Cucumber Town – Total Recall

Man, see how the plot thickens?


Now the rightist imbeciles are out for the blood too. See how they are smacking their lips smelling blood? They are supposedly out to save the one moron they know is certainly of no use to anybody.


He is called ……. Well you wouldn’t want to know what he is called.


They are out to save his sorry ass.


Rest assured that the sheen’s are quite visible. Its hundred and twenty thousand times more visible now. You might think there is no ‘point’ to it, but let me tell you there is. ) Even Preita Sindabad is with them.


They have just sought their help by phone.


“Please support us”


And the moment afterwards, these guys are doling out money in treacle’s.


Of course they don’t have the money, but you have to help out on a good cause you see!


The purpose you ask?


All in the cause of keeping the statusquo. That is doing nothing for the benefit of the public and taking money for the service.


And minimising the threat of , you know who ( he is the deadliest enemy of the office holding. The treacherous fellow, he wants people to do good to the public, ever heard such)


Man how cute!


All for one, and one for all.


Their idea is to turn this land into a paradise with no other inhabitants other than themselves and their families.


Only thing is. There is one guy out there who talks about responsibility and rules. Who cares about them?


They will come and go as they like. They will get paid in the manner they like.


What are you thinking guys, they are supported by the high and mighty.


They can’t be touched. You would wonder if this is the cucumber town.


You are right.


This is the bloody cucumber town.


If anybody dares to say otherwise they will do away with them.


Do you have any doubts? Just ask the service organizations.


They will take out their subscription coupons as a first measure.


That’s a threat.


If it is not heeded


They will send others with other coupons till you boot them out of your cabin.

Once that happens, they can attack and even kill. They have bought the weapons. They are set.

And the guy who is causing all this turmoil, is living under fear.

You see the obscene faces around with the owlish grimaces that are called something else. They are the one’s out to do it.

“The Itcholi express ”

“The Itcholi express ”

Well that’s how things are, you see, we are out to get him good and proper this time! By the bloody masterplan, this can’t go on! He has to be stopped. He is not doing anything against us, that is true. (Hmm, do anything against us, let him but try, he’ll see the kind of stuff we are made of!) But that doesn’t mean he is enamored of us. And that’s very dangerous. One ‘bad’ egg would spoil the whole basket of booties.

That of course can’t be allowed. We know that he is writing all kind of stuff against us. The Audacity! He is playing against the ‘very faithful’ of the regime. Let him remember that! The damn publicity monger, we’ll see that he gets good publicity. We’ll tarnish him even with the names of our dear and near if need be. We’ll hound him to the end of the earth.


And you know, we just had a brain- storming session inside the compu-room. We computed the amount of money we are swindling out of the government treasury by not doing a single thing for the whole month. It comes around to a few hundred-thousand lovely bucks per mensem. It’s totally gross, we know! But it is easy money. And we don’t even have to go to the office to get it , we can sit at home and play with our children and manage our own privet business.

Some say we are stepping out of our jurisdiction in doing such things. Jurisdiction our blessed foot. Our jurisdiction extends from ***icut to ***luru to ***mala. If anybody says anything about our jurisdiction again the lord appa would ‘take care of them’. We are sure about that, if not of anything else.

And there are any number of other deities who are willing to help to keep the world the same, no one need worry about that. We often wonder at our luck too! It is as if we are doing the god’s mission on earth in undermining everything in the world.

We are the blessed of the whole inhabitants of the earth.

And would anybody ever want to let go of that and the easy money it provides? That would be tantamount to being ‘good’; wouldn’t it?

And who wants to be good? For that matter aren’t we good to our family, our banks and our ‘favorites’? We are! Just come and have a look around in our lives. Can you find anything ‘bad’ at all in them? You will have to perspire real blood to do that! Look at the mansions we build, the hostels we run, the journey’s we take, the ‘tea’ that we regularly take!

So don’t talk about being good to us. We are good. To ourselves anyway. But to the rest of the world, we know how to behave, if possible we want to bring the terror out. We are not afraid of a single thing. At least we have the help from everybody in the service and not to say the service organizations. There is something called the class politics isn’t there? One has to look after one’s own kind! And we all know that the government is for the us and for nobody else.

