The Time to rock the boat

Ram was rowing the boat now; he has a nice way of doing it, with long steady strokes as if caressing the water. There was barely any movement. The little boat was sliding smoothly over a surface which was thick and greenish. I dared not touch the water with my hands. It looked deadly. It was completely opaque as if it was made of some pliable plastic material. The thing lay thick and undulating beneath the boat.

I was looking abstractly into the water and watching the barren clouds reflected in it. They were moving at some speed. They looked like a group of nurses. What is the hurry about guys? Where are you off to? You don’t have any patients to attend to do you?

Ram rested the oars and dipped his hands into the water make it moist for a better grip. I thought of saying something about it but thought better of it and desisted. He would not mind getting his hand dirty like that. He is like that.

Now he again took up the oars, I could trace the greenish outline of the foul water on his palms. He should not have done it. It was dirty water. It did not even look like water.

It was like a long piece of green thickness.

One could chop it into little bits and they would hopefully remain separate like portioned off layers of green jelly. What horrors lay underneath the surface, I did not know.

Well maybe you would not die of drowning if you fell into it. It was a mini dead sea, with high concentration of salt in the water.

Yet you might die of infection. The water could be the highest concentration of domestic and industrious discharges in the world. The canal extends some 5 miles and every sewer in the neighborhood might open into it.

Well really I do not know if it is absolutely true. May be no sewer is connected to it. May be the water is pure as hell. May be this is a canal in heaven, with water made up entirely of green honey.

All the same the water looked wonderfully vile.

It is the sesha I thought, on which Lord Vishnu goes to sleep. The Adi Sesha, the primordial serpent. The green sesha.

How deep could it be? Ten, twenty feet? Could not be more than that. Well twenty feet could be tricky too if you fell over.

Well we were at Veli and come here often to row around for some hours, both as an exercise and a pastime.

It was the weekend and there were very few options for a weekend day in this bit of land. You could go to Kovalam and bathe in the sea, or you could come here and wander around. Both are always crowded but I preferred Veli to Kovalam. There was reason for it.

Kanai Kunjiraman has gone berserk here. He is the sculptor of our basic fantasies. That concrete Yakshi at Malampuzha was violent. He has done several pieces at Veli.

I did not care about the other pieces, but the massive relief of the girl looking up at the sky (he has fashioned it as a part of landscaping, out of the very ground) is unbelievable.

Kanai has some mysterious thing with which he link to something very basic in us.

We had done the round of the garden earlier in the afternoon. It was a bit early, just after two in the afternoon .There was only a group of Malee girls around. We were both wearing slippers as we had planned to row around for some time.

There were the normal giggles and the surprised looks.

“He is cute”

“But they are wearing slippers!”

“Still I like him.”

It was like a balm to our ego. We felt we can get a boat on this day.

Now we are rowing through the canal in the boat owned by the youth club there. The boat of course was on its last legs. The slots were the oars were to be fitted were missing on both sides and we had to tie them to the boat with a length of rope.

We of course had to face the black looks of the guy in charge of the boat. He was not ready to hand them over to us. Well he can’t be blamed. The boats were unfit to be on the water. We took the best one among them with the remains of iron rings so that we can tie our oars to the boat.

There was lull in the air now. The motor boat which takes the tourists around for a spin through the canal had just returned to its jetty. It kicks up hell when it passes by our side. Even Ram has a hard time controlling the boat then. The imbecile who drives it would have a huge grin on his face when he sees any of the youth club boats, his stupid passengers would follow suit and grin the more.

The guy would purposely make a big sweep around us creating a trench to drown us.

Well he is back at his jetty and might be packing his boat with other tourists. We would probably be away from the danger area by the time he starts up again. He does not normally go much farther than the over-bridge. Once past that I planned to take up the oars.

Ram would laugh whenever I demanded the oars.

“I often think you are like a child” He once said. “You have an excess of energy like them.”

Ram looks at me wonderingly when I am at the oars. I would be kicking up hell with the oars. Thrusting them deep into the waters and tearing at it so that the oars would emerge from the water with some noise.

You are wasting energy. Only half the effort is needed to make it really fly.

I do not heed at all.

The boat will start then to heave and tilt. Every great pull would thrust the boat forward at some pace and it would slightly languish when the oars are out of the water and is being again thrust into it. I hated that moment of inactivity. I wanted to fill it with power.

It delights me when I dip the oars deep down into water and it resists the pull of my arms and shoulders. I enjoy it me when the oars rip the water apart and emerge dripping and shining. They would burst out from water with a great load of water following it.

Now we are just past the over bridge and I have the oars. I can’t talk to you for sometime now. I will be too busy rocking the boat you see……….

Shackles to break out of

I seem to have sadly driven away some of my faithful readers with the delectable trash I write now. Well friends, what did you expect, daily doses of sublime insights into mine and your lives?

I am not blaming you. I was like that too, had only wanted to read the finest, the very best, the most meaningful, and the mind boggling.

Well I have searched all my life for such a book or such a column. I am yet to find it, when I do so I shall of course let you know.

You certainly understand that I am not talking about holy books, they are of a different genus altogether. Our business is with books and words written by people like you and me. Call them by any name you prefer, call them geniuses or artists or writers or anything.

I have always thought that the real difference between them and us is that they can give expressions to what we feel while we can’t. Some of them come near to my ideal of a great writer, people like Dostoyevsky for example. Certain of the stuff that he wrote had completely destroyed me.

Well even his works would not act as a bible to us if you know what I mean. There are limits to which artistic imagination can reach. Beyond that it is us and us only.

It is left to us to struggle with this macabre thing that we call our life. I have not yet met someone who has made the head and tail of it in a normal way other than a few fanatical souls who go by faith. They believe that they have found the truth by following the words they believe in.

Really finding truth is not that important in a worldly sense. I can easily claim that I have done so in my own way too. But as some shrewd friends have pointed out there could be something pessimistic in it. Such enlightenments have a tendency to deny the world.

I believe that this approach can be improved upon.

What we need is a doctrine which can reconcile our ordinary life with reality or truth perceived by other methods than which people generally know.

Let me tell you, if you are really fired up you can find truth even now, at this moment, and even realize it intellectually. Once you achieve that, living in it becomes easy as hell. You would not need anything at all then. I have found it so.

I realized then that I did not need even the basic necessities of life. It was a conviction which went beyond everything that we know.

Those who follow the crap I dish out regularly and watch the inconsistencies through which I seem to go might not believe it. But the fact is that I have been there and back and have seen life for what it actually is. A pitiable dream.

Yet the dream that we call life can be suffered otherwise too, without trying to know what the life is all about. The only problem is that then we become too much involved with it and start to behave like puppets.

We lose control and become controlled by others, events circumstances and the like. Instead of being masters of our destiny we would be like vassals carrying out instructions that come from all around us.

You all know how true these words are. We are not free to the extent that we would like to be free. Rousseau’s words goes farther than even he intended “Man is born free and yet every where he is in chains”.

Perhaps man is not born free even. The chains were there even before our birth. Heredity genetics and any number of other factors might put is in chains.

Yet we all yearn for freedom. How can we be free with all these chains around us at all times? Well as you can see the only method is to go for truth. I know it is a much used word, truth, but we have nothing to replace it with.

So go for it, it is not such a hard thing to find as you think. The only thing needed is to wipe your mind clean of what you believe yourself to be and see what you really are. Any one can do it if they really want to. Then you can be at peace with yourself and the world.

I had suggested a method to do it elsewhere in my blog. There are no restrictions to it. Do it whenever you please and in whatever condition you are. Do every thing else as you do at present. Do the worst you can to your body and mind but pursue the technique seriously all the time.

It will reform you as sure as the sun is shining above.

The ‘Residence’ Evil

Nothing is as it seems.

We are about to crash they say.

You kidding? it’s the great Kerala economy you are talking about. You don’t talk about it lightly!

Oh yeah? There is a world economic crisis? Well and good, but what is that to us?

We are in the business of producing cheaper brains. We do it by the truck loads. We are the best in the business.

We have a monopoly of sorts in the sector.

You say it is that very thing which is not wanted anywhere now because of the crisis?

Oh?

How did it come about?

Due to the mortgage crisis?

Now what in the name of hell is that?

You mean every one in the US was buying up houses for years to cause the crash. Man, this world is unbelievable. What has the US craze for houses to do with the world in general?

You don’t mean?

People not credit-worthy began to buy houses?

But who would give credit to those?

The banks did?

Brother only US banks would do it. We don’t do it here. Not ever. We pick only the credit worthy fellows here, and if they give us something in personal credit we pass the loans too.

Well we can’t expect you to be as shrewd as that can we. We are the brain people.

To tell you frankly that was gross man, to give loans to those who can’t repay them.

You say there was high liquidity crisis? May be you mean there was enough loose change with the banks to throw around.

But should they throw it to all and sundry? Have you ever heard such things happening anywhere in the world? Did you consider whether the guy had a wallet even?

This is what I call unbelievable. I feel like that English man who said he doesn’t believe it when he saw the Giraffe for the very first time.

Easy loans to finance houses my god!

But there had to be a plan, you can’t just throw around cash even if you have it in plenty. What about recovering it friend, even the US banks (We don’t have a high opinion of them at present considering everything) might think of that would they not?

Oh that was what the mortgage was about? They get the house if the moron doesn’t pay up?

Probably the idea came from some Indian brain. We are pretty good at such things.

