Smoke Gets in the Eyes

Alone in the chilly winter night. The lights were bothering him and he shut them off. He turned his attention to the blank screen in front of him. The cursor blinked away, counting down the seconds. Man’s feeble attempt at measuring such an intrinsic property of the Universe. A sudden flare of bright yellow light as he struck a match and lit his third cigarette of the hour. Slow puffs. He watched the smokes curl up and dance, overjoyed at their new freedom. Breaking off from their physical form, to merge and become part of the greater whole. It was the fire that set them free. Did they feel pain? And was the pain worth it? Was rebirth without its torment? And did they have a choice? The flame shines in its brief glory. Smoke rises up, never down. The ash is what gets flicked away and emptied into the dustbin.

Impact Decoupling

What not to do. The absence of action? Suspension of motion? Insert thoughts in freezer. Soldier through the mushroom cloud. Implode amidst explosions. It's easy with eyes closed. Easier to look. Detach and decouple. The physical from the intellectual. The sexual from the philosophical. Ripples rip you apart. Pebbles. Walk out and run in. Listen out and speak in. There are off-switches. The world is binary. Short breathes. Long pauses. An incessant hum. A perennial silence.

Want

The darkness flickers in the rain

Hurling pebbles at passers-by

Shadows of mist

Of motion

Of smoke

The movement of sound

Trembling gasps

Tussling hands

Words and paper-cups

Winds and letter-box

A shard pierces the whole

The blood shrieks into the silence

The sound merges with the wind

The wind with smoke

The smoke with the rain

Bellicose

The incessant hum of the light sabre, the cyclical knocks of the prop. Ghostly voices drunk and high. Revelling in the shortest of breaths. Shallow gasps of air caught in between storms. The bass drops in an unidentifiable song, a swarm of locusts take to the air. Revelling still. The utter hopelessness of hope. Of therapy. Of whores. To dull the senses tonight would be to sharpen it some more. The lead drops down their bellies. The sulphur fills their lungs. To flakes and milds. To monks and pride. Jump on to the other side. Come on to the other side.

Patamda

Where am I?

Where is a function of when. And I?

I am no one. I am here. I have to be.

I don't have. I will be. I am not this.

I am there.

I am journey. I am board rooms.

I love all. I hate it.

I wrong but I don't.

I don't but I mean.

I love it. I hate it.

I creak. I stain.

I reek. I stand.

I am 5 years. I am.

Torrent

This is going to be a fast one. I am stuck in the office with no work and am waiting for my room-mate to get out of the shower before I head home. That can happen anytime and I will go on typing right up till the moment I get the ping, at which I will post whatever I have. It has been a rigorous ride so far, leaving college is more about a change in self than geography. I am thankful, because financial independence is a humbling yet rewarding experience. Working long hours, something I never did before has gone from being a habit to an addiction. Its telling however that despite the 8-12 hours in office I find more time for my hobbies now than I did when I had all the time in the world. Ennui is the enemy. Pinged. Leaving!

My TV-logue

Its a slow day at the office today, so I figure I might as well make an entry here. In fact, there is a certain article that I have been planning in my head for a while. A full and comprehensive review of all the TV shows that I have seen till date, and a person with an average CGPA who stays at NITR for 4 years, does end up seeing a lot of them. But a little thought over the matter made me realize how stupid the idea was, not to mention, pretentious. I definitely cannot claim to have watched every TV show that exists in DC-verse, nor can I claim to have a fully unprejudiced view of each. Watching a TV Show is like a love affair, and a person does form his list of favorites. Again, there is a huge number of shows that I just saw the pilot of, or abandoned midway for one reason or the other. But I do want to write this article. So to effect a compromise, I will drop the whole notion of a "full and comprehensive review" and instead write what can be loosely described as a very egotist referral for all the shows I have ever looked at. Here goes-

• How I Met Your Mother

It makes sense for me to start with this, because it is the first show that I saw, even before I came to NITR, back in the days when it was still considered by a large majority of the population as an out-and-out hilarious show. It is true that it lost out on a lot of steam in the 3 to 4 years after Season 3, but it has its core fan base of die-hard loyalists, present company included, who have kept the show going strong. And now, with Season 8, these HIMYM-fans' faith has been rewarded amply. For the rookie, the overall theme of the SitCom can be summarized as the story of five young friends- the mushy and strongly committed Lily and Marshall, the beautiful and ambitious Robin, the womanizing and 'legendary' Barney, and the hopelessly romantic Ted, revolving around the latter's search for his one true love, and his eventual redemption, as narrated by him to his kids in the year 2030; the story of how he met their mother. What sets HIMYM apart from other SitComs is that it is, as its writers put it, a "comedy with heart". There are plenty of touching and romantic moments amidst the laughs and it is even a tear-jerker at times. And then there is the case of its fast-paced writing with its flash-backs and flash-backs within flash-backs and the slow and meticulous development of every single one of the major characters. With HIMYM all set to come back for its last season this September, it is time for Carter and Craig to take a bow.

• 24

24 started off strong for me, with its fresh concept of one hour in the show being one hour in the characters' lives; a season consisting of 24 episodes making one season the story of one single day in the plot. But as soon as the novelty wears off, you start seeing the ridiculousness and impracticality this entails: don't they eat, sleep, shit, atleast piss? It has super-cop Jack Bauer killing bad guys who have deep conspiracies and plans to kill the President. My interest had waned by the time of the 5th episode of the 1st season and when Jack kills the would-be assassin and immediately another assassin is sent in, I stopped watching it altogether.

