Cucumber Town – Total Recall

Man, see how the plot thickens?


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


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


They are out to save his sorry ass.


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


They have just sought their help by phone.


“Please support us”


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


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


The purpose you ask?


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


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


Man how cute!


All for one, and one for all.


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


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


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


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


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


You are right.


This is the bloody cucumber town.


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


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


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


That’s a threat.


If it is not heeded


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

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

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

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

“The Itcholi express ”

“The Itcholi express ”

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are doing nothing at all!

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

“Let Him beware!”

The Pother the Moon is in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway long live Moon and his intelligent cronies!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can take a look at this video here:



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

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

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

Jitters

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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


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

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

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

Whats in store

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desires

Lust is something we never fail to recognize. We can shut our eyes and call it by something else. But it’s a primordial ‘effluent’ that is knowable by its grasping insistence.

It can’t be denied. Nobody has done it till date.

It’s so tangible as to be nearest to our very being. Many have tried to drive one type of craving out by replacing another in its place. The sad thing is, most of them never know that the replacement is ineffective, since the thirst driving it, is a part of our right to be.

This hunger is there because there is something to crave for and everywhere there-is-something, it naturally generates lust- Because lust is world in its widest sense.

It appears in many guises in our lives and it involves most of our senses. May be the mind is the organ that lusts and not the others. The other organs might be playing second fiddle to the master tune played by the mind.

There is a theory that mind is everything.


Lust in a being is probably situated in the heart and mostly has no ‘sense’ to it. It doesn’t recognize the intellect and would have nothing to do with reason. Its domain is the irreconcilable desire for possession.

We often wonder how many forms this can take.

For example one gets curious about why people drink human blood. I am not talking of vampires here, yet there are at least a few people in the world who crave for blood and consume it.

And there is this report that a villager in India has been drawing blood from his wife with a syringe and ingesting it for the last two years or so. He is reported to be saying that it gives him strength. Such cases are not rare. Some people report such a craving in all cultures.

Well there are those who abhor, and delight in, and would not be judgmental about this practice. Some of those who criticize it point to the health hazard involved in it. They believe people can catch all sorts of fatal illnesses drinking blood. But there may be no scientific basis for this assumption since ingested blood has to survive the culturing of stomach acids to be a part of the body, barring in the instance where it comes into contact with a cut in our body and gets in the blood stream directly.

Apart from medical issues, why do people do that? Could there be psychological reasons for this behavior? There are certain instances where hired killers sprinkle the blood of their victims in their food before consuming it. What prompts them to do that?

It is hard to say. Some of us would like to consider it as a morbid state of mind and a sickness resulting from psychological problems.

The killer or the drinker of blood may think otherwise. They may say that there is life force in blood and they are absorbing it by ingesting it.

One also wonders why some god’s are gratified by a bloody sacrifice!

It may all be just lust in the end. The desire for possessing something we do not have or imagine that we do not have.

Disguises

Noon it was. May be a bit towards the eventide, or may be a bit more nearer to the noon time. That didn’t matter. For the glare was noonish and that was enough…..

Hell.

What makes a time of day noon?

-Heat, intensity, vividness?

Whatever…………. one fails to recall.

This was noon. Of that one was sure. And of that the faces around me were sure.

None needed any watches. None needed any computation. None needed any consultation.

And too, none of us had taken our watches with us.

A watch is not nice, it’s a mechanical demon we strap on our wrist to dissect our mind into tiny pieces. It’s a drainer of energies, it’s a mean device that watches us with derision and is watched by us with fear.

Yes a watch is not nice. It plans events in advance for us and take our compliance for granted. It fragments our being to suit the social monster that stalks us all the time.

No, we need no watches on holidays.

We were at the sea shore and had taken a few dips in the lukewarm water. None of us were real swimmers. We have all been brought up in the shallow ponds at our villages where we swam with jumping frogs and slithering water snakes.
This was bliss to us.

What was undulating before us was something inexplicable and vast. It was might in motion. It was imagination on the move. It was a billion bosoms thirsting in a trillion sighs.

New to us this was.

Just now I was waist deep in water. And before that, the others were there, splashing about, jumping around, till they thought it was safer on shore.

