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.”