Amidst the smell of human piss and medicinal alcohol I realize how Delhi makes me resent myself. There is always Nizams kebabs to ameliorate this feeling but that apart, each push and jostle from the lady in the queue behind me has my adrenaline pumping as thoughts of confrontations loom in my mind. People are extremely comfortable jumping ahead of you in queues, and sure some hyper queue jumping junkie doesn't get me worked up but when it transpires three times in a row I feel it's time for a confrontation. And so it ensues and not that it leaves you simmering in a pool of victory. I felt resentful,like I have regressed. There are ofcourse many socio economic evils in our society that makes one sympathize with the bottled anger and frustration, but the words of German philosopher Nietzche resonate in my mind- he said- the measure of a society is how well it transforms pain and suffering and undoubtedly, en masse, Delhi has plenty of the aforementioned pain and suffering, yet we channelize it into hate and aggression. A new form of catharsis perhaps is needed. A metamorphosis into art, as Eric Weiner writes about Iceland in his Book "The Geography of Bliss", is required in this disgruntled city as well. Brooding writers, dark poets, struggling painters...where are you my friends?

The Invincible Bubble

We live like we are going to live forever
Planning and doing, with the aura
Of invincibility upon us.
Forgetting we’re no different from the
Insects and rodents we disinfect our homes of,
Man is great at creating illusions, delusions
Why are we different from the stray dog
that was killed yesterday on the highway?
Why are we above this randomness,
The mortal nature of our living?
Why do we plan years and years of happiness
Ahead of us?
Why aren’t we more afraid?

The Silent Traveler

There was a reason Robert Louis Stevenson said “I travel for travels sake”*. Perhaps it was so I could include it in this little verbiagal waterfall or for RL Stevenson to be able to smirk from the heavens at us, when he sees the next facebook Post that goes like this: “Off to Ibiza”. Afterall, we live in an age, where apparently talking about traveling on social networking sites is more gratifying than traveling itself. Ah, us Post-liberalization children, little do we realize that it brought many things to us other than Coca Cola. Greater purchasing power to the educated elite translated into endless spirals of pretentious travels to corners of the world, to the existence of which we were previously oblivious Yes, indeed, travel is amazing, but more amazing, is to update our facebook status’ to inform our “friends” of our inevitable submlime coolness on touching down in a “foreign” land. The real bravehearts are those who travel, not knowing, not talking, but with that blissfully palpable trepidation, that beats in their heart with every step they take into the journey. That braveheart however, isn’t me.
I revere, the Silent Traveler.

*"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. the great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey, 1879

Anti-Beauty

Why do the prettiest
Declare that pretty is overrated?
When all I see, and all I hear
Is thin stick figures, clacking along the way
Pages and pictures, movies and theater,
Replete with the perfections, that perhaps,
Aren’t real, yet define our reality so.
The long glossy hair, and the untainted skin,
Their diaphanous visage, cascade in a bucket of
Visual assault, that seems intolerable.
My own cells, scream, squirm. They know that’s what
They’ll never be. Yet,
This is all I see.

Null Hypothesis: If our existence has meaning then everything we do has meaning.
Alternate Hypothesis: If our existence is pointless and without a meaning then nothing we do will ever have any meaning.

Veni. Vedi. Vixi

Since my phlegm ridden state couldn’t keep my away from it, I’d say Paris has a charm to it. But that perception was perhaps consecrated over the period of forty-eight hours I spent in this city, where people surprise you as much as the beauty of the tour Eiffel or the din of pedestrians at Champs Elysees. So I am prompted to say : Not sure about the third so much, but fourth time is definitely a charm. However, the apparent purpose of this blog ( is there a purpose, of any blog, apart from some subtle ego-massaging to ostensibly enlighten the world with your eclectically giddy words ?) is to extol the people I met and perhaps the spirit of the humanity in general.
It started with the lady Thai-Chinese taxi driver who drove us cheerfully to our hotel on Rue de Rome whilst chanting concerned instructions about protecting our bags in the underground metro. My experience with lady taxi drivers has not been the best in general, and that would be an understatement. However this particular creature had the spirit that was contagiously cheerful and she happily shared her holiday plans for the summer and apprised us that Thai airways is offering splendidly cheap return tickets to Bangkok. Noted, Mademoiselle Sunshine. Another taxi driver who drove us to Tour Eiffel the next day from Tunisia, told me that Freddie Mercury had lived in India and his parents were Indian. I did not know this. Oh well. Bohemian Rhapsody has a new found meaning in my life. We also conversed in English, Spanish, and I even tried my hand at some Arabic and repeated some extremely tongue-wracking French sentences. My contribution was the longest word in English – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Well, as far as coined words in English language go, and well Mary Poppins says so).
There was also an interesting tête-à-tête with a souvenir seller near the tour Eiffel. He was from Punjab, lured to Paris by an agent, having mortgaged his land to pay Rs. 10,00,000 to arrange his new life. Ofcourse, it was a ruse, and he ended up selling brass eiffel touwers to tourists on the road. He wanted to go back but well, he didn’t have the money, he told me. He seemed oddly at peace with this turn of fate though, and well I urged him to figure out a way to study more (he’d only finished high school). Once he realized I had nothing to offer more than some unsolicited advice, he decided to move on to the next potential customer. And yes, this was the underbelly of the city, a side I had not encountered before. This encounter also answered some questions that had floated around in my naïve mind as to the presence of multitude of Indian souvenir sellers around the Tour Eiffel area.

