Johhnie walker! 

Sepia curves under the blaspheming sun.... bangalore to poona 

The Highway Exodus.. 

D'solve

I used to wait in the throngs,
one foot in the sleeping rain.

watch the muddy ripples
of the faces drifting by.

wait for nothing to arrive
something to depart.
vice versa.

Nothing ever did.

Except my reflection.
Faded off that mirror......
below my forgotten foot.

A snap by my brother in a cathedral in england...

I walked into a church today, or should i say cathedral, that what it said outside...as I peered at it through burning eyes... for the first time in my life. I didnt go there to seek advice or to cast blame or confess or to be grateful. I just went there because i saw it and I had never been there before.
It was vast,lavish , with rows of varnished chairs cradling silent bibles leading up to a white conclave, adorned with intricate wood, cement and brass.
It had a red carpet laid out for someone ..I guess inviting God in.well, I actually half expected God to get off the back wall, walk up to me and tell me what to do for the rest of my life. That would have made things a little more interesting , dont u think? well, curse my luck, must not be my day because nothing of the sort happened.
I was all alone there scanning the entire place ,thinking a million thoughts.
It was like a vault , sepulchrous and expansive, fawning and indulgent, its stained glass like the dead in Westminster Abbey, unable to shine their porous light.
Then someone walked in and shut all the doors and windows ,dead bolted the doors , whom did he expect to break in, the Devil? The Devil would have never recieved a red carpet welcome in his lifetime if he did.
I felt trapped . So i walked out.
I want to go there again sometime.
To see Faith.Find out what it is.For I sure as hell dont know

Ciao!

t'was a dirty smoky haze , i saw a light go off in...didnt seem relevant at the time .but as i walked to the door, i dropped my smiling key... couldnt find it and left it there ...smiling in the shining speckled tiles ,kicked and battered as it found its way to nowhere.
Waiting for Godot i heard someone say, waiting for that fused lone bulb ,to gray to golden yellow, glint off the dirty yellow beer and its crystal cuts into my glassy eye and only then, die.
I met Prachi today.She's off to NID, the Nebulous Incarnation of Demi-Godliness... so sayeth ye olde patriarchs.Ciao, friend!

GLug..glug..glug..glug I went after stepping home a vanquished hero who's suffered the trials of the Great Indian Train Journey.Not like it was worse than the Great Indian Sweat Fest that was astonishingly well organised by the Gre... well I wont push it...Indian railway.Yes since one really cant afford to spend more than a grand,up and down on the innumerable trips one makes to pune and back one just lies content with second class. And there it begins ..the recent edition of the government initiatives- the Dehydration Drive!This one , one really cant ignore , what with the trail of slimy sweat that rises with you like a clinging piece of tape, off the cheap berth when u wake up and drag your face off it, like plaster off the wall.
Well, now I go glug..glug... till I feel its forever and ive neutralized the evil forces that drove half my body content away( I tell myself to chill coz i have 27% water left ,totally 77% if u didnt know, and if i go any further , they'll have to pump it out with the Great Indian Disposable Needle) and then finally im satisfied. All I need now is three days of sleep and in 5 minutes I have discreetly acquired a new title-'Great Indian ,dead as a dog,log and three fat snails in a nuclear fall out'.
Note: The comma before dead is autobiographical...

I posted this comment on nupur's blog a few days back in response to one of her posts and forgot about it.
She came to me today and told me it was good. well, thought i'd post it ..albeit context less without reading her initial post...
So here goes.

see the churning gears of ugly grease.
walk with the living ghosts of a past which cannot be erased.
Try feeling for something that has never hit you.
never seen u reeling .
never made u feel like the glass window would melt into nothing and u would never get a chance .

To escape.
TO draw out your trembling fists and fight .
To douse that riotous inflamed urge that overtook everyone around you .
To start a fire out of the ashes among burning embers soaked in that gritty rain that has your bones numb and your skin dead.
Try feeling for something that has never smashed your mind down into that shuddering ground while your body lies untouched in a hazy mist.
try feeling for something that never hit u .
FOR MORE THAN A DAY.
Thats why we dont feel enough.
For someone else's life.
For it is not ours to feel.
What shall smear across the mundane sepulchre of our own life,
only can we really taste ..and it may remain like grainy wounds that never heal.

The art of making a fool of oneself..

The art of making a fool of oneself. hmmm.. Not too hard to learn , one might presume . And one is often right.The most difficult part is however, to get to a M.F. Notsoverysain stage. And then art becomes life. And life becomes art.
Well, I warn you all, beware the wannabes in this specialised field . They lurk around every corner and in every organisation, and have the disgusting habit of disguising this brilliant art as the art of getting out of one's skin. Way out.Even that doesnt redeem their intentions. Lack of inhibitions really does not directly mean being a fool often confused in certain regions with a token of extreme affection presented by a young man harrassed by his own follies ,driven to utter derangement , to a woman , young or old can be quite questionable , followed by a aeon of pure disillusionment. This my friends is a disguise to avoid oneself the cheesy displeasure of mentioning to the world that fool sounds horrendously like" phool" meaning flower in hindi.
Considering this is an art let me advise you budding artists out there that taking a few bottles of paint and splashing it on a textured canvas ,extolling it as a metaphor for the philosophy of life where the battle between the inner forces of exterior body and the outer attacks of inner conscience delve into each others viscuous souls seems somewhat of an exercise to this end. However thankfully art really isnt such a drag.
Well, now lets rush to the awards section.
I'm hoping that I've been nominated in the elite list.. with me echoing JUB JUb jub....TUM TUm tum... in front of a disconcerting audience, that too with a pout and torn jeans, i might be right there at the top of the list .But no one can really deny that apart from the fear of making a fool of oneself comes the joy of letting go, of almost tasting the freedom that torn jeans and a pout can bring. Poor old Lewis Caroll of Jabberwocky fame might be whirning in his griffy trave, at my peculiar interpretation.
Apart from all this i have some serious comments to make.
There's someone who's perfected the art of making a fool of himself, a great proponent of this art form which was once described by M.T. Head as the" practice of opening one's thick skull to the detest of an unsuspecting audience" has pipped our very own exasperating Srishtian contender Ananya to the top for the "Best artist in the field of self-destruction".This public figure is, thankfully not our very own, Mister Monkey man, who apart from making multi-billion dollar dealings with bearded arab terrorist icons of the century ,works part time as the President of the US of A.
Personally, however this time one of our very own noted philanthropist, humanist and extoller of true Hindu virtues, someone who has worked extensively and productively in the field of communal harmony , Mr Narendra Modi should grab the gold with a slight change in the name of the award , the "self" being cancelled out.Well, since Ive been too frank and straightforward , I'll get back to my sarcastic self and say i have much to learn in this form of art. Let's hope my skill progresses..might have to do a self assessment on it later too , the srishti way.
Well,then see ya next year where the sparkling live performances will be Vajpayee dancing to the Naga beats ,Michael Jackson singing Father Figure and finally Bob Dylan doing a Norah Jones cover in his dulcet tones.All for now. keep tuned.