Then what went wrong. If the poor bastard can’t pay up the banks get the house, don’t they? They can resell it and recover costs, so where is the hitch and why is this crisis?

Oh we know all about that. Demand would increase prices and naturally developers would charge in to swindle people out of their money, land value would go up there would soon be more houses than buyers resulting in a crash in land and house value and everything else.

Man, who was managing business in the US? You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what would happen in such a scenario as they say.

People who borrowed money to buy up houses expecting their value to go up would be unable to pay interest rates once the values plummet. They would ditch their houses rather than pay more than the house is worth. The banks would be left with houses they can’t sell!

Really what were the banks expecting? That god would come to their rescue once that happens? This is bad fiscal management brother. It seems that the Us Bank management believed in the might of US real estate. They never expected the prices to fall.

They probably have never seen a utility curve!

That is unpardonable. You can’t do business on the basis beliefs and national feelings.

The banks coupled with firms dealing in Mortgage Backed Securities and the Insurance companies have landed the US economy in a soup (consequently the world economy too).

We just don’t see that the bail out package of $700/- is going to put it back on line.

Bad economics bro’s and sis’s of America!

Anyway banks are not so bad off are they? They have the deposits coming in from their customers. But the goose of financial Institutions seems to be cooked.

Would buying up bad securities by the government steady the economy? We certainly have our doubts dears, going by what we have seen up to now.

The banks thought they could float weak loans without risk shifting the main responsibility to the MBS firms and Insurance companies. Brilliant short sighted economical mastery.

Now would the US banks ever think of giving loans to any one? Well well well!

I bet they would not even if you manage the entire gold reserve in the US treasuries.

Not this time mate!

If you don’t believe me try your luck at some bank.

The sad part is you guys have gotten us into trouble too. We were living happily by exporting brains (The cheaper variety of course. We are trying to come up with a strain which is capable of finer deeds.)

Well who knew houses would cause so much trouble in the world.

The abode of our friend the horn tail and hooves.

‘h’, I might be in a fix!

[There he goes again! Is there no end to this? Would some one please shoot down the guy?

There is one blessing though- the guy is inventive!

‘h’ indeed!]

Well I am disappointed; here I am, trying to make every one up to date. And what do I get in return? This!

Anyway if you feel that way let me make amends. I shall give you some clues. (I am in a very forgiving mood lately!)
Watch closely, here comes the first clue at a gallop.

“If Max has a Planck what mechanics would he use on it?”

[To break his head he means?]

Friends do I see a spark? A glimmer of intelligence? No? None whatsoever?

Still at the ocean of ignorance?

Well naught to worry about. We are all set here, raring to go to the next clue. It is already in the oven.

Here it jumps.

“There is only one thing constant in the world.”

It is not love, it is not truth, it is not sorrow, and it is not your mother-in-law fair friends.

Any idea?

Does the old grey matter still refuse to come forth with guess?

Well in that case I might be a little smarter than you are, with a smatter of “innolij” (Acknowledge please)

Alright I will let you have it with all the 26 zero’s and a 6624.

Still no idea? Well it’s the clanks ponstant. I mean the Planck’s constant. (Don’t mistake me I have this sorry habit of confusing words sometimes)

Now as we have established what ‘h’ actually is after some soul searching, I might take up the thread of my supplication again.

I am in a fix.

And what a fix!

The fix has to do with numerology.

As per the delectable system of divination this ‘h’ is trouble.

But why?

Well because it is verily he!

Quickly who?

That one, the mean guy, the Mr. Hyde of god, the ineffable Shaitan.

You now say “Crap”

But I say “Hark”

Remember I am smarter than you are. Learn from the master himself.

Let us do away with the 26 zero’s outright. They don’t mean nothing.

What is left? I mean to the right of the zero’s?

6624!

Tell me what do you see in them?

Nothing?

Look closely.

What follows the two sixes?

You would say 2 and 4 wont you?

Well I say it is a six!

How did I constantan it?

‘Simple’ arithmetic-2+4 make 6.

[The only one to object would be a character in Basheer’s novel. He had once found that 1+1 make a still bigger 1 at school!]

Y’ll know what three sixes make! (If it doesn’t break you!)

It makes sh sh sh (you don’t utter the wicked one’s name.

True followers of numerology would not be satisfied with as little as that, I know.

So let us go deeper into it.

First add all the four numbers together in the true numerological tradition.

6+6+(2+4) = 18!

( Let us not add the last two together for the sake of ‘brevity’. As they say brevity is the soul of whit.)

Divide the figure thus arrived at, by three. (Why 3? Well you see we need to show that three sixes are contained in the constant. It is imperative to prove our theory.)

Viola, we get six! That means there are three sixes in germinal (for want of a better word) form within the figure we arrived at.

Proof positive that our friend the horn tail and hooves is contained in the constant.

You now know why this can’t be divided any further. For it is the seed of all division in the universe. My dears, the dark one is hiding at the atomic level.

Take heed.

Whither you perpies

My idiotic perpies are beautiful; they have done everything to make my life hell, but seem to be eating the humble pie now.

That is but natural, what they carry on their shoulders is not made up of any durable material, it is made up of flesh and bone and would wither away (as the state does at the end of Chammunism) if some one does something on it. Well I am not the guy to back off from a fight. I like to imagine their grey matter shrinking and evaporating altogether.

Actually there is nothing to shrink and evaporate. You can’t shrink and evaporate vacuum can you? The darling perpies think that by putting their heads together they can fill in their vacuous heads, but let me ask you, would quadrillion blanks create a word, would the hen ever have a mammary gland, can you ever pick flowers from the sky? Well if you can do all that you can fill my perpies with brains.

When I think of all those hot air balloons at one place in serious consultation I feel exultant. This is a war I have already won. I can home in on to them any minute; I can fuck up their vacant cerebrums in an instant with a word, with slight movement and even with a smile. I love every minute of it.

Friends what is life without enemies? Enemies are like the nectar of youth, it rejuvenates you. It adds meaning to life. If there is a god somewhere as they say, I am thankful to it for letting me have these imbeciles to play with.
The darling gas buddies of my life. What would I do without you?

Some times I feel great compassion for them too. I know that they always picture themselves as subservient to me, though they and their cronies pretend it is the other way round (the poor darlings do not know that all the ways are within the mind. No amount of pushing and shoving is going to get them anywhere in it if they don’t know what it actually is.)

I am afraid that I have involuntarily made them the devotees of kuttichathan, a very mischievous low spirit they say. (I hear that they go there with their whole families now. The sorry plight of my high and mighty colleagues. They are alternately at Sabarimala and Parassinikatavu at present (Both the homes of powerful deities as per popular concept. Well I have nothing against these deities you know. But when I am around and stands before them in flesh why should you visit some one else!).

Whenever they are pushed into a corner by me they cry out.

Ente muththappaa. (My grampa- the deity seems to be conceived as the ancestor of all)

Or

Ente ayyappaaa (My Ayyappa- This deity resides at Sabarimala a very popular place of religious tourism, they say it was a Buddhist temple once. The Brahmins in this land seem to have converted it into a Hindu temple.)

Both these deities are Hindu. But my preppies are of different religious beliefs. That do not matter much it seems, they go to these places all the same. Nothing like a powerful enemy to teach religious tolerance!

The prepis with their lovely talent for inventiveness have even led a few kids astray. Their frantic activities always make me wonder. They are the strength in numbers (though nothing in their heads), and they have the backing of every invertebrate in the land. They have the money, the means what not. Just what are they afraid of? I bet that they can’t tell themselves, it is emotional, my presence makes them uncomfortable, it shows their deeds in a different color altogether which they dislike.

They just can’t move away from me and go on with their lives. Well if I can help it I won’t allow it also you know. Every single moment of their lives would be filled up with my thoughts. I am very particular on this. I won’t have it otherwise.

Once some one comes to me on their own accord, they are mine till the end of the world.

That is how subtle relationships work out. Once you sink your tentacles into some one you are in for eternity. They should not have done it in the first place. Only the fools believe that it is a one way bridge. When you build a bridge people enter both ways. Think on it. It might clear the cobwebs inside the vacant spaces that are within your mind.

They are still pretty confident when they are together, though they come up with ideas of involving kids to fight against me every now and then. Well my darlings, fight like grown ups, fight with your mind if you can. But that is the very problem is it not. You fail at every mental game that we play, and then you take it to the physical level. Who won my loves? Who won? Only those lose control that can’t fight with their wits.

My sweet preppies (Let me tell you, this is another sweet, not the kid sweet I usually talk of. So don’t take me wrong) I have obliged you in etching these few lines for you though I am rushed off my feet. It is to comfort you really. There is no thrill in fighting with a bunch of morons without taking some punches all the time. There is something called compassion isn’t there.

I am giving you some little leeway by this post. Make the most of it and bandy it around.

Wish you well my precious gas buddies. We will meet after Christmas.

And a very sloppy new year too.( Not to you, rest of the world. You enjoy the best things and the best times!)

The Rains gone country

These are the months of no rain here. Well, when did we last receive rains in the preceding several months? I can’t remember. It is heart rending to see our soil now. She is porous. She can’t hold water on top like other soils do. She is the greediest of the lot. Gulps water down like a desert. Our soil can’t survive without a sea of water every year.

We are in for a drought it seems.

No one is bothered.

