Thursday, April 29, 2010

what is love then?

I’m not a movie guy. This is kind of strange because it’s not like I dislike movies totally, I just find the act of planning to waste 2 odd hours and money for something that might not turn out to be entertaining throughout and that even might have subject matter that might antagonize me, abhorrent and that without the option of just flipping the channel to watch something else. I like TV better and rarely do I ever watch movies on it. I love watching TV and most of what I watch is centered on a few news channels, Discovery, NGC, AP and History. I even dig Shaun the Sheep and Spongebob on CN and how could just forget to tell you how much I love Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show. Basically I’m saying that I watch a lot of TV whenever I can.
However my views about movies are changing. It’s been a very gradual process and started when I tripped over a second hand book titled Close Imagining, written by a celebrated literature teacher Benjamin DeMott. We bought it at a book sale at the Parade Ground in Sector-17. It talks about how to read literature in the sense that how to make sense of literature. Anyone can read but it trains you in a certain way about the approach to understand the text. Somehow the training, whatever sense I could make of till now, also got extrapolated on to my interpretation of cinema. I’m still reading that book since I’m a very very slow and irregular reader and that is another thing I generally don’t like doing, reading. But I’ve grown to like that book and like picking it up once in a while and being bowled over by the poems and stories and parts of classical literature that form the examples of the book. In almost 10 odd months, I have watched four or five movies—apart from the ones I watched at the movie club of IMTECH—most of which I actually liked. It’s 1:15am and I just finished watching a movie on HBO (I think it was some other channel) a few minutes ago titled A lot like Love.
I was just surfing through the channels when I saw Ashton Kutcher (Oliver) looking rather silly in long hair then I saw a rather weird looking girl Amanda Peet (Emily) and paused to watch what was happening here. I was rather pleased to see that the movie had just started so just kept the remote aside and watched on. I liked what I saw, it was rather silly but I still liked it because I could really relate to this story; the craziness of the initiation all too familiar. The surreal time when you live in a sort of a dream with a stranger in sensual and fantastic world; you can either freeze it there and move on your separate ways or get to know the person and burst the lovely bubble. In the movie, it's frozen and thawed time and again. Of course I raised my eyebrow more than once at the silliness of the story at times when there’s a gap of two years and sometimes three in the story—people really do move on and don’t have those feelings anymore—but what I found to be nonsense was really a figment of my imagination and in a certain way, this really was possible, why not? It was put together well. I found Emily to be a little too complicated in the way she has the preconceived notion about what things should be like to work out—till the very end—but then it suddenly dawned on me that Emily, after all, was a girl and all of them are like that. If I can’t accept it then I’d just have to turn gay. Emily, I believe, is also a very passionate person which is reflected in the fact that when the story starts it seems like she’s down in the dumps and it really seems like Oliver is the guy who’s gonna make it big in life, but it really turns out the other way round. Her passion of photography, which she starts of after Oliver gifts her a camera the second time they meet (three years after they first met), brings her success. Anyway I felt really sorry for this Oliver guy who makes such big plans in life, is so confident and almost reaches there but doesn’t. Broken and broke he finally realizes that he should at least express the love that he feels for her, which she never allows him to speak, but it’s too late by then as Emily’s already engaged to some other guy. By the way, they both date and breakup with many people in between. It’s sad to see him at that time for they both have had such amazing moments by then in between those six years but they’re so fragmented to fully reveal the gravity of their value to each person. But deep down inside I believe they do…but it’s very deep I guess, hard to reach kinds. Though they realize that they’re in love, they never speak up about it. She never lets him say it as she feels that it was she who made the first move with him and doesn’t let go of it till she “finds out” that it was actually he who made the first move…umm! Six years ago. Now that is something I found to be extremely stupid but then again with a woman, it’s such a real possibility. Anyway when she realizes, it’s too late on the other side and just when I thought this sweet story would have a tragic end, it doesn’t. It was pleasant and I must admit that Amada Peet’s face just grew on me and by the end of the movie, I admitted that she was beautiful; something contrary to what I thought at the beginning of the movie but even then I loved her big bright eyes.
And by the way, I find the new Batman costume in The Dark Knight such a downer.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Is this goodbye?

