whtever is all this crazy shoutin about objectivity...about urself or about others!!!! can anybody ever understand their own pathos bathos and the rest of it all!!!!!!
can u ever appriciate the funny bone which life jerks into u without anasthesia and expects shamelessly for u to appreciate the funny side of it!
i'v heard people talk about the revlation! the magical moment which poets talk about when u can understand the world...see it in a different light! is it this very realisation of the futility of it all! whtever...as i said at the very begining...crap!
Friday, June 15, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
whatever!
its sooo tuff to make choices!!! wether u wnt red heels wch wud go only with two of ur dresses or a nother "evergreen" "tropical" black pair....esp if u already hv blck in 5 diff styles already!!!!!
wether u wnt to eat cakes or not....esp keeping in mind the fact that ure gainin weight in the "fast-forward" mode and u dnt have the remote to ur own life to play it in slow motion like adam sandler....
wether u wnt to support the bjp or the congress in the next elections,,,,esp given the fact that u'll be worried with ur xamz and ofcourse the lack of any visible difference in their ideals! is there any choice then???? any?
what is it that makes this particular word so interesting and imp????
everyone wants to keep their choices open....consider everything and make an "informed choice"
choices are what define freedom for us...if u can choose wch flavour of ice-cream u want...its the result of democracy......
we make choices and we revel in getting confused amidst the horde of em simply coz we can "afford" to make choices...we have the luxury..
the weird outburst u have been reading till now is the result with a small girl whose name i do not know....i dnt think i ever will....
she is a brick-maker's daughter.thats all she is to me.....coz she showed me on my father's insistance how bricks are mouded.......how the earth is worked with fire and water and their sweat and then the bricks disappear underneath the paint and cement coats....as is their labour....its sperad all across the lands...far beyond they can ever hope to travel...in the multiplexes they cn nt even concieve in their mud and plastic huts built rite above the fire brick kilns........
the dexterity with which she moulded bricks one atre another and dispalyed them out in long rows in the dug out land...surprised me...not jus because she was so adept despite being so young...but beacuse she displayed her "art" so proudly as if there is nothing more imp anyone else could have done anywhr else! her mother looked on proudly and said..."she is a brick-maker's daughter...ofcourse she's good! this is what she's meant to do all her life" every single day getting up at 3 in the mornin to dig out land and lay the bricks in the feild to dry till mid-mornin....doing the work so mechanically that even light is rendered superfluous! all the work can be completed in the dark!
that is what reminded me of my most frequent conversations with my friends...."so what's up??","nothing at all..life is so monotonous...its a drudge! busy doing vellapanthi coz there is nothing inetersting to do"
yes "we" can "afford" to have choices! to mull over monotony....
wether u wnt to eat cakes or not....esp keeping in mind the fact that ure gainin weight in the "fast-forward" mode and u dnt have the remote to ur own life to play it in slow motion like adam sandler....
wether u wnt to support the bjp or the congress in the next elections,,,,esp given the fact that u'll be worried with ur xamz and ofcourse the lack of any visible difference in their ideals! is there any choice then???? any?
what is it that makes this particular word so interesting and imp????
everyone wants to keep their choices open....consider everything and make an "informed choice"
choices are what define freedom for us...if u can choose wch flavour of ice-cream u want...its the result of democracy......
we make choices and we revel in getting confused amidst the horde of em simply coz we can "afford" to make choices...we have the luxury..
the weird outburst u have been reading till now is the result with a small girl whose name i do not know....i dnt think i ever will....
she is a brick-maker's daughter.thats all she is to me.....coz she showed me on my father's insistance how bricks are mouded.......how the earth is worked with fire and water and their sweat and then the bricks disappear underneath the paint and cement coats....as is their labour....its sperad all across the lands...far beyond they can ever hope to travel...in the multiplexes they cn nt even concieve in their mud and plastic huts built rite above the fire brick kilns........