Well anyway we are the great optimists around in the world. The god will bring rain the earth would collect it and we have just to tap it you know, and all would be well. Doesn’t the god have a responsibility towards us? But then would we visit the temples mosques and churches? That is superstition and we would have none of that. The times have changed Mr. God. We are much more intelligent than we were ever before. We accept you as a myth, a strange and interesting remnant of our past.

We are no more willing to knock our heads on the stone blocks to be blessed. The very thought of it ha!

Well whatever our affinity to god and nature are we seem to be in for it this time. We are crazy about water. We might be the only people in the world that takes a bath more than twice a day. It is not any bath that we take. Our sense of hygiene being fanatical we use up an entire piece of soap to get ourselves clean every time we bathe.

You think it is limited to the city folks in the state? (There are no real cities in Kerala other than perhaps the twin ones of Cochi and Ernakulam; all the others are just overgrown villages.). Well no my good friend no. The urban population might find it hard to get enough water inside their flats and their congested living environment. Naturally they would be the more dirty ones in this blessed state.

We who reside in the villages or in the suburban areas really go for it. We are the guys who use up soaps by the truckloads every day. If possible we would bathe thrice everyday. How do we brush? Brother can you brush without at least twenty liters of water! Impossible, what friend you are not washing you truth brush are you are BruSHing your teeth. Incidentally we follow the way they brush in the commercials on dental hygiene. We squeeze the entire tube on to the brush and

“zlinkh of zla nize fleelinglglgl whehnj ju ju itch. Hlu hlu hlum.”

(“Think of the nice feeling when you do it”. The rest is gurgling as the discerning might guess intuitively)
We wash our hands and feet and face when we go out and when we come in. Mostly these are elaborate rituals with soaps scrapping and rubbing involved. And unlike in the west we don’t use toilet papers when we go to the loo. We use one gallon heavy duty water for the purpose every single instance. Should not be untidy what!

Imagine us in a desert. We would die of the sheer horror of not seeing water anywhere. There are 44 rivers in this state and hundreds of lakes, tanks ponds and wells in this long thin strip of land. (All are presently drying up). Because of the tremendous acumen we display in these matters we allow every river to take away the water to the Arabian Sea. Water management? Does any one manage water as we do?

We need six months of rain in this land. If we don’t get it we are cooked. Still our wonderful earth would look resplendent. Trees would be green, the grass would be green, and the minds of every one who visits the land would be also green- with envy that is. Yet we would be in the clutches of the drought.

We still foolishly believe that the rains would come. It is not a belief based on factual evidences, it is a feeling, it’s a hope.

But such optimism and bravado is not going to save us this time. We are totally dependant on Hydel power in this long strip of land. We have already power cuts in here because the water level have gone down in the major dams.( birth rates are going to be on the increase, for what are we to do in the half hour blackout we gets every night at a very sloppy time.? There is the question of recreation you know.

Being very progressive we never would allow thermal, nuclear power stations in the strip of land. Instead we are ready to purchase power from other sates and the central grid for killing amounts of money. The one good thing is we do not have any industry other than the domestic baby producing industry to worry about. This later “industry” does not require power as some know.

I do not know what is happening in this land. We are a dependant people with no agriculture and Industry to bring in money. The only source of our income is our poor darlings working in the Arabian Gulf and elsewhere in the world. What if that source dries up?

A high literacy rate and birth rate a low death rate, a doctor for every 50 people ( and two engineers for every single citizen some say!) with no real financial structure to support it up well this is the most strange form of development in the whole world.

I pray for this foolish people that there be rain in the land, with all the pride and arrogance and aggression of my people they are just a bunch of idiots, without any ideas about future or even the present. We are sitting on a powder keg. None seems to have realized it even now.

A story on bottlenecks

The bottle of course was fast draining now. I had held on to it for a whole year, only taking small, tiny, occasional amounts from it. That was all gone now. But I was now past caring and I was also fast becoming maudlin (all bright).

I said with tears smarting in my eyes. (It was smoke really. I can’t touch alcohol without smoking through it)

Do you mind cousin?

I do.

What do you mind?

I mind everything.

You do?

I bloody well do!

Well I am interested in life.

No bloody way!

Honest to god.

Gosh man, how much is the subscription?

He tipped the plate of red potato chips in to his mouth direct. His eyes were misty. But I still had some sense left in me. He is an idiot, this cousin of mine, I thought ruefully.

I wanted to kill him. Subscription, what in the name of god….

What the hell are you blabbering about?

He peered at me steadily for some moments.

It is a magazine isn’t it? LIFE magazine. I have seen one or two issues…. God this liquid is harsh. Does it have to taste so bad?

A magazine? Cousin, it is this maggoty life I am talking about.

No… your not!

I am too.

The hell you are. Oh…….you are now?

Yes. That's why I blog.

Bull.

On swami saranam.

Bull.

OK on my own bloody zygote.

Don’t go there. There was no call for that. I believe you.

You do?

Well …you have the bottle!

Don’t blabber, and tell me your opinion.

My opinion?

Yours.

Why?

I have the bottle.

You have the bottle.

Its mine.

And you want opinion.

I want opinion.

No other way round?

None.

You have a blog

I have one.

God, that is gross man! Never expected it of you! You should never have done that.

Why is that Mr. Heep? Can’t I wucking frite?

You see, you have put me in a pred …. predi…

Predicament?

That is it. And who is this Heep guy?

You.

No I mean actually?

Charles Dickens.

Anyway let me consider it.

Being ever so inconsiderate up to now, that is?

Exactly. Now sh..sh I am being serious here… Bull!

I still can kick you out of the room.

Hell. Pour the liquid on. Let it flow.

This is Chivaz Regal son. The flow is ebbing.

Pops, tell me, who was this guy Chivaz.

The boy was a girl. It came from ‘She was Regal’

Was she?

Could have been.

Nothing is sure in life is it? Where were you then? Well here are my views.

So you are interested in life, what of it? So is every one, even suicides are so. They do away with their lives because they can’t live the sort of lives they want! What is so special about your life and views that others should know about? More importantly why trouble them with it? Why not leave them alone!

I was pissed.

Sorry cousin, I can’t, for I have found an answer to some terrible questions here! It goes like this:

Every one of us occupies a definite bit of space and possibly a special type of time that we could call our own in this universe

He roared

Guys don’t listen to him, this guy is bad.

I did not care a hoot and went on.

Naturally it follows that all of us are unique and in that sense our lives and views are definitely worth relating….
He was having it good by this time.

You have made your statement and have won your point. But do you really have something to tell us?

Well doesn’t everyone have something to relate for that matter cousin, the problem is finding someone to listen to it.

My god, you want to make others listen too. Good grief, you are into it big way man.

I have the bottle.

Well did I say anything, anything at all? You go on, you lord, duke king and emperor. You divine incarnate.

Question.

Fire.

How do I make them listen to this cry from the wilderness? There could be a billion bloggers around and every one with their own thing to say, with their own special cocktail to serve. Who could say which of them would appeal to others?

By this time I was again growing all bright (Maudlin). Yet I continued resolutely.

None can. But that need not deter me, for this is an existential requirement…..

“Exist potential requirement?

Existential – on the basis of we being alive- requirement.

There are such?

So I gather.

This world is bad.

I had been pretty well worked up by then.

You see cousin my blog is a statement that a certain incarnation have visited this earth and had labored with the rest to produce this interesting thing we call life! But was my support really necessary to produce it?

It sure does.

Will you keep quite for a moment? Can’t you see, actually it is not a question of necessity even, it is a question of being here and being a part of it, which fortunately or unfortunately I am.

For us you mean.

Cousin you are interrupting my flow of thought. I have the bottle. Don’t forget that. The harder I try the less chance I find of removing myself from the scheme of things in the universe. I might remove myself from one sphere but would have to materialize in some others then.

You would haunt us as a ghost too! Wouldn’t let us live? You have everything pretty well worked out…….

I was suddenly losing him. It was then that I suddenly decided he is less important than my bed. So naturally I do not remember anything after that.

Eating out

( A hasty caricature)

I was just returning from my walk in the morning, yes I keep perfectly fit. You know, I am fitter than some of the students that I teach. Fit like a fiddle, but no one to play it other than my poor wife. Yeah she was good some time back. Now the age is catching up with her and with the children around, it is difficult too. Well that is life.
The College is on a hill top. It is a good walk to its ground and back. I never could understand this policy of having colleges on hills. Does people require rarefied atmosphere to study. But then what are they studying? Only those things that we teach them, is it not?

Well we don’t know half of what we teach. Oh I teach literature. And I am not bad at covering up my mistakes.
To tell you the truth I never cared about the language in the first place. But my father was adamant. It was those times you know, when children can’t oppose their parents.

The old man had studied it at collage and had become a professor. He wanted me to follow suit. I would have liked to do something else, take dance lessons for example. Well I had a supple figure and pleasant face. Some of my students still call me kamalahasan. My fantasies were all centered on becoming like him.

You know the first part of the movie in which that song is Mounam polum madhuram (even the silence is sweet). I regularly dreamed of Jayaprada then. Had sent a few letters to her too without the ken of my father. She never replied, even to the letter with my photo in it.

Tell you what; my wife is not like Jayaprada at all.

Luckily my children take after me. The younger one is not all that great. But may be it has some thing to do with what we did at his birth. Fourteen years is a long time. How young I felt then. I could have taken the whole world alone. How time passes.

