Eruption

Statutory Warning: Those with a weak heart, or any heart at all, the content in the post below is not meant for you. Others are welcome to read.

As I woke up in the middle of the night, around 5 a.m. with Eruption playing in my head, an idea popped in my head. The idea was to play and actually listen to Eruption in audio format. So following the idea I enqueued the song, the sole and only song to listen to it in repetition. Sleep was not coming. thats probably because I had already slept for like 8-9 hrs. With such a tired mind and Eruption in the background the following scenes passed before my eyes...



Eddie (not the Iron Maiden mascot, mind you.... but the fret-tapping maestro :-P) walkin in space with his guitar, making love to it. The guitar in turn moaned, gasped and cried-out... Eddie knows his moves...

Me looking at me... My eye sockets all hollow.. Then I have eyes... Now the eye balls are missing... Two planets involved in cosmic sex...

I am in a ship... Space-ship, mind it... Travelling faster than light... The space changing colors while I fizz past.... Planets changing color.... Planets stop to look at me.... The ones in cosmic sex...

A war scene... In a jungle... Lion feeding on one of the soldiers, its mouth painted with blood... BLOOD...BLOOD...

I am back in space... My ship is outta control...

A Samurai and a Ninja exchange blows through their swords... Faster than lightning... Shrink... Shrink...

My ship, about to crash...

My shoe laces are open...

I crash on a planet... I jump out of the ship... On my knees....

The alarm bell rings... Its morning....

Yo-Yo

"If you want to live under water, Michael, you must learn to breathe like a fish."

"How do you feel about that?"

"That we never had a choice. I don't feel good about it, but I won't feel bad. Its our natural destiny, as Teemer might say. Biologically, we are a new species and haven't learned to fit into nature yet. He thinks we are cancers."

The How to Kill Series : The First

Editor's Note: The blog from now on will be totally committed to describing ways to kill people and things. The owner of the blog is not directly responsible for his actions, he is an escapist and will relinquish any such allegations by a mere shrug.

The first section of this unending series is dedicated to the question : How to kill an optimist?

Before we travel deep into the fathomless sea of ways of killing an optimist, the question that should ring in your head, : Is it possible to kill an optimist?

The answer of course is NO. No you cannot kill an optimist. Some of you may say that I have lost my mind, and in due course present lethal ways of killing an optimist. Some of you who belong to the jovial category may try to gag and would suggest something like shooing a bunch of pessimists on our central theme. Ya sure, probably your jokes will have a better effect.

Tell an optimist that you can kill him. And he will give you a smile similar to a mothers who has just heard her baby’s first word. He will simply discard such a claim. He will simply tell you that he believes that he can survive. That he will still be alive. He would say that you can kill the body but not his never say die spirit. His body may not support his unquenchable spirit of optimism, but the fact is that at the end of the day the optimist still lives..

So what should we do now? Run out of business in our very first edition? Come on, don’t let the pessimist in you rise on such an optimistically correct situation. Throw all your worries on me, that’s why I am here for. I promised you a dead optimist and a dead one you shall get.

The trick is, tell the optimist that it is impossible to kill him. And he will simply chuckle and explain you in full theory how you seem to have confused impossible with difficult. He will tell you ways of killing him and will confess that he is dead too. So here you have it. The optimism is dead.

Next edition:: How to kill a How to kill something series.

Intezaar

itani baar samajhaayaa hai is dil ko..
ek baar aur sahii..
ab to use bhii..
agalii chot kaa hi intezaar rahataa hai..

One from "The Line"

There is this burning desire to do something now, I dunno what but something.. I want to run away, dunno where but have to run away.. Away from human influence.. Nobody around.. But I don't think I will last even there.. I would run away from there as well.. Its just this irresistible desire to run away.. To escape everything that is probably working in me.. I hate human faces.. No.. No I love them.. Its just that I need to change them after a while..