• Prison Break

I guess this list is turning out to be arranged in the chronology in which I saw the shows. Might as well be the case, as it helps me organize my thoughts better. So the third TV show I saw, and I remember it was the summer after first year that I came across this gem, was Prison Break. A thriller with tight scripts, marvelous acting, and a wonderful plot that never strays too far from its basic premise, this show skirts the line between a crime show and a political drama. The story revolves around Micheal Scofield, the prodigal civil engineer who concocts an elaborate plan to break his brother out of a maximum security prison where he is on death row. The first step of his plan is of course robbing a bank, armed, and getting arrested himself. Prison Break has plenty of fantastic moments and keeps the audience's attention for all the four seasons with its speed and Scofield's brilliance. It is one of the shows where its hard to find too many flaws, and although the impression it leaves is not indelible, it is definitely a worthy investment of one's time.

• Lost

This is probably the show that started the string of high-budget TV dramas that have so dominated the last decade. Originally conceived by none other than J.J. Abrahms himself, its the story of a group of people marooned on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific following a plane crash. As the plot progresses, it is revealed that not only is the island full of mysteries and powers, the seemingly random collection of survivors are, in fact, not random at all. Full credits to the show for keeping its audience entirely intrigued about almost every aspect of the plot, and for developing rich backstories for every character there is. I saw it the only way it can be seen, in a full 2 week-marathon, and cannot imagine how people could possibly wait full weeks and seasons for the next episode. The cliffhangers are beautiful and a person watching it will spend the larger part of the time at the edge of his seat. Originally conceived to be a 3-season show, its huge revenue generation had the network push the producers to extend it for another 3 seasons. And that is where the show 'lost' it. Introducing needless complexities and pushing the storyline into utterly irrelevant and fantastic elements, it ended on a low, not being able to resolve most of the major plotlines and intrigues that it itself had raised. The series finale episode was such a colossal clusterfuck that it was an insult to intelligence everywhere.

• Two and a Half Men 

This was the first SitCom I saw after HIMYM, and as such my standards were pretty low going in. Not to imply that this was not an entertaining show. To the contrary, TAAHM is one of the better comedies of the last decade with its cleverly titled name, and its basic premise that could only spell trouble. Two brothers, one a stinking-rich man named Charlie who has made his fortune composing jingles and lives a life of booze and babes, more like a practical version of Barney Stinson, and the other, Alan, who is a middle-class Chiropractor with a son and an idyllic suburban life. The plot starts when Alan's wife divorces him and takes away everything to leave him and his son Jake going on to live in Charlie's Malibu beach house. The interactions and adjustment pains for all the three concerned is a riot, and is the backbone of the story. But what really drove the story for me was Charlie Sheen, and his impeccable acting as Charlie Harper, a character so resembling his own self. So needless to say, I stopped watching the show when he left and was replaced by Ashton Kutcher.

• Friends

In the pantheon of SitCom greats, FRIENDS probably sits on top of the pyramid. With its massive 10-seasons run, it pretty much ended up dominating and defining the later half of the 90's and the first half of the new decade. Its success was unprecedented and made the actors playing the six major characters household names across the globe. The very essence of the story was its lack of a definite plot. The show just depicts ten years in the lives of six friends, their daily trials and triumphs, love affairs and heartbreaks, all packed with probably the best jokes ever written for primetime TV. Its laugh-a-minute scripts coupled with superb performances by its legendary cast surely makes FRIENDS a show that will resonate through the ages. 

• The Big Bang Theory

Its true you always end up very unimpressed with whatever SitCom you see after watching FRIENDS, quite simply because, nothing can be as funny as FRIENDS. And it is the one you see immediately after FRIENDS that you end up particularly disliking. For me that was TBBT. I know people rave about it, and I agree it can induce proper geekgasms, but fresh after watching FRIENDS, all the jokes seemes 'Meh!' to me, and the truth is I could watch it only because the winter vacations were on and I did not have anything else on my lappy. The story revolves around 4 super-intelligent nerds who suddenly have a beautiful bimbo move in next door, and the awkwardness that ensues. The show has its funny moments, but the gags do get repetitive after a while, and the level of jargon gets too damn high at times. I didn't watch it after the 2nd season.

To Be Continued

Post Title

Its been close to a year now since I wrote here last, and while a lot of that can be chalked down to lethargy, and career pursuits, the major reason is of course that I found the means to get more people to read my stuff by "legitimizing" it. If you think that is a curious choice of words, I would explain myself by saying that it probably all boils down to my interview at Hero Motocorp. My CV listed, at the fag end of it, nothing more than a filler, among my hobbies, sandwiched between guitaring and reading, this word: blogging. And that one word had me chalked down as a socially inept, nocturnal, "underworld" nerd. That is the stigma that we bloggers live under I suppose. But then I could further suppose that that is what we have invited upon our sorry selves; we children of a lesser god, of unread articles, and untimely posts. 

Earlier tonight I took some childhood buddies for a drink, a celebration, now that two of us are on the cusps of major transformations in our lives. As fate would have it, it turns out we had to wait till our last evening together to discover that one good bar in the town, now when we have no idea when the three of us would ever raise our glasses together again, while we spent about 6 vacations hunting for good watering-holes, settling for the theka at Naraaj and the outcrop of rock overlooking the barrage. While that place had its own perks, the wind in your hair, the economy of the outing, there are certain times when a decent bar is where you want to be. It does speak about the nature of the town when its bars don't even have a ladies' room. At that moment I felt nothing but the deepest sympathies for the good people over at NLUO Rourkela- 1. Cuttack- 0.