the dexterity with which she moulded bricks one atre another and dispalyed them out in long rows in the dug out land...surprised me...not jus because she was so adept despite being so young...but beacuse she displayed her "art" so proudly as if there is nothing more imp anyone else could have done anywhr else! her mother looked on proudly and said..."she is a brick-maker's daughter...ofcourse she's good! this is what she's meant to do all her life" every single day getting up at 3 in the mornin to dig out land and lay the bricks in the feild to dry till mid-mornin....doing the work so mechanically that even light is rendered superfluous! all the work can be completed in the dark!
that is what reminded me of my most frequent conversations with my friends...."so what's up??","nothing at all..life is so monotonous...its a drudge! busy doing vellapanthi coz there is nothing inetersting to do"
yes "we" can "afford" to have choices! to mull over monotony....
Sunday, June 10, 2007
roland garros
ps: no serious content in this one!!!!!!
i wanted to write something on friday itself...after watching the men's semi-finals....i was alwayz sure the final wud be between federer and nadal and nadal wud clinch it again!!!! this is not at all bragging on my part!
federer is a class act...truely a treat to watch...his style...penache and his looks(just on court!)
and though he lost the final again to nadal....this is my tribute to federer.....his game...his superb technique and his awsome backhand chop!!!!!!!!!!! killed davydenka with it.he'll kill nadal with it too smday!
not to assume that i m prejudiced against nadal......he's the most ineterstin spaniard i know after benderas!!!!
i wanted to write something on friday itself...after watching the men's semi-finals....i was alwayz sure the final wud be between federer and nadal and nadal wud clinch it again!!!! this is not at all bragging on my part!
federer is a class act...truely a treat to watch...his style...penache and his looks(just on court!)
and though he lost the final again to nadal....this is my tribute to federer.....his game...his superb technique and his awsome backhand chop!!!!!!!!!!! killed davydenka with it.he'll kill nadal with it too smday!
not to assume that i m prejudiced against nadal......he's the most ineterstin spaniard i know after benderas!!!!
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
monatge
my dad was recently telling us about his childhood...my grandma joined in...there was food to be cooked by her for the nine members of the family, there was fodder to be cut from the fields for the cattle, there were then ofcourse the cattle which needed ample care and time and effort, there was the sewing to be done, the cleaning to be done of the farm and the house and loads more....
this is not an ode to my grandmother...though i intend to embark on that project someday....this isnt even an inventory of all the wrok she did...that would again be a part of the aforementioned project
the dialogue got me thinking of how less time there must have been for what today accounts for a majority of my time spent - thinking. she had no time to think...one had to constantly work to keep the wheel rolling, life moving smoothly....she did what she had to do...slipped into all her roles as best as she could without thinking....pausing....that is why she cannot sit idle a minute now....cannot let a minute go unaccounted for...cannot understand what effect thinking, our own and other's, can have on us.
the places and people around me have become a part of an elaborate psycological game...
i cannot imagine man ever fore-seeing the extent to which the sales techniques could and indeed have changed the way man and (u'd like to agree with me on this one:) ) women see themselves.
everyone has time to think...think how the dress on the sleek manequine would fit one's not so broad shoulders, one's not so tall figure, not so flat abdomen and the rest of it all....
i remember reading an article bout these effects that advertisments have on people.....i cannnot quite recall the name of the author but it quite changed the way i looked at the glittering world of advertising....strategising every product so that it makes one feel a part of the "stylish-elite" crowd or making one feel exclusive...they can sell the worst possible thing as the best thing that ever happened to mankind.....they sold the atom bomb in a similar fashion once and now the nuclear power.......