The water caressed me with its thousand hands. Now like a baby pulling at my chest hair, now with large calloused palms rubbing me over so that the skin tingled. Now enveloping me in embraces that only in shuddering love I have met, now patting me on the head like some sane and wizened village elder, now grasping my elbow like a trusted friend, now with the warmth of a mothers bosom, now in the glee of a long met brother, now with the advances of lass in passion, now admonishing like a parent in anger………..

The sea was alone with me and it was playing with me.

When did the play stop and the time begin……..?

I still don’t know.

What we delight in

I am not particular about anything in life and most everything is permissible to me in this laughable existence we lead. But certain things affect me in a way that is almost biological. One of them is hearing somebody lie without any reason at all for it.

Now, we all lie, only the dumb and the retarded don’t do that. May be they can very well do without lying too, being protected by powers that is unknown and unintelligible to us. But that is not the case with others like our own poor selves. We have no one to protect us when we land in a soup and so we need to lie to save our asses sometimes. This ‘saving the asses’ might not even be necessary in that particular situation. But we don’t know that, we haven’t been blessed with the foresight and clairvoyant ability to see what is in store for us in the future.

With meager available data we normally take this plunge and lie bare faced. It saves our skin some of the time, but it might land us in some trouble on other occasions. But this is a risk we are willing to take and probably that is worth taking too. Even the mighty do that on occasions and have been doing from time immemorial…….

You see, you and her are doing something very privet and the tiny tot wakes up and starts to cry.

“Don’t kill my mummy, please daddy, don’t kill my mummy”

Well you have no intention of killing her. You rather intend to enliven her somewhat and you have been hard at work at it for sometime too. You are pretty heated up and a bit breathless and nothing other than stars and dull specks of light is visible to your inner eye.

The mom starts to laugh and you accompany her with a helpless and pitiful hraw hraw hrrr and try to slide off her inconspicuously. This is difficult at the best of times and you are no acrobat.


The tiny tot is immediately put at ease by its mom’s laugh and dries its eyes to scramble on to the bed without heeding you and looking crossly and suspiciously at you.

You wonder, from where the thing gets all this possessiveness. It’s not from you; you are a giver, even when there are no takers.

The mother tries to sooth the tiny tot by murmuring “it’s nothing my darling”

“But what were you doing?” It enquires.

“Well mommy had difficulty in breathing and papa was trying to breathe in to help me “The mother is whispering with a mischievous look at you.
“Now you are alright? “ The tiny tot is concerned. It can’t imagine a life without mommy.

“Yes my dear, now that you are with me, mommy can’t but be alright, isn’t it so my jewel?”

“Yes I will help you” It clasps her with all its might. You enviously look on.

The point is we all lie, even without intending to do so. You wouldn’t go and say to the kid that:

“You know pet, we were just trying to make more things like you to pester us all through our lives” Even if you feel like saying it -Whatever the sex educationists say.

No, you don’t do that. That is not done and we can’t help lying at those moments.

But when people intentionally lie to gain some selfish ends I feel it very raw in my bones.

I don’t just dislike it, I totally hate it.

Cold has its own domain

Mostly the cold comes armed with claws of iron and it's silent and cunning. It stealthily buries itself inside chinks of wooden walls and floors and pounces on you unawares.

Smooth is its operation. Stalking us through the stunted hilly terrain into our dens and circling us down like some do to an animal hunted down on the sly.

It clamps its freezing pincers on where it matters- the heart and suddenly the center become porous. Icy air passes through the portals to inside and out. The heart then becomes a honeycomb filled with something frigid and gaseous.


Gotcha!............It murmur's.

And then comes that dumb laugh with its mean and clinking teeth.

But you are not dumb, you were expecting the onslaught and have covered yourselves in woolen sweaters and mufflers. You may not fancy room heaters. But you have beefed up your defenses. Still the cold is cunning. It keeps in the shadows and strangely has become demure. In your sleep, when the cap or muffler slips from your ears, it starts licking your ears lasciviously. It has suddenly turned amorous.......!

More about our fencing match later.

Back

So, how are you guys!

Still at whatever you were doing before I guess? It’s not bad, you know, doing the same things ad infinitum. I do it all the time, never become reformed. In fact some sages say that’s what’s we have been doing from the time immemorial


Anyway it’s great you know, being persistent and not giving up. Methinks that’s how the mankind discovered a lot of things, not to say ‘invented’ some others.