We did have some good times, me and my wife, even after the birth of the first one. She is studying for law now, the first one, not my wife, her choice. I did not interfere. New age, new rules. But I still do not understand what she is going to do with it.

There is no future in law, all the children of my friends are studying for either medicine or engineering. That is not very difficult to arrange really. Every village in this blessed land has a medical college and every ward in the village has an Engineering college. All of them are in the privet sector. One needs to pay good money to get the children in.

But I could do that, you know with the introduction of the ***scheme we do get good bucks now. Fortunately we did not have to sweat for it too. Yes there was some talk of making the PhD as the criteria for getting in to the pay scale.

Let me ask you who can do that at the age of fifty? Even if it could be done, what purpose would it serve?
None of us were crazy enough to even think about it. We still got the raise.

Well that is what is wonderful about this land of mine. We went on strike and that was that. The government acted tough for a few days to show the public that they are against it. But in the end they caved in, that is the real strength of organized struggle.

Every segment of the society supported us, for we have been teaching them you see, and nothing worse has happened other than what we see around now.( what more could possibly happen?)

Did we not send something to the moon recently? Well most of those guys belonged to an earlier generation, yet the ones we teach are not bad are they. They would make good politicians. And every one would agree that that is what this country needs the most.

Well I did not watch the launch of the Chandrayan, who bothers, but I would like to buy some land in the moon though. Otherwise the children may call us short sighted.

As I said this place is as bad as when I came here some twenty or so years ago. It is showing no signs of improvement at all.

I am now at the gate of my house. There she was lying in the early rays of the sun, (Not my missus my new car). I am quite proud of it.

I had an old rickety thing, which was alright, but you know the children thought it was old. This one is from the same company but is the best model around. Worth the money every bit and luckily I had enough to spend on it too.
Not that I use it a lot. Rarely goes out. But of course we do visit the restaurants in the evenings. That is inevitable. Don’t make anything at home you see, why bother; can feed five families with what I earn now. I don’t bandy about it, but you know you have to spend some of it.

There is this restaurant that we love. The food is great; we don’t eat much for that matter. We are conscious of our weights.

We are pioneering the eating out movement in this place. There would be others surely in our wake. That is how the society progresses.

Well I have to take leave of you for a little while. Has this time to spend at the collage you know.
Has to keep the wolf off my door.

“Difficultext”

Y’ll know that I have this wicked habit of turning Alvin Toffler into Francis Fukuyama and Jan Huizinga into a Japanese gentleman.

(Well this “I am” is the most irresponsible dude in our intelligent species).

Of course they would naturally want to waste me if they can locate me (Anybody with a GPS?).

Or would they look down on me with withering scorn?

(I leave it to you to imagine the look. I shall only provide you with the dialogue.)

- The insignificant li’l worm crawling in a third world country!

[Let us consider the dialogue in full:

“What is that crunchy again?”

“You mean Hinjia Sire?”

“Do I? Well anyway, who lives there?”

““Lives” Sire!”

“Anything amiss?”

“A ‘miss’ sire! A dreadful one. Our ‘intelligence purports’ to say that no one actually ‘lives’ there.”

“That’s gross, but how come?”

“Live on what? None other than the Juice have survived on the nectar of Hope.

“Yet there is Cape of Good Hope”

“No one wears that now”

“Sad, still how distressed are these people?”

“Pretty buttressed in by China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Srilanka sire”

“ Dangerousticus diplomaticus problematicus!”

“Naturalliticus”

“Should we drop manna from our F 16’s, but my god are they Aryans? Give me the lowdown on these Anthropo Pithecus”

“Well sire it is a country inhabited by two distinct racial strains named Proto Hippocratoids and Grotto Patientoids”

“In brief?”

“That’s the brief and full of it, or do you want me to de-brief?”

“Hmm!”

“What Sire?”

“What you mean by what?”

“Are you pissed at summim….?”

“I only said I saw your point”

“Oh Sire this is sheer bliss, you are too lucky!”

“Well thanks man, but what makes you think so?”

“As if you don’t know! Don’t sire don’t!”

“The jolly truth is, I still ducking font!”

“Sire you are the first to see my point”

The Sire looks at the man with an expression which suggests:

He is that type is he!

And says brusquely:

“Anyway let us come to the po……I mean the business at hand”

He conceals his hand behind immediately.

The man looks for the hand with intensity and at last resigns to his fate and intones.

“You have to just to ask you know sire”

“Don’t I know that? But coming to the po…..hmm tell me about Hinjia, do the Hinjians live well?”

“Blithely.”

“The two strains, do they like each other?”

“Can you re phrase the question more placidly sire?”

“Affinity betwixt them existext?”

“Difficultext”]

Well unlike in the above dialogue I don’t want them to happen, these name and country swaps, yet they happen without my ken. What then?

We can’t just say Nompenh, Cattle Penn, and Battleship Potemkin and put up with it.

We have to be doin summin.

Honest to Beelzebub, all this shit happens unknowingly.

(Another sorry admission to make. I have no idea what the word ‘unknowingly’ actually means. I haven’t bothered to look it up in the thesaurus.

Some say thesauruses are some kind of dictionaries. Well what can I say!

They may be in the know. Every one has their own point of view haven’t they?

And I am ready to defend their right to believe in it, but dictionaries! Man…..!

All the same if ‘unknowingly’ means anything other than “without my knowledge” or “ “unknown to me” you are welcome to genuinely mope and hope that I wont make holy bloopers like that in the future(future of course was created in-absentio)

It never realizes it doesn’t exist and encroaches into our very present.

Sadly one can’t do anything without being suspected of sabotaging something. If some one says something others ascribe it to the ‘thing in itself’. Sad, sad what has the world come to?

Though I never planned it this way I am glad that the world has turned out in this form. There is an unbelievable amount of blithest wickedness in the world. You can partake of it if you have the rhino hide to hide you.

If that worries you well and good.

I am the satisfaction iddself!

If this world was full of laughter and goodness, I would rather be in the ‘out of the world’ universe.

I like a little bit of everything. Having said good bye to ego long ago I am all go.

We Indians (barring the two ancient species mentioned afore) are normally a very intelligent people. Have you seen any of the Hindi movies? They make you like the world the more!

You got it I hope.

(After writing this post I carefully checked it and was satisfied that it is absolutely meaningless. So rest assured that none would find anything meaningful in it.

Well you are not taking my words seriously are you?)

The 'Gray's' of Life

As I told you in the previous post, I was totally confused about truth in my younger days. People seemed to be advising one thing and practicing something else.

My mind was in turmoil. I was assailed by hundreds of doubts. But the greatest problem was I could not express them in any manner.

Well like every child I was able to articulate about the things I saw and was emotionally involved in. But when it came to thinking in the abstract and putting such things into words I was dumb.

I was not familiar with the grey area in between truth and falsehood. I never knew that such a thing existed even, in those days.

This confusion persisted all through my young life. My greatest disadvantage then was an inability or disinterest rather in falsifying my feelings. I was never sophisticated in that way. I could never pretend I was happy when I was not and morose when I was feeling otherwise for whatever reasons.

Culture is like art, it projects beautiful lies. With sophistication numerous internal and external influences begins to play on the mind. Even activities like picking up a cup to drink and sitting in a chair becomes a regulated and complex activity. For those who are taught to do them ‘correctly’ from child hood these become second nature.

But to children like me who were allowed to go wild such complex activities have always been difficult to learn. Not that I drink from the tap directly every time or sit on the arms of the chair whenever I get the chance. I might be doing all the proper things. But the hitch is I do not see the point in them.

When you don’t see the point of anything, why should you follow it? Shouldn’t you be truthful to your feelings rather than follow what people call propriety.

This question of truth and culture and art and sophistication used to trouble me a lot in those days.

Then one day I chanced on a book named ‘Devi Bhagavata’. It relates the tale of Shakhty the sole goddess of the universe. The book has some intuitive insights too.

Here is one.

“Touch (sparsha) is the highest source of pleasure among all species, so there is no sin in pursuing its delights”
Well ….. No sane person would deny it would they?

Anyway, there was a story in the book which caught my particular interest. It was the story of Satya vratha (the truthful).

The guy was totally stupid and was thrown out of the house to fend for himself by his parents. He did not have any talents and had never had learned anything. His parents were fed up with him.

He banged on the door of his house to let him again in. But his parents were unmoved. He was a disgrace to them. He was not even able to learn the basics of their trade. Every one was laughing at them.

They shut their doors and mind to their stupid offspring. Well some times people can be so heartless.
The poor guy cried his eyes out, but no one was ready to take him in.

In his extreme distress he decided to leave the world of people and go into the forest to pray till he became wise. He set out for the nearest forest and was soon established in it. His life was simple. He would sit somewhere till he got tired and would sleep the rest of the time.

As I said he was illiterate and had never received initiation from anyone. So he did not know how to pray even.

Yet he continued in the forest for years on end, subsisting on whatever he could get from nature and reflecting sadly about his life.

Soon he became known all over the territory for his great truthfulness. Because of his complete simplicity he never could say anything other than the truth at all times.

Then the most trying day of his life arrived.

A huntsman, after wounding a boar, was chasing it. In its frantic run to escape from the hunter the boar burst on to the place where our hero was sitting. It was tired and had lost much blood. In its fright and weakness it saw the bush behind our hero and hid in it.

The plight of the boar had shaken our hero and he was hoping that the hunter would never come that way. He was a kindly soul and had always felt the same for all beings in nature.

