The word "fuck"

After a bluetooth session with my dear friend Sourabh I was in possession of an obscurely titled mp3 file.
Must have been a recording or some show on TV.

The guy sounded like a South Indian, Christian maybe...

Excellent five minute discourse on the word "FUCK".
-It is the most beautiful word in the English language
-It can be used as an intransitive and transitive verb
-Its tone and context can denote pleasure, pain, hostility, apathy, disgust, rage, etc. etc.

Fucking funny.

(sic)

'Twas not hubris...

I think that the main reason for the Xerxes incident at Thermopylae was not, in fact, hubris.

It was a simple miscalculation on his part to assume that the Spartans would bow to his wishes.
Alright, he managed to get a major part of his attacking force decimated, but at the cost of scandal and shame... Humiliation and finally defeat at the spear-points of the entire Spartan army.
Where 300 tried SO HARD and SO LONG, but failed... The Spartan army was victorious.

What were the words... "Remember Us".

DO we?

Or for that matter... Take us Indian Hindustani Bharatis...
Do we remember the sacrifices of our nation? Do we carry those ideals still? Those ideals for which our men, women and children were attacked viciously?
I'm not talking about Mahatma Gandhi or any political leader such as Nehru or Bose...

I'm talking about the REAL grassroot level heroes... Bhagat Singh and countless, nameless, faceless others...

I don't know why I'm in such a patriotic state of mind today, which is VERY UNUSUAL for me.
But heck. I'm ashamed of the way I live my life as an Indian.

What IS Indian in me right now?

I have difficulties in speaking Hindi. If I continue in Hindi for too long, I eventually mess up.
I think in English. I speak English. I read, write and breathe the English language.

Indian customs don't interest me. I don't go to any temples. I don't like Indian weddings.

India as a country is lost on me.

Its a profound sorrow that I feel. At my utter ignorance. Who am I?
A stranger in a strange land.
This place is my home. MY COUNTRY.
But there is no feeling of belonging burning in my heart.
Perhaps its all relative.

I never wanna shame the blood in my veins/
and bring pain to my sweet grandfather's face/
in his resting place/I made haste to learn/
and not waste everything my forefathers earned in tears/
for my culture...

I'm so sorry... But this is who I am.

Easier to run

Its never easier to run for me.
I can't. It's a disadvantage.

I hate that.
When the whole of this goddamned humanity is running away from itself... Why the heck am I unable to even think about turning my back?
Sheeeeesh.

Angry Scientists

There was this character in the cartoon show Sheep In The Big City...
The Mad Scientist... No... The ANGRY Scientist.

I mean he kept insisting throughout the show that he was 'Annnnngreee'... with some measure of frustration and despair at General Specific's thickheadedness...

I liked the cartoon.

The relevance of all this sidetracking is that I'm feeling pretty much the Mad/Angry Scientist right now.
It's a very disgusting Sunday. I hate Sundays. There isn't any promise of anything in it today.
Not even a hope to make it beautiful or at least worth enduring.

I don't even have the courage to go fall asleep!
So here I am, hoping to turn my mind to other things, which I'm prolific at. There's a heap of sketches and drawings that need scanning pronto... As well as some story-making.
But seriously, do I have the mental energy for that?
May I add, that although these are cerebellum intensive actions, the abovementioned stories are a fuel, a catalyst in their own right. So I shouldn't really worry about a fuse blowing up in my cerebral cortex.

I'm guessing its just plain Sid the sloth-ness.

Oh by the way, I watched Ice Age again last night. Moves me EVERY time.
And then I regret ignoring my animating talents. Oh well, there's a time for everything.
Spilling tea on my dog, included. Ouch. Dumb mutt lays just in the place my foot wants to go.

"Yeh kaisi ghari aayi, sujhe nahi hai kuch bhi..."

That's a line from Abhijeet Sawant's song, Tere Bina...
Perfect for what I'm experiencing right now. What the hell did God mean when he put such a mind inside of ME???
Total wastage, man... Maybe somebody else would've been more deserving.
I know I don't even utilize 90% of my mind... The majority of Earth's population don't, either...
But that doesn't mean I have to be like them.

I was thrown back to those days, those memories of my childhood yesterday... So many things I had forgotten, so many things I didn't know...

ABOUT ME.

