Back from a long and much deserved break

Hey so here I am finally after a real long long break, more so duration wise.. Cause lets face it, if I were infact to vanish from the scene for a coupla months and you to decide to write me off (nice pun effect eh?) then one of us has a problem :) Anyways, lets get down to business.



Quick couple of warnings though, One - Pardon the excess, grossly over compensating attitude (Its just to reassure myself). Two- If i dont seem upto the mark just heed this, its been way too long and would take me a little bit of time to get back..



So, I am living in this lovely city on God's green earth (Wonder why they say that though? Is it just me or is there really not much greenery left down here. I almost wish I could tell the lord, dude, terrible state of affairs down there, u might wanna pull up your socks ;), apparently they call it brown, dusty earth nowadays) by the name of Namma Bengaluru. What do I say about it that his not been said before? I could of course tell you that there is an old Bangalore(areas such as Banshankari,Basvangudi) which still wake up to the aroma of filter coffee, the smell of incense sticks and fresh flowers being delivered at the doorstep. It really reminds you of the old Bangalore which you visited when you were in school and your suddenly turned rich/Onsite returned cousins stayed( Ouch! that hurts, even the thought of onsite does).



Then there is the flashier side of the city. Filled with people. Loads of them. Who wake up to the sound of honks, rush to work, earn a living here, have a life here and yet never quite feel at home here. That's all of us, well most of us. We slog on weekdays, fall asleep in the bus, we're seen at every mall in the city there is on weekends. You cant tell us apart if we so much as stood in a group, but leave us alone and we stand out. Dunno how but the auto guys always seem to know who you are and just how much to extort out of you :) I can still tell you every single shop on every single lane of my hometown, my native. Ask me for a zerox shop in my area and I know squat. That's the difference.



But the feeling the city gives you every time you return to it, that feeling of being productive( I dunno if you'd agree to this but being paid for something I do is one of the most apt definition for productive so far as I'm concerned) is priceless. After all, we always like to believe what we do does make a difference.. I know I do.. Even if more often than not, its not true....

What is up with people anyway???

One of the earliest and most innate desires of mankind has been to receive due credit to any great piece of work he does. This need for validation sometimes even encompasses the end purpose one wishes to achieve by it...

No piece of work, no matter how great it is does not become so unless a person of importance decides to give his "views" over the subject(my abject apologies Mr. Bacchan,nothing personal here)

Which brings us to the subject which these days every person has decided to give an opinion over(irrespective of whether it matters or not). After all,nothing gives us more joy than creating issues where there were none in the first place.

Coming to the subject,the furore around the Slumdog millionaire i cannot help but wonder what stand i need to take over the issue. All of a sudden every "INDIAN"(i quote it because the term is in the truest sense a convenience based title which every citizen in our country decides to adorn as and when he finds it convenient enough)decides to raise objections over the supposed depiction of a poor and miserable India. I mean,dont we admit to ourselves that India is most of these things. Just because Mr.Boyle decided to turn it into a story we decided to get offended and annoyed. Truth as it might be, but do not show us the mirror.. No sir,we're not ready to see what we already know. One very interesting fact which amuses me yet again is how nobody took notice of the fact until Mr Bacchan decided to state his opinion. And once he did we showed a kind of unity which one would have not dreamt of seeing otherwise. Its amusing how hatred and occassional bouts of patriotism bring us together.

Yes,at this point i'd like to mention a very important thing which the world ought to focus on more often now(and this one goes to all the Adigas and Danny Boyle's of the world). WE ARE A LOT MORE THAN THIS!!! There are several other stories worth telling about India.Look aroundand u will find stories of path breaking successes,sheer grit,hard work and determination.If India has a Dharavi it also boasts of an Electronic city. If u see the poverty here,u can also take heart in the number of middle class families which has risen by leaps and bounds. So all i'm saying is treat the movie as yet another piece of art. It is someone else's interpretation of "our" country.. Honestly,why should it even matter? Had the movie not won so many awards or been nominated to the OSCARS would it still be such a hype?And yet,when it was nominated to the OSCARS we did not waste a single minute to lap up the Indian conncetion(I mean,the last time i saw Danny Boyle was definitely not Indian). What is it with us and this infinitethirst to get acclaimed by an OSCAR?Is it not enough if we validate it?

In the end i'd like to wrap it up by saying it's a pity Mr.Boyle this is the only face of India you managed to see...

heart-break a frustuated,critical,self indulgent maniac........