But the hunter who was in hot pursuit, appeared immediately. He knew about Sathya vratha’s truthfulness and asked him.
Where did the boar go sir?

Now, our man could never utter an untruth in his life. The poor guy was biologically incapable of doing so.

Yet his heart had gone out to the poor quaking boar; but he also knew that however he tried he could never articulate anything other than the truth.

In deep anguish he cried out in his mind to whatever forces there were in the world, to help him in the dilemma.
The hunter again asked.

Tell me which way it went.

Then the great goddess of the whole world was pleased with our hero and made him into a poet. He now said:

“Even nature remains silent on this, what do you want me to say then?”

The hunter was non-plussed. He had never heard such words before. He departed ruing his bad luck.

Our hero became the most celebrated poet of the times.

A simpler story on the subject of truth could not be found. I thought it answered my question perfectly. Saving a life seems much greater than telling a truth.

Here was a man (who was truthful all his life) suddenly being made into a poet so that he could circumvent a direct question to save a life.

Such circumvention or camouflage or lie is what art, culture and sophistication may be all about. The story says that saving a life is the highest creative activity of all.

You might not believe in god, but you still do believe in beauty, in whatever form it appeals to you. Well beauty emerges only on realizing the worth of other living things.

May be there is only one truth in the world, that life is important in all its forms. Everything may revolve around this primary advice

The Booby Trap

As you may know, there is this thing called speaking the truth.

Well I can’t tell if you have ever practiced it in your life. But honestly I did try it once or twice in mine. The results have not been very encouraging.

The fault could have been entirely mine; I took others at their words.

“Speak the truth, don’t lie” All used to tell me when I was very young.

So I tried hard at it.

“Why is Raman squeezing Cheeru’s boobies?”

I had just seen it happen. Both Raman and Cheeru were our servants. They were behind the firewood shed when I chanced upon them. I was intrigued. She seemed to be in some pain. Her face looked distorted.

She was making a sort of hoosh, hoosh noise too. Intuitively I guessed something bad was afoot.

The wonder was that she was not crying out. That did put a little doubt in my head. As I looked on, the situation was becoming more and more violent.

I was frightened.

So I ran to where others were and expressed myself somewhat vehemently.

It was as if the world had suddenly gone deaf. No one seemed to be listening. They did not look at me even. It was as though I did not exist in the world.

I did not like it at all. I never liked being ignored.

In this case I had spoken the honest truth and I was being totally disregarded.

But even that did not mater, Cheeru was in mortal danger. I had seen her being pushed back on to the wall. She was definitely hurting. I was sure of that, if I was sure of anything in the whole wide world.

So I became a little more insistent.

“Why is Raman squeezing Cheeru’s boobies?”

My mother cried out in anguish.

“I should die this moment.”

I was alarmed, but on closer look nothing seemed to be the matter with her.

Grand mother too seemed furious over something.

“The shameless wretches”

But my uncle looked greatly amused. Both my mother and grand mother had been always unanimous in saying that “Ravi is mostly dumb”. But in this instance he was the only one who seemed to have heard me.

“Ha, ha the swine didn’t even look round, did they?”

That was too much for my granny. In a flash she turned on him.

“Ravi…….!”

I had thought always, my uncle, he was never the one to fight with his mother. He immediately left the room.

Seeing this, his wife became indignant. Normally she wouldn’t dare utter a word in front of the elders. She did so now.

“The disgrace!” Her voice was a screech.

She was still angrily looking towards the door through which her husband had just disappeared. She seemed intensely wrathful all of a sudden.

Well none are behaving normally today I thought.

I was still glancing from face to face hoping that they would take notice of me at last.

Then Malathi aunty, who always seemed to be in another world, roused herself from her reveries to ask.

“What happened?”

“That” there was a terrible pause “is the last straw!” Granny said. She was livid.

But Malathy aunty did not seem to mind it in the least and went back to her dreamy world again.

Still none of them were taking me seriously. I was losing control too.

“Ma” I yelled.

My mother appeared to be fighting several feelings at the same time by the look of the face she turned towards me.

“Are you going to stand there or going to disappear for ever you lying boy?” Mother shouted at me. “I have’d enough of you”

The black looks on other faces also convinced me that I had done something terribly wrong. How could that be? I spoke the truth and Cheeru could be dying at that very instant.

I could not understand it at all. Why did mother scold me? I retreated from their presence quite crest fallen. These grown ups are a bad lot, I decided, they don’t know the first thing of anything. Cheeru might be dead by now.

But surprise of surprises, Cheeru had not died and she and Raman looked very pleased and happy too, when I saw them again after some time.

They of course did have a sheepish look on their faces whenever they had to come before me from then onwards.

Once Raman even told me.

“We don’t always say what we see you know.”

Well as I was saying I was confused then. What wrong did I do? That confusion lasted for a long time. Why can’t we speak truth, why is the truth taken as a lie?

Much later I came by a copy of Manusmrithy.

The famous (or infamous considering your personal point of view) law giver has allowed to speak a lie on three occasions.

1. To protect one’s life
2. To Protect ones family
3. To protect ones belongings

Well you can make whatever of it. I am still confused.

1000 billion Bill Gates’

I don’t really want to be negative, but I am sorry to say that all the preachers of abundance are leading you astray. They have the best of intentions of course, they are trying to help you and perhaps help themselves in the process too. But the fact remains; you don’t have the resources to make every one rich in this world. You just can’t have 1000 billion rich people on our globe, this is a fact.

Imagine a world where you have so many Bill Gates’ equally rich, even as an ideal there is something weird in the concept is there not? If any one of you can visualize it in any detail hats off to you for I can’t.

Well there goes the great theory on the Law of Attraction, where every one is equally ‘blessed’ and equally capable of attracting wealth. I am not saying that positive thoughts can not help you, they can. But they can only help when the situations are favorable. You may even be able to attract wealth and love (both dangerous things to attract if you have your senses about you) by visualizing success.

Agreed even Bill Gates must have dreamed of success before it really came to him. But it was not merely the law of attraction at work in his case was it? There was some talent involved too. He had the good luck to be on the scene at the right moment and come up with something which was useful. He also had the good sense to market it aggressively.

There was a good deal of work involved. There could have been hundreds of obstacles. He could have been cheated out of his inventions (if there are any such) and the company he formed. Anything could have happened. When you start a company and are trying to make a head way you won’t have time to sit back and picture your success in any detail.

Gates was intelligent enough to realize the need of the times. The computers were becoming popular and UNIX was not offering any solutions for small units. He gauged the pulse of the people and was quick to react. As they say rest is history. There was no “secret” in it. It was honest and hard work coupled with good fortune. Not every one could have done it at that point in time.

I like books on positive thinking, not because they are great but they are curious stuff to read. The imagery some of them employ is cute. Here is one for example.

Question: How do you over come the troubles and difficulties in your life?
Well who wouldn’t want to learn that! Some of us would give our right hand to learn the technique won’t we?
The question was asked to Andrew Carnegie or Napoleon Hill, I do not remember whom. They set you a riddle by way of answering it.

Think that you have to get over a mountain and reach the other side at the very next instant. The mountain is large and the time is limited. What would you do?

Well you think up of several options. Climb over it, go round it, dig a tunnel to get to the other side etc. None satisfies the questioner. He says there is not enough time for all that.

At last you give up and ask the other guy what you would do. He replies that you have to become larger than the mountain and step over it. Just like that!

I read it in my youth in a book of Norman Vincent Peale and it has remained with me. Good imagery but unfortunately not very helpful when you are emotionally affected and you are fighting against immense odds.
Take for example the case of this family that lives near my house. It’s the one of the saddest cases I know of. Talking about extreme ill luck, they have it. The eldest of the family, a woman, is wandering about our neighborhood stark mad. A young girl (the child of her dead sister who was being looked after by her) had accidentally died catching fire from their kitchen while the woman was away somewhere. Some say she went crazy after this incident.

This woman used to tend my wife when she was a little kid. Those who know her then say that she was quite fanatical about personal hygiene then. Now she has not a thought in her mind. Sleeps where she pleases and goes about in rags, calls people all sorts of names, smells like hell. Strangely she still remembers my wife and calls her “my own” whenever she catches sight of her.

Her younger brother who was an epileptic had died recently falling into the temple pool. He was around fifty then. He never spoke a word in his life time.

The family is now looked after by the youngest sister of all. She had lost her husband recently and has some five kids to take care of, both hers and of the elder sister who had died some time back. She was doing it by working shifts in many houses including our own. All the children are studying. All of them are boys and there is no one to assist her in her in house work.

A pretty tough life to have already it seemed.

She had been complaining of some pain in her legs for some time now. The pain worsened and she had to be admitted to a hospital. Well it seems that she has some problem with the bone marrow. She can barely stand up now and is in terrible pain. No one has told her about the seriousness of the disease.

They have barely enough to live …….let alone treat her. She is the only earning member in the family.
Do you think that such troubles could be easily stepped over?

I am positive of only one thing about life- that it is negative.

I am not making a rule out of an exception. In reality life is nothing but trouble. We generate fantasies about our heavens to forget what we have actually. Do you think money, fame and positions in life would help you in anyway?

Do you actually think that they would?

Christina Onassis had it all.

That was not enough for her, was it?

This is a wooden post (I know)

Poor guy, I really feel for him. He brought up a girl all alone (her mother had died when she was very young) and made her into an engineer. It was no mean achievement considering he had to dig into his savings to do that. The poor man had lost his job due to retrenchment in the company he worked in.