PR is what drives the world today.....the distinctions between madonna and magdeline can be manipulated..after all no pulicity is bad publicity! people can be convinced that the vixen is the flavour of the season and girls would be scurrying to show their "abilities".
similarly coke and pepsi can convince you that because amir and shahrukh drink it...its "in". wonder where these soda venders get money enough to hire these stars.....wait its MY MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and ofcourse its the only substance they have...........indeed its an art to convert something insubstantial into smthing that can change ur life..........it can be absolutely anything-soap, cold drink, tooth paste, shoes, table cloth, pencil, a perfume, crockery, plastic chairs......anything, it only depends on which ad ur watching at this point in time!
this is not an ode to my grandmother...though i intend to embark on that project someday....this isnt even an inventory of all the wrok she did...that would again be a part of the aforementioned project
the dialogue got me thinking of how less time there must have been for what today accounts for a majority of my time spent - thinking. she had no time to think...one had to constantly work to keep the wheel rolling, life moving smoothly....she did what she had to do...slipped into all her roles as best as she could without thinking....pausing....that is why she cannot sit idle a minute now....cannot let a minute go unaccounted for...cannot understand what effect thinking, our own and other's, can have on us.
the places and people around me have become a part of an elaborate psycological game...
i cannot imagine man ever fore-seeing the extent to which the sales techniques could and indeed have changed the way man and (u'd like to agree with me on this one:) ) women see themselves.
everyone has time to think...think how the dress on the sleek manequine would fit one's not so broad shoulders, one's not so tall figure, not so flat abdomen and the rest of it all....
i remember reading an article bout these effects that advertisments have on people.....i cannnot quite recall the name of the author but it quite changed the way i looked at the glittering world of advertising....strategising every product so that it makes one feel a part of the "stylish-elite" crowd or making one feel exclusive...they can sell the worst possible thing as the best thing that ever happened to mankind.....they sold the atom bomb in a similar fashion once and now the nuclear power.......
PR is what drives the world today.....the distinctions between madonna and magdeline can be manipulated..after all no pulicity is bad publicity! people can be convinced that the vixen is the flavour of the season and girls would be scurrying to show their "abilities".
similarly coke and pepsi can convince you that because amir and shahrukh drink it...its "in". wonder where these soda venders get money enough to hire these stars.....wait its MY MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and ofcourse its the only substance they have...........indeed its an art to convert something insubstantial into smthing that can change ur life..........it can be absolutely anything-soap, cold drink, tooth paste, shoes, table cloth, pencil, a perfume, crockery, plastic chairs......anything, it only depends on which ad ur watching at this point in time!
Saturday, May 26, 2007
problamatic patriotism
I'v alwayz been quite uncomfortable with the idea of nationalism or even patriotism....especially military nationalism....actually just military patriotism.
I am aware of the linguistic crime i am commiting by using both the terms nationalism and patrioatism simultaneously...
But the irony never escapes me when the culture tries to justify the war and bloodshed for peace and when the jingoists shout out for unmitigated revenge for some political hulabaloo.......hulabaloo, yes its nothing more.....the term used for monkeys and "imaginative" children can be used for the people who run the countries for us beacuse we do not have enough time to spare from our corporate lives...but that some other time
Does the justification of the 'naughty child' in all of us justify the waging of wars for nothing more than ego?? some psychologists claim that the childhood fantasy of planes and bombs and guns gets transformed into the frenzy, the madness which kills more men than any other "cause" year after year....
Whats more men revel in gore.....
What is the parameter of civilisation which bases itself on such violence??? the supremacy one can claim in the hobbsian world?????being the fittest in the race for survival?? or the ability to transform oneself like a warewolf....the perfect gentlemen off the battlefield and the savage-est man on it????
I saw the movie 1971 today....about the POWs who are still stuck in Pakistan.....the ending wherein an Indian soldier who has gone through hell to reach the border of India, a runaway from a prison-camp from Pakistan dies jus a couple of meters away from the border of India...piognantly wearing a Pakistan army uniform which was supposed to be his "passport" to freedom ultimately led him to be dragged away back into the Pakistani territory....and left to rot.....is this what nationalism and patriotism make of men....scavengers...
