for her 'Contributions to Diversity'

and this of course is the current affairs section of my blog. The EU has just rewarded Aishwarya Rai for her "Contributions to Diversity"! Gave me so much joy i couldn't resist sharing it with the world at large, especially the part of it that missed the inner corner of page 12 (I think) of The Hindu today. Man that paper cracks me up practically everyday, and we take it because its the most serious publication available (if you discount the business standard i suppose) ... says great things about our news 'industry' don'it?

"Does Humor Belong in Music?"

“In the real dark night of the Soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Ah well, one always presumed, rather mistakenly as it turns out, that one had some sort of copyright on a time like that. I mean c’mon, what could be more quintessentially me than three in the a.m., some entertainment (Le sacre du printemps. Zbigniew Zamachowski. The Yardbirds. John Mayall. Cream - I’m not picky, unlike clapton), some cacao infused delectation and a little nicotine inhalation?
And of course, a well stocked fridge for when those munchies come calling. Ah the sweet and simple life, so very far it never has quite seemed before.
One’s brain is on its protesting way to becoming the most exercised muscle in one’s body, much to one’s chagrin. And one was recently unpleasantly surprised with the discovery of a hitherto comfortably missing guilt mechanism known as a conscience INSIDE ONE’S BODY! Now I know what they mean by ‘your body changes as you grow older’ – one will never quite be twenty again (tho’ here is not the time or place to mention sags and allsuch).

Incidentally, still searching for Nina Simone… all along the… naah.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother as a Surprisingly Young Woman

"You are a most hopeless idealist – your aspirations are irrealizable. You want from men faith, honour, fidelity to truth in themselves and others. You want them to have all this, to show it every day, to make out of these words their rule of life. The respectable classes which suspect you of such pernicious longings lock you up and would just as soon have you shot – because your personality counts and you cannot deny that you are a dangerous man. What makes you dangerous is your unwarrantable belief that your desire may be realized. This is the only point of difference between us. I do not believe. And if I desire the very same things no on cares. Consequently I am not likely to be locked up or shot. Therein is another difference – this time to your manifest advantage.
There is a – let us say – a machine. It evolved itself (I am severely scientific) out of a chaos of scraps of iron and behold! – it knits. I am horrified at the horrible work and stand appalled. I feel it ought to embroider – but it goes on knitting. You come and say: ‘this is all right: it’s only a question of the right kind of oil. Let us use this – for instance – celestial oil and the machine shall embroider a most beautiful design in purple and gold.’ Will it? Alas no. You cannot by any special lubrication make embroidery with a knitting machine, and the most withering thought is that the infamous thing has made itself; made itself without thought, without conscience, without foresight, without eyes, without heart. It is a tragic accident – and it has happened. You can’t interfere with it. The last drop of bitterness is in the suspicion that you can’t even smash it. In virtue of that truth one and immortal which lurks in the force that made it spring into existence it is what it is – and it is indestructible!
It knits us in and it knits us out, it has knitted time, space, pain, death, corruption, despair and all the illusions – and nothing matters. I’ll admit however that to look at the remorseless process is sometimes amusing." - Joseph Conrad, in a letter to Cunninghame Graham dated 20 December 1897


I’m back – ish. Though after such long separation I must admit slightly tongue-tied and at a loss for words. So let me talk about another movie – its part of a trilogy actually and I only saw the first one today – it was blue – I mean it was called blue. Its French, by a polish chap whose name I couldn’t possibly spell right so I’m not even going to try. The trilogy is colors – blue white and red, for the French flag and they stand, respectively for liberte, egalite, fraternite, mon cher. Blue had Juliette binoche in the lead and apart from being the usual delicious fare in terms of luxuriant lighting and absolutely perfect cinematography, it was also otherwise … absorbing? In terms of treatment I’d give it a perfect score but in terms of content maybe not that great. But then you know me, I’m a sucker for anything even remotely French sounding, oui? With my brilliant luck, I’m sitting right now in probably the only barista in the country which is not actually wi-fi enabled, and I didn’t even think to ask before I blew a load on something I didn’t even particularly want to eat… oh well, at least I’ll save five bucks going home… and I’m not buying any more cigarettes this month, which is not saying much at this late a date. But budgeting is no fun – though I have only spent a 100 rs. On cigarettes this month, that also means I have had to forsake my habitual Camel regulars (“rajasthan ki hai” – Bhaiyyan) in favour (or otherwise) of our dear old pal navy cut. Which I can now conveniently blame for my throat getting progressively sorer instead of improving as my cold disappears. Oh well as they say in teenie pop land: c’est la vie.
p.s. the movie i actually promised to talk about was Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffiths - the highest grossing silent film of all times - but i guess it'll have to wait in those dark and dusty store rooms of my mind...