There was of course the ‘golden shake hand’ which more often than not turns out to be a wooden hand shake in the end.

Well he had some little money all right but not enough to throw it away. He was only a blue collar guy. He had pined over what he could not become and had decided to give his darling girl the opportunities he could not get in his life.

The girl was not bad at studies and got her grades easily. Now she is an engineer.

He had not married when his wife died thinking about the little imp he had to support. Gross error, one should never make sacrifices where one would come the worst off.

When I think of the long chilly nights he had to spend all alone and the house hold chores he had to perform( the darling girl would only open her mouth to swallow what he makes in the kitchen, would never budge from her desk to assist him in the house) I feel for him the more. He was not that old when his wife died.

He even got her through her puberty unassisted. (You get the meaning of course?)

He may have washed her soiled cloths too. The things that the world makes people do if they are not careful!

Well the guy is a saint. He had to be the mother and father to the girl. Tough work brother, very tough work. I grew up with two sisters. There were enough family members and relatives to take care of everything. We had servants besides.

Even then they say that it is some job to bring up a girl.

He did it all alone. He had married late, and is now old and broken inside for more than one reason.

The wonderful girl he brought up has turned out to be terribly insensitive and selfish to the core. She is the ‘quintessential’ Indian engineer now, totally white collar. Hates everything manual.

Still kindly allows her father to cook and wash for her.

She is back at home after her studies. Retires into her room early and would only issue forth around 11 in the morning. Has no interest in taking up a job. Is not very nice to her father if he does not produce something nice to devour at meal times.

He is no chef, so he rises early and begins the hunt for a tasty meal from the restaurants in the neighbor hood. This has to repeat every day morn, noon and even.

Then he takes the broom and towels to get the house into some shape.

In the meantime she has taken good care of herself too. Has a nice love affair going with one of her classmates. May be the long absences into her room might be to daydream about her near and dear lover.

Her daddy is her worst enemy now. He is uncultured, uneducated and “country”. She would not go out with him and avoids being seen with him as far as possible.

The poor man was an idealist. He had certain principles and stuck to them. The feeble guy thought that everything would turn out well if he did his bit.

He never understood that life is a bitch. Even at sixty he hasn’t learned. I heard him complaining to some one the other day.

He had terrible shoulder pains and could not move. He was ready even then to go out and bring something home for his girl. But he could have done with a refreshing early morning tea.

He called her from her reveries and stated his case. The intelligent girl looked at him blankly and remained silent. It was as if she did not recognize the existence of a kitchen in the house.

He could not shout at her, being a motherless child, and he can’t cry, being a man. In the end he broke down and cried.

She did not move a muscle on her face. He began to understand then; they were totally on different wavelengths.

There were tears in his voice when he was relating the incident.

I do not know if any one would agree with me on this point. It might appear a little cruel too.

But a guy in his position who had to lose his whole life in the bargain should never have aspired big for the girl.

He should have sent her to ordinary schools and to an arts course in collage and should have planned to marry her off when she came of age. It would have been easy to train her in the house hold cores then.

It is the certainty of stardom which makes some girls crass even though they may be intelligent otherwise.

Girls are adaptive and would fit any roles if the options are limited. If this girl had just an ordinary education she would have dreamed of a nice married life that being the only option out.

Girls are the most practical souls in the world.

And also he should have married. There is nothing like step mother to instill humility in a girl.

Terrible words, what with the Women are Lib and all in the background! But facts are facts.

He had no business to give her ideas about her importance. His stupid decisions ruined his life. He can’t complain at the moment.

Well his darling daughter has become an engineer now.

And he is drinking the very “inchi neer” of life.

( Inchi=ginger, neer= juice, A strong herbal remedy to get the worms out of your tummy( citation needed) and keep the nausea also out, pretty bitter stuff to take they say!)

‘Inchi neer’ is how some call engineers in this part of the world, nothing disparaging about it, I avow!

TAKING THE ROPE FOR A SNAKE

I am saddened by the fact that my readers are getting used to me. Even when I make obvious gaffes they grit their teeth and go on with their reading.

But I do not wonder at it anymore now. When I wrote Eric Fromm instead of Eric Berne no one noticed. This happened several times. Not even a flicker of realization among my friends. The other day I made Jan Huizinga a Japanese gentleman (I really thought him to be Japanese you know. You would believe it won’t you?)

There is this interesting guy in our land. He is an intellectual. He was interviewed by one of our TV channels the other day. He says that he would do it first and think about it later. I whole heartedly support him you know. He is a real gem.

Well no reaction to my blunders at all. Sad, sad indeed. They should at least have stood up for the poor souls who were being misrepresented.

It is not easy to earn a name in the brutal world of intellectual pursuits. When one has earned it by the dint of hard work no one should deny them the stature they deserve.

Well the fact that I see every one the same does not relegate the issue at all. What if I make Idi Ameen an English gentleman in the coming days? I might you know, I just might. There are moments of forgetfulness in which I mistake the rope for a snake (I am yet to make the other mistake of taking the snake for a rope. That would have been dangerous)

Well the fact is that the things that I say do not weigh much in the sublime scale of human utterances. It is mostly an exercise in enunciating sounds or words to be exact.

Some say that words stand as symbols and also convey meanings. But to me words are just sounds and sounds are beautiful in themselves without any meanings attached to them.

I am delighted with words like ‘gullupullu’ “sangustu’ ‘ Aiopave’ and the like. I constructed them even now as I am typing these very lines. May be they have some sort of a meaning in some languages. Hence some may suggest that I look into them and start being wise for once.

Well what of “ Blushbloom” and “Plushgloom”. These could be terribly meaningful too. They might conjure up images in your mind. I beg to be excused from blame if they totally destroy your peace of mind.

There is this ancient theory in my land -The mantra sastra (the science of mantra). It bases its scheme on a simple (hmm) principle that every thing has a sound body. It follows that every sound has a form. If you vocalize any sound a considerable number of times it produces its form in the subtle and even the gross levels of the material universe. Combining different sounds could bring forth lethal forms.

These guys have discovered any number of such combinations in their meditative states and have been kind to let us know of them too.

Some of the words they use are just beyond compare.

“hraam hreem hroom hraim hraum hrahah” is one such. It is for bravery in battle.

(Did you quake? You should have, it is supposed to instill fear.

No wonder too, for if you start to intone it in front of your enemies they would either be so powerless with laughter or would take to their heels pitying you.

Just imagine the effort required to learn it by rote and vocalize it!)

Certain texts on the subject say that it would bring forth an ape god of immense power that some times you would be running from the guy all your life cursing the moment you thought of bringing him forth. (Don’t ever dare to recite them even in play. The results might surprise you.)

Joking aside I will let you into a secret. Most of our police men do recite these. It is supposed give them strength and guts. (Going by the paunches they sport they have enough guts already it seems!). Warriors of old seem to have done this. You don’t have to look further for the reasons of our defeat at the hands of every invader who came to this land.

Baber is said to have come to this land with around 25 cannons and two thousand men. The Indian army which met him had more elephants than Baber’s men. It seems that all real “hraam hreem hroom hraim hraum hrahah” was done by Baber’s cannons and the combined effect of a hundred thousand Indian warrior’s “hraam hreem hroom hraim hraum hrahah” was lost in the hoom hoom hoom mantra of the cannons.

A sad day it was for “hraam hreem hroom hraim hraum hrahah”!

Luckily other than our policemen none appears interested in learning it any more and they learn it more to camouflage their beauty burps.

“Hraehm”

They have a right to their privet sport too. This is a free country. No one has said that they can’t have paunches and burp once or twice during a whole minute.

To sum up, words may have meanings and meanings may have many words. But I won’t have both. I will let you have the meanings, but I will definitely have the words.

You see, I am not mean; I don’t want to have it all. That would be meaningless would it not?

E. Prime or I Prime( You won't find any "is", "was" in this post)

Why E Prime? Well why the hell not?

The guys who use it seem to have developed an entire philosophy on it. Or did the philosophy come first and E. Prime second.

Well I would not want to talk about philosophy (and development for that matter) if I can help it. For very valid reasons if you want to know.

This ‘philosophy’ thing has troubled me a lot recently. It has become tabu or taboo ( or tabu the cine actress) for me. I can’t touch it no way. The fucking infamy of it! In fact I can’t touch most of the other words too. I had a pretty good literary life till I started having certain strange experiences.

Well every one has their own little kingdoms to protect. I too seem to have had one such. But now my poor empire has broken up because of intense ‘terrorist’ activity within it. (Take it very seriously as a joke)

Well as I do not believe in everlasting empires and unending lives I hardly care what happens to my blog. But while it lasts I have to write something on it on a daily basis. That has to do with certain other affairs that I need to take care of.

Bloody hard work, this business of writing, at certain moments your mind would appear like a pot drilled with holes. It appears sublimely empty. It feels as if it contained emptiness from the very start and has held nothing in it at all in the course of its subsequent existence. Mayakovski had observed that ideas would writhe formlessly in the mind before coming out as words.

Well at those moments of blankness not a single idea would arise within my skull. Not that they naturally do before that. No bloody sweat, no such luck for me. I have a tough time fabricating ideas (if you want to call them that) and making them come out in the form of words.