"it seems tough to endure the darknessnot just because of the uncertainity it bringsbut also cause it brings out a fear of not being able to see..and also brings the realisation that we always need aids to see the truth..sometimes even the biggest truth isnot strong enough to stand alone"
yes,i have no qualms in admitting i am al those things...on the brighter side,i am much more than this too.. but lets leave those things aside..
i am frustuated to the core..people fail all logic and senses in my world and they seldom understand me too..why?i ask myself and i know theanswer is the worst one ever n yet strangely true.."it's cause i am toosimple".. again,don't get this to be some kind of place where i keepexclaiming great things abt myself n playing the role of the wronged maiden in distress or the not so poor yet poor little girl living next door..
its much more than that..for instance it never ceases to amaze me how ppl hate the obvious n love the round about..to get to know aperson u like it's not enough to jus say"i like u,i need u..."instead one must first pretend to be all the things one isn't in the first place,pretend u dont exist to the other person,act all high and mighty when u r actually so desparate that u could actually readyto pounce on the first thing that comes ur way!!phew!what a whole wasteof effort..
why is it like this??someone who knows the answer please say..
if someone comes to u in distress u r exactly supposed to say those things which will soothe their "so called ego"..dare u say the truth!!why on earth???again if someone knows please feel free to speak..i'd be delighted to know...
another for instance,u NEVER get treated the same way as u treat people...WHY??i think it was,perhaps,the first lesson learnt duringour childhood."good begets good and so does bad"..then where does thisnew logic come in where good or bad both beget indifference..again,iam the clueless moron here.. moron cause there must be somethingwrong with me..i see nobody around me irked by such troubles.."damn!!they're lucky" i think cause either they don't face wat i do orthey don't see it,either of which is the case,the advantage is alltheirs....
strange,how the mind works..its wonders have never ceased to amaze meeach single living day..it must be very exciting to be a psychologisti muse..each mind a new mystery,no two minds alike..

the truth is always the truth..it needs no aid for support(of course this would be an ideal situation)..yet we need wrappings of lies,comfort and deceit to have comfortable fallback..after all nobodylikes a nasty fall onto the hard ground of realities,eh?

the paradox that's called.life

There are some weird instances one faces in life...moments which seem incomprehensible and more baffling by the moment.moments which make u feel with an intensity u never thought yourself capable of otherwise.life seems pretty ordinary otherwise.but these instances leave u with a lingering sensation,nothing lasts of it except the way u felt it..each time u feel on a new high,even better than before..amazing to see that u defy ur own benchmark every single time and reach another great height much higher than before(only sometimes u wish u wouldn't,things would be a lot easier then)
it's a bright sunny noon on a sunday..everyone is fast asleep except a six year old waiting eagerly..those curious eyes alert and rapt with attention eagerly noticing any movement possible.. suddenly there is a distant sound of wheels on the street which is growing steadily.. nothing unusual to anyone else.. but she knows better,after all its the sound she could recognise even in the middle of her sleep..her pulse quickens at the thought.. she rushes upstairs shaking her poor mom rudely awake demanding for a rupee. a rupee yes,that was all it costed..her happiness..a rupee for those few moments when the uncle hoisted her on a seat andgave her a spin ("merry go round" he called it)..those few moments when life felt more beautiful than it ever did..it was probably the spinning that did funny things to her head..she felt a kind of joy,no ecstacy was more like it.. actually none of these words seem appropriate enough to describe what she actually felt.. words after all do not offer such superlatives..
it's almost the middle of the night and yet she wouldn't fall asleep..rather she prevented..not that she was less tired,but the thought of fatigue and physical exertion seemed more welcome compared to what would follow next..as always the conflict and the fight she put up with herself made her tired in a way she could never have conceived otherwise andagainst her wish she dozed off..and it came again,it was almost like the thing inside her was aching to start ,waiting for those shutters of the eyes to go down..
it's dark and gloomy and she was running out in the middle of nowhere,why?she didn't know..where to?not a clue in the world but she knewthis much for sure something terrible would happen if she stopped running so on and on she went..suddenly there was a room,she saw faces there..a scream rose to her throat and died there..there was something very weird to those faces they were.....almost not human..but she couldn't stop there so she ran on and on..each time she saw something infintely more worse.. suddenly she had reached the edge of a cliff and before she realised it she was falling..slowly and steadily..and then she landed with a dull thud on something..what was it?her cot...eyes flew open and she realised she must've dozed off..now sweating all over again she woke up tryin to calm down..nothing happened..nothin except that a lump rose in her throat..the dread that filled her was invincible.strange how powerful fear can be.."it was just a dream,nothing else..it meant nothing.",she kept telling herself but then why did it seem so real??took her weeks sometimes to regain her composure...
each day she met different people silently envying them ..they seemed so lucky to her..they always did.. she was always told"look around you,observe how much misery ppl are suffering and be glad u aren't sharing it".. how could they??just how could they?to each his problem is his own and the toughest thing in the world..there could be a million odd perceptions to a same problems..will u say to a kid who is scared of huge loking ppl that there are bigger problems out there??and his problem is silly at the outset itself??its absolutely alright if u are at a loss of what to say..no problem..u need not always have to say something..atleast don't humiliate someone like this!!!
weird,strange logic man...and people are consoled by it!!(still worse)