I just woke up to my ringing cell phone. I thought it was the alarm I’d set in it but realized that this was the ringtone, not the alarm-tone. I got hold of the phone and saw that it was a call from the Sisters. I didn’t know what to expect and quickly took the call.
“Good morning sister” I wished without knowing which Sister it was.
“Good morning Jesse. Jesse we’re leaving.” said Sister Annie.
“When? Where?” I shot back
“Our provincial has decided that enough is enough and we need to be out of this place. You know how difficult things have been for us here. God knows if Father Sebastian will appoint some other Sisters for this place. We’ll pray for the children here but really we’ve been pushed to the limit here and cannot take the way the treat us anymore. It’s better that we go away.” she confessed.
“where are you going?” I asked
“Don’t know yet Jesse. It could anywhere even Nepal.” said Sister Annie
“Oh!! How will we ever meet again? But I understand Sister, it’s been very hard for you here. By what date are you planning to leave?” I asked.
“We will leave by 15th of May, though it hasn’t been decided.” she said
“Well…ok then sister. I’ll come and visit you as much as I can till you’re here” I said unsure about what to say next as a million memories started to flash past my mind. The memories of three years and the thought that Riti just last evening, said that she planned to spend a whole Sunday with the Sisters soon after her exam a month away.
“Sure Jesse. Do come. Ok then bye. See you soon.” She said
“Bye Sister.” I replied and we hung up.
Then the thoughts crossed me: What next? Shall inform Riti first? Or shall I expedite the long delayed help that some people had offered to the kids because I might never be able to get into the Children’s Home once the sisters leave? Shall I talk to the sisters about how we can sustain the outside help to the kids even after they leave?
I picked up the cell again and frantically started to type a message to Riti…but I deleted it as I didn’t wanna be the harbinger of bad news. I knew the Sisters had probably either called her already or will call her right after she talked to me. I just waited for Riti’s message which did come in a while.
We both plan to visit the Children’s Home this evening.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Circles

I thought I’d massage my arid scalp with some coconut oil today. Absentmindedly I picked up the blue bottle and headed for the microwave. Why? Because for me, the bottle of coconut oil was still living frozen in the winters, when I’d last used it. Suddenly I the liquid moving inside and for good reason; I was just wearing shorts, why would the oil be frozen. Oh God! I’m so baffled at the things I do sometimes. Then I went to the kitchen for some midnight snacking. I was confused about whether I was hungry or thirsty. Instead of just drinking water and finding out, I set out to fix some snacks which comprised of four slices of bread with butter, a substantial quantity of dal, stir fried in butter till dry, and an egg white dropped on the dry dal! You might be wondering what kind of a dish that’d make and the answer is “Filling”. As I ate it I could easily discern the filling combination of the buttery dal from the tender egg pieces. The butter lying on the table first turned soft and then gooey. Alarmed, I rushed in the fridge before it melted and flowed out on the table. Suddenly my eyes caught one of the newspaper headlines, Rain brings down minimum temperature (TNS). “Bloody hell when did that happen. Is bad weather just following me?” I thought as I wiped the sweat off my brow. I twisted my head to read it again clearly and yes, it was Chandigarh news.
Then I shifted my vision some more to the right and saw the date February 24, 2010. “Ah so much for respite”, I thought.
I picked it up and read on, it and I quote
“…winter is far from over.”
“People will experience a cold spell again. The Tuesday morning rain will bring back the chill soon.”
“The weathermen have predicted partly cloudy sky with a possibility of thundery development in the next 24 hours in the city.”
I don’t clearly remember what I was doing on 24th February but 10 days earlier on the 14th, I attended Dog Show with my girlfriend and her friend, and I remember that it was quite hot in the morning. Ten days hence must’ve been hot alright. What bliss must this news have brought to people back then.
The heat is growing unbearable and I wonder what hard times lay ahead; electricity cuts, water shortage, the discomfort of commuting on a two wheeler in an even hotter city will soon follow. It’s difficult to place these roads as the same ones on which I traveled wearing a warm jacket and gloves and still feeling cold. I can just think of them as blast furnaces on which I travel alone.
“…People will experience a cold spell again…” what prophesy. What a paradox that I experience it to such a degree in this heat. The winters were so warm and the summer is so frozen in spite of itself. I know there will be respite like there’s always been; within the gamut of the choices I can make. My truth was different then from what it is now but the real truth is that I’m writing so much these days and it all comes down to the same thing.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Good Mourning everyone