There are fools around in the world who believe that we are appointed to serve the government and the people. Can there even such idiots exist in these enlightened times? One wonders. It is unbelievable. We know that there have been such simple souls from time immemorial. But we have managed to get our way every time didn’t we? Why? Because, there have never been the much touted “government of the people, by the people and for the people” anywhere around in the universe.

It just is not possible. The crow may fly backwards, roses may bloom in the desert, the pillow may even grow roots. But something would never change, that’s, how the regime works!

You see, there have always been one kind of government in the cosmos. The “government of the officials by the officials for the officials”. There has never been anything else. If there’s anybody amongst us who thinks otherwise, he is a black-leg, he is a revisionist, and he is the sum total of anti revolutionary sentiments.

And that wouldn’t do at all. Off with his head!

We are going out against him with no holds barred. We are not bothered about master plans or integrated un pronounceable plans and revision of schemes at the moment. By the way, who discovered these monstrosities anyway, to irk us? Don’t we have anything better to do, like dreaming the time away, appointing ‘temporary’ new slaves to serve us out of government monies, and thinking about our promotions and pay rises?

If for nothing else just to sooth our nonexistent prestige. Shouldn’t we have prestige? Why not, we at least we are not doing anything at all to make things any different in the world.

We are doing nothing at all!

We are out for the real battle, like the ‘Payyoli Express’ we are out to win this cross country hurdle.

“Let Him beware!”

The Pother the Moon is in

The ‘Moon’ has its phases. Well, who doesn’t know that! It’s only ‘full’ on a single day of the month and some say it is the salary day of the Moon! Arrant nonsense, doesn’t the moon have a responsibility towards the family and children. Are there any bigger duties than taking care of them properly and shunting them to school/workplace and back every day? And what wonder, the Moon is involved in them all the other days of the month. Tell us, where is the time to go to work? Of course there is the wireless communication to rule remotely, isn’t there?

No one would dare to say anything about the Moon’s absence too, if they fear their lives!

But curiously, on the calendar the Moon attends his office every single day. Well what of that? It has a duty to ‘be present’ everyday even if it’s not around anywhere in the sky. Who can blame the poor Moon, he is doing his best, and can you imagine the trouble he undergoes to climb up the sky once a month to its place in the heavens? But what about the vigilantes, who are entrusted with the duties of over-seeing even the Moon? Well what about them? They are in the payroll of the Moon too, it is rumored. It’s them that give the courage to the Moon to stay absent, the grape wine whispers.

Not even the Sun blames the Moon. At least they both practice the same trade, so naturally they have to back each other up, don’t they? Okay there could still be some fools who murmur against such things. But who cares as long as the Sun and Moon are in power and as long as they have money to eliminate those who speak against them!

And the Sun is also reported to have given the go-ahead to the process of elimination, some say. Naturally the Moon has passed it on to his goons who are fattened by long periods of inactivity allotted by the Moon and are ready to murder anyone who goes against the wishes of the moon, for money and favors of course! They have recently been given chairs and tables in open places to read their glossies, can you beat that? You think it’s brazen and that they would shrink before visitors who come to the place? You dream, they are the new working class who rarely attend work. They know how to get by in life claiming only the rights and ignoring their duties. The Moon, being a terrible “populist’ is all in favor of the philosophy.

If you don’t believe this, come to the heavens and have a see! These goons are turning into proper heller’s and some of them are turning on sheer and pure terror. They couldn’t be proper terrorists could they be? One misdoubts but then who knows? Man, one has to fear to write these. You can imagine the kind of faces and animosity these goons can exhibit. They ooze murder and mayhem and are protected by all the absentees who are out there.

They have even started threatening the other heavenly bodies who try to do their duty, if possible, in the murky atmosphere. Poor dutiful heavenly bodies, they are currently quaking in fright, it is reported. These lovely goons come in all colors and shapes and are further backed up by the ‘sodalities’ that are supposed to represent the rest of the work force in the heavens other than the Moon and Sun and the major heavenly bodies.

Well the Moon can do it all alone without any help, his deputy whispers. So okay, the Moon has several interests that mint money like rabbits and is the lord of underworld wealth! What of it? It can remain in its home and construct palaces in other places. It is the master of health and can even spring magic mansions up in the heavens if it wants. It even burns its chariots down and gets fresh ones if need be, with the kind help of the Sun of course.