Say something new, one can tell me.
But it's true. I have no recollection of my early childhood. Save one or two memories at the age of three, I have no memories of my child-child-childhood. Like before the age of five.

I understand that it's not anything alarming, MANY people don't remember.
But then again, DO I have t o be like them?

My mum remembers everything about her childhood. She recollects things in such vivid detail that one wonders at her mortality. She wasn't meant for being a human. She could easily have been one of the ever vigilant angels up high.

Ahh... But where would I have been then...?

An unborn seed, hurtling through limbo, neither possessing enough energy to break free, neither going back to the cosmic source.

Actually we're all bacteria. Sorta kinda humbles you, doesn't it... That the very things you pop pills against and get shots against are actually what you were.

There's a line in the movie Dirty, spoken by Clifton Collins, Jr.'s character, Officer Sancho...

In the end you can't change who you are or where you come from. You'll always have that same heart inside.

I agree. We do behave like scum most of the time.



PEACE.

Of L.P. and Sands...

No I haven't become so numb...

But I love this line from this great song by the masters of Nu Metal. Linkin Park, as great bands go, isn't the BEST... But it definitely has a presence, and a commanding one at that.

It's a dull boring Saturday. I hate Saturdays. One more day added to the list of Mondays and Sundays to aggravate my misery. I'm at a dead end with my software project... This will mean that I’m not in any mood to handle any messy programming on my part. It'll just have to wait till Monday. I'll dump it all on my supervisor's lap... (I hope... ha!!!)

But what do I do TODAY!!!???

I've got a couple of loose ends I need to see to. Meet somebody maybe, maybe not. All that matters to me is doing something, seeing something, hearing something that will make this day into a better experience. Earlier, like in second year of college, and before that, I used to wake up on a Saturday morning full of hope and expectation... It used to be an off day.

Guess the charm wore off pretty quick.

I remember there's a part in Antoine de St. Exupery's "Little Prince" when the little prince goes to see a fox. The fox is hiding at the edge of the farmers' fields. The fox says to the Little Prince that all the farmers celebrate today as their holiday and go to drink together. That day the fox lays waste to their fields. The little prince is surprised. The farmers can surely leave somebody behind to guard the crops... right?
The fox explains that people have a strange tendency to enjoy and respect, to cherish something as long as it is in short supply...

As long as they are accustomed to having that particular thing on special/rare occasions, they respect it. Once it is a matter of fact thing for them, it loses its value in their perception.

The fox says all this in the context of holidays... If every day was a Sunday, the farmers wouldn't feel like celebrating. But since they work all week and get one day to enjoy themselves, they don't mind about the fox eating up their crops.

What happened later was that the fox got 'tamed' by the Little Prince.

And when it was time for the Little Prince to return, the fox was deeply moved. And he explained his 'taming' in the same context as he had explained the farmers' holiday phenomenon.

It was a very moving experience for me. Now I realize that at the tender age of 11 I had read one of the most important pieces of literature ever written.

I cried copiously at the Little Prince's return. And I got a phobia of sand into the bargain...
I still don't understand it.

Hail LP!!!

(The Little Prince)

Evil Tidings

Something distinctly fishy is afoot with my PC...
Seems someone's been re-scheduling dates of my weekly virus scan to get in Worms...

I hope this was a one - time job, otherwise I'll have to begin haunting the cybercafes again.
Like a bad penny, a virus pops in JUST at the time when your machine's running smooth.
That's life. That's the age of technology. That's my luck.

I was noticing something weird about today.

It doesn't seem like a BIRTHDAY day... Ha! Not mine, but my younger brother turned 16 and the day hadn't an iota of difference from what yesterday was like, or what tomorrow will turn out to be. Except for the "Operation DinnerOut" and the crazy mindless ride at night we had.

Maybe it's an 'age' thing?

Like, maybe when you grow old-er you lose the feeling of enchantment that used to take over and permeate your senses on moments leading up to your birthday...
It's a sad, sad world we live in.
What I would like to know is...

How does one go about apologizing to somebody you've HURT BADLY.... Badly enough to make that particular person feel like forgetting you...?

And what's worse... (in my case, selectively... because not all people are blessed with a temper like mine)
How does one fend off the rising tide of anger and frustration at the repeated ignores and the repeated I-don't-know-you-I-don't-want-to attitudes...?

Huh????
Huh???