What a start to the day, I couldn’t sleep well last night because of the tenacious mosquitoes and the fluctuating electricity. I swear by ODOMOS, the mosquito repellent cream but yesterday night that did little to deter the mosquitoes that were probably hungry from all the days of Odomos barrier and decided they’d had enough. My forehead is swollen and I look like a big brained alien. I spent the night switching between ceiling fan and AC because the electricity supply was flipping between the two. In a semi conscious state and when the electricity completely failed in between, I turned into an unwilling audience for the talks of the big family/friend gathering in the adjacent house and the father-daughter duel downstairs; sometimes living in a flat sucks. I woke up at 6:30am and try as I may to convince myself that I’m well rested, my body is behaving otherwise. I washed my bike off last night’s dirt that accumulated on it when we rode through the rain and a certain amount of disgruntlement. However you end up thinking that if there’s a chance that what the other person’s saying is true, it would be outstandingly crass on your part to not understand. How selfish but hey, before you throw stones at someone, think about how many times you’re in their shoes. Affection doesn’t require too much of effort to develop between like-minded people but understanding requires effort and some degree of selflessness.
Anyway last night I grew up a little more. I recalled the time—the only time I crashed my bike—when my girl accompanied me. Of the three of us, the bike, her and me, she was the only one that got hurt. However it didn’t show on the outside and since she never spoke of it and I was too busy concentrating on riding and reaching Dehradun, taking a detour to Herbertpur and reaching my sister’s place before a more severe tragedy struck us that I never asked her how she was. She didn’t show one sign of being hurt and I presumed she was alright, just like I was, for some reason, despite the bad fall on a downhill slippery road, I wasn’t hurt a bit and the engine kept running; but the whole psychological trauma suffered due to the same led her to brand me insensitive. We roamed around in Dehradun and had lunch and not once did I sense that she was hurt; for me she was fine, just like I was and just like the bike was. The extended act of sullenness that almost demolished our relation on the return leg of the journey made me brand her illogical and laid the foundations of the bomb that was built up over months and months and despite the love, it was set alight. It didn’t explode loudly, it just poisoned and killed.

Last night’s experience, coupled with memories of that fateful time in the past, was a revelation to me. I was in the other shoes and someone else was in mine. The revelation made it easier to forgive, both this person and myself—for the past—and understand that sometimes things aren’t the way they appear to be.

But hey wait, let’s see what appears in the newspaper’s front page today:

I see Manu Sharma’s plea’s of freedom being rejected: You can’t kill people in the open, imagine if he would’ve used his head, gone hidden behind a bush, aimed and… Shit! These are incriminating thoughts.

I see the handsome Shashi Tharoor walking away from the media hounds; I can almost hear him say “Leave me alone you camera wielding cattle”

I see dejected foreigners stranded at the Mumbai Airport: Iceland’s ash causes air-travel hash.

The local news says that yesterday was a black Monday with a string of armed robberies, an immolation, conning and killing: Ah this is my city beautiful but how safe is it, I think it’s a topic to mull.

Dantewada massacre’s been relegated to…umm! Somewhere inside I guess, if at all. They howled, they barked, bared their teeth…at each other and then they slept waiting for something else to happen.