turtle

tho' i saw, and admittedly enjoyed, The Cinderella Man yesterday, Harvie Krumpet still rules as my movie of the month... somewhat behind times i realize, but hell. Tho i will admit it tends to be somewhat Slaughterhouse-Five ish. Ah well. In the words of the maestro himself, So it goes.
incidentally, anyone seen I Love(sic) Huckbees?? [heart heart heart - ed.]
And still too lazy and enjoying an unnaturally prolonged hangover to write properly or longer - i wish i could stay in this fishbowl feelin all the time - where the outside world wears strange, undulating faces that somehow cease to surprise or threaten in their alien-ness. So Kashmir will still have to remain a mystery of sorts... tho' i will mention the spectacular bruises of interstellar magnitude i have on my thighs as souvenirs...and there will let it dangle.

higher and higher in the widening gyre

Inches of rain in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina - 18>>
Inches of rain in Mumbai - 37.1>>>>
Population of New Orleans - 484,674>>
Population of Mumbai - 12,622,500>>>>
Deaths in New Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina - 100>>
Deaths in Mumbai within 48 hours of rain - 37>>>>
Number of people to be evacuated in New Orleans - ENTIRE CITY>>
Number of people evacuated in Mumbai - 10,000>>>>
Cases of shooting and violence in New Orleans - Countless>>
Cases of shooting and violence in Mumbai - NONE>>>>
Time taken for US army to reach New Orleans - 48 hours>>
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach Mumbai - 12 hours>>>>
Status 48 hours later - New Orleans is still waiting for relief,army and electricity>>
Status 48 hours later - Mumbai is back on its feet and business is as usual>>>>
USA - World's most developed nation?>>
India - Third World Country? >>>
> India is making a $5 million donation to the American Red>
Cross. America's donation to India - NIL>>
In addition, India is still willing to donate essential medicines to the relief effort.

getting my breath back again, can promise a real post real soon.

Inaction, no falsifying dream

off for a week, or maybe more. keep your eyes peeled for bomb blasts in sri nagar... it might be the last time you hear of me..
au revoir and au reverie

... or something equally inoffensive to a suffering eye

Oh those awfull foggy monday mornings. Oh those relentless, pervasive monday morning blues. Where the mellow warmth of saturday night whiskey still hugs your head like a petrified monkey sitting on your shoulder, blurring your vision with warm, tense palms-softly lined and semi familiar from a long forgotten past that, looked at from the disdainful, sober distance of now, couldn't possibly be yours anyway. Walking through main corr and masticating memories, one fumbles/stumbles with concrete locators like a jam packed TEB and the grinning faces of manic monday morning Dayscis who JUST WON'T ROLL OVER and ... well.
Thats my aggression Quota for a day that started off too late anyways, what with lazy professors who cancel on you before you can decide to bunk on them, and other such apocalyptic symptoms of total and utter chaos.
P.S. radio jockeys now top my list of absolute and utter vermin that it is my responsibility as super hero to exterminate for the greater good of cows. This morning's gem - Smoking causes blindness, so all you smokers had better stop smoking because a recent study has shown that smoking causes blindness. I have it on the highest authority that it has now been proved that smoking causes blindness - so if lung cancer didn't get you to give up, this oughta because smoking causes blindness. and unlike her, i'm going to stop right about now, and trust in your ability to impute from this that smoking causes blindness. !!!
...

On a brighter note, its now four days and counting to Man in the Moon, a.k.a Watchout Sri Nagar - whoopeee!

or not

so much for optimism and snap solutions. damn and double damn. i have realized it's not just a post problem, even the sidebar on my blog is center aligned. The creation has run away from the creator, or in the words of a certain famous Dr. Frankenstein: "oops!".
oh well,
The best laid plans
Of Mice and men
Gang aft agley.
- Robert Burns.

signing off,
more a mouse than a man.

hallel-u-rekaa!!!

ok, somewhat shamefacedly, that was rather dumb. but moving on and not pressing the point, the axis of my world has tilted to a rather more comfortable allignment. So yay!

huh!

ok, much against my will and the inclinations of my gigantic and somewhat intrusive ego i must now admit to certain well concealed weaknesses and failings. or not entirely. however, exposure to a certain extent becomes unavoidable when one calls for help, so here goes. my blog, for some strange inexplicable reason has decided to become centre aligned and this particular aesthetic choice does not quite appeal to me. though i am the most relaxed and understanding of parents, especially now that its going through the particularly sensitive juvenile age, and though i do somewhat recall the confused jabs at an identity and the existential angst of those pimply, pubertian days of yore, and can take incipiently rebellious stances lying down, this is like the body piercing where i absolutely must draw the line. help is solicited from all concerned fellow parents and guardians, we must stand together in our days of need: the only thing we can afford to lose at this stage is our hair. Outside, the battle waged on regardless.

really, doesn't
this
look strange, disembodied eery and unappealing
also threatening, but maybe thats just me.

for lack of something gimicky

i could of course quote neruda at you endlessly, he is just about the most divine thing i have ever encountered... and where are the poets anymore... i think he took up all the poetic quota for an entire century or more.