Well I'll be.. The luckiest person on the planet if Waheguru ji showed me some revelatory flash, some epiphany...
But these things are like VERY ephemeral flashes in the pan.

Till then, my compliments to people who have their P.R. department taken care of.

"Tali talai roti kaun nahi khata?"

ME.

Home Sweet Home

Nothing beats blogging peacefully at home on your desktop.

For me, that is.
Finally got this tortoise-ish dial-up activated. It's slow but heck, better than nothing.
It's getting to become sorta kinda summerish. Although the whole day just blew past me in a whirl of heat, I still felt the tinge of the monsoons (HOPEFULLY FAR AWAY!!!) in the evening.

Talking about evenings, I had three assignments to do today... My litle bro's practical file, and some project data I had to do for a friend, as well as a long and beautiful moonlight ride to the army cantonement area here, on my friend's Royal Enfield.

Damn... Each time I ride it, I regret not buying it. Anyway, I have my hopes set on getting one after my final term exams...

Graduation before my teen years end... Will this prove to be a boon or a thing to take in stride?

I have no concrete argument for that, but I will defnitely vouch for my mum's conviction that I should give it a go.

I still remember that balmy August afternoon.... I was sick, curled up in bed and watching cartoons... Mum and dad came home. Mum said, "You have B.Sc classes from next week"

I literally went ballistic. Shot out of my invalid atmosphere and my bed and pounced on her.
Hell, I don't even remember what all crap I must've said to her.
Luckily I wasn't THAT thickheaded (Or maybe it was her unique style of convincing me) and mum ended up getting me to agree to go.

I'm pleased.
Thank you mom.

D-Day

It's D-Day.

8th April in this year of our Lord, 2008 Anno Domini...

And my bro's got his exams starting from today.

My deepest condolences... To the papers, that is.


Peace.

Post Scriptum... umm... ummm...

Reading the last post...
I felt ashamed.
How the hell could I put bhai sahab at 1st place... That goes to my mum. Who put up with all of my bullcrap all this time and still tried to instil some sense into my thick cranium.

Mr. Sourabh Arora comes second. But nonetheless, whatever happened, with me, couldn't have occurred without his timely interventions.

This is one thing I'm never ever gonna forget. God didn't give me a sign... He pushed me i nto the way of the big gigantic force that changed my outlook, attitude, behaviour, growth and sense forever.

Still,I do regret and I do feel ashamed about all the things I did and said. I never cease to marvel at the love and affection that I received, and that too despite all my antics.
WHEW!!!
If I was the parent here, I would've disowned me...

Confessions...

I confess I'm a jerk.

There. I said it. Its not like a secret or that its something amazing... Its just that not many people like to admit it.

Well, I had to. Its long past that time when I used to delude myself that maybe I am sorta kinda a straightforward person who's got some sense...

NO WAY...

Life is way long past that one.

So, how do we carry on from there?
You know, once when I was about 17 years old... I prayed VERY devoutly and with full belief to God, that He should just give me a sign, something that would point me in the right direction.
I prayed that the sign should be something so special that I would have no problem in understand its origins to be divine. I had tears running down my face, and needless to say I was a mess... Problems at home, problems at school, problems with myself... I was in the dumps.


There's something that didn't occur to me.
If God was so gullible to send me the sign... I would've been blind to it.

But then something happened.
My mum always says, children hold a special place in God's heart... It's the grown-ups that need to be looked after.

So one fine day, after playing basketball in Yol Cantonement with my best schoolmate Abhishek Gill, we went up to a pastry shop in the army complex.
Abhishek said, " aaja tujhe bhaiyya se milata hoon."

And that day was THE day, if not the sign, that was the beginning of my change and improvement.

Hats off and my everlasting gratitude to Abhishek Gill,
and to the one person who single handedly brought me around...

Sourabh bhai.

Abrogation of the norms...

Life turns up such a surprise for you some times that you are TRULY TAKEN ABACK.
Not the 'literary' taken aback...
You're just forced to stop in your tracks... Look wide-eyed... Maybe howl and clutch at your hair in frustration and disbelief.

Now I don't mean to say that that's ALL there is to it. Various emotions range across the human spectrum but these are the general stereotyped reactions.

Now I'm glad to say that I'm out of that phase. I did undergo all that last month. Ergo the psyche took its toll at a bad time, indeed.

I've got my final exams looming in front of me this July.
After graduation, I'm going to check the waters.