"life it seems is not without a strange sense of irony" someone said very rightly so...how else can explain the irony that the same person can explain such extremes?
(no prizes for guessing who it was)

hypocrite's oath

The Hypocrite's Oath
It's strange the way my mind came up with this interpretation of the above famous title..Even stranger because i wasn't thinking consciously..Seems like my sub conscious mind is a hell lot more
creative than i estimated.....
"I promise to abide by each and every rule of being a perfect hypocrite all my life.To speak anything but the truth,to never make people show what they actually are and to be a s****r my entire life.To leave all sanity,logic and sense and reasoning back at home and never ever to appear knowledgable on any one of the above even if somehow i am found gulity to possess them..." "I promise to always BE THERE for people with the whole and sole and full awareness that it makes whatsoever no difference to them if it's me,or someone else or another third person present there to comfort them.To confide into them fully knowing them and also knowing that they shall store it in the rot of their brain to use it against me someday(how true and so right were when u said it).""I promise to stick by them with the full awareness that i am only a matter of conveninece to them,however if i dare to behave the same way i am a traitor,a blot on the name of friendship and so many unspeakable names"......
This in essence is what the hypocrite's oath must be...Since it is a "hypocrite's" oath in the truest sense.But perhaps this is where the denial aspect comes into picture..The worst form of denial..To be all this and more and be hypcritcal over it too!!Jesus!how much can one lie??Even ur existance is one big farce...Not that i need to justify one bit about all what i've said but this much i'd like to add,make no mistake of assuming this is some frustuated loser psycho whohas created a "space" for herself to vent out her deepest frustuation.At the cost of sounding naive i'll say this i've long ago stopped thequest of searching for the good in every human i meet..No sir,i'm not that great.. It is a kind of greatness which i cannot conceive of..I'm not saying i'm the superlative picture perfect human who is too good for this "big bad world"..no,that's not what i say..I'm as much guilty as they are perhaps more,but in a different sort of a way,atleast i do not pretend to be otherwise...And that is one thing which gives me all the comfort in the world..

chak de,india....

for some stupid unexplainable n yet predictable reason i watched "the" movie everyone's talkin about on independence day......not that it makes a difference(i mean u can never experience a sense of patriotism u do not feel just by watchin some movie on the 15th august or 26th jan)...
let's leave the explanations bahind(nope not a spellin mistake,just tryin a different accent in the writin style too since it's catchin most ppl's fancy in the lingo)...
Ah,where was i?the movie right?hmmm....well one of the sensible cinema in the recent times given the rate at which movies r comin up these days it is quite an achievement i daresay...
The story for one has nothing new to say or nohting extraordinary to portray n yet the fact that it is told with utmost sincerity is it's biggest plus point...Brings home the fact once again that to make a good cinema u don't necessarily need a very good script,sometimes your earnestness n sincerity can touch hearts in a way u might have never dreamt of as possible.........
The story revolves around the story of a coach Kabir Khan(aka SRK) who once upon a time had captained the Indian National Hockey team.. But trouble arose when the team lost a decisive match against Pakistan and suddenly his integrity and intentions were put under a scanner owing to his muslim origins...At this point the story seems a tad too far fetched..The fact that a loss of one match became the ultimate nail in the coffin for Kabir Khan and he was kicked out seems a bit unbelievable..Let us let it be for the time...
Now Kabir Khan decides to make a comeback into the game of hockey as a coach to the National Women's Hockey Team.. This is his last and only chance to regain back his lost dignity,glory and self respect...
The story from this point is beautifully depicted..A story which tells the tale of hardwork,grit and determination...Brings home the fact that there still might still be justice out there in the big,bad world of male chuavanists(no offence meant)... The cast does full justice to the roles they depict...Very well done..
Now we come to the best part of the movie..yes,SRK..If there's one actor whose restrained,silent and yet powerful performance stands tall like a pillar of strength throughout the movie it's him...
Everytime the critics have stood ready to write him off as a destiny's favourite child he bounces back with ine such performance which is enough to silence his critics(atleast for a while)...Give him a role of this nature and the way he rises to the ocassion to perform such a role is phenomenal,really.......All we have SRK's fans have just one thing to say to him,we need a few more of Swades's and Chak de's please....because if this is what u r truly capable of then it's a sin to settle for anything lesser,from your side as well as us.....................

created a blog at last!!!!

this was one of the things tht was on ma mind frm quite sometime n yet the urge to laze somehow overpowered each time i almost made up my mind.....but then be that as it may,the bottom line's m here finally....