One thing that I was losing out on and have regained in the past 5 months has been my reading. I only sat for two interviews in 8th semester- XLRI and ZS A, having already gotten placed last August. And both of them were experiences of the highest order, much more enriching than my trials and tribulations of the Autumn. Of course part of why I view these two so fondly in particular could very well be the positive or positivish nature of their outcomes, but hell, I'm human and I am allowed to favoritize. So what I am trying to say is this last semester has been particularly ameliorating. I started off a tabloid in our college, completed my thesis, got my dream job and yes, caught up on a lot of reading. The last one was helped by a sudden windfall in the form of a huge accumulation of cash in my insti book account. So there I was at the book fair with 3000 INR and nothing but novels to buy. The only books I had read in the entire last year were The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and Midnight's Children. So I decided to pick up where I had left off. There comes a stage when you start appreciating novels in terms of their literary and intellectual worth, where plots and characters become tools, a secondary concern. 

Now Rourkela has a pathetic book scene. There are absolutely no good book stores, so I haunted the one where I had placed my order everyday, lapping up whichever good book came to its shelves. I started off January with The Chemistry of Tears, a tale of two people stuck in two different centuries. Their only connection being the journals of one of the protagonists being read by another. It was very reminiscent of the Luisa Rey-Robert Frobisher connection from Cloud Atlas and has, if the text is indeed independent of the author, a touch of surrealism in the pages. Or maybe its me who feels that ways because most of the time I was reading it, I was in a half-stupor either in my room or in the class. Next thing I picked up was this journalistic epic- India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha. Its a 1000-page masterpiece detailing the entire modern history of India, and although I only read it on the side, and it took me close to 3 months to be done with it, it has to be one of the most erudite works ever done. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years Of Solitude was one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever come across and its easy to see why Salman Rushdie speaks so highly of it, although truth be told, its a slow read. God of Small Things had me melancholic for an entire week, but did show me the beauty of pain and suffering. The Shiva Trilogy by Amish started off strong but ended limping, and Coelho has gotten on my nerves. Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger was very different kind of book from what I had been reading for some time, but was thoroughly enjoyable. Then there was this book of stories by Franz Kafka which I borrowed from my friend, although I could read just Metamorphosis, The Great Wall of China and Investigations of a Dog before he took it back.  Kafka is a genius, my friend is a dick. 

Genghis Khan and Tony Stark?

Who, or what, is a hero? How do we define heroism? We give out medals, adore them, even take them on as our role models, but do we pause and ask what exactly is it that we are adoring. Is it the person? If so then what kind of person would we typecast as a hero? For that matter, is there any such thing as a ‘typical hero’? Is there any checklist, physical or mental, that has to be crossed off before a person qualifies as a hero? The most common quality that we usually attribute to a ‘hero’ is bravery. Soldiers dying on the battlefield, people protesting a repressive regime, they are all heroes, that is the burden that society has bestowed them with. But is that all? Many young infantrymen displayed exceptional bravery while fighting for Nazi Germany. Tales of their heroisms, and courage resound even today, but while we unflinchingly use the word ‘heroism’, not one would ever accord them the status of ‘Heroes’. Brad Pitt pretty much summed up how we remember them 60 years later, when he called them “the foot-soldiers of a Jew-hating mass-murdering maniac”. So do we take it that to be a hero, you not only have to be brave, you also have to fight for the right side? And it’s the winner who writes the history books, so what does that tell us? What if the Nazis had gone on to win the war? Say they went ahead and conquered all of Europe and Africa, and say Hitler died the very next day. And to the helm came a ruler who not only established full human rights, and peace, he did that across his global empire. Would there have been a Balkans, or a Desert Storm? Africa for one would have been definitely better off, pretty much anything is better off compared to how they have spent the last half-century. So in this Utopia, would we remember the American and British troops who stormed Normandy as heroes? Or the foot-soldiers of a corrupt and violent way of life? Memory is short-lived. Alexander of Macedonia, indisputably a hero. Tell that to the villages that smoldered in his wake. Genghis Khan, revered as a god in Mongolia even today, how would the people he raped and killed in his wild rampage feel if they heard that?

But bravery in the battlefield is only one of many kinds. Courage comes in many forms and so do heroes. M.K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., random Egyptian on the streets a year back, brave people who went up against a whole system. What they lacked in skills they made up in moral strength, going up defenseless against a powerful foe who only needed to say the word and they would have been dead the next instance. Humans, a species as obsessed with worship, as with optimism, thus fused the two together, valor with moral strength, fighting skills with incorruptible good intentions to create the concept of God, or their modern day pop culture counterparts, comic book superheroes. Who as child did not believe, or at least wish, that Superman or Phantom were real? What really is the difference between a college student who studies nothing and goes to the temple before the exams, firmly believing, or hoping, that ‘God will save him’, and the 3 yr-old who jumps from his balcony with full faith that Superman will catch him before he hits the ground?