Some believe that logic and facts makes good reading. I think they make stupid reading. Reading as an intellectual exercise bores me, it should seem like a pastime. I had always wanted to break the shackles imposed by them. If you believe it seem easy for a guy like me, think again. It becomes terribly hard to get out of the habit of forming logical ideas based on facts.

Braking from habits appears much harder than making them. Most of the habits attach themselves to us invisibly and unknowingly (right word I assume?)

When you set out to write you start worrying about topic, presentation, style, facts, beginning, middle and end and the like as if you are out to create world literature. If you can write like Umberto Eco you should do that instead of writing a blog.

Come on, how many of you can write or even imagine writing something like ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ in your lives. I am not saying that you should duplicate it. Think of something on that scale. Let me ask you how many of you can even finish the book once you started on it.

(I despaired at times reading through the massive amount of data the book contained. He seems such a writer; his illustrated novel the Mysterious flame of queen Loana seems more complex Baudolino,and The name of the rose are not bad either. I did not name them to show off; I think sane and insane individuals alike should read him. Try him if you dare)
Well I wonder how many bloggers even glance at classics. Not that it seems required to live our lives at all. But it might make them realize the futility of thinking themselves as something grand and stop raving about logic and facts and reason and such great things.

If you want logic and fact you should be somewhere else than in a blog post at least.

Well all this has nothing to do with E. Prime at all. Why have I accepted this challenge? Well I can’t say I have accepted any challenge at all. People do that to prove or flaunt something. Normally I do not look into any thing very deeply. I just catch on to a word or a name and construct my version of it. To some one like me E.Prime appears like murder.

For instance if I had to rewrite the above sentence like “ Chasing my shadow suggests that to him E.Prime exhibits some of the characteristics’ that the society generally ascribe to the human criminal activity of killing one or more members of its own species” I would not survive the effort for long. Yet I believe that their attempt do not appear faulty considering the inexactness of what most write.

Well any way the effort to clear the cobwebs created by time and people in our modes of communication do seem vital looking from several perspectives. I should admit that I have not wholly grasped the subject clearly as yet. Even formula’s appear in the literature, formula’s my god!

If I abhor anything other than the word ‘abhor’ they come under the name of formulas. I could bear “form’ and ‘ulas’, but not the combination.

My experiment in E. Prime consists of excluding ‘is’, ‘was’ were and ‘am’ from my sentences for this post.
I do not yet know if ‘should’, ‘would’, ‘could’ etc comes within the purview of E Prime or not (dude!). If, only “is” and its other forms belongs to the banned items that would lessen the trouble somewhat. But if there come a need to include more items in the list, well that could bugger up our life to an extent.

Yet it seems a novel effort to get at truth. But truth appears a vague term till one realizes it some including me say!

‘E Prime can distill truth’ appears a little bit tall or long (literally I mean!). Not that I have anything against it. It appears a novel method to say things. I do not know what it could do to language. Certain very shrewd people think it as the only way to kill Aristotelian dummies floating in our intellectual atmosphere.

They might probably have something going for them it seems. It could be a little restrictive, no doubt. But why should we worry about that at all? Take a look around. What do you see? Nothing but restriction everywhere. All seems interconnected and not free at all. We do not normally notice it in our busy lives. Yet truth remains self evident in the midst of our very activities.

Any way I believe in ‘I Prime’.

A race ‘unrun’

Well it seems that our Achilles has run half the distance and is still ruminating on the infinite number of the distances that he has to run. But then he is not sure of even that. Did he move at all? He seems to be suspended in the space and not moving very much.

Let us leave Achilles to consider his own problems and think on ours. Unlike him who is caught in an unrealistic mathematical dilemma we all seem to be rushing away to some place. No one knows where the place is as yet. Many have tried to find out and have failed. Yet we are terribly rushed and are making great splashes trying to wade through something. What the hell is the stuff that we are wading through?

Well who knows? When you look around everything looks very complex. Once C.V. Raman remarked that it is useless to send space probes to the moon unless we can tell what is happening inside a blade of grass with any certainty. He was expressing disappointment in the way we tackle things. We do not know the first thing about the next thing we see around. Still we would like to be the masters of the universe.

We know that we can’t learn everything about the things that we see. But yet we would like to know them would we not? We think that it would be nice if we could do that. But then are we sure? Would it be more interesting if we did know everything about everything?

Is it not our very ignorance about it that makes the life interesting in our eyes?

It is our efforts to learn more about the world that is keeping us interested in it. If we knew how our life would turn out in the future we would become immediately fired up with an idea of changing it in some way to make it more interesting. We would not want to be the all knowing thing. It could be dead boring to be so.

In ancient texts there are several references to such a state and such a being. Invariably it gets bored with the state of affairs and it wants to divide into many or to play with itself. Well if it alone existed or exist all play could be called a sort of self play.

The ancient seers juggle with the idea of the One and the Two. When the one becomes two time and space is created. With the two the third or the observer also comes into being. The moment there is more than one there arises the question of individuality and the question of independence. Without these two things the play is not possible.
When there is more than one there is also uncertainty. It arises out of gaps in understanding.

I know the above is a purely ideological concept of the world. It presupposes a conscious entity at the back of everything. But then emergentism proceeds from another angle altogether. It has to believe in a linear progression of time to hold on to the view of the consciousness evolving out of matter.

Any way on a very limited level it is the uncertainty which adds glamour to life. If we were like the characters in a book or a teleplay performing pre determined actions we would not be very happy with it. We would like to brake the constraints and do some thing else.

This then is really what we are aiming at. This freedom from inevitability. We fear death because of this. That is the one thing we know to be inevitable in our lives. We have to die and we naturally rebel at it. The thing which rebels at death could be the consciousness which wants to survive.

It does not agree with the point of view that it has to disperse the moment it physical vehicle is destroyed. This fear of death comes up again and again in the discourses of our race. It is said that it is this fact of inevitability death which brought philosophy into being.

In trying to solve the problem it has led us into meshes which are worse than death.

And our pal the science is playing hide and seek at present. It would not admit that it has failed but it would also not claim that would succeed now or ever.

Well what are we to do about it?

The parts to the whole

The ancient texts of this land contain some lovely stories; here is one about Satyakama who sought truth.

He wanted to study so much that he asked his mother:

” Mother tell me about my Gotra (fathers Clan), for the master is sure to ask for it when I approach him.”
His mother told him:

“My dear, I do not know about your Gotra. I gave birth to you when I was serving many. My name is Jabala, and your name is Satyakama so tell your guru that you are Satyakama Jabala”

He approached Gautama and asked permission to study under him. The guru asked him about his Gotra.

Satykama replied:

“My Lord, I do not know my Gotra. When I asked my mother she said ……..”

And he related the whole conversation.

“So my lord I am Satykama, Jabalas son.”

Gautama said to him:

“You would not have said thus unless you were a Brahmin. So bring the necessary things. I shall initiate you now. I see that you did not deviate from truth.”

Gautama initiated him and gave him 400 weak and starved cows to look after and told him

“My son, follow them”

Satyakama said, leading the cows into the forest:

“I shall not return until they are a thousand in number”

He stayed in the forest till the cows became so many.

Then a bull called to him :

“Satyakama”

He replied:

“My Lord”

“We are a thousand now; lead us to your guru’s place,

also shall I instruct you about the parts of the ultimate truth (Brahma)?”

“Do so my Lord”

The bull then taught Satyakama:

“The east, the west, the north and the south are subdivisions to this part. It has thus four segments. It is called the illumined being. If one worships this part of truth with its four segments he would become famous in the world and he will go to illumined spheres after he leaves this world.

Now Fire will teach you one part of truth”

Saying so the Bull retired

In the next morning Satyakama took the cows with him on the journey back to his Guru’s home and when the evening came he camped, lighted fire and sat down near it.

Then Agni (the fire) called him:

“Satyakama”

He replied:

“My lord”

“Shall I teach you now about one part of truth?”

“Please instruct me my lord”

“My son, the earth the air the sky and the ocean are divisions to this part. This part of truth is with four segments and with the name of eternal being. Those who worship this part of truth with its l principle eternity would have an unbroken line of descendents and would reach endless worlds.

The swan will instruct you about one part of truth now”

The next day’s journey also ended thus. While he was sitting by the fire the Swan came and asked him;
“My son may I now instruct you on the one part of truth?

“If you please my lord”

The swan said;

“Fire the Sun the Moon and the lightening are portions to this part. This part of truth with it four segments are known as luminous being. Those that worship this part of truth with its luminous principle will attain the quality of light and will reach the worlds of the Sun and the Moon.

The gull would instruct you further”

The next day’s journey also concluded thus. The Gull approached and asked:

“Shall I tell you now about one part of truth?”

“My lord be so kind”

“My son, the breath the eyes , the ears ,and the mind are fragments to this part. This is that part of truth which is known as Reliable being. Those who worship this part of truth with its principle of reliability shall become reliable at all places and shall reach vast worlds after death”

Satyakama reached his Gurus place.

The guru wondered :

“You do shine like a knower of truth. Who instructed you?”

Satyakama gave him his word of honor:

“My lord I was instructed by those other than the humans. I wish that you would also please instruct me, I have heard that knowledge becomes fruitful only by being taught by the wise”

Gautama then set out to instruct him on truth, it was the same as the others taught him. Nothing was missing.

I believe that the spirit of the poetry might linger even through my faulty translation. I quoted the entire story because I could not leave anything out of it. The depth of feeling contained in every word and every line is beyond words.

Great poetry speaks to us through what is concealed in it rather than what is actually narrated in it.