That was just a movie...but there have been men living in those jails beacuse there are'nt enough people who can see them as men....sharing something in common with them but as those who wear another country's colours and swear by another constitution.....and i am not jus refrring to the Pakistani jails....
It reminds me of one line from a novel by an irish guy called Josef Conrad i read once.It is about a white man going into the heart of africa...the dark continent....the man kurtz, sees black men on the shores and feels a shudder when he realisez that he is afraid of these people not beacuse they mite be primeval but because he could percieve some sort of a primordial-rudimentary-genetc link between him and what he pronounced on behalf of the civilized world, to the civilized world as savages.....the threat is of all the distinctions being dissloved.....supremacy cannot be claimed then.
There is no winner no loser...no rite side....no wrong...only men dying and others who see them suffer and do not flich from feeling proud about their contribution in it!!!!
The irony at a personal level is ofcourse that this line of thinking is not in conjunction with what has been taught to me all through my life. Of saluting the flag as it stands for the nation...of feeling a sense of awe for the men who are ready to sacrifice their life for the country.....there is even some amount of sex-appeal attached to it!!!!!!!!!!!
Sometimes i feel that there are more who can see this the way i see it...who can understand why i feel it is all hollow...and perhaps that is why they carry on with the pretene.....there needs be some justification for all the effort, energy,emotion and resourse which goes into sustaining this brand and strand of nationalism....
There needs be some justification for the sacrifices made by the soldiers and their families.....the idea has to be worth the history of sacrifices and the future of scarifices which lie ahead....the glory has to be worth it...
One ashoka was enough for history and the world....
I am aware of the linguistic crime i am commiting by using both the terms nationalism and patrioatism simultaneously...
But the irony never escapes me when the culture tries to justify the war and bloodshed for peace and when the jingoists shout out for unmitigated revenge for some political hulabaloo.......hulabaloo, yes its nothing more.....the term used for monkeys and "imaginative" children can be used for the people who run the countries for us beacuse we do not have enough time to spare from our corporate lives...but that some other time
Does the justification of the 'naughty child' in all of us justify the waging of wars for nothing more than ego?? some psychologists claim that the childhood fantasy of planes and bombs and guns gets transformed into the frenzy, the madness which kills more men than any other "cause" year after year....
Whats more men revel in gore.....
What is the parameter of civilisation which bases itself on such violence??? the supremacy one can claim in the hobbsian world?????being the fittest in the race for survival?? or the ability to transform oneself like a warewolf....the perfect gentlemen off the battlefield and the savage-est man on it????
I saw the movie 1971 today....about the POWs who are still stuck in Pakistan.....the ending wherein an Indian soldier who has gone through hell to reach the border of India, a runaway from a prison-camp from Pakistan dies jus a couple of meters away from the border of India...piognantly wearing a Pakistan army uniform which was supposed to be his "passport" to freedom ultimately led him to be dragged away back into the Pakistani territory....and left to rot.....is this what nationalism and patriotism make of men....scavengers...
That was just a movie...but there have been men living in those jails beacuse there are'nt enough people who can see them as men....sharing something in common with them but as those who wear another country's colours and swear by another constitution.....and i am not jus refrring to the Pakistani jails....
It reminds me of one line from a novel by an irish guy called Josef Conrad i read once.It is about a white man going into the heart of africa...the dark continent....the man kurtz, sees black men on the shores and feels a shudder when he realisez that he is afraid of these people not beacuse they mite be primeval but because he could percieve some sort of a primordial-rudimentary-genetc link between him and what he pronounced on behalf of the civilized world, to the civilized world as savages.....the threat is of all the distinctions being dissloved.....supremacy cannot be claimed then.
There is no winner no loser...no rite side....no wrong...only men dying and others who see them suffer and do not flich from feeling proud about their contribution in it!!!!