But till gods and superheroes come back again (or out of disguise, we know you are there!), ordinary mortals will have to do. And thus the whole weight is for the chosen few to carry. A soldier wins the Param Vir Chakra, and the country goes gaga about him. How did he not feel scared, they ask. How would it be to run straight into machine gun fire, without feeling the slightest tinge of fear, they wonder. A recurring theme in every war hero's testimony is that they never ever felt like heroes. They would call the people they served with heroes, but never themselves. They would say they felt fear stronger than anything else they had ever felt. They would say every action they did, was for their own survival and for the man next to them, that thoughts about country and strategies and armies were not even in their minds. But we choose to ignore that. In our movies they cry out the country’s name before dying, keep the national flag in their pockets. Because they are our mules. Theirs is to carry this burden that they have earned. Because a hero is more than a person. A hero is a belief. A belief that our world can be saved. A belief that our world is worth saving. 

Get Back!

I once read an article in the newspaper that rued that the previous decade, the 00’s, had nothing of significance to contribute to the world of music; that the best way to remember the ten years would be to forget it. That was back in 2007, and Coldplay had only recently come out with Viva La Vida, which was being hailed worldwide as their coming-of-age album. The article went on to argue that bands like Coldplay had all but become a rarity, and despite that, there was no one band which had risen above the others and given the decade a musical identity. The author argued that with three years left to go, there seemed to be no one on the horizon to take up that mantle. According to him, the music industry had hit rock-bottom. If only I could read his thoughts now.

“You tell me that its evolution, well, you know…..”

Led Zeppelin live

I am old-school. And as such I am not really aware of the contemporary music scene. What little I know, I actively despise. I have seen thumbnails of music videos by a group which call themselves LMFAO, have had to sit through so-called “Trance” music, the bastard son of the original Psychedelia, during joint parties, and encrypted alien warning messages that they call Dubstep. I have still not been able to tell one rap song from another and I am growing tired of the over-produced, over-sampled and over-auto-tuned voices of ladies asking me not to “funk” with their hearts. And lets not even go to the whole YouTube scene. The last remaining true rock stars are all depressingly aged; people like Paul McCartney, James Hetfield and Steve Tyler, they are still the only ones kicking ass, long years after they first started, and their replacements are nowhere in sight.

“Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear…..”

The Beatles at their famous Rooftop Concert

Its hard admitting to the fact that Rock has now become just one among many different genres of music. For better or for worse, it monopolized the music scene for the greater part of the past 50 years. The last time, such a situation had existed it was the 1950’s. The 60’s fixed that. There never was or has been a more important decade in the history of music. People like Elvis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly had already laid the foundation. The only thing needed was one band that would transcend them all; a band that would grab the musical world by its throat and shake it till it never saw things the same way again. And right on cue, there they were, The Beatles. Coming in at a time when Rock n Roll was beginning to attract large crowds and was generating a heavy lot of enthusiasm and interest among the youth, they drove audiences mad with their shockingly good looks, cheeky irreverence and their music. The Beatlemania that followed catapulted the four to levels of stardom and fan-following the world had never seen. There would be packed ball-courts, mass-stampedes and water-cannons to suppress the crowds wherever they went. But above it all, it was their music, which set the tone for the times to come. The Beatles rocked every performance they ever gave. And boy, did they rock! Veins pumping with adrenalin, spiked on dope, the four shrieked, and riffed, and thrashed their way across the world, setting stages and crowds ablaze wherever they went. Riots broke out when people were denied tickets; girls fainted in the dozens necessitating the setting up of First-Aid outposts at the venues. For most bands with members in the early 20’s this would have been the end of all musical creativity; but not for John, Paul, George and Ringo. They brought out a total of 12 albums in a span of 7 years, and many excluded singles. With every new album they pushed the boundaries of music and explored and added new territory. Their early albums were out-and-out rockers with the occasional ballad put in, which they could perform live. When at their zenith, they decided to stop touring to be able to concentrate better on making songs in the studio. Experimentation in the studio took on a whole new dimension with The Beatles literally inventing the feedback (I Feel Fine), back-masking (Rain) and bringing in string quartets and entire orchestras to perform on their songs. Still staying away from the stage and seeing the world saturated with over-produced and experimental music (which they started), they went “back to the basics” in their final 3 albums before starting off on wildly successful solo careers (well, mostly). Theirs was the greatest musical adventure of the century and things would never be the same again.

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock

“Well, I stand up next to a mountain…..”

But the 60’s were not just about The Beatles. While the Fab Four did break down most walls and bring artistic legitimacy to Rock n Roll, there were pioneers aplenty in that decade. The greatest poet-cum-singer to have ever lived, Bob Dylan, did his best work in that decade and made the leap from Folk to Rock n Roll. Throaty-voiced and Jack Daniels-drinking Janis Joplin redefined the concept of a female rocker while, bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones pulled music inexorably towards a more heavy sound. This was the decade of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, two members of the hallowed yet heartbreaking 27’s Club. The one band which, in the annals of music, is considered worthy to hold a torch to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, had its seed sown in this decade with the formation of The Yardbirds, the band which also has the distinction of launching the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Pink Floyd, the original and true masters of psychedelia, got together, while bands like The Animals and The Byrds kept making chart-toppers from time to time.

“To be a rock and not to roll…..”