POETRY
- Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
-----

part of one of his last volumes, published a few years before his death

Riders in the Sky - what they signify ,or, APOCALYPSE NOW!!!

most(moxt, mozt, whatever) of you do not know college.
most of you have never even heard of maya john.
this being my third and last year here is also not likely to be of earth shattering significance to you.
but she is the first female president in college in 125 years - and that perhaps will make you pause.
funnily enough, that is about the least important thing i have written yet.

don't you see, this is the end to stephania as we know it... though who knows interesting things may come out of it yet -

as we speak abhishek panda has arranged an anga protest where they all dressed in black and carried candles to the mess with placards saying 'looking for men's p.g.s'
Panda!

as we speak uttam and aby are throwing the first ever joint losing camp party tonight for which as it turns out none of us are going - despite rumours of 18000 rs. worth of booze.

as we speak a pervasive fog of apathy steals over andrews court, and its ignorant victims in main corr fail to notice the blue funk they all seem to be floating around in.
this is the saddest college has ever been, even i dey and willie now mutter restlessly in their sleep and pull the blankets tighter around themselves.

somewhere in the labyrinths of another newly converted block, high pitched maniacal laughter lingers in the corners, driving out the last tenacious ghosts of countless room BAAPS and DADAS, who scurry out clutching their translucent airy white balls.

Of Virgins and Vertigo

watching my 6

this might be me getting paranoid again but i think a lizard has been following me around for about a week now. At first when i saw it on my car driving to ambala, i thought it was just a poor hitch-hiker, but the increasingly alarming frequency with which it tends to sort of 'drop into' my life is beginning to arouse my long dormant suspicions. though i haven't been able to get a good look at its face so far, the general description is always the same - biggish, yellow-brown, eeky and slithery. if you see it around please get in touch. Am hitting back by being pro-active and stalking the stalker. i will outslink the reptile - watch me crawl
up a wall.
it's watching me from the comp next to mine as i type this - i kid you not - i think it might just be one of harish's evil-minded minions - who needs webcams?

here's lookin at you kid

another place i'll never hit the teens again.
semi sweet bitter blues. the bluesy poetick monster resurfaces, only to submerge again to the murky depths of the vague, unformulated, verbally immobilised surging foamy seas.
"For he hath fed on honey-dew
And drunk the milk of paradise."
beware beware... and i will carefully sidestep, dodge, ignore and otherwise outmanouver any hair comments. Eat my dust suckers!
Yamaha 350 is my newest love in life - all ye faithful, now celebrate, a crush is finally upon us.

fade out to sounds of ecstatic cheering, wild clapping and whistles, with a half-disguised note of someone in the audience having a quiet orgasm to themselves.

However, one is free to disagree,
vehemently,
lukewarmly ,
or not, as the case may be.

dissenters/heretics/unconverted heathens

The hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse

A fresh look at - The Excorcist

ok the title has nothing to do with anything - its just the misleading title of a book i once picked up that failed utterly and completely to live up to the promise of its rather intriguing title... talkin of failing to live up and all that...Happy independence day or Something. and the world really never slept at midnight did it... and india never awoke... still grand rhetoric and all
losing my re vision. have stared at a screen pretty much two whole days now, and the air is so thick and wet i'm swimming in it, and heavier than the dead sea too.
incidentally, ever heard of a movie called Miller's Crossing? it's by the same people who gave us barton fink

the potentially tantalising tale of ramu and the flying thapar

since the hair raising exploits of the chaddimaster was taken off the air due to some rather unforeseen circumstances (involving the accidental revelation of the secret identity of that much loved savior of the people), this spot will now be dedicated to the transmission of cheap reruns of the once popular sitcom/family drama/soap/thriller "The exploits of Ramu the vampire boy aka Chhotu".
to know more, watch this space
Stay tuned...
coming up next: yet another day in the dreary life of our producers/sponsors...Why Knot i kask Kyou