The only ‘pother’ the Moon has experienced in the recent times is the trouble it gets from misguided ‘right to information’ fanatics! They would seek information on everything that the Moon or his satellites has a mind not to approve. One would wonder why such trouble makers are there in the world at all. What if the great Moon declined permission to start an honest business? If it is a business shouldn’t the business-man do ‘business’ with the Moon first, otherwise how is Moon to know that it is a real business?

We should feel sorry for the Moon and its vassals. What if the last 18 years have been not productive for the Moon’s office? That’s how the intelligent guys run things, is it not? Bother about social responsibilities. Is it not enough that one gets paid every month even if one stays at home? That’s how socialism is going to come. Is there any doubt about that?

One can’t really criticize the Moon, he has a kind and large heart and he permits everyone to be errant too. Even if you are going to be killed, do nothing worthwhile at all; does the world need our efforts to make it better? The only real option is to make it worse, let’s check if the world can come back from what we do! We dare the world to ever come back; we have wrung its neck!

The Moon’s advice is, If possible use only off color remarks to those who come to work regularly, punctuality, as you know, is not welcome in the holy heavens! Promote such behavior and that is the only social service one can do. There could be those who are against this policy. But that is holy Moons policy, and who would dare oppose?


The Sun had once tried its level best to get it across to Moon that there are other ways to do things “you got everything here except productivity”. The Sun is said to have remarked to the Moon when he came for a visit to his sub domain. But as you would know, the Moon has something called the ‘gift of the gab’ and immediately retorted, ‘what work is possible here in the hellish ‘Heavens’?’ The shocked Sun did not even venture to speak further. And of course the vassals of the Moon clapped their hands in delight till they swooned off.

“It’s our master the great Moon, whew”, they murmured. “No one can put our moon to his place. Not even the Sun, not even the government of the whole world, let someone try! We will do away with them all, we swear on our dearest god Groucho Max.”

For they all belong to this same ‘Old faith’ you know, the Moon and his vassals. One of these days they are going to raise their banner in the most reverent of places, they are sure of that! They don’t wish to raise other flags, it’s a majority decision. They would decimate everyone who oppose. They of course don’t have to fear the bloodshed, for it is they who are planning to shed the blood of others, what if innocent blood is shed, it’s for a great cause, that of ruining the world.

At certain locations the ‘training’ for the takeover is progressing it is rumored in the highest of places. There is said to be a convergence of all the necessary elements in the heavenly fields and some fear that another revolution is in the offing. It’s going to be ‘the dictatorship of……’ (You know what) from then onwards! Man, the way we are trying to change the world!

If the Moon and his vassals ever learn about these lines they might murder the writer. It is learned that they have already sought the help from all quarters, even that of alien gods to get even with everybody that criticize their “good work”.

The writer is verily shitting in his pants, is there anybody to help!

Anyway long live Moon and his intelligent cronies!

We are the thing, all you fools, we are the thing

One thing we have decided, we should pool all our resources into undermining whatever good that is in the land. There is no compromise on this score; this has to start from the government offices. As a first measure we have instructed all our members to be purposely late in attending offices and if we attend at all we need to do everything against the people. Object to anything and everything that the well meaning officers say to us. Do they know what is good for us and our organizations?

God forbid! (We don’t actually believe in god, god being the opium of the masses and intellectuals like us being more prone to the theories of you know whom. But all the same we even go to visit the ‘X’ now and then. He is a proletarian god and we believe in him implicitly! The nice fact that by going there we are meeting certain people without being under notice and are doing so many underhand things is an added incentive, we must admit. Do the fools who go to such places know any better?)

As we said there is no compromise. We are hard at work to raise the pension age to 60 in this state. This desire is not merely because of the added money it would bring to us. Are we as senseless as that? It’s the golden opportunity to do ill that is lovely. We can go on destabilizing everything that is out there in the land for five more years, can you believe the good it would do to our real masters who are sitting somewhere smiling at us. Ha, when we think of the pleasure of being noticed by those masters, we simply water at our mouth.

We are already making good progress. Every good officer has been put to his place and most of them cannot take any independent action without our consent, or else you know what we will do. We have so many goons in our hand that even the Genghis Khan would stand abashed before us!

We might even resort to graver measures. Let us see what our gangsters say!