Some say you need to cover every existing sphere of knowledge to learn truth. But it seems to me that a little bit of reflection is all that is needed for it.

Satyakama was alone in the forest, with nobody but the cows to talk to. He learned to reflect on life as time passed, perhaps that was why he was sent on such a mission by his guru, he became so involved in it that everything began to speak to him( reveal their true nature to him. Well some in these times would call it schizophrenia. ) and teach him parts of reality which would evolve into a beautiful whole in the end. There was no need to teach him anything after he had acquired such knowledge.

Yet he asks the guru to instruct him on truth when he returns, and it was no different from what he was taught by nature earlier.

In fact he was instructed in full by Gautama when he bade him follow the cows. That was the real instruction, and to those like Satyakama that seems enough.

May be not to us….but then who knows……!

It’s a shitty thing, this life

(Incomplete caricature)

Lord, how do we live in this world? We may have the most innocent of intentions; and they will convert it into something else

The Boccaccio’s the Salmon Khan’s.

I often wonder why god created the world at all. He had some evil design behind it. The design is entirely against me. I have no doubt about it, going by what is happening in my life.

You can live anywhere else in the world. But not in this country and not in this state. No, not ever!
Friend can you imagine it. I had the most honorable of all intentions. I don’t know why, I am an incorrigible workaholic. I can’t sit still for a moment. A certain very low character says it is nervous tension. Darn him.
Work is god to me. Why do we live in the world- to work? What for are we working? Now wait a sec. Fair is fair. You can’t jab below the belt.

I know what is in your mind. You can’t do that to me.

I am not a sitting duck. You can’t take pot shots at me.

I work, and I have a philosophy of work too. Work it self is the reward of work. For if we do not work, what in the bloody hell do we do?

It is not important the sort of work you do you see, what is important is the work itself.
Why?

Hell, man, do we have all the answers in the world. If we did would we go on living?

Yet you see, people won’t allow us to live otherwise too. As I said I had only the good intentions on my side. She has some fair skin, all right, what of it, my wife is fair too. Now my wife is not very fair in certain other things. Doesn’t always allow me…. You know what and how it is.

It gets rowdy at home sometimes. I want it and she has the pains. The thing is if I didn’t do it where does the pain come from. Is it divine pain?

The strangest thing is the pain is flowering as the time is passing. You see what I mean. I am a man of great self control. I often wonder at it myself. My father, he was like a goat, would eat any thing in the world. Pretty conscientious guy too.

He would have his encounters while we were returning from the market. The dusk would be silently approaching; there are lonely places within the busy ones in our country side. I was very young at that time.

He used to smell of thick sweat and coconut husk. It was oppressive. He also had calloused hands and feet. I never liked the combination. But he was my father and that was all there to it.

At certain points in our journey back he would meet with certain women , I always thought that he was off to have some country brewed spirit, he had always the same smell, so I could never tell whether he had some or not.
He would say to me:

Now run along, me, I have some business.

I never had the guts to ask whether it was on the same business my mom took him to task everyday. But he was kind; he brought me sweets every time.

They would disappear into an alley. Some times I waited, afraid to go alone in the dark. Then I would usually hear sort of a scuffle and noises made by branches and the bushes. Faint laughter and murmur of voices.

When others came that way I hid for shame. I did not know why I was ashamed for a long time afterwards.

I wonder now, did he take all those women; some of them were the same and them I knew by sight. Some were quite unknown to me. Were did all that women come from. How could they like a man who smelt that way? It always hurt whenever he touched me. He hands and feet were so calloused from climbing up and down coconut palms that you could chip away at them like they are wooden pieces.

He used them against my mother too, but was careful not to hurt her too much. But every small slap sent her flying away to the corners. The perplexing thing was that she seemed to like it to boot. It seemed to me that she quarreled against him for the very purpose of getting hit.

There would be tears and gasps from her and kind words from him. Kind in his own way that is.

Shut your trap, you wooden ass.

Strange are the ways of women. She mellows at those words. And there would be a reunion and a peaceful night.
As you may have guessed by now, I do not have the same talent for charming women. Not my own woman too. Otherwise I would have had a better life.

But I never expected this. I am an upstanding member of the society. Think of the damage it would cause my budding career.

Oh the people are cruel.

Okay. I invited her. But it was purely on official purpose, you see. I had this data to present at the head quarters and as the person who collected the data, she had to accompany me. I need not persuade her even.
There was the office car and there were only the two of us. She should have known the importance of the mission. Yet I was nice.

I told her that she has only to be ready at 2 O Clock in the morning and we would pick her up. She was ready too. But at the last moment something got into her head and she withdrew. It was a totally unacceptable situation. I had expectations about the trip. Well that is that.

On top my disappointment I had to suffer this too. There are murmurs whispers and leers and what not. ………..

The losers.

Your father has played dying

Of course you know of J. Huizinga.

You don’t?

I don’ believe you, Get outta here! You don’t really mean that? You do? You don’t know the guy? Not even a little bit? No?

Brother, (and sister, as our man Vivekananda said once in the continent discovered by Columbus and named after Amarigo Vespucci.

As an aside let me say this, My South and North American friends, you should have named your land after the ‘Patronymic’- Vespucci.

It’s only a humble thought, don’t take it amiss.

The United States of Vespuccica, that would have been delectable!)

But coming back to what I was saying,

brother, I am disappointed. This Huizinga guy is intellectually hot; he is irresistible though a wee bit abstruse. (I have only understood one line he wrote up to now and that fortunately is the subject of this post)

He is not new I know, has been around for some time, everyone seems to relish him too.

Munch, munch, crunch, crunch.

Lucky guy.

He seems to have incarnated in the isle of Japan by the look of it.

Neighborly people, the Japanese.

Once one of my countrymen visited these wonderful islands, like many in my land the poor guy had a poor sense of direction.

(This sense of direction has nothing to do with the sense of direction of one of my sweet friends. Honest to God)
Well the point is, we do not actually use our legs to get around to some place, we invariably make use of the wonderful instrument some call the larynx.

We ask every poor bastard we chance upon:

Bhai sab (Brother and Sir)……..

Or if it is a lady:

Bahin Ji (Sister and revered)……..would you….

Then there would be an interval (pregnant with silence) while we start to take out something from our pockets. It is an excruciating process. It could be a piece of soiled paper with the address written on it.

We have invariably put it in the deepest and the most inaccessible of our pockets. If we are wearing jeans it could be at the inner most recess near our very sanctum in a crumbled roll.

The poor prey is waiting patiently. We at last extricate the divine piece of paper. We are somewhat relieved too; we really had our doubts about recovering it without damage.

We then say with an enormous sense of achievement and importance due to the greatness of the place we want to get to:

Sir/Revered, how do I get to this place?

Our prey has a terribly hard time trying to decipher what is scrawled on the paper and if by luck he/she is a lab technician or a nurse they would manage it after some intense speculation about the ways a word could be written on a piece of paper by the most intelligent of the species.

Well as I was saying our countryman had the ill luck to ask directions from a Japanese gentleman while in Tokyo. Now every one knows that is the last thing one does in Japan.

The Tokyo-ite dropped everything else and took our man by the hand and did not let go till the destination was reached. Our man was in tears and was inconsolable afterwards. It was a case of the prey turning into a predator. The terrible Tokyo guy robed our guy of his favorite pastime of ‘dumb’ing it around in Tokyo in search oh his address.

The sad thing is it is otherwise in the case of our own Auto Rickshaw drivers here. It is rumored that one tourist had the luck to see seven Government Secretariats in a row on his journey and wised up somewhat after that: He is reported to have remarked to our Auto driver:

That is the seventh secretariat I am seeing.

The Auto guy turned round, smiled sweetly and passed on the delightful information:

Just three more to go you know!

Well we can’t blame the Japanese on those lines. In sense of humor you can’t beat them.

Remember the thing which comes out of the TV and the washing tray in the developing studio? That is what I am talking about, sense of humor. Well all who have seen the original Godzilla from the land of the rising sun would assent in one voice.

That Godzilla, it ate our innards. Poor Roshomon was impaled and displayed at the gates of that great and fighting people. It was a real pretty sight.

(Hollywood is miles ahead. It brings emotions into the adventure. There is nothing like our old flame stealing footage from us to save her job, to liven the plot up.)

No wonder Kurassova, Akiro followed Kavabata, Yasunari.

He took the decision right after the Godzilla premier.

Their Hara-kiri was out of despondency. They were living in the land where the sun never sets. But they were seeing darkness all round.

Well you know when there is darkness inside there is no point in having unending days of sunlight on the out side.
They did not want any extra suns too. But some provided them with two of them some time in the 1940's. Those were brilliant suns.

They warm the Japanese even now.

No wonder they have the spirit of forgiveness in them. They know what death is.

See what our man Huizinga says:

In his land(In Japan I mean and not anywhere in Europe. Don't be always Euro centric you guys ) in certain forms of conversations a dead person is supposed to be playing death.

(No, no not playing dead, as certain canine friends do, but playing death, it is a higher form of histrionics. You can only play it once in your entire life. So be careful, emote subtly)

What happens is this, in polite aristocratic conversations certain remarks would actually mean this:

"I hear that your father has played dying."

The implication of course is that he has gone to elevated spheres to play further.

Well there is the other extreme too. Where everything is looked upon as the most serious of things. I would not have to quote examples do I? It already exists in plenty.