The 70’s would go on to see many other greats take center-stage.  It would be the decade of Led Zeppelin and Queen, of Pink Floyd and AC/DC, and of Ted Nugent and Steven Tyler. Paul McCartney would play to packed stadiums with his post-Beatles band, Wings, while John Lennon would become Saint John, the perfect archetype to young and hungry rock n rollers everywhere. Eric Clapton would come into his own, while Bob Dylan would lose his way. People like David Bowie and KISS would shock and challenge the limits of audience acceptance. Out of the wilderness would rise a band named Black Sabbath which would singlehandedly invent Metal, later to be perfected by Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth.

Kurt Cobain goes into a solo at the Roxy, Aug 15 1991

And so would it continue through the 80’s and into the 90’s till the fateful moment when a 27 year old Kurt Cobain would take a shotgun to his mouth. With the last rocker blowing his brains out under a bridge, so would the demise of Rock start. Steve Jobs would come in and strip songs from their albums; no longer would the album be an entity to itself. Try imagining a Sgt. Pepper’s in today’s world. Songs would be made for nothing more than money, with studios hiring pretty boys and skanky girls while factories churned out tracks for them to sing on.

“The times they are a-changing …..”

AC/DC's Angus breaks into his antics

As the last of its proponents still maintain their fan bases, the tilt of the young generation is unmistakably away from Rock. Rock n Roll is all but dead and Metal has radicalized to an extent that its performers and followers have become a genre onto themselves. As bands like The Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Radiohead and Greenday do their best to keep the flag up, what is truly needed is a return from the clutches of over-commercialization, and above all, a band with the impact and caliber of The Beatles, a true game-changer. As AC/DC put it-

 “It’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock n roll.”

Turning Inward

Procrastinators and Supernovae

A few hours to go before I start out for Rourkela, and it seems I have become quite the procrastinator, since its only now that I have sat down to write the ‘Summer Entry’ for my blog, many of which had been planned originally. And while I know, dear reader, that such behaviour is inexcusable, I have my defences, this being a pretty good vacation, one in which if not anything else, I was kept busy. There isn’t much to write about, partly because all my creativity is being drained away by White (yes, that is the name I have decided to stick since that was the name that Windows autosaved it under, and its as good as any other) and partly because, I am reluctant, nay scared, to speculate about the future. Very different from the mental state that I had around this time a year back, or the year before. And I am not exactly languishing in agony or melancholy either, so that takes away my other favourite muse. So dear friend, instead of cancelling this article, the thought of which has already visited my mind more times than I would care to admit, lets, I say, dwell on the past. ‘Cause it is not only in your most tender years that your mind has the ability to block out, or cover up, the painful memories, preserving just the pleasant ones, for moments like these.

I, thus, withdraw into my cocoon, my shell. The shadows are done creeping around, I let them jump up and engulf me. The ceiling grows distant, the walls draw closer. I let it, I let them, because its only when the night is blackest, do we see the stars, and it is stars I have promised you.

But nothing bright leaps up at me, no white shimmering spot steadily rising in intensity, till it grandly announces its arrival on the scene. No. It is just dust and ash, and clouds, and rain. I strain my eyes, for a cold now grips me, the fear that I, having promised you and led you along for so long, might have to shame-facedly turn you back, that in a moment as monumental as the final few hours at home, I haven’t been able to produce anything worth anyone’s while. But, what is it I see? This can’t be! Yes it is! But I had seen that cloud once already, I can swear it wasn’t there. But, see for yourself, it is there! Have I then, in my search for something grand, overlooked this tiny little star? This dwarf quietly throbbing away in the shelter of the brown mist? Have I betrayed the all-too human flaw of expecting every beginning to be a collage of grandeur and megalomania?

No, as I can see now, and must tell you, the first tiny star, the first memory that entered my mind, is nothing but a brown brew in a red paper cup, in front of a red booth. The whole place seemed so alien back then, the first lab ever of my B.Tech career, the cup of coffee taken to ward off sleep, something I had much read that it happened so. ‘Engineering Drawing’, the two words had filled my mind up with neatly drawn pictures of buildings, on large charts of paper, shaded to perfection, with complicated drawing devices strewn across my work-table. I remember thinking of all that and also the abrupt feeling of disappointment and betrayal I felt seeing just a small room crammed with dozens of computers, all shamelessly displaying the words “AUTOCAD Student Version” on their screens.

But I must move on, three more stars have started gleaming in the velvet firmament already, begging to be inspected too. There I am saying goodbye to a weeping mother as they go away and then proceeding to the swimming pool where I meet the first friends I make in this college, and there I am in the cool February night uttering into my phone words that I had never meant till that moment, and there that’s me again, standing in awe as men dressed in black do windmills with their guitar, and their long hairs, while my ears are assaulted by the huge speaker next to me.

Now the space around me grows thinner, light pervades the surroundings; they are now popping up everywhere I look. A massive explosion of life, and brightness. They flow into my mind like a river breaking a dam. I am tossed a tennis ball which I refuse to take, as it gets closer, it turns into a balled-up fist. I brace myself for receiving the ball, when the lights go out, and I am missing a locket around my neck. There is my senior, who pours into my glass the first drops of what would forever increase its presence in my life, and there is me repaying his debt to my juniors a year later. I see bright yellow lights, not unlike these stars, blinding me, and I am disappointed at the roar, or the absence thereof. But it doesn’t matter ‘cause they have been preceded by laser-lit skies and moonlit stairways, by dances and by buses. And by aimless wanderings, eyes averted even in darkness. There are friendly invitations and more balled-up fists. There are drops of sweat on radiating keyboards. There are blank screens with pulsating dots, and inquisitions scribbling hasty D’s. Peers accept while patrons reject. Amber finds a voice, while winter learns to scream. Cold breezes caress backs, yet sweat accompanies shivers. The warm woody smell of trust fills my nostrils as grey concrete rushes past at hundred. Sparkling yellow drowns me from the insides while its bubbles rise all the way to my head. I see myself black marker in hand greeting the first rays of a red sun by scribbling on my room’s walls while a maths book lies open on my bed. It rains and an umbrella is borrowed, skins wet and heads ache. It rains words, the mist obscures the crowds. And obscures it still.