The irony at a personal level is ofcourse that this line of thinking is not in conjunction with what has been taught to me all through my life. Of saluting the flag as it stands for the nation...of feeling a sense of awe for the men who are ready to sacrifice their life for the country.....there is even some amount of sex-appeal attached to it!!!!!!!!!!!
Sometimes i feel that there are more who can see this the way i see it...who can understand why i feel it is all hollow...and perhaps that is why they carry on with the pretene.....there needs be some justification for all the effort, energy,emotion and resourse which goes into sustaining this brand and strand of nationalism....
There needs be some justification for the sacrifices made by the soldiers and their families.....the idea has to be worth the history of sacrifices and the future of scarifices which lie ahead....the glory has to be worth it...
One ashoka was enough for history and the world....
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
now its yoga
i recently realized a new energy in me to start yoga....no spiritual awakening....jsut a tiny minute little rebellion against the system.
does that sound like utter crap? yoga a way to rebel!
i heard the newz that some guy...i dont know if there were just one or more...some crazy group or an organisation....wether indians or americans or africans or what! but i heard that they had filed a patent for yoga...
this is one of those times when u feel helpless sitting in your drawing room and try to make yourself feel better by merely changing the channel...i did the same thing
i am not much of a tv person or even a newz person...its after every zillion years that i feel the urge to now whats going on in the world i live in....and this is what happens...i feel bogged down and stiffled by the system....the structure which gave something like yoga as a cultural inheritance to us...it's specifically indian....atleast to me and to crores of other people who cannot find the root of its origin...or its influences or its possible migrations from other places even in the ancient times...hey its all possible in this world of "intertexuality" as a freind o mine puts it
all of us have been reduced to diasporic subjects...living in one nostalgia or the other....my golden world experienced a rupture when i heard this newz....a part of me which i defined and detailed by my "indianness" can now be potentially controlled or "copy-righted" by someone who i do not know and who mite not know what he/she is taking away from me and countless others...
every aspect of me can be advertised or controlled.....not speakin of the so called "brain-washing" of the media
perhaps an over-raction to the changing face of the world....
perhaps the world will come back full circle as they say evrything does and the system will gradually give back what its taking....perhaps the patents will hold no value one day.....even the social ones...
perhaps i'll forget about this in about 6 onths and become a part of the whole encroaching process....
perhaps no one will read this and one day silently i'll erase this weak testimony of my protest....
perhaps....
does that sound like utter crap? yoga a way to rebel!
i heard the newz that some guy...i dont know if there were just one or more...some crazy group or an organisation....wether indians or americans or africans or what! but i heard that they had filed a patent for yoga...
this is one of those times when u feel helpless sitting in your drawing room and try to make yourself feel better by merely changing the channel...i did the same thing
i am not much of a tv person or even a newz person...its after every zillion years that i feel the urge to now whats going on in the world i live in....and this is what happens...i feel bogged down and stiffled by the system....the structure which gave something like yoga as a cultural inheritance to us...it's specifically indian....atleast to me and to crores of other people who cannot find the root of its origin...or its influences or its possible migrations from other places even in the ancient times...hey its all possible in this world of "intertexuality" as a freind o mine puts it
all of us have been reduced to diasporic subjects...living in one nostalgia or the other....my golden world experienced a rupture when i heard this newz....a part of me which i defined and detailed by my "indianness" can now be potentially controlled or "copy-righted" by someone who i do not know and who mite not know what he/she is taking away from me and countless others...
every aspect of me can be advertised or controlled.....not speakin of the so called "brain-washing" of the media
perhaps an over-raction to the changing face of the world....
perhaps the world will come back full circle as they say evrything does and the system will gradually give back what its taking....perhaps the patents will hold no value one day.....even the social ones...
perhaps i'll forget about this in about 6 onths and become a part of the whole encroaching process....
perhaps no one will read this and one day silently i'll erase this weak testimony of my protest....
perhaps....
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