Sadly, I have not been very inventive in my life. I lack the genius for it. I am the guy who used the word ‘technology’ doggedly without seeking a replacement for it in my most famous post till date. I now shudder at the usage. You can search my site for the post. It’s hilarious. Not that it felt hilarious at the time of writing it and also when certain very lucid and intelligent souls criticized it. I must admit that it felt terrible.

I actually cried a bit!

Well as we get on in years we become less sensitive and less ‘imaginative’. So I can now safely look at the post and not cry for my imperfections. It’s not my imperfections per se I know, it’s my lack of skills in authorship (but then I have never been very skilful in anything as you should know by the way I ‘pen’ my words).

Honestly, it’s some gargantuan ship, this authorship. I can never be a sailor in it let alone its master. I have stopped trying even for the post of a cook in it if it’s any consolation to you.

Still, even a person like me has a few things to say now and then. And in my country everybody supposedly has the right to freedom of expression. They say “we gave it to ourselves” and they are trying hard to take it away too. Anyway one likes hearing one’s own voice sometimes! One has to check whether the sound box is working alright.

Well that’s about it for this time.

Boos taurus

Whoosh, and so the major moron appears on the scene and takes up his glass of milk. Did I say milk, I must have been mad. This ‘milk’ is not milked from some species called Bos taurus; this is distilled from some other source, and is damn heady once it is ingested.

What the heck, can one be not at peace with oneself for sometime in the day at least? Especially when one is at the office and is new. One is bound to feel nervous, and alienated and forlorn and doesn’t know a single thing about spatial aspects of one’s surroundings and is only aware of one’s desire to fit in the boots one has put on somehow.

Yeah, it’s just then that the thirst to drink this milk and offer it to others becomes a big need.

And so the moron takes charge and offers ‘milk’ for free and there are enough morons around to lap it up by the tubful and become friends. And you know you will murder for a such a friend if he just asks for it. I, you or the world could be a victim of this wonderful ingestion of pure and pristine ‘milk’.

Well it doesn’t end there does it, the milk has to be imbibed in camera and possibly in the midst of officials belonging to the other sex, if circumstances permit it.

Well, well, well, nice and nice and nice.

So the world moves on and the scum lives on!

Eucalyptus and onion

" Do I contradict myself?
I am large I contain multitudes"

They say its a folly to help your enemies, and they could be right. For your enemies would probably use the help to undermine you later, that is, if you give them a chance. This is as certain as the sun rises everyday.

But some of you wouldn't mind that would you? You would like to be the good Samaritan's to your enemies. You believe in doing good, even to your enemies. You would like to turn the other cheek all the time.

Oh man, not good for you, no not ever. Other than your cheek's getting bashed up, there is never any good coming out of it. Your opponents would relish such an opportunity to get you at a disadvantage. And weakness is the greatest disadvantage that you can have when you have enemies.

Weakness breeds doubts about right and wrong, about good and bad, about courage and cowardice. Weakness tends to make you believe one is the other, that bravery is cowardice and chickening out is the best of practices.

My advice is,

If you kill (even when you kill insects), do it in style, do it without regrets, do it as if you were born to do it. Not a touch of remorse should hamper your thoughts. That is the only way to do it. Do it with relish and panache.

But there are those amongst you who have been brought up with compassion for the vanquished at heart. Apart from being the most desultory feeling of all, it is a damned weakness. It is a human aberration. There are no models out there in the world for such a thing other than among humanity. This is a selfish preoccupation developed into a social syndrome.

So don't help your enemies if you can help it, it will turn out bad almost always.

Okay, if you have any doubts, ask around, people will tell you gruesome tales about the way things turned out when they did something god for those they hate. Well may be its not the nicest way to behave for those you call your enemies, but do they care? After all they are enemies, and they have to be true to their calling. They believe that the help they got was a lapse of judgment on your part.

May be they are right. In the first place you had no business to help them. If you did, it is for you to take the consequences.

Yet to me it has always been otherwise. I often do help my enemies, with both money and might. Why, you may ask. Is it because I am the nicest guy around in the world? Hardly my dears, hardly. I couldn't care less if my enemies go to the blazes. I would in fact be so glad that I would give a party to myself in such an event.

So then why do I try to help my foes?