Over and out
Have a nice day!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Surge

Some things end in a flash
Others smolder slowly
before they to turn to ash
Day’s left me ached to the bone
A nap’s snapped me out
Of the red zone
Slowly I crawl out of my bed
Wishing I could jump out instead
My room is in such a mess
The sight adds ten quids to my stress
When suddenly I wanna play
I wanna play the game
So life’s not the same again
Wanna run and catch the verve
that’s seeping down the drain
I wanna soar away
To a place where
they don’t know my name
Wanna shout out with joy
Even if they call me insane
I wanna jump high
And reach out for another plain
I wanna do more
And not have any excuses lame
Ride fast those curves
Even if sometime they
confuse my brain
Dive in so deep
And watch my freedom
stick to no lanes
So what if the day’s nearing an end
So what if there’s nothing left to defend
I guess I’ll just live the moment
that’s slipping away
For who knows that in it
I might just “live” my day.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Seeking Solid Solitude

*
My institute is located in an isolated corner of Chandigarh. It has big trees on the boundary such that hardly any sound from outside penetrates the campus. Inside, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter are all inaccessible.
I must concentrate on science. I must concentrate on my work.
And then there are days when I’m lost in what I do and I love what I work on and crazy ideas bombard me from all sides and I’d never trade my work for anything but such days are few and far in between. I think they should send me inside a dungeon to practice science; I need more isolation from this crazy world.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Maligned Malik

*
*
WOW! Shoaib Malik lied.
I am most apologetic for what I wrote about Ayesha Siddiqui and have removed it from my blog. But what an amazing foresight of this woman who, as some reports say, had saved some of her clothes from the times they had physical intimacy. I have mixed feelings about this. But who cares man! like I said before, the topic is jaded.
And like I said before "Sania don't waste those hot legs of yours....concentrate on tennis."

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Kiss me not, piss me not!!

A British couple in Dubai might face imprisonment for kissing in public. An Emirati woman sued them for the same because she was accompanied by her children when they came face to face with the perpetrators. I am sure what prompted her to go to the police was her children’s curiosity about what they saw. Ha ha ha poor kids probably were oblivious to the act of kissing living in the UAE. I guess they don’t consider it appropriate to touch and fondle the apparatus of your body meant to speak and ingest food with that of your partner; HEY WHAT’s WRONG WITH SHAKING HANDS?—they’ll probably ask. Hey!! Isn’t this the place where they have flashy cars, humungous hotels and all that money can buy and you can’t kiss in public? O HO!! I’m sorry I forgot, you can’t do so in my country either. If you’re caught kissing in public, you’ll face the bastinado. Both police forces are sensitive to the sight of touch; the moral police and the city police who think you’re soft targets to extort money—Oh please don’t call up my folks or all hell will break lose. If for some stupid, ‘unnatural’ reason, you end up kissing your girl outside and get caught, you’re doomed unless you have some money to stuff in the police-wala’s mouth. It’s perfectly alright to kill women for dowry or other pretext—of course, wedding also gives you the 007 licence—but dare you show affection in public, it’s gonna be taken a very very serious offence. The choice for us is simple right, between love/affection and hate/scorn, the latter is always more conveniently pleasing to us. I wonder why I was surprised at the Dubai news after all, the same would’ve happened in India as well and even worse treatment could’ve been metted out at the couple.

Besharam-wati

So what else? Mayawati admonished the RTE and said that the state doesn’t have money to educate so many children! Mayawati doesn’t have money? She lacks grace, decency and concern for the masses. In fact I thought that money is the only thing she and her band of brothers have. She was greeted with Rs. 5 crore (??) garland in front of some of the poorest people and that did not make her tremble with shame; she’s unconscionable. Maybe she’s scared that if people would get educated, they’d actually realize how shameless she is. This vile woman says that she doesn’t have money to educate poor children; we all know what kind of money she possesses, she should be debarred from contesting elections.