And thus, with these sweet and sour moments, the Paris sabbatical was wrapped up, sitting on a bench near the Seine, the proverbial tourist as always, staring up at the Eiffel Tower, as it gleamed golden in the rich blue Parisian sky.
As for the Latin in the title this blog, I shall let the incoherency hang.

PS: Midnight in Paris by woody Allen; is a must watch. Delectable , heart-lifting and magical!

1984 much?

Right now we live in a world filled with choices. We don't have to tell others where we are or what we are upto, but we tell our machines to do so for us anyway. At a whim, if you will. A party or a special city.
Now imagine a world, where we don't have a choice, where all of us have to report our coordinates and actions and feelings through the machines at our disposal. Communication and networking is one thing. Being institutionally mandated to be made visible at all times, not so much.
Our present is the means to this eventuality. Our transparent present and this Orwellian future are not too far apart.

French Onion Soup

I see, everything,
As it plays out
Slowly, unwinding
In front of my unrelenting
Eyes, that linger on your name
I watch, as you look past me
Onto others, ignoring, perhaps
Noticing not, as I stand there,
Waiting. Slowly wasting.

The Common Man Triumphs, and promptly forgets.

April 9th 2011

As India awoke to the realisation of a resounding win in the world cup cricket, little did it realise that the week going forward would have the country united for another reason altogether: The passion to end corruption.
Growing up in India, I realised soon enough how the country is united by the force of Cricket. The faith of my country men and their belief in the countries cricket team is unwavering, something I can't say with the same conviction about our countries governance and laws. Rampant corruption weaving its way from the lower rungs of the hierarchy to the upper echelons, seamlessly becoming entrenched in the functioning of individuals and other structures, rarely questioned when indulged in, but often talked about with panache in retrospect, is perhaps the major impediment in bolstering our faith in our country.
The phenomenon of Corruption in itself requires one instance and one individual to start and then becomes self-sustaining. Can everyone promise to steer clear of this chimera? Corruption can arise when the existing functioning of the system is grossly inefficient and in order to get the work done one must bribe an official in power. Alternately, it can arise when someone in power realises to wield his power position to extract favours from others in order to get this party what they desire. The second case of corruption can only be dealt with in a remedial manner- punish those who abuse their positions. However to curb the fundamental form of corruption, the systems need to be made efficient in the first place so as to remove the need for anyone indulge in an opportunistic manner. Until this is done, I am wary of the level of commitments that is going to be forthcoming from individuals across the country.

When Anna Hazare a political activist, decided to fast until a bill that creates an independent body to address corruption cases was passed, the entire nation was propelled to join in this vortex of cataclysmic process- thousands of activists, school and college students and movie stars joined forces- organizing protest marches, candlelight vigils and posting relentlessly on Facebook to substantiate their support for the cause. After 5 days of protest, the government relented and decided to issue a notification to set up a committee to draft the “Lokpal Bill”. This is when Anna Hazare and many of his supporters broke their fast. The country is still celebrating this victory as I write.

But are celebrations really in order? The transition might have been kick-started here, but the road to transformation does not appear to be linear. Whilst the past five days have taught us the power that rests in the hand of the common man in a democracy, at the same time this spurt of passion brings to attention the short attention span of our media-driven society. For most part the media helped in spreading the word of the masses across the country and even beyond the countries borders. This freedom and openness is like a security blanket, every move of the government is under scrutiny, and in a democracy, any inappropriateness can spell out disastrous poll results. But come tomorrow, and there is a fear that this valuable attention is going to be turned to the next newsworthy story and the ignited passion might be washed away overnight.