Remember a Day

Since I am actually going through the phase in which I do nothing and nothing at all, so I decided to ask myself this question, as to why I cannot stay in this phase forever. I know why I can't, I said. Now I wanted to know from others, about the same.. So with the help of Roger and Syd, I came up with these set of questions:

Q: Why can't we play today?
Why can't we stay that way?
Why can't we reach the sun?
Why can't we blow the years away?


And here are the answers from different living beings..

Slayer a.k.a. Dirty Chadha's response:

Dirty: Because we are all locked up in the prisons of our minds.
Me: And who will rescue us?
Dirty:Haven't you heard Steve Vai? This heart is a prison, bound by chains of gold. Wherein lies the key, god only knows.


Madman's response:

Because Pink Floyd said so. Also because we are all trapped.

Chadha's response:

Because we are engineers. Queen you shall be if you wish, just have to find your king..

TY's response:

Hey listen, I will call you up later, I have to rush to office.

Siddhartha's response:

Because we are humans

Game stopper's response:

Game stopper: U can if thats what u really want... Anythin u ask for is granted... If u jus want it enough.. the sky i'll wrap n put at your feet... do you want it?

Me: I will take my chances.. What should I be expecting?

Game stopper: Its not a chance.. its not a decision.. when u want it so much that u know u have to have it when theres no thinkin jus knowin its yours... when u love somethin beyond yourself.. unconditionally selflessly, when u want it so bad that it transcends the definition of want, nobody has the power to give it to u anymore..its yours by the simple fact that it exists... go take a look at that sky if u can feel it in u n u can feel ur life flowin through it then its not mine to give anymore.... its yours..

Baby Boomer

Baby Boomer: no answers
we could play today, if u wanted to..
we could stay that way, is our choice..
but all we do is blow years away..

Me: sun?

Baby Boomer: sun rulez, actually not as much as the moon..moon simply pwns


I am still awaiting responses from some candidates....will update it later...

Illusions of a realistic empty mind.......what???

Chewing up the nail, till there is none that can be bitten off. Gazing at the smoke from the still-burning....not totally crushed cigarette butt, the irresistible urge to have a sip, of tea and finish it all then and there. Listening to the "Call of the Ktulu", unsure of whether its playing in the head or on the player. Reading about Rajapaksa's crackdown on Tamils in Colombo, without discrimination. Thinking continuously, without fail to think of something. Checking up the mailbox for a new ray of mail. Bearing the disturbance of an irritating voice penetrating the sphere of the "Call of the Ktulu".

Checking the cell-phone, the killer of letters, for a text - message. Watching the pigeon outside my window, doing endless rounds. "Can I be of some help, you seem to be looking for something". Looking at the time at the system, "ah...the sun is shining beautifully". Looking at the cover of "Crime and Punishment", "yes honey i know, i owe you another 100 pages of reading". The source of the irritating voice seems to have been shooed away. "What?? its been just 30 minutes since the last cup of tea......"

Just another day at the office.....

Land, the ardent fool.

Hand in hand they ran over the fields
Land, the ardent fool,
Expects rain with just a cloud in the sky.
The day is bright and blue
The gold fields welcome them.

Land, the ardent fool,
Wishes to bloom flowers
“But you have gold”, said the sky
And thorns that prevail.
“I will write a song for you”, he told her.

The spring is where they will be
For its hot and there is no rain.
Land, the ardent fool,
Gives away all the water
Some to flowers other , to the sky

The wise ghost wished it was alive
Snow is on the land now
Land the ardent fool
Hopes foolishly, endlessly
Rain, rain, rain, it cries.

The Mind's Battle Victory and Me Gaining on the War

A hello - hi friend whose name isn't important: Aur bhai Mr. [my name here] kya haal chaal hain?

Me: Pata nahi

Thats when the cloud lifted yet another layer, and I "noticed" that I actually am the "Indecisive Bastard", as christened by MadMan..... Take this one up yours mind.

Death for Greatness

There may be either of the two things running through your head after you have read the title of this post and the content of the previous one. First(and the most common...haha read thy mind human), this guy has just lost it, he is on the verge of either a suicide or someone is going to kill him. Or(for the over smart ones) that the guy is obsessed with death, deadly obsessed.