Good question, one that I have often asked myself and the only answer that came out was that I am a bigger devil than they are. My reasons seem highly suspicious in truth. By doing that I am trying to assert my superiority over them in no uncertain manner. I would always make sure that that is the case, that I have them in my power and I am willing to kick them out of trouble just because I can do it.

Just because I can do it.

I would have no illusions about the out come of the event or its future ramifications. I normally am a confirmed misanthrope. I would not be easily deceived by the tricks others are trying to pull over me. In fact, I don't recognize anyone as my enemy at all in the truer sense. I mostly take my opponents as buttresses to bolster my ego. I don't give such a great value for them in my life. They are just a few nonentities to make use of, in my journey through life or to strengthen myself.

So in helping them I am not really acting out of compassion, I am really acting out of a necessity I find in myself, that of needing to distribute largess to others who ever they may be. Its not magnanimity at all. Its just a style of doing things to me.
What if they become stronger and come after me?

Well let the poor slobs try!

Oh my sweet (union) mamas in law

Mothers-in-law are tough nuts to crack, or so the experienced say.

They usually have a kind of a love -hate relationship with their sons in laws. And they would kill for their children, even going to the extent of doing totally away with their sons in laws to save their offspring.

These are all rumors. But as they say, there won't be smoke without fire.

May be this is something inherent in them or in the human race, who knows.

The problem that I am facing now has something to do with what I call mother-in-law complex among some of the staff I have to deal with. They were sworn enemies of one another before my advent to the scene. Initially the wimps used to shed cold tears when speaking of each other.

They hadn't seen anything other than effeminate buffoonery among their compatriots till I arrived and yet even that had made them cry. The moment I appeared they seem to have realized the bigger threat that is around and are now bunching together to hold up each others asses.

Their stupid union also seems to be afraid of me and is egging them on. They usually send scouts to survey how things are going with me. The other day a consumptive idiot came on such a mission and what's more the “single breath' had the audacity to confront me in person.

There are other such imbeciles around on call too. Our own Katrina Kaif is always holding on to a phone just to get a chance to call such despicable specimens into the workplace.( She is Forty, but dresses like she is sixteen and believes she is the heart throb of millions! I can bear conceit in proper places, but a hillbilly girl in her forties showing off like a teenager is too much to bear. Why couldn't the woman wear something decent?)

In short I have many mother in laws around in the place now.

Being the only real guy around (there are other 'guy's' if you want, but they are none better than apology of guy's) I am feared . None of the other members of the effeminate community likes to face me alone. They are probably afraid they would get 'violated' by my silent machismo.

Who knows I may have emasculated the previously male segment of the community by my mere presence among them. Only one lion could rule a pride!
This is hard on the subverted erstwhile males and they have now become converted into mothers in laws and is currently starting a fund to keep themselves fit for the fight against my masculinity.

Of course all this is their imaginations, but what to do, when fear enters submissive minds they can only act in a certain manner.

Continents

Tell me this, what would you do if somebody has you by the scruff of the neck and that somebody is much stronger than you?

Well, the answer is obvious; nobody likes to look that in- dignified before the others, so you would look around for support. And maybe, just maybe there would be others who have had the same experience and they would hopefully come to your aid. But that help may not be enough to extricate you from the brutal arms of the adversary.

Okay, I don’t know why I get this feeling that others believe I am kind of a strongman and have them by their necks. I don’t normally do that (that would be pretty heathen wouldn’t it, though there are enough people out there in the world who need some real shaking up in that way?) But that is another thing.

What I am worried about is the fear I instill in people around me, I am not joking about this, they really go in fear of me. There is no reason for that too, other than I have certain principles that might be seen as old fashioned in these unscrupulous times. Sadly some mistresses are beefing up their defenses with help of hubbies and irregulars. Because there is a charm in helping the weaker sex there are enough irregulars to go around.

Don’t mistake me; I have nothing against the character of these women. They would probably even cry if someone throws them a dirty look. But it’s not their chastity that is on examination here. It’s their fear, fear makes people club together, to attack together and to defend together.

It’s not only the women who fear me I learn, but all the effeminate guys in the environment are either thrilled at my nearness (so that there would be goose pimples rising over their hands) or normally empties their bladders at my very sight. This is not a rare happening too; I see it all the time. It may be an epidemic of incontinence.

Whatever it is, the poor darlings have got a whole continent of cowards armed to the teeth and I have to watch my step every time. They are said to have heard threatening that they would make me pack my bag and go.