Perhaps, what remains to be seen is that if, this passionate display of solidarity to demand a redressal mechanism for corruption related problems, is just a fad and would dissipate as the world looks in other directions or is this a new form of democracy in making, where school children and retired individuals alike, would stand shoulder to shoulder, demanding transparent systems and even being prepared to fast until death to rectify the system?

Happily (n)ever after?

It’s exhilarating to look passively, on what tracks your mind trudges on after seeing a movie that displays a cornucopia of human emotions- dark and those which have no respectable place in this world. Not because these emotions induce you to a state of melancholy trance, but the glaring reality of their existence, and their denial in other mainstreams works and popular culture. The Hours – is a movie about three woman across generations, living out their lives, and making decisions on what to do with their lives thereof- live it in unhappiness, not live it at all, move on away, or throw parties to shield themselves from the emptiness. It doesn’t end on a joyous note, the last scene where Virginia Woolf drowns herself in a river, is mesmerizing, in its simplicity and lack of grandeur. The movies does not horrify me at any point, that is not Stephen Daldry’s intent. It makes the audience accept the decisions made by the characters, however unrealistic or preposterous they may seem. Moreover, the acting does not assault my senses, in fact, it is deeply ethereal, yet natural.
Coming to an actual assault on senses though, my mind is drawn to the movies I’ve seen courtesy the Indian cine industry. Somehow, I can’t think of a single movie where the finale of the movie isn’t dotted with giddy brides and obnoxiously handsome grooms riding into the sunset in their daddys Toyota Corolla or are seen making promises of an impending wedding. (It’s a glaring exaggeration! Is what you’re going to say. This is also where you refer me to movies like Rang De Basanti, Udaan, Tare Zameen Par, but let’s get real- these radical movies are exceptions rather than the norm.) So as I so rightfully mentioned in the parentheses, that’s it, that’s how 95% of mainstream Hindi movies end. Is this a representation of reality? Or is this shaping our reality? This issue of causality though confusing, is something worth a thought. I guess my thoughts diverge onto two levels now- firstly, why is that Bollywood adheres to this need to end movies with a couple getting betrothed? Perhaps their opinion of the audiences’ maturity and depth is excruciatingly low. Somehow, I am not surprised. People do treat movies like a popcorn crunching fest- a getaway haven of sorts, that makes the experience enjoyable only when their puny minds are not exercised. This is how the graphical representation would shout out bloody murder.

The second question is of practical relevance. Is a wedding the penultimate objective that any individual can strive for personally? Lets assume it is, and hence the Indian movie industries proclivity to absorb itself in wedding related hogwash. So if we are assuming that the movies are representing the actual state of the society, then the fact that comes to the foreground is even more appallingly shallow and well, my apologies, but blasphemous! Weddings are not the happily ever after that everyone makes them out to be. It isn’t my intent to sound deterministic or to belittle the institution of marriage (nor is this the account of an ugly, embittered 40 year old unable to find a suitable husband-as one may cognitively try to justify to himself or herself after reading this) however, I refuse to believe that this one event can cause me to believe that on crossing the threshold, on to the other side, life would be hunky-dory, I’d be ridden off all my foibles, and love will make all the issues disappear. Marriage has its merits (I do not attempt to elucidate this here though), yet the array of grandiose gestures surrounding it and making it out to be this pinnacle of happiness and delirium, need to be put to rest or squashed or well, whatever makes you happy.

When words fail...

Dolled up daughters,
in silver and frills,
trained to smile,
cephalically dead.