Transient

29-04-2011




23:42


My last 18 minutes as a second year engineering student, which means I am now officially ass deep in my 'chosen' career. Screwed up my endsems big time after a neat performance in the midsems, which basically means, I am staying put as a 7 pointer. Engineering Grades Inertia, the mystical condition where the graph of your academic performance gets suspended in time and space, making you fight to hang on to your average while offering no chance for improvement, has claimed its latest victim.


23:45


The electricity returns to our rooms, breathing life back into my desert cooler. The noisy apparatus drowns out the irritating voices of the final year students, who in a collective stroke of nostalgia, had been playing antakshiri for the last half hour. My cooler served me well for these two months, its water-choked breeze seeing me through the worst of the summer. I shall be returning it tomorrow, its stint over in room B-318, the meagrely dimensioned space I shared with another full-grown human for the last one year. We had settled on staying here because it was the only room that wasn't locked, infact it didn't have a latch, and no lights either, and one wall covered with graffitti that was both meaningless and obscene. When we leave it tomorrow, it will have a layer of debris thicker than a hedgehog's hide, and infinitely more dangerous( I sometimes hear sounds from under my bed that convince me, the two of us aren't the only occupants of this room), a very hastily hammered together latch, and FOUR walls full of meaningless obscenity. And we intend to take away the lights.


23:50


"Self-imrprovement is masturbation."
Me not being a smoker, the backpost wasn't at all the reason why I had chosen to come to Hall 7. "Its got a gym better than DTS, a music room and many other such designated 'rooms'" is what my senior, a Hall 7 addict had told me. Here I am ten months later and I am yet to see what the gym looks like. If there is one word I associate with Hall 7 it is 'ennui'. In a corridor that has Gulti M.Techs and people from the strangest parts of India playing the most obnoxious form of music ever invented in the most obnoxiously loud speakers, it is no surprise that I hardly ventured out of my room. My days here were spent stretched out on my bed staring glassy-eyed at my laptop, occasionally strumming my guitar and/or reading the previous occupants' wall-scribblings for the umpteenth time.


23:55


Hall 7 wasn't all about boredom and inaction. There's a reason why this place has been christened Hell 7. And if this hostel is hell, my corridor, the hill-facing B-top, is where Satan takes his dump. His minions, the little red ones, swarm this place, arriving in thousands every evening, all year round, wreaking havoc. You need nets everywhere, on your windows to protect yourself from these tiny terrors. And even that is not enough. I personally don't have a single part of my body that does not have scars testifying to the my ordeal here, my suffering at the hands of this plague.


23:58


Two minutes to go now. All in all, Hall 7 is where I wanted to come at the end of last year. Now, I never want to see this place again. Its not about how good the place looks from the outside. Its about how it makes you feel inside. The environs of a person do affect his outlook and state of mind. I know I am going to try my damnedest to get shifted to another hall next session. But there is this one place where I can never go back to. It was a place where you always referred to your room as "our room", where ALL doors were broken, yet we somehow never worried about our belongings, where the mess was the size of the room the Hall 7 night canteen is in, but it had a fridge and you could wake up the guy anytime in the night to give you an amul kool. It was a place where I had the most helpful of GMAT's living next door, the craziest of gamers a few doors away, whose desktop was as good as a public computer, and who could solve any technical issue with a swipe of his mouse, and a college-superstar-in-the-making sleeping right next to me. It had a real lawn, one that was not surrounded by concrete and people on all 4 sides, where one could have a long phone conversation without everyone in the hostel being able to see you. It was less silent than Hall 7 but infinitely more peaceful.


00:00


I miss Hall 4.

In Lonely Hour

There is a heaviness in my heart. And to think of it I can’t remember the last time it had actually felt light. So much time in its company has afforded me the unenviable chance to analyze it, to look within, figure out what it is. Not much good has come of it though. Its a mixture in there. Pretty much everything I have looked for, I have found. If I thought maybe it is because I carry so much hatred in me, for everyone and everything around, that is what I found. If I wondered whether it is because I am deeply in love, I have found that in there too. But thats not it. The weight never lifts. Nostalgia, boredom, irritation, regret, sense of achievement, helplessness- its all there. But there is more, or maybe it is something entirely different. Maybe I’ll never know, maybe I can never know.

People tell me I should smile more, that they get negative vibes from me from the very first meeting onwards. That I ought to be more amiable, or sociable. I want to tell them I can’t. I can’t because I AM guilty of all that they accuse me of. I really don’t like to smile. Laughing is not a problem, but smiling makes me something I am not. I do stay wrapped up in my own existence. I like it that ways. I like empty classrooms. I breathe a subconscious sigh of relief everytime my room-mate goes off leaving the room to myself. I like it when its dark. Not because I can’t be seen, but because I can’t see others. I do feel that I exist on a different, not higher, level of existence. I am genuinely disinterested about other people’s lives, and find their problems and stories plain mundane and boring. That is why my ‘Hello’ is more of an acknowledgement, rather than a greeting. That is why I feel it to be too much of an exercise to distort my face into a smile. And even if I do, my eyes simply don’t obey.