Happy French Mistake

Still recovering from the stinging lashes of witty critics from the back of beyond, or first world countries as they're otherwise called. Anyways, what do you who sit in your air conditioned, un power cutted jazzy coffee places on gay street know about the conditions this writer has to struggle out of on a daily basis just to crawl upto this blog in order to get a breath of fresh air or a forum for expression. Here where they say "Off With their heads" before you even get a word in edgeways, this poor persecuted lizard/scribe has had to resort to various means, devious, nefarious and otherwise, merely to get a word in, out, or around, as the case may be. Before I hit upon this priceless parcel of post, you might have heard of me under such pseudonyms as: Isaac Bickerstaff, A Dissenter, A Person of Quality, A Person of Honour, M.B. Drapier, T.R.D.J.S.D.O.P.I.I.
yeah yeah I know i'm not proud, but then i'm not any of the above either.
incidentally the chronic allusiveness and intertextuality of this post is at an all time high.
Go ahead, swing home reaper, the golden wheat sways all the way to the guillotine, dancing to its lone last lilting song.

maybe its just me but there's something intensely unreal about a tiny pale green caterpillar crawling slowly across my screen as I type this. And he's on the outside of the screen, my side of reality, this touchable world. However, in the space between this sentence and the last, he has fallen off, shaken himself, realized the absurdity of his position and slunk away under the colossal weight of the improbability of him being here at all. A consciousness poised between 'history and ignorance': someone , I forget who, said that to be a great poet beyond twenty five one needs a sense of politics. or something to the effect, the point to me being that before the age of 25 one can be a great poet nevertheless.
"I want to do to you what spring does to the cherry trees" now theres a thought... chile is one place i miss, all the time i's somewhere else, but then every point in the space time continuum where i'm not is a place i miss so....

fin de siecle

A movie called "Stray Dogs".
about two young kids in afghanistan out on the street since their father was arrested by the americans for being a taliban and denounced their mother for marrying again after he disappeared. Both parents in jail, mother facing execution and father refusing to forgive her, these kids are out on the street trying to survive, and get into jail one way or the other since home is where the heart is. they pick up a stray dog whose welfare they are extremely concerned about and who refuses to eat try what they may. The story has a jaane bhi do yaaron feel to it, though the treatment is perhaps not so explicitly ironic or humourous, maybe because a shared joke between the adult director and audience would be at the expense of the innocent child protagonist. However, there are also ominous overtones that reflect the mood of a dystopian golding or burgess using children as the most effective weapon of choice. But it becomes scarier here because it isn't merely a, perhaps exaggerated, vision of the future, it is.

Mine of course, lamentably perhaps, is over. More through lack of time than complete satisfaction with the end product. But well, no more desperate brainstorming at mocha, though something about the idea of cocoa induced smoke smothered adrenaline rushes is rather enticing. However,

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes - why take a chance? fly home instead.

out of work... and order

Unfortunately, no longer going to work due to the terribly inexpedient necessity of returning to college ( though i was briefly tempted to drop out). But this years course, at least in bits and pieces, seems exciting. Ranges from Fo (accidental death...) to Shelley and yeats with everything from eliot to graham greene to chinua achebe thrown in ... also Frankenstein... looking forward to this counterview - seeing as a monster a man you can't help fall for through his poetry... reminds me of this book I read called Mrs. Shakespeare - very brief and playful, but fun enough. Saw a movie from Taiwan called What Time is it There? it was brilliant, vague, and well executed - the idea and the treatment were in perfect harmony for once... the whole blue wash or (almost ruthlessly bold) chiarascuro brought the sense of alienation and loneliness bordering on a mass neurosis out very well. Anyway, I personally have a soft spot for things in the absurdist manner, i like the lazy meandering and yet purposeful way they have of getting the horrible point across, and if the medium and narration mate perfectly it can be undeniably brilliant. Also saw Pather Panchali ( Actually saw four movies at a stretch yesterday and looking forward to repeating the experience today and tomorrow): I always wondered where something as brilliant as Malgudi days could have a precedent in terms of Cinema or T.V. because for once filming complements instead of detracts from the pristine glory of the original - well i just found my answer.

From the close pan of a toothless Squint eyed Thakorema shuffling slowly across a background of patched and tattered linen hung out to dry, to the little line formed by a tempted Durga and Apu (not to mention the dog) behind the sweetmaker as he rings and jiggles down the path, hawking his wares. I think the simplicity or clarity of Black and White (the old kind with its skewed contrast and slightly blurred outlines - the new kind is too stark and confrontational) allowed for a rare kind of pathos and emotion sharing that just isn't possible anymore - it was like a line drawing - a few simple strokes, the simpler the better - bold and yet not fully revealed, inviting the viewer by evincing a simple faith in his ability to form his own conclusions, unhurried in their attempt to make a point, lacking the note of desperation that inevitably mars most propoganda, even of the highest order. Anyways, dying to see the rest of the Apu trilogy. Maybe more on him later.