Happy Idiots*

“It’s a great era to be born in” someone mentioned to me whilst sipping on a glass of wine and blowing plumes of smoke in every direction. I couldn’t help but grimace. Is it really true then, are we really lucky? This individual with radically utopian views continued “Particuarly for women, there is so much we can do.” Can we really?
The complacency that has come to surround the middle class, upper middle class and the nouveau rich is deeply rooted in a sense of narcissistic myopia, hedonistic, lifestyles and wielding of horse blinders against the gruesome reality of the world. Of course we are not bidding goodbyes to chunk of our male population and sending them off to fights world wars, or living in mortal fear of civilian bombings everyday. But that is just you and I. The reality is grimmer in many parts of the world. New poverty estimates published by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than US$1.25 a day in 2005 (www.econ.worldbank.org). Can we even relate to how these people sleep in extreme cold or heat, do we ever think of them when we take for granted the bed that we have, the roof and walls that give us our cherished “privacy”? Is it all right to live in this state of denial? Is it acceptable to generalize the excesses bestowed upon us to the rest of humanity?
For women, there is no room to dance in sheer abandon celebrating the liberalized era, yet. With rampant Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in many parts of the world (according to a 2010 WHO fact sheet it is that estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/), denial of basic human rights and imposition of restrictions which most women in the western world take for granted, the lacuna is perhaps even more pronounced. The factual position presented here is intended as a mere representation of the reality, and it is necessary to make our existing worldviews more coherent with the reality.
There might not be world-war looming ahead or a genocide to threaten our very existence, but the bi-product of the capitalist culture that dominates the world these days- the growing chasm of between the rich and the poor in some countries and the extremism of other forms of governance in others that leads to blatant denial of human rights to many, is something that our frugal human spirit trapped within the comfort of our bourgeois lifestyle need to acknowledge. We face the risk of becoming ketamine induced individuals where thought of people dying of hunger written off as “depressing” and prompt a quick redressal by means of deep conversations about the people that have the best sense of humour. Are we becoming more superficial and exponentially shallower? Are we at the risk of becoming happy idiots? I think you already know my answer.
I do not wish to offer a deterministic view here, however urge a sincere thought as to why the increased complacency of our comfortable life has numbed us so. Action on our part, though important, is a secondary issue at this point. Getting out of the cocoon that impairs our objective vision and worldview through its faux fur lining is the new social imperative.
* Thanks to Ms. Y. Shymko for sharing this phrase, who claims the genesis of this phrase rests with Professor D. Allen.

Thy Soliloquy

When Shakespeare eloquently elaborated in As You Like it: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players, little did he know he was foretelling the future. In this digitized virtual world, we do live our lives like a movie, a script narrated by us on forums like Facebook and Twitter, and then instead of an animated applause from the audience after our soliloquy we are rewarded with “Likes” and “Comments”.

I am bracing myself for the impending critique following this verbal vocalization of thoughts, however, I would be wrong to say that I didn’t have inspiration to begin with. The author of the book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle – a Psychologist and Director of the MIT initiative on Technology and Self Program in Science, Technology and Society, talks of how everyone is “performing” on these virtual forums. (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/371249/january-17-2011/sherry-turkle). Also vehement discussions with a dear friend who infact told me about Ms. Turkle, are also responsible for shaping these thoughts.

Ever heard of information overload? The amount of information that assaults our senses everyday is humongous. Do we really need to know what each and every one of us is engaging in and with what emotional intensity on an hourly basis? Do we really need to update 500 people every day about the food we ate that day or the clothes we bought for our birthday party?

Let me draw a simple parallel. Do we display on the doors of our homes what we are eating, doing, feeling whenever any significant variation occurs that we deem to be important in our self concocted bubble of narcissism? No. We don’t do that because it is socially inappropriate to leave a poster outside your door announcing the purchase of your new Mac Book Air and how it is any day better than a run of the mill PC or that you had an awful day and how life is a wormhole filled with feces. We don’t do that because we want to be private about these things. This brings me to another issue- the Privacy Settings option. We need to educate ourselves more about what we share and with whom. Yes indeed, there is a way after all- of not sharing everything with the person you met in a bar five years ago and haven’t met since. Free tutorials from my side to the uninitiated is going to be my civic duty as of now.

Well, online social forums are facades for easing communication, networking and casual banter on inane issues, and they work brilliantly for these purposes. Technology has its merits after all. It’s evolution and an indication of how far we’ve come. We need to curb our enthusiasm and fast. Otherwise, very soon we won’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

Disclaimer: This work is not intended to offend anyone or instill self-doubt. These essentially are ramblings which should not be considered all pervasive or universal after all everything is ephemeral. Diatribes are welcome, though not encouraged ;)

More on Social Networks in NYTIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html?scp=1&sq=150%20friends&st=cse

Late nights, and drunken eyes
Stars sing, the piano cries
Millions of me, in millions of universe;
I hold the warmth of sunshine.

Toxic

The dark muck slides down,
It slides down the sides.
It slithers and it taints,
It dirties all in sight.
The noxious liquid of disgust,
It creeps up inside,
Engulfing the prolific center,
It corrodes till the good dies.

The Chimera of Capitalism

What’s this thing I heard?
Let’s go and get it,
everyone must.

Perhaps, we need more,
this is now necessary,
to feel happy just a tad.

Let’s not think here now,
lets make haste,
we got to jump in.

I’m here now,
where everyone is,
Ah, yes, we’ve arrived.

But what is this,
out there, there’s more,
I’ m going to run,
lets run some more.