I have trouble letting go. Even when I was a kid, I always found it tough to part with old toys. My wallet’s back pocket is evidence of the fact that I like to preserve. I like to hang on to stuff long after they have outlived their usefulness and even if they have become downright harmful. Maybe that is what this weight is all about; bits and pieces of the past that have accumulated over my two decades of existence. The memories are long gone, but the regrets and disappointments have not. Will they? I don’t know. Do I want them to? I don’t think so.

It doesn't Matter

I’m sick and tired of faking smiles. Sick of all the happiness around me. The world’s a sham, life’s a joke. No one fucking cares. No one. There is no all powerful being sitting up there in the clouds looking down at you with a benign smile, slowly and masterfully guiding your life to eventual peace and contentment. He doesn’t give a shit. And neither do I. Coz I have learnt it the hard way. I have learnt it the hard way that there’s no plan for any of us. I learnt it when dreams I had built painstakingly were brought crashing down, ruthlessly, without a second thought; like a child who gives hours of effort and patience to build a sandcastle, and without warning, a sudden fluctuation in the ocean’s tidal dynamics produces a freak wave which washes it away. A loss so big for the poor kid, but did the ocean with its billions of metric tonnes of water even notice what it did? Somebody should have just walked over to the child when he was beginning to build his castle, picked him up and told him, “Whatever it is that you’re planning to do, it wouldn’t matter”. And it doesn’t matter. Never. Do what you want to pander to your desires, but in the end, the happiness is only momentary. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Is this that hard to see? Why do people around me laugh? Why are birthdays celebrated the way they are? Don’t they see how overhyped the concept is? Pretend to rejoice the day you were thrown into this pigeon-shit existence for the next seven decades(barring the few lucky ones)? What’s in that fucked-up flower your lover gave you that’s making you give me that big-toothy one? Its gonna fuckin dry up, and then stink as fungi and bacteria make a meal out of it. Why the applause when the teacher announced he would not be taking classes tomorrow? Do you think that made him any nobler than he is? Do you for one second doubt his intentions to screw your lives the first chance he gets? So you landed a job? Congra-fuckin-tulations! You just signed away 50% of the waking hours of the rest of your useful life (if that’s even a phrase) to working your ass off doing something we both know you hate the guts of.

So why the fuck do you laugh? Or even cry for that matter? Why do you celebrate? Or mourn? If you think it matters to someone, go get a good look at yourself in the mirror. All of it is inconsequential, YOU are inconsequential. Puke out the food you eat, bleed till you drown in it, shout till you can’t hear yourself anymore, or simply hold your breath and just keep holding....

Time for The Sphinx

The Black Sphinx
My second blog where the Black Sphinx will take you on a journey into the lives of people, fictitious and real, where the only thing common between the various events will be utter irrelevance and disconnection. so time for me to shut up and let the Sphinx take over.just click.
http://theblacksphinx.blogspot.com/

64 down, 12 more to go

Its the 5^th of july, which means the summer holidays are now 2 months and 4 days old. And without getting caught up in any philosophical debates, something i have had a lot (thanks sidharth, thanks sehraan) in these vacations, i will take a bold leap of faith and declare, being of  brilliant mind and amazing body, that yes, i am still very much in existence. I look back now and there’s hardly anything i remember at all about the last four fortnights. Nothing. Its kinda hard to describe. I mean the events that transpired in the last week of april somehow seem closer in time than the ones that happened in mid-may or maybe the ones in june. Thats weird right? It feels like yesterday that i was with Ankita at IG park and we were sitting at Pizza Den or the shop-hopping that we did, but sitting in my bedroom in front of my lappy and watching the first season of Prison Break seems like ages ago. Doesn’t make sense because while the former happened on 30^th april, Scofield did not start dropping his origami ducks till the last week of may. Freak you out? Didn’t think so either.

So that is one of the things i did this summer. What else? Well, i went through a large number of movies, some of them really good, most of them chickenfeed. Completed season one of Lost earlier today. And it makes me regret having confined myself to sitcoms for so long. Far cry from the summer course i had expected to end up doing. But there are people out there who have made the most out of these vacations too. C/C++/JAVA/VLSI/AUTOCAD, take your pick, attend classes 2 hours every weekday, march out one month later with a certificate in hand and a clear cut advantage over the likes of me when we return to the insti for our third sem. There are people who flunked their semesters, and now have done summer courses, adding Ex’s and A’s where there were F’s in their marksheets, and have pushed up their pointers big time. Some have learnt to swim, others now play billiards, fuck! some have even scored interns in their first year! The first of my friends have started losing their virginity. And if not anything, there are people who have set world records in boozing and/or shagging! And what have i done in the last 60 days?  

Well i did get started on my guitar, but the progress is hardly anything worth mention. I have joined a gym whose instructor has taken it as a personal affront that someone as skinny as me is walking around in his gym. He is now on a mission to either make me a Schwarzenegger or kill me off. With every passing day the chances of the first alternative becoming true are rapidly fading. In fact, its time for me to go hit the gym again. See you on the other side. Adios.  