The one thing in our mind is destruction all round! And come what may we are going to accomplish that. We swear on our Bose.

Complications

Now, like most belligerent people out there, wouldn’t one like to call oneself uncomplicated too? Technically, anyone could do so till it is proved otherwise. And there may not come a day for that too, since you’re the sole originator and user of the theory. They say, even serial killers think they are as innocent as babe’s.

Now wait a momen…….. did I say bayb? I can’t have!

No, no, not ‘babe’ babe, God forbid, that’s off limits in this context.

But it seems that there are differing opinions in their case too. Some say they are infinitesimally intelligent (So they can’t but be honest!) and some say they are just otherwise. I wouldn’t like to start a controversy here, I might get called a male chauvinist for all my good intentions, but even in those likeable specimens of humanity, it could be an inborn trait, like the color of one’s hair or skin or the eyes. It may have nothing to do with subjugating the fair race, that is, hopefully!

Coming back to the point, so why couldn’t one think oneself as honest, however improbable that might be? At least, it’s about our own idea of our self that we are talking of, we do not have to worry about copyrights in this case. Do we?

As an aside, let me assure you too, that it is not maintained here that people are mostly dishonest, it is only held that they are totally and dutifully so, and again, to themselves, the more optimistically so. May be it is the only way to suffer life, or more importantly it could be the only known method to keep your beans about you.

(That is, if you have any beans inside you. And, you know even from before saying this that I am an unabashed admirer of intellect.)

So, the thesis is that we can think whatever we like within. And no one would come and berate us about it, provided we do not publish what goes on the insides. Till such time we are safe, whatever the mind control experts say.

But sadly, life is a little more complicated than this. I am not saying it is unbelievably complex, unless we make it so. Other than the sad fact of our birth, and the sadder fact of our death, and the time spent in fear of death, there is nothing in it to be curious about. (Death is the only sure thing we have in life, don’t you think? Everything else is subject to doubt. Even our beloved might desert us brutally, but not our friend death. It is the most constant of all our companions. )

As one very intelligent man put it, “All we do is, we wake up, eat, execrate and sleep. That is all there to life. Some may imagine themselves to be something more. Well……

Yet life, as I said, is not as simple as one would like to have it. It is not as easy as death surely. Things go out of hand in it most of the time. You entrust something to someone and they do it only too well and land you in dire trouble. You blink and swallow the bitter pill and are seen as the dumbest of persons around.

You think its fate, there are such cute expressions in the human tool kit to keep you in equilibrium. Otherwise no one would come back from a terrible fall that they took.

You can take a look at this video here:



This is what people call experience. All are supposed to learn from the mistakes they make in life. My father used to advise me to gather the lessons that life teaches. Being a total iconoclast I am still to learn any. But I am not too proud about it mind you.

But there are also intelligent people out there who like to see the life complicated. May be it gives them the zest to live.

I would like to congratulate them too for the inventiveness they have.

Jitters

There are moments in our life when we feel something strongly without even knowing what or why it is. We might feel affinity to, or distance from, something or someone without obvious reasons .We might feel despair, or elation about something on other occasions, all without really knowing why they occur. May be some of you do not believe this and are quite certain that you have everything under your control. If so well and good, but the chances are, even well maintained minds would find it most difficult to do so in most situations.

Such is the vastness of data that is coming in to us at any point of time in our lives and such is the nature of their connections with things that occurred to us in the past. These connections may not be very clear at their superficial level. They may even be coded messages that we discover or imagine that we recovered from what we were experiencing. All this could be going on within us quite unawares.

This is not surprising considering that most of the sense data collected by us over the years lie submerged and even invisible to our consciousness. I am not taking you to the realm of psychological theories of Freud or Jung or others here. Their thoughts may have some bearing on the subject. Their systems might even be able to dissect our mind and uncover the roots of the feeling. Well then there is not much to discover for them in any situation except “libido” and the “archetypal” is there! I have often thought that both are saying the same things in different words.

Whatever that may be, the above musings were prompted by something I overheard this evening. One guy was confiding to another:

“Once I hate somebody I can’t change it. I hate him for life. So I am trying not to hate him now”

Either he is being very defensive and boastful or being totally truthful. Knowing the guy I tend to go by the first guess. This is a man people call ‘weak’ and one who is easily frightened. I have seen it happen on several occasions and had felt sorry for him too. He is presently surviving with the help of the considerate among his fellow beings. There is nothing wrong with such conditions and there could be any number of reasons why a person is strong and another one is weak. It may be constitutional or acquired and in both cases the person may not be able to help it.