Anywho, I neither deny nor accept both the schools of thoughts. But seriously my question is....Is greatness too big for life? Does it take a death to define the greatness. Can we spot greatness in its physical, materialistic form? Does death shoot up your greatness levels?

I know, I know, but naah..... I ain't in a hurry of being great....thanks for the option though.

Why don't you kill me??

Kill me, why don’t you kill me?? Am I not special enough to be killed, murdered. Killing is good and death is bad. The type of death I get will define what I had achieved in life. The worst form of death is the natural one. That means that you were not capable enough, even to find a way to die and nature or existence had to do the job for you. Still worse, of course, is the one by natural disasters/ man made disasters. It defines that nature thought of eliminating a whole bunch of nobody's and well I was one of them.

Suicide is of course far better than any of the above mentioned ways. At least I made sure that I cut nature’s work short and found a way of eliminating my own existence. Still a better category is that if I will be murdered. For I was important enough for someone or my death was, perhaps looked as a way for gaining profit and hence, before nature could get to me, they did. The best and probably the most high class (uptown) and satisfying death would then be assassination. Yes, doesn’t it feel great to hear it from someone that you were assassinated. A great feeling, isn’t it? Yes I would like to be assassinated and am sure most of you out there(whether you agree with me straight away or not) would love to be assassinated if given a choice.

The Deprived Generation..

What does one do with unused energy? A drive but none a driver in sight? They say ours is a deprived generation, with no great wars or no great depression to fight, no great cause or great leader follow. What does the youth of this generation do? The youth needs a direction to go... it needs to die..

Is it the fascination with death or the inability to accept that death is bad? In the absence of all the above mentioned great "causes" the youth's natural energy has gone disarray.. With no great hero to adopt a style or two from, the probability to fall for any mortal with a cap on was inevitable..



Long gone are the greater causes of serving ones mother/father land and lesser mortal of issues like, looking for real love, fighting for one's "space", to set the mind free, have taken center stage. No songs anymore make you realize the worthlessness of realizing, you have to realize it on your own. The "intellectual" ones seek refuge in songs of yesteryears the rest well they are uncharacteristically categorized as humans..No political issues get the same energy as it used to..Getting wasted is understood now..so getting wasted isn't hep as well.. Sex is just a compliment away..that too is no more of an accomplishment.. Money well...really you call that a cause??


No common cause for men/women to unite and fight for.. the deprived generation

Why Amitabh Bachchan is Amitabh Bachchan?

Something off the kinds of topics I usually write. But was sitting down the other day and was watching Kaala Pathar and came up with this thought.

So why is it that Amitabh Bachchan is Amitabh Bachchan? Acting is there but then I won't refer him to be the best actor that India has produced. There are a score of better actors, Om Puri, Nasiruddin Shah, to name a few. So it is not just the acting.

According to me Amitabh Bachchan is at such a position mainly because of the kinds of roles he played. He at the start of his carrer never played a "hero". He was played something related to it, but never the "Hero" itself. Mainly what he played at the beginning of his carrer was the role of an anti-Hero. The hero with negative shades or rather the hero with grey shades. While Indian cinema is all about a hero playing a completly idealist, Amitabh never played any such role, atleast early in his career.

Examples of the such kinds of roles are apt, Deewar, Don, Kaala Pathar, Laawaris etc. So the point is that he played roles that were more human. He potrayed that there is no such thing as idealism and that a hero is just another guy and that he too has his strengths and weaknesses. This is what the audience identified with and rose him to the level that he was.

Amitabh always had roles who were of a guy with high moral but was at times hard on luck or rather a guy who was forced to do wrong things because of the circumstances and he being human did it. This made the audience realise that things can go wrong and they are not completly bad or paapi if they do stuff to get on top. He potrayed roles which were more of idealism mixed with realism. A person true at heart but who may get beant due to circumstances.