The things that fear makes people do!

Huddles

May be there is something in a story, may be there’s only a story and everybody knows its end.

Whatever the case may be, I am interested in stories, if it has some savor to it the better. There are unsavory stories too, I like them sometimes because of the message they contain.

Aneesh came to me with a story just like that.

It’s a story about repressed feelings and acting out of those feelings.

It seems there were these few comrades; all of them would give their lives’ for others. They gave more than their lives it seems, and that is the story.

In the end, there was a big skirmish, all of their own making. Now they are huddled together and is giggling insensibly because there is nothing else left to do. Poor Aneesh, he seems to have been a member of this club too.

The story was of a denial of some sort. The denied became angry. Now certain people deny certain others certain things because they don’t like those people. What is denied is not of great importance. Its denial was a ruse, was about taking sides.

The denied and the deniers did not win. They realized it long after somebody put up a few notes.

Showing sympathy at the right time has benefits. Now these poor souls are giggling at each other.

Let them have their peace of mind!

Well Aneesh, you are a sad soul. You keep it up

The Alien /UFO question

I have been reading up on the Alien /UFO question lately. I may have been remiss in not doing so before. In fact I should have noted that we (the human race) are a culture which has lost everything we held dear to our heart and is in search for something to replace them with. There is a terrible vacuum growing inside our hearts which needs be filled. This fact has entered into every mind out there and is possibly generating newer quests into the known and unknown realms of knowledge. This search is not limited to the realm of science and philosophy anymore. It’s everyone’s business now.

This is a nice and welcome phenomenon, instead of receiving it with a fair bit of optimism; I may have dismissed it summarily. Thus I am in error no doubt, for no line of enquiry into the unknown is without value and can only be proved wrong or right after all its facets have been unraveled.

As a person who can laud the human spirit in all its endeavors to find truth I should have been prepared to accept any new form of interest without questioning its basis. In fact what is the real basis of human enquiry other than the quest for truth? No doubt, the intelligent have reduced our civilization to such a pass that we do not any more believe in a central truth. Instead we have relative truths, fragmentary realities which lead us to nowhere other than into the realm of uncertainties.

The scientists have even lifted up the principle of uncertainty into the status of a minor deity. No wonder the general public has lost hope and is searching in the weirdest quarters to find a believable explanation for our existence. This need is so vital to us; we yearn to find a foot-hold in a crumbling world. Some shrewd customers in the hierarchy of power have been working on this nature of our consciousness and have supplied the rudiments of a system to further this line of enquiry.

Instead of god’s we now have aliens.

I know these guys are after Control; it’s only a version of divide and rule. But yet it may yield something in its wake. It may even surprise those who have started it in the end. There have been such instances in the human history. I can’t rule out the chance of something happening in this manner. Yet my primary thought is that of caution, we can’t be blinded by our inner yearnings for an explanation to disregard the barest common sense. I have a reason for saying this.

Our mind is quite incapable of standing by itself. We need something to rely on, some host mechanism to fall back upon. That’s why we invented god in the first place. Once we invented him we were living in peace, untouched by trouble and certain that there is someone (though mythical) who is looking after our interests. We were only in search of a prop, not anything reliable, for inside our hearts we knew that such a thing is impossible. We sort of filled god up with every fine thing we located amongst ourselves. The god grew and became so obese that he became stagnant. Now he is so blown out of proportions that he can’t even take care of himself. He needs wars and missionaries to do that. But even they are not sure whether the god is alive or not!

Our personal god has died a sad death and there can’t be any question about it. The only remaining option is that suggested by Nietzsche of elevating ourselves into the status of Gods or supermen. This is an internal exercise and can only be supplemented frugally from without. Our consciousness is evolving and is starting to realize its true potential. We do not need to supplement it from without. The alien question may be one such that’s directing us towards this state.

Anyway my heart goes out to the ardent souls who get involved with the alien /UFO thing on the net. Believe me, I am not faking it and making a joke at their expense as some do. I am in earnest here! I like these guys for what they are. They are honest souls and they are after the truth. Sincerity is one thing which still touches my heart. I go all mellow inside whenever I see a sincere human soul -sincere to any cause that is, this feeling of mine is blind to the creeds they belong to. Sincerity is a rare quality in a human being, while most distrust it in people, I admire it.