yup figured it out to some extent . The blue of both authoritative and of subordination has an undercurrent basis in trust.The trust that both are viewed with is reflected in the colour.So they have a common ground in the value of their being .

We are doing a course on colour and have to give a presentation on blue . Blue. What is blue? How many similes and metaphors will u get before u realise that nothing is really blue without conditioning , surrounding and labelling? Since that is what we're built on , it is a valid assumption to say that loneliness or dreams feel blue or footsteps or the ghost song feel blue.
A slightly confusing aspect would be the fact that blue is authoritative as in the blue pin stripes ,blue tie and the spiffy blue mercedes, the IBM logo,the SBI logo, Microsoft and yet why does my friend Vivek think of only blue when he thinks of Murali? Isnt blue the blue of subordination ,of millions of drivers, peons, security guys and the rest?Even if it hides behind the technical blue of the workman's overalls it still is subordination.
The mystery of blue ,colour of the shadow side, of the melancholy,and the raat.

I look acrossthe harbour's misty blue,

And find and lose that magic shifting line,

Where sky one shade less blue meets sea...

Here are a few observations on the colour blue froma book the faculty gave us:
Mosquitoes are attracted to the colour .
A blue candle flame is said to indicate the presence of ghosts.
A blue cover for a magazine on a newsstand increases sales.
Sharks dont like blue.
Asian babies are born with a blue spot on their lower back when they are born which vanish in a few days ..
here is a final one..
What did the cow do when it ate blue grass?
Mood Indigo.
What do u connect with blue?

questions..

Prachi mentioned to me a few days back that to live such a philosophy would be great temporarily...would be interesting.I got thinking...Can someone actually live a philosophy? Even if u believe that, how real is that truth? And what great belief it would be..an obsession ? How does one have the courage to do that? Are Philosophies only for proposing , finding fascinating and leaving them to gather dust on a corner shelf, or to be something of the past? And if u did live them , wouldnt it be the most enriching experience be to live through all of them temporarily and your own too? Life would just be so much more. Is this just abstract thought?
Why?
I cant leave my comfortable shell and venture out to believe anything and make it a part of my life, other than what i already believe in .well, i dont have to but well its hard for one to think beyond your everyday doings, goals, trials and the instantaneous life?
The Instantaneous Life...thats what it is...can I live beyond the instant?
Shrug.
Anyway nothing matters, if I'm listening to Albert Camus.
I have lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.-Camus

Awesome light... 

Photograph I had taken at a wedding .Incredible smile dont ya think? 

Avy told me today that existentialism is gone,' that was long back' he said. how, i thought ,can a philosophy be a thing of the past? How can he say that a philosophy, one that has frayed the white collars of a believer, that has made a bilious protest rise against its very core, a belief that could free man from the yoke of idolising and worshipping an Ahura Mazda or a Shiva, lying prostrate at the feet of a stone carving or statue ,empty except in its symbolism,a way of thinking that could cease mans efforts to believe in a another being intangible and abstract, how can such a thing be done with ?
Something that can explain so very simply all the meandering questions of every man about life and the eternal quest for meaning , that can say that the fundamental absurdity of life is that there is no meaning , no truth ,no reason ,a thing that can make a man believe in nothing and live for life's sake and not for a higher goal ,a thing that if followed may not end up as the overwhelmimg expectation of the masses , but may be one of the most free ,in the true sense of the word, most FREE and fulfilling ways of living.
Fuelled by the illogicities and doused by the miracles ,it exists in every lonely,depressing, self doubting feeling man has ever felt and has risen due to that question that every man asks more than once in the period of his lifetime , if not all the time -
What is the purpose of life?my life?
Existentialism answers back...
NOTHING .

a masquerade it is, all of it.....

I am not what i seem . Seeming is but a garment i wear. -Kahlil Gibran
The despicably true mound of poetry breathes its last sigh at these fecund words and walks on to a life without shame.
All of it , every word, every expression , all of it , a seamless travel into a phony progression of seeming? Well, yes.And its fine. I dont live like im afraid of it . Seeming is my possession and i am not ashamed of it. I use it and obey it , and defy it even if it has no rules to obey .I do not genuflect to it , as i know i can surpass it . And a garment doesnt cover one completely.....Revelation is just made arcane by the very act of seeming.
Clothes are a provocation to want to see a person naked.
so I am my garment .....
my surface , my skin
I am a melanin masquerade.