All this packed with great punch lines made him a superstar. By the way the punch-lines also showed that his moral is high and even if he is down on luck he wouldnot take shit from anyone.

Another star that I think plays these kinds of roles aptly is Dev Anand. Whether its his role in R.K. Narayanan's The Guide or Kaalapaani etc. The only reason why he is not totally up there with Amitabh (although he is a total superstar in his on right and one of my favourites) is probably he(Amitabh) played the roles with greater energy and emotions.

Anyways this is all what I can think of right now.

Why am I an Atheist??

Worth reading::

Why am I an Atheist?

Child's Play

Last weekend my brother was here to stay over for a night as he moved back home for his college break. It was just great, it reminded me of the days we had when we were young and life was just too long. Although not very long back but I miss those days we spend at home together during the holidays, playing cricket in the midday hot sun, totally carefree and careless, the times we spent fighting.




When I sit alone in my room over the weekends and notice the street kids out there playing there hearts out, it reminds me of my days as a kid. The child out there playing in the sun doesnot bother about the heat nor does he/she worry about the boundaries. There are times when a car owner shouts and tries to scare away the kids. But the child was born free, born in a world where no boundaries should exist.

A child has a heart of pure gold and the heart is ever so enthusiastic and full of jows. Sorrow is unknown to it, for the mother is there to take care of everything.

Ah the good old days.....

How the mighty beat the law?

Today's newspaper contained an article as to how Shibu Soren, accused and currently sentenced for the murder of his secretary, is enjoying his life out of jail. The article talks as to how Shibu got himself transferred to the Raipur jail from the Tihar jail and is currently occupying a room ( two-rooms) at a Raipur hospital.

Well the paper just wrote about one of the many such cases. The well connected and the close ones of the ruling parties in India have made a joke of the Indian judicial system. And the judicial system acts too dumb or rather overloaded with work to notice any such indisperancies.

Not only is this evident the present case of Shibu Soren but also there is a similar pattern in all cases invoving high profile or well connected people. This pattern is not only ignored by the media but also by the people who have fought for the cause of getting the accused to the book.

The series goes on like this:
1. The accused is set free by a district court where the accused's case is handled for the first time. Mostly the reason given by these courts is lack of evidence or incomplete evidence. This happened in the case of Shibut Soren, Jessica Lal murder case, Priyadarshini Matoo case, the Pareira case etc.

2. Next the court is either brought to the High Court either by the victims of the case or the High Court intervenes on its own accord. Here the accussed is held guilty on all accounts and is sentenced accordingly. The same happened in all the cases mentione above.

3. The case is then moved by the accused to the Supreme Court where the court lets it hang on.

Now the catch is that the media is recording the case or giving it the top priority only thill the guilty is brought to the book. But moment this happens the media forgets about it. The accused and the well connected take advantage of this very fact and they quitely move the court to he Supreme Court. Once admitted by the Court there are several ways of getting out and staying free. One way is to get bail, another way is as our honurable politician did.

The ways of playing with the system are many. It is only us who keep a blind eye to it and don't try to find out whats happening behind the scenes.

The Revenge of the Ego

Its appaling how at times people tend to underestimate you. Just the fact that you have not tried something before doesnot give one the liberty of underestimating your potential. In such circumstances as I have so aptly been in the recent past the mind behaves in a manner that I have presented in this post.

The first reaction is that of a non-believer. Mind resents or rather the ego resents you from believing what the other person is mentioning. This set your mood off and hence work takes a back seat and you would rather think about the reason for the underestimation.



The next phase is thus born in which your mind plays with your ego. It makes you believe that the other person is right and that there are things that you are not capable of. This state of mind is even more harmful for work and work becomes a thing of the past and huge workload piles up.
What follows is depression of why am I unable to do certain things. And the ego gets all its bruises in this phase when the mind reminds the ego of apt number of examples from the past as and when you had been unsuccessful.