The rangy Cowboy of the mordant postmodern world

Ok. For once my title will actually be directly linkable to the rest of the post. Though I do dislike bowing down to conventionality. Well, needs must and so on. This post is about a fascinating phenomenon that i have been in the lucky position to observe closely in the past few months on a daily basis.
i like to call it The Quivering Knife or new age nirvana in five easy-to-attain stages.
Yes the one and (unfortunately not) only, your friendly neighbourhood bus conductor. This species occurs in a variety of sizes, an assortment of shapes, ages and temperaments and can boast of the highest recorded levels of testosterone and general aggression in anything-that-lived-to-tell-the-tale. They can be divided into two seperate sub species; of the DTC and Private variety. The first are usually lackadaisical, not prone to movement, reluctant of speech, and adept at the art of expressing a bewildering array of emotions ranging from contempt to superciliousness with the mere twitch of an eyebrow (in less skilled members this can be accompanied by peering over the rims of their glasses to emphasize the point, but real masters disdain the use of any props beyond a clinking bag full of coins, which they will jingle at you if you prove an especially daft and unappreciative audience). Made somewhat in the Argus Filch mold (incidentally, reading the HBP right now and suffering from a serious case of sleep deprivation and general exhaustion - am in the office on sunday - which i think will right itself once college starts again and i stop working. ok so it has started already i just haven't been yet alright?!) when prodded they prove about as helpful as four shrivelled potatoes lining your window sill. (which, in case the simile is too complicated for you, is NOT AT ALL).

However, it is the other sub species that really hold our interest, with their unlimited ability to see empty spaces in the bus that could be filled by even more human bodies (yeah of course the crook of my elbow is space wasted unless the third tyre of somone else's belly can rest there. and what better place to put my nose than in that sweaty man's hairy underarm, may i really?), their profound capacity for continous meaningless yelling, and their propensity for doing their job so well that you never quite get to exactly where you need to go, because of course it was silly of you to want to go there to begin with. Overflowing with the milk of human kindness, they will stop at a bus stop for as long as it takes to make sure that they leave no one behind, not even the ones who will get there next year, regardless of the inconvenience caused themselves throught the thoughtless and inconsiderate heckling of the complaining passengers already on the bus. They are the new messiahs, the modern shepherds, the desi cowboy, the new age guru, fast replacing the politician as the least influential but most deadly species on the sub continent.
This nexus of extremely powerful men control your lives, making decisions for you that could make or break you forever. Like cattle they herd a blissfull unwary busfull of passengers around according to their own deep dark devious plans, modifying routes and rates with the mere flick of a hand to suit their purposes.

where are the metaphysics petalled with poppies

or the rain softly scattering...
the best story i've heard so far this year comes from the indefatigable reigning queen of goofs and slip ups - swati puri, most recently remembered for her sterling performance last year in "The Man on the Beach - His Heart or his Packet". The matinee idol now comes back in the summer blockbuster titled "Stuck on the Turnstile or Another Strange Man Who Spun Me Around". it goes something like this...
first, god's operation was a success and we are now getting regular, tho' still slightly wimpy, rain. (tho' i warn you it is a futile attempt, if you still wanna try and make sense of that sentence, see below dated june 29, titled 'and there will come soft rains'. or don't)
so.
pretty miss puri sitting on a tree, kay-aye-ess...
ok sorry, forgot.
It had rained all night, and delhi woke up to the usual more rainage less drainage morning after.
miss puri found herself stranded in the wilds of far south delhi, somewhere around AIIMS, and suffering from a drastic cash flow problem. Being a conscientious hindu, she immediately invoked the gods, and mammon appeared in the form of a huge neon arrow hanging in thin air, flashing in the direction of the nearest ATM (yes anything can happen as long as you have faith).
Now the arrow pointed in the direction of a harmless enough looking shiny red turnstile, so what with her predilection for the colour and other things, she headed straight for it. (Warning, the following description, tho' tedious, is not redundant, and is necessary to go through for the sake of the story so all cruise readers are forewarned, or in other words, SKIP IT AND COME BACK AGAIN LOSERS!!!)
The turnstile led down a step to a path which was hedged on both sides by embankments, fences and lawns, in that order. Predictably, this inadvertent pool was now a miniscule pond, and regular users had devised a rather ingenious way of getting across: they hung on to the turnstile and swung till they reached the embankment on one side of the path, where they lunged for the fence and sidled along it till they reached where they needed to be. (What can i say, every indian is a trapeze artist at heart, or has some kind of repressed circus aspirations)
Anyways, our li'l miss women's lib 'anything-they-can-do-i-can-too' wasn't to be left behind, "Why this, there's nothing to it, if i can grapple with KRC's foggy meanderings, what's this to stop me?" Undaunted, valiant, unaware of the will of gods, such was the fate our heroine was to suffer in her ignorance.
so.
she found herself atop the slightly rusty turnstile, and swung. All went fine so far and she was rather pleased with her success. Alas, at this point the fickle friend fortune deserted her, so to say, mid-stride, and our lone brave warrior realized something she'd so successfully managed to evade for years: her legs were too short. Try as she might, she could not manage to reach the little cemented island on either side, and so she did the only thing she had so far been succesful at - she swung. Now she did it with all her might but there is only so much even a punjabi can do on an empty stomach and a rusty turnstile. She swung forward creakily till she was stuck right out in the middle of the little puddle. There she was, literally hanging in midair, too far from any surface where she might gain purchase enough for another push, sort of pumping in thin air, as if riding a rather viciously bucking turnstile. After doing this to no effect for a couple of minutes, she decided to glance up. her eyes fell on her saviour, the tea stall man, who at the moment was too debilitated by laughing fits to come to her rescue. Having nothing better to do (it was a slow day on radio) he had been watching the shenanighans of our ravishing redoubtable rapunzel, and had probably given himself internal haemorrhaging from all the rolling and falling and side clutching.