I found a catchphrase to define my status...

Depressive Realism.

I'll do some research I guess. Its too exact to be a coincidence.

Maha Shivratri

Who knew 24 hours could mean so much...

Since yesterday... My whole life has changed. And this time I'm going to make it permanent...

A lesson has been learned.

A puzzle has been solved.

A dream has been shattered.

A love has been lost.

A friendship regained.

A resolution resolved.

An idea thought of.

My life has changed.

For the better or the worse, I don't know concretely, but definitely, definitely changed.

HOW THE HELL COULD I BE SO GULLIBLE??

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN MY LIFE!!!

I'm the biggest sorry assed loser in this universe.

Damn.
All I wish is for this to become a bittersweet memory of love lost and wisdom gained.

Because I'm going to funnel it all into my creative muse, and its going to coalesce into something that I have been after for such a long time...

A BOOK...


Cogito ergo sum...

In sickness and in health...

I'm going to make up my own marriage vows.

No stereotyped stuff for me! I mean, I can imagine myself saying, I do...

And that's embarassing.

It was a strange day today. My friend Shipra's birthday. Rushed off to her house with another friend of mine to drop off a surprise birthday cake.... (she'd already left, but we went on my bike and gave it to her sister instead... sneaky)

Well that went nicely.
Then there was a huge collective sigh of relief when it was decided that our current teacher would be continuing the class on time as well as taking up the immeasurably boring subject of Software Quality Testing.

The course material was more like a tabloid... Same thickness.

So it was a strange day. Nothing accomplished, but it went well.
And then we're planning a surprise hop to Chandigarh, this weekend.

SO thats cool.

I only hope things work out, the things that are supposed t o work out don't work out till last and the stuff that you think is dealt with unravels itself in a continuum.

Disgustingly real.

PEACE.

"Beautiful World"

That's a song by Coldplay...

It sums up my feelings to the core.......!!!

It was such a wonderful 29th of February, so special because of how the day unfolded, as well as because of the fact that it would repeat itself after only about 3 more years...

Ha ha, ha ha, ha...
I couldn't sleep last night so I turned on the idiot box.
Watched cartoons for 4 hours flat out then went to sleep.

Man that was weird!
Alternate and unreal realities are confusing, especially in sleep-deprivation-induced haziness.

I got up early.
For a sunday, that is...

Today started up normally. I don't like sundays particularly at this point in life.
I re-installed my PC today. Kept scanning it for 4 hours... 69 files were infected.

THEN I LEFT.

Now I'm just thinking about last night. I kept watching MTV Roadies 5.0, and I felt so bad that Snehashish got voted out.
God darn it.

That was the first thing that came into my mind when I woke up... The guy's wide-eyed but gutsy expression when he was given the VOTE OUT.

Anyway.
Life is beautiful, even in vote outs and backstabs.

Delay, decay, never moving, ever moving...

How was THAT for laziness?

I'm such a retard for thinking that I could actually stick with my commitment to keep publishing after such a hiatus...
Mankind!!!

Thou art but a leaf before the oncoming storm.

I was in such high spirits yesterday... Possibly because there's a new addition to our class roster and I'm relishing the dialogue with her... Finally!!!
A female whom I can atleast converse with in my natural dialect... Angreji....

I feel so suffocated at times, its almost palpable... Take the day before yesterday, for example...

Felt positively out-of-sync with my surroundings, and as a natural effect, the day went rollicking down into the depths...

Lets hope this morning foretells a beautiful 24 hours ahead...

Genoi hoios essi...

Today... My First Input

It's not such a great day. Seeing as how I was feverish and weak for most of the morning, I'm thinking it would've been a better idea to sit curled up in bed, and watch a movie or two to just ease the mental tension.
Yeah, that's one thing about me, I get depressed when I'm ill...
Perhaps it's the debilitating effect of sickness, or maybe it's my usually active lifestyle, which I miss a lot when I'm cooped up in bed...
Active lifestyle here defines... My day, the routine, the unusual stuff I notice each day, the studying.

I wonder what all was taught in class today.

See...?
That's my problem. I'm too preoccupied, Maybe I DO need to get the tension off my back, which incidentally feels the size of Texas.

I had a fever tablet last night.
Now it seems like my entire digestive tract is layered with Paracetamol.

Eugh.

Not a pleasant thought.
Let's end it with that.