When the ego has had its share of beating there comes its revenge of doing the same thing that you had been accussed that you are incapable of. And then when the challenge is set for the ego....and another one rises for the mind when it watches the ego taking over and completing the task. The new challenge for the mind is to find out reasons that led to your success and to praise the ego and to learn the lesson that is not to underestimate the ego.

The Official Head of the State, who's next?

The biggest debate at the moment is who will e the next President of India. A question that Dr. Rajendra Prasad would never have dreamed would be the hot topic for all kinds of opinion polls and debate shows. But the question is not who would be the next President but whether he would be someone with a political background or not.

For those who are not aware the President is elected by people's representatives. Simply putting it all members of the lower and upper houses of all the states as well as Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha vote to elect the President. The candidates well they are the candidates that are backed by political parties. So they not only choose the candidates but also elect the one they feel is best suited for the job.

Currently the people who are the biggest candidates (as in accordance to the various news channels) are namely:

1. Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam
2. Bhairon Singh Shekhawat
3. Somnath Chatterjee
4. A K Antony
5. Narayan Murthy (though not really)
6. Amartya Sen (similar as above)

A little details about the various candidates.

Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, the person presently holding the post. Ideally the best man for the job and also the least likely to be elected (though I can bet that he may not even be put up as a candidate). An eminent scientist and probably the wisest of all the mentioned candidates. But sensing the atmosphere and being disgruntled over his hands being tied by the government during his tenure, he may simply just bow out of the office without even trying his luck at the office for a second term.

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the present Vice-President and an ex-BJP politician. He would like to continue the trend of Vice-Presidents converting into Presidents as in the past. Although an ex-BJP politician, has little chances of being the candidate of the BJP, who would like to back Abdul Kalam if he is interested. But Congress may agree to back him as their candidate.

Somnath Chatterjee, the present speaker of the Lok Sabha, he follows a popular following by various politicians and would probably be the choice candidate of Congress, if it doesnot back Shekhawat.

A K Antony, the current defence minister. Has just come on the national scene as a minister and has slim chances of being even proposed as a candidate. His "clean" image is probably his biggest USP.

Narayan Murthy, the ex-CEO of Infosys. A person that the Indian middle class idolises and is probably the person responsible for internationalising Bangalore. His recent stints and outspokenness against the government shows his interest towards the post i.e. he wants to be popular now.

Dr. Amartya Sen, a nobel laureate and an economist at par. But would not be interested for the job.

But whatever be the choiced candidate of the governement or the opposition, the government has surely learnt one thing amd i.e. not to let a person without any political leanings to the office. Taking the example of our present President, he defied all limits that previous Presidents had set. Kalam has had his set of confrontations eith the government but due to the limitations of the powers of the post has not been able to make much difference. But his activeness to make a difference is a lesson that should be learnt from.

He had defied the government and the system on various occasions by being an example. Seeing this the government has learnt its lesson and will try to curb such a situation in the future by not electing a "wise" President. But with him leaving the post the situation will again go back to what it was earlier.

The problem is that even though people try to set an example, a very few people learn from it. President Kalam had on many occasions sent out message to the general public through his speeches, his books etc. But the outcome I am not sure that there will be any. People will do their own jobs when he moves out of the office and some puppet of the government takes his place. The fact remains that people will not do anything to change the situation.

A CPI(M) M.P. vividly told a TV show host that who will bw the next President will be ours (the people in power) decision and nothing will change with you holding opinion polls and people sending SMSs to show their choice. He is right in a way. It is the fault of us, the urban middle class. We don't exercise our right to vote and worse we donot want to enter politics to make a change. The usual reply is that politics is a sewer, but my question is who is responsible in creation of this sewer. It is us. Not only we donot except our mistakes we keep on repeating it. Change doesnot happen on its own. If you can't change yourself please donot complain about the system, for the system is because of you and not the other way round.

Jai Hind!