well, he finally recovered enough to take pity, came and swung her around and politely, with an almost straight face, pointed to a proper gate, some five feet away, as a perhaps more manageable alternatives.

Watch this space for more exciting episodes from the Swatian Chronicles

The doubleOs: license to kill

Buy peace today! It’s fast, it’s cheap, and it never breaks!

Microsoft agreed to block the words “democracy” and “freedom” on its new internet portal in China – in accordance with its principle of respecting local laws.

Five inmates were killed in riots in a jail in Brazil – their severed heads were displayed on stakes on the jail’s roof.
In India, a woman’s arm was cut off for protesting child marriage. They say she’s lucky she raised it when she did.

“Then we tell them that meth causes your brain to shrink – which it really does – they don’t believe that either.”
Smokers worldwide are now the youngest they have ever been. Nine year olds beg and steal to support habits. The grown ups are too busy supporting their own.
In Nairobi, a bitch foraging for food found an abandoned baby which it carried across a highway to its own litter.

Out in the west, a cowboy woke up, saw the hollering Indians, and shot himself in the leg.
They fetched him and locked him up but Smith and Wesson got him out and gave him a medal for boosting their production. He now comes with a statutory warning stamped: Hazardous to health. His sales have shot up overnight.
The Indian wedding party broke up when the ambulance ran over the bride.

In Thailand, minutes before the tsunami struck, elephants on the beaches panicked and fled to higher ground, saving the lives of the tourists riding them.
Refugee camps overflowed in Atlantis, as a million suntanned legs, straw hats and sarongs disappeared.
A billion freed bikinis seized the chance and fled back to the homeland: a very colourful, polka dotted, striped atoll emerged as a new economic superpower.
A new word entered our disaster dictionary

The tiger disappeared in Sariska, and Japan announced plans to expand its whaling industry.

Elsewhere:
Michael Jackson was let off and gave thanks for never having been a rapper. (And that’s not a typo)

But at least, they say, the millennium bug was a hoax.

Clockwatchers inc.

or how i briefly strayed from the fold....

After a month of working really hard we have managed to get our proposal together and send it off. The last week was a bit off, where fatigue or general ennui ness finally caught up with me, but the rush of the last few final changes, sending it off, the deadline aspect of it, all seemed to revive in me an enthusiasm almost at ease with my old innocent self. And it did lead to great things... being left with no work once we had sent the programme proposal off, we went and asked for some. result: am now making a movie with some other students for this fest competition, and coming off a twoday brainstorming high i have to say so far all is rosy on my horizon. Interesting, so far, and fun more than anything else. i'm sure in another day this will have turned into a general gripe about the limited ( to put it politely) thinking capabilities of my co workers but right now all is hunky dory all in glory such a story ... ...

confessions of a professional idiot

"I have a dream," said Coleridge, with a grand light shining in his eye,
"... and i have managed to lose it" he sheepishly went on.

One of the tragedies of my life at the moment, only one mind you, is the absence of a laptop with connectivity. For example, this morning alone the world might have lost the profoundest words of wisdom to spring from this fertil(ised) mind just because they happened to spring forth when i was performing my daily ablutions (to put it discreetly) or, for the more literal minded among my many non-readers, was otherwise engaged on the pot.



All that remains of what i clearly remember as brilliant stuff now forever lost in the deepest darkest recesses of godaloneknows where, is ( unlike the little fragment that eventually became Qubla Khan) merely the title. And like they say, even 'he saw that it was good'. But that was before sunday happened to him. And he's been enjoying the brilliance of that last invention of his, the day of rest, ever since. (Incidentally, i have it on good authority that his penultimate invention was the hammock, which of course is linkable through direct causality to the Last Brilliant Idea.) I mean, c'mon, The Day Of Rest!!! no wonder he's still the cat's miaow, you could rest on your laurels for eternity for something like that, not to mention the neverending party you could throw just on the royalties. Everybody but everybody wanted a piece of the action when it first came out, and people will still kill for a good share of sunday.