My guess is that he was a victim of inner office politics where he was working last. There are certain types of vicious scum on earth who delights in seeing others suffer for no reason at all. Sadly these types of criminals thrive in an official set up. These are the guys who put the thoughts of murder into you and unknown to you. Intelligence and worldly wisdom would not save you in such environments.


Unless one has the thick skin of a rhinoceros and the idiotic belief in one’s own importance in the scheme of things, one would be in an unenviable situation and would have to suffer steadily in places like that. Probably our guy lacked those qualities and he was emotionally mutilated. There may have been nothing that he could do against them. He was totally unprepared for it seems to be.

If these criminal types have any fear at all that is about their personal well being, not that this is a foolproof counter strategy against them. Some are like sharks that tear off their bellies to eat it if it is cut. Some of these trash could be as insensitive as to not to think about their own safety too while they are on the hunt.

Yet, the moment you manage to instill some fear into them you can be sure of some respite from their onslaught. If they have any belief at all that is the belief that they have the right to go on living, you try to show them otherwise, then they might draw a little back.


But this is easily said than done. Our guy could not have done it. I think he was totally at sea about what was happening to him when he was there. He is still respectful of certain psychic thugs who were in his last office. He seems to have no clue that they brought him down.

Anyway I had tried my best to help him when others were trying to put him down. In his torpor he hasn’t realized it yet.

I wonder what brings on such attacks of panic that I see sometimes in him!

Whats in store

What a fall from the six systems of thought to the six fatal diseases!

Well that’s the Indian reality now. True, we never were much bothered about philosophy. Aberrations like philosophy happen in history of a people, you know there always will be strange guys in any community who worries about meaning of life and life after death and useless things like that. The more intelligent never bothers about them. They have other things to worry about. Like making a living and putting others down etc.

When these interesting and vital activities are out there who cares to spend time searching inside to find truth. In fact only the idle and the useless would even think of philosophy as an activity, barring the chairs of philosophy in the west that has made it into a specialization and a bread winner in the last century.

The sad fact is that now no one can claim to be a philosopher in the west unless one belongs to either a continental or analytical stream of philosophical approach and has concocted a theses one some subjects like “ the sado-masochistic tendency in Nietzsche’s Philosophy” ( Am I being too simplistic and too Freudian here? Okay then let it be about “The problematic of will to reason in Nietzsche’s philosophy”). The point is unless one has a PhD in something such; one has little right to call oneself a philosopher in the west. Sad it is!

Luckily every Indian can still talk on high philosophy when there is nothing else to do. We have been through testing times in history; we were the ‘subjects’ of too many invaders to become anything less than philosophical.

You see, when aliens dominate the land and rule one’s body and soul nothing is left but sweet philosophy to console one ( No, no, I am not talking of the aliens belonging to the ‘gray’ or ‘reptilian’ sort that is supposed to have bases on our globe, god forbid! These aliens were of human origin and were from other lands and other cultures. How words lose their original meanings and acquire new ones in the passage of time!).

It is ever so easy to blame Karma and fate than our own petty inside squabbles and weakness of character that made the foreign domination possible!

Well, we have another sort of invaders in our midst now. We are said to harbor six nice illnesses in our land. They have very sweet names too -Malaria, Chikungunya, Filariasis, Japanese Encephalitis, Leishmaniasis and Dengue fever. I am not sure if they are the six deadly ones but certain reports make me believe so. One consolation is that India is not alone in this. Climatic changes and the resulting bug mutations are making them more drug resistant and fatal.

We can’t stop nature from having it out with us for our sins can we?

People are taking vaccinations (whether they are effective or not) right and left, especially if they are planning to visit this blessed country. These vaccinations seem expensive and there are moans of “watchagonnado” from them too.

Hygiene – mental, physical, and of the environs seems to be the only way to remedy the situation. We can’t go back to the stone ages to get the nature right. If we limit the air pollution alone we could save eight million deaths in the next two decades the WHO says.

Well our suffering might be over before that according to the Mayan calendar. There are but a few months to 2012!