What is it about First Love?

is the question that has been making me go Plato since yesterday. Why is it that your first love never ceases to be in your life? Never goes away for good? You cut-off all bonds, try your damnedest to move on, endow your affections, in far greater measure, on new objects, but you look within, and you look hard enough, and there is this tiniest of spaces in your heart still occupied by that vestige of the past. And it scares you so because you see in that tiny trickle a real possibility of a deluge. All it needs is a push and a prod and its there, right at the forefront.

Richard Marx, this rock artist from the late 80's and early 90's, used to be my most favorite of all musicians, his music, my most adored. His tracks dominated my playlists for the better part of three years. But then, towards the beginning of my 12th, i went through this phase of musical stagnation. Marx and other favorites like Lionel Richie, George Michael, Linkin Park, Evanescence,The Rasmus to name a few got boring, and hitherto untried bands didn't seem interesting enough to have their albums downloaded and listened to track-by-track. And then i went to NIT.

NITR, with its DC++, enabled immediate, lightning speed and free downloading of almost any album by almost any band, and of course, plenty of free time to try them out too. So, sometime in early september, what i did was format my entire playlist and put in a whole new stock of tracks. In came Skillet, Nirvana, Daughtry, Alterbridge, Creed, Switchfoot, Coldplay, Celldweller et al. It went like, "Hey this song seems pretty neat, let me get the full album" and more often than not, i liked the album too. I was so fed up with my old favorites that i remember vowing to myself never ever to listen to those artists or those songs again (towards august i would sit and scroll through the songs, searching for something which might remotely be less listened to than the others). And i hadn't. That is until yesterday.

A week back i got myself a guitar. Too tired and bored of playing the same chromatic scales and those retarded nursery rhymes again and again, i decided to search the tabs of some good slow songs that i, with my nascent skills, could pull off. Yeah, i tried some coldplay and greenday shit, but playing and changing cords with the required speed turned out to be too much for me. And then, flash of light. Surely the intro music of Right Here Waiting by Marx was something worth trying. I mean the beat is pretty sluggish and it involves only plucking of single strings. I downloaded the tabs and voila! i could play the tune within an hour of trying. Really playing that tune by myself, as i felt the music come out of my own fingertips, it reminded me of just how poignant and beautiful it was. Individual notes assembled with pure genius and finesse' to give rise to the tune that was Marx's coup de grace. I went over to youtube and gave the original song a listen. For a moment, i was back to being that 15 year old kid who had heard the opening piano solo for the first time in a random collections' cd. I remembered in exact detail, how i had felt at that time, maybe because, in a certain measure, i felt that way again. i saw the video 3 more times. That was day before yesterday.

Yesterday, thanks to mininova.org and my internet plan that permits free downloads of upto 2.5 GB, i got a Best Of... collection of Richard Marx. I have listened to that album top to bottom thrice already. From the classic ol' school rock n roll feel of Satisfied to the hauntingly beautiful strains of Hold On To The Nights to the euphonious use of the saxophone in Endless Summer Nights; from the surreal Hazard to the smooth and suave touch of Touch Of Heaven to the mellifluous, yet a bit heavy-ish Angelia; from the laid-back Keep Coming Back to the masterpiece that is Right Here Waiting, each one of these songs enraptured, enthralled and liberated me. I can't believe i had been missing out on these for such a long time. Or is it that that i hadn't listened to these songs for such a long time that made me enjoy them so much? Maybe your first love never goes away. Maybe its there all the time while you wander off after other pursuits, liking and doting stuff you think you love more than that one. And while that might be true, your first passion is just behind the curtains waiting, because after a long enough break, all that is required is the tiniest of sparks to remind you how exactly it had made you feel THEN. I know i am listening to a lot of Richard Marx now, but am i gonna give up on Kurt Cobain for him? Or am i gonna prefer him over Switchfoot? I don't think so, because there is a reason we use the word "FIRST" in First Love. At the end of the day, they are picture-perfect sweet recollections to be treasured, cherished, honoured and, while in the midst of your REAL and PRESENT life, to be dwelt upon once in a while. It will make you smile, trust me.

VENOM

not really in a mood to write today.........so i am just gonna drop one of my poems on you guys, (ya i do write some amateur verses from time-to-time),,,,,its titled VENOM, and although degree didn't publish it, i ges they know shit. i wrote it wen i was in 11th.......here goes..


VENOM

So let darkness engulf me
Strip me of all I have been.
The devil’s laughter ring through my ears,
Fill me with the immortal zeal.

Revenge! Justice! My soul cries,
Anger blazes its trail ‘cross my heart.
A scar that burns white with rage.
A scar thats here to stay.

A din surrounds my ears,
Pressing me on, urging.
I descend deeper into the abyss.
The darkness grows darker.

I bite my lips harder,
Enjoying, relishing the feel,
The momentary escape into physical pain.
Wish the spasms never end.

The dagger of betrayal delves deeper into my soul,
Want of vengeance rushes through my veins.
My trust shames me.
I spit venom, I bleed.



As my soul burns in this conflagaration,
A tiny flame tries to fight off the freeze.
She’s the trust that upholds my immolated soul.
She’s the calm when my world crashes down.

But all the while I hear more laughter,
More accusations, more abuses,
More venom.
His whisperings grow louder
As my skull splits in two.

He enters with a torrent of hate
Decimating all opposition he finds in me,
Blasting his way through,
Burning.

As my soul cries its tears of blood,
It sees its last moments through his green eyes.
I awake


-Devraj