Quote for the day:
"The number of taxonomists and ecologists is dwindling the world over at an alarming rate."
I kid you not, this aint no disguised attempt at humour or irony. It aint even from the pages of MAD.
( MAD - the one sane voice still around, apart from the Simpsons. Though it seems almost incestous, one wonders what you'd get if you crossed the two.)

another lovely place i'm nowhere near ,or, singing the broadside blues

"A mangrove is a woody plant"/
can there possibly be anything else in this world that now remains to be said?/
i'm falling in love with lower case. e.e. cummings is dead./
has been since 1962/
i can't believe the man who/
wrote 'may i feel said he'/
ceased to be/
when my mother was still in diapers./
All is lost to a world where/
"Empathy with the id is the quintessential/
Je ne Sais Quoi, so to say, of the existential."/
to be the naked and the dead/
is to have Dignity with a capital/
or lack capital with dignity./
Anyways, norman mailer died too./
tho' his wife never did press charges.







"Here i stand, I cannot do therwise, so help me God."
- Martin Luther.

I wonder how many theologians twisted themselves inside out trying to interpret this particular comment to mean one thing or the other on Predestination and Free Will? Not everything is as straightforward as throwing the devil at inkpots, or vice versa.

who do we applaud?

9 could well be a number. Nine years after a certain 17th child was born in a family of 52 children somewhere in the middle east, messrs Yamasaki and Robertson designed the WTC. The first building specifically designed to withstand the impact of a boeing 707 (then the largest extant jet plane). Silly them, wasting so much thought on making a building in the middle of lower manhattan 707 proof. especially since man was going to create the 767. there is nothing we do that we can't do better. amd will, given time.

46 could well be another. go to psalms in the bible. In the 46th psalm, count the 46th word from the first line, and then the 46th word backwards from the last word of the last sentence. the king james bible incidentally. he might have done it himself on his 46th birthday. then again, maybe god likes name dropping...

And there will come soft rains...

The devious demented denizens desecrate the desolate durbar of a dying demi-god, while my attempts at avoiding alliteration are appropriately awful.

there's less in life to talk about, as i sink into the quotidianous quicksands upto my neck. I can only turn my head around to look at life passing by; scruffy, dreadlocked, flea-bitten, clothed in rags, a couple of months overdue for a bath and stinking to high heaven. 'one day' i vow, yet again, 'one day you'll be in my bed sweet, and maybe even on my terms' but we're going to have to sanitize you first, won't we? Pour on you a gallon of respectability, lather you up with a bar of sweet smelling ignorance, shear off that fur with some middle-class censoring, and dress you in the garb of the visible, or rather the seeable. oh well, don't worry, we'll have our sweet adventure yet, just as soon as its perfectly safe. but hell yeah i'm brave, bohemian and breaking free of the middle class mindset every chance i get. Haven't you seen me eating at the shady pork and beef joint? rolling jays 'fore watching plays, and even smoking out in the open, like way out?

ain't that enough for right now? Well it ought to be, cause as a perfectly legitimate member of the self righteous midders, i decide my own set of values, and though i'm open minded, unbiased and understanding, of course the world will ride by my rules. It daren't do otherwise.

It's monsoon now... Aaah the shortlived relief of a brief piddly shower, as if god had a prostate problem. And then oooh the blissfully muggy weather for the rest of the day, when a drop falls on your book and you look up expectantly (the eternal optimist you) only to realize your own sweat saturates the page you're reading. Delhi - you justa gotta love it... it makes any place look like heaven. And to add to it you have the tantalising memories of dharamsala, where you could have been spending your summer. the blissful abode of the lama, junior and senior, where you can tell everytime there's been snowfall in the dhauladhars when you wake up. Where all the t.v. plays is fifa2004 on the x-box : a dangerously hypnotising game even though you can't actually make out the blonde squiggle getting tramped into the mud to be beckham. Where to get to the nearest cyber cafe, you walk down the precipice to your own private stream, cross over the ice cold water, or jump in and loll about for a couple of hours if the sun is around, and then climb up the opposite bank to reach norbulinka, that strangest of retreats with those crazy monk dogs with the beautifullest karma in the world. the thought of that stream right now could just about drive me mad... meet mrs. Tantalus. hello.
goodbye.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh... in a rather soppy wet manner.