Stranger than Fiction

Well this is an incident that happened to the grandfather of a friend. Now this man(the grandfather) was in service with the Indian Railways post independence. This incident occured when he was posted as a station master to a far off station in some village. I am not too sure of the geographical details but here is the story( I am going to tell the incident in first person)::

India was at war, yes it was the Indo-Pak war. The village was very deeply located, so deep that many people had forgotten about its existence. And those who did well the war had brought on too many things to help them forget of its existence. But well anyways I was posted here and doing my duty. Not many trains arrived or left the station, just a few goods train here and there and well a passenger train once in a while. The station was usually empty, and that was one of the reasons I was surprised to see this old man on the station this morning. He had a very expression-less, wrinkled face. You get to see more of wrinkles on the faces of villagers in India, partly due to the fact that they worked all day long in the fields and partly because thay had seen too many dreams getting squashed and too many promises made to them had been broken. But still hope lingered on.

Anyways this old villager in ragged and dirty clothes walked towards me. He had three pink coloured papers in his hand. Well these coloured papers were very commom these days and I recognised them very well, they were the telegrams. They were perhaps one of the ways that the headquarters could actually contact me since the nearest telephone was miles away. Anyway as he approached me, my eyes kept moving towards those telegrams, the source of all the good and sad news that need to be told immediately.

"Sahib", he called me, "could you please read these out to me." There were three telegrams in his wrinkled and sun-burnt hands. "Sure", I said. I took the telegrams from his hand and started reading them, inorder to understand and translate the contents to him in his native language. The first one read, "Regret to inform you the desmise of your son, Sp. Mahinder Singh STOP He died in action STOP." The second one read, "Regret to inform you the desmise of your son, Hav. Bhagat Singh STOP He died in action STOP." By the time I came to the third one my hands were already shivering. The third one read what I had feared "Regret to inform you the desmise of your son, Hav. Ram Singh STOP He died in action STOP." Now my whole body was shaking as the old man looked up expectantly towards me. How could I tell him such a heavy news. Nothing is more sad as news than to hear the news of the death of your son.

Keeping a control over my nerve I broke the news to him. I had expected him to break down or faint down. But nothing of that sort happened, he took the news unexpectadely well. I asked him if he was alright and and without any emotion in his voice, he replied while taking the telegrams from my hand, " I am alright Sahib, you need not worry. They have died for their country. I have lost three sons. But I have two more and am waiting expectedly so that they grow up soon so that they too can join the army." I was left speechless as the old man walked away.

The Great Indian Middle Class--??

Its been abt 7 to 8 years now since the economy actually opened up to foreign investments(although officially in 1994). Since the rise of number of opportunities in the Indian "MNC" industry there has been a rise in a totally new genre of people and section of the society. The timid Indian middle class has attained a much more high profiled and what the call a "great" status. This greatness is all due to the opportunities given to the middle class because of large number of jobs in the private sector. Now the rise in these jobs has sent a new message into the society, i.e. study well and get some great degrees to get tagged along with your name and you will have enough money to blow your minds off. Not realising that the work that they do is actually going for the upliftment and the profit of big corporations that are the native of some other country. But this should not bother them for the salary reaches into the bank account on the last day of the month.

But in all this money minting scenario somewhere this suddenly risen class has forgotten its roots. It tends to move away from its own lifestyle to that of the so called "western" lifestyle. Some people may be offenced by the name that I have given to the lifestyle. So being politically very correct I will name it as the "corporate" lifestyle. Now the basic feature of this corporate lifestyle is to work for 5 days a week and party for the rest of the week. The work part may not be true but the party factor is a must. For if you don't then you are outcasted (now this is a feature that my fellow country men or the whole world have not forgotten or can never be taken out of them) and considered wierd.

The great Indian middle class now prefers to spend off their holidays in a suttle and quiet place rather than sitting home. They tend to have forgotten the necessity to work for the society and to work to improve it. Ofcourse this scenario tends to naturally turn opposite if you get a chance to be on the Page 3 of a famous daily. But the point is if you are earning all the money that you could not even have dreamed of then please make it a poiunt to give something back to society. For it is this society that has helped you rise and provided you with what you call the basic ammenities. Work towards making a difference rather than just sitting ona beach and sipping martinis and enjoying your weekend.