Nikah Triangle

Shoaib claims that he has never met the Ayesha, whose photo was sent to him for nuptial approval and Sania claims she knows everything. Ayesha actually turned out to be the girl who claimed to be the so called Ayesha’s elder sister! Yikes!! Oh no!! So this wasn’t the hot and sexy Ayesha (sexy name anyway) that Shoiab was dreaming of. I’ve seen fat girls who’re beautiful but this Ayesha isn’t one of them. Every time I see her on TV I feel like pulling her cheeks and saying “Aww you mischievous Vixen! Now look what you did to li’l Shoaib. Ummm! Naughty knotty”. If what Shoaib is saying is true, he’s an incredible idiot and if what Ayesha is saying is true, he’s still an incredible idiot. Ayesha says that she has people who will testify of her and Shoaib spending time alone in a hotel room.
Shoaib was dim-witted enough to take nuptial vows on the phone—arre shaadi hi to hai, to kya hua, baad mein talaaqh de doonga—and bizarre to now be saying that the same action doesn’t solemnize a marriage. How dumb is that! Correction, how shameless is that! Sania don’t waste those two legs of yours sweetheart………concentrate on tennis (heh heh heh what were you thinking). That Ayesha in picture was sexy, Sania is sexy; Shoaib you are a sexy maniac. Ah! Pardon me, who doesn’t want a beautiful bride. Shoaib you’re such a bloody paradox personified that you should be ‘punished’ with celibacy….and no non-marital sex either, you sexy maniac.
Well I’ll just put a cork on this already jaded controversy.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

passing thoughts

Once bitten, keep your gun ready.

Once bitten, bite back.

Bite first and make them twice shy.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Beauti-fool day

1st April 2010
I pushed myself overboard. I returned home feeling tired but convinced myself that I could so some exercise. The weight loss regime has worked beyond my imagination and I’ve turned thinner than I would’ve liked. I am desperate to put on some weight. After all “log kya kahenge (What will people say)” syndrome affects me as much as the others. How will I explain that I’m scared of growing fat at thirty for I know it’ll be very difficult to lose the flab; I must be just-right. Who decides that? The society in which I live! My legs were limp so I started to exercise my triceps lying in bed. After four sets I fell asleep and woke up with a start, confused about my position. It took a few seconds to come to terms with reality. By then, I was more tired than before, now my hands refused to move as well. I dragged myself out of bed with a great difficulty, walked to the drawing room and fell plop on the sofa. I watched a documentary by Nilanjana Bose on honour killings in our country. I wasn’t surprised watching the interviews of Khaap Panchayat members justifying honour killings from every angle of unabashed stupidity. Of course my views would incite a similar response from the Khaap were they to find out what they are. Honour killings are also happening in the West and not surprisingly in Indian and middle-eastern immigrant families. There are just so many people in our country, so many uneducated, also so many educated but unaffected by education, also so many educated high class scoundrels, all trying to avoid the “shame” that their children might bring to them. “Values” must be taught with rigour and from an early age. ‘Educating’ children to differentiate “us” from “them” is quintessential to our society. What a shame that some iconoclasts just don’t imbibe the ‘good values’, break the shackles of ‘limited freedom’ and commit sacrilege; maybe education is actually bringing about the needful change in a few. By the way, talking about education, starting yesterday, another fundamental right has been introduced in our country. Every child from the age of 6 to 14 has the Right to Education; three cheers for The Government. Hey but what about schools where teachers do not come to teach but draw their salaries, what about the dilapidated buildings, what about the broken benches and boards. Private schools will be directed to accommodate 25% students from economically weaker section. How the school will bear the burden, that’s their own headache. But this still is a good move now let us wait and see the next, and the bigger problem being solved; implementation. Is this order going to be meet the same fate as the government school in my sector; big and grand when built, almost non functional in some time for ever and ever till the term “47-Model” brings to mind an unkempt building where the locals go for casting votes during elections. Really? Is that a school? A Model-School”? Paradoxically, for us in Chandigarh, the term “Model-School” brings to mind such buildings in tatters with a fake promise of educating children. Of course there are exceptions to this as 2 or 3 Model Schools do live up to the meaning of their name but most others do not. Let us all take hold of one main-road each on which we see kids begging and count how many children go off the streets and are shifted to schools in three months time. Talk about counting, the government has started the new census that will go on to count and fingerprint the billion strong. Now that’s one counting I could never do. So we’ll all learn to read and write but when will we learn to differentiate wrong from right? How can I cerebrate on the problems of my country when I feel that I’m neither true to myself nor know how to be. Aha! Maybe there is no problem at all; it’s just a figment of my imagination. Ignorance is bliss and it’s a Fool’s Day after all so let us celebrate by not doing anything. Sigh! Why should I anyway.