they threw a war and nobody came

I have a headache the size of a minor planet... also, and this amply demonstrates my special status in god's universe, a head cold in the middle of the hottest week of the year. Be that as it may, we shall, in the proud tradition of your-friendly-neighbourhood-female-martyr, persevere.
"We need a self-help program, a do it yourself philosophy, a do it right now philosophy, an it's already too late philosophy." - malcolm X

its already too late in 1965. where does that leave us, forty years on, still without a clue, or even a line to call our own? wearing 'che' tee shirts and listening to dylan music from way back when, really the wrong side of the tracks, picking our revolution for the evening from the charred remains of a million young beliefs, hoping the vigour and sweat and actual sheer belief will maybe, just maybe, rub off , or even just lend a reflective glow that would nicely complement our thoughtful attire for the evening. yeah man, the revolution has arrived. the revolution is dead. the revolution is now a funeral party, also, ironically, called a wake. join the danse macabre, enter the mausoleum, close your eyes to the ecstatic noise and count slowly backwards from ten as the swirling glittering party you constucted around yourself decomposes and disintegrates into the temporal nothingness that is its rightful state. wake up to the bittersweet smell of weed overlaid with the smell of the dust raised by a thousand rotting carcasses who, but for you and your desperate interfering ways, would be where they're supposed to be, conservatively rotting in peace. Aah c'mon man, let us be already. yeah we realize your inherent inability to communicate with your own period or the people inhabiting it around you, and we understand your need to leech off the blood of those already dead and bled, but c'mon, cut us some slack wouldja? we've already laboured through our own intensely felt times, smelt enough 'stench of earnest sweat' to last us a couple of lifetimes, so roll over, and let us play dead! and quit quoting dead guys already. its disgustingly like those ancient roman ladies bathing in the sweat of gladiators, hoping god alone knows what would rub off on them. or somethin like that... these dead guys can get confused, apparently their heads aren't where they used to be. the author would here like to take credit for any self aware irony discovered in this post by the discerning reader, intentional or otherwise.

Of office hours and missing socks

its funny how right when one is about to rejoice at the sudden lack of work in one's life, and has just managed to switch to the right frame of mind for getting off work early, has, in fact, already picked up one's bag and is in the process of lookin for one's shoes, one is ( to go back miles to where we originally were) cruelly presented by the malicious and inscrutable gods of Office Mysteries and Missing Socks with a whole new load of work, which not only effectively prevents one from leaving early but also, since it means you start a couple of hours late, results in you ending up staying longer hours in office on a saturday than you did all week. Another aspect of this newly unfolding and still mysterious universe are the inscrutable laws of work attraction. in a few words, since i'm currently too busy to have time for more, here it is: when you have no work, you are also not likely to get any, and when you're already overbooked, the rate of accretion of more work will be directly proportional to the amount by which you are already behind. if i had time to use a metaphor, it would be something along the lines of icebergs and 9/10s below... but have to go do another voiceover now.... and then the blissful testosterone smelling hour long bus journey home... aaah saturday!!

Everybody wants KOONG FOO fighting

last night i saw a movie called 'kungfu hustle'. if only more of us took ourselves as seriously as the makers of this movie. it was slightly strange in that one felt the overtones of an almost gallic irony in what was after all a Very Oriental Movie. highly recommend it tho' to all readers - in the unlikely and hence probable event of someone drifting across this blog in this bizarre pretzel shaped universe - ok , if you can come up with something more irrational and tortured I'll give the weary metaphor a rest. till then I'll stick to the classics, though their smooth well worn surface may make sticking tough as hell. Since we're talking bout self aware, tho' steering clear of irony, blogging (so far) seems to me to be all about getting your voice past this big lump of self awareness lodged squarely in your throat. even without an audience and in a position so far undisclosed (un-dis-closed: who said double negatives were a no-no?)
Anyways, do go see the film, and then get back to me. In an age where scary movie is your archetypal spoof, it raises the levels and standards of humour in the category, in fact redefines the very genre itself in a much needed re evaluation.

what causes the earth to quake? and sundry random queries.
an easy lazy metre. no mention yet of fairies.
tear apart this blue gray jungle looking for four leaf clovers
in a holey leather armchair, for spare change do voiceovers.
the books pile up the money dwindles: cock one's snook at keynes,
a snigger drifts through a wormhole - will now work for beans.

i'm just a product

yea baby, the wazoo stops here. well what did you expect? i'm early at work and have had about as much of "early foetal development and the ear" as i can currently chew. and hopefully regurgitate. besides, miss babe in arms, even you can't be innocent enough not to have done this intentionally. you send an egomaniac like me here, what d'you think i'm egoing to do?? huh huh?
ok, mind sluggish pre the midnight mark, and its still shockingly closer to post than pre. therefore make a... oops signs of life, gotta duck. maybe life gets more explicable , then again would one want it to? ps a cat named cat