It is nice to believe in something than not believe in anything. It takes some guts to do that. Faith is childlike; it won’t take nay for an answer. So whenever I see a person with faith I am delighted, I feel protective about them, I feel worried that they might lose this faith someday and would be broken. Simple belief has something going for it. It gave us the myths, they were vibrant and looked after us for a long time, till people tried to kill them with their superior knowledge.

I am a great fan of mystery, have been always. I love mysterious beings and mysterious happenings. Our ordinary life is so dull and un- interesting that we may need to take recourse to fantasy every now and then to relieve the tedium. So I have nothing against the Aliens and UFO’s, the fact is that they have now become a part of our consciousness and would remain for some time still. So I love pro Alien /UFO set. I love their simple hearted belief in the thing. In fact I love those who have a simplistic belief and approach in life. I envy them in fact. I am too disillusioned to be so. I have drunk all the bitterness of the world up, to be like that, in my beliefs.

But sadly I don’t yet believe in aliens or UFO’s. This is not merely because I haven’t seen any of them in my life (I don’t consider that thing I saw to be any alien vehicle, though I joked about it, it could have been an optical illusion,) but it is more because we do not need them for our growth or anything else. We may have been an infant civilization once; we may have needed help then. May be someone provided it and may be they didn’t. That’s all past now. Now we have more pressing problems with us than the aliens.
Yet I am ready to defend the right of those who believe in these things in all the ways I can. Honestly I would prefer dying by the hand of a sincere believer than by the hand of some scrupulous charlatan who fakes his beliefs, if I had to die so. To be frank most of us are such charlatans, and great dissemblers in our lives. We may say that we have no other options and that may be right too, but it muddies up the world terribly.

So my well wishes to you, alien-ufo believers……

Self doubts

Here I am, troubled by self doubts again.

But really, why are people like this, we do one thing and they guess some thing else. We want to help and they turn hostile!

Hostility turned inwards is hate, and hate can be a little too much to handle at times.

Here I was trying to help a poor bugger thinking he deserved it, and it turns out he doesn’t need it……

He does need it badly, but wouldn’t admit it; it amounts to the same thing. We get laughed at for what amount of good we did.

Well, I know, no sane person really cares about what others think of him and what he does, it is not that, it is the hidden animosity that is troubling. Not from others but the recipient. No, we don’t expect them to be servile because we did a favor to them -for the rest of their lives. That would be obscene. But at least we expect recognition.

Well, who does recognize whom these days! We do a good turn to somebody out of good will and we appear as the dumbest person alive!

My friends say I was crazy to do that. The problem is, people have become wise, and none expects any thing from any one other than by way of coercion.

That is acceptable, because there is no loss of face involved. I should have guessed it; none needs any crumbs of bread other than by way of the sweat of their ‘wicked’ brow.

Hello Satan, how are you! (Perhaps I am a little too self righteous?)

The case of Aandi Pandaram

Something has triggered the memory of a story in my mind.

It’s the story of Andi Pandaram.

Aandi Pandaaram was what people call vileness personified, the like, (hopefully) you would never come across in your life. He had swindled, robbed, cheated, humiliated, maimed, and hurt everyone he had ever met. There were hardly any exceptions (He was such a democrat in that regard). People used to shrivel up at the bare mention of this unimaginably inhuman character. Like all such enviable men, it was his wont to inflict numberless physical and mental tortures on his children and grandchildren. He used to make sure that they never spent a day with a dry eye.

But even inestimable men like him have to die one day and at last his day had come. The sublimely wicked, as you can guess, are generally very intelligent (there could be exceptions like the ‘Assange’ if you like , but they don’t really count do they? The poor slobs, they don’t even know what they are doing!) and hence he could guess that his sojourn on the earth was about to be over.

So the irrepressible man called all his children and grand children to his bedside and spoke to them in great anguish.

‘Oh, my very own’ (the unfortunate guys quaked at the implication of these words) ‘oh my very own, I have sinned against God, People and of course against you guys. But all that is now sadly past (he could barely suppress a wistful sigh while saying so). And I am about to leave this earth. As you can see I am penitent; I grieve over what I have done.

He paused a moment for effect. His offspring stood there mute, barely believing what they were hearing. Even in that weak condition the man’s force of evil and command over them were such that none even dared to think of saying anything in reply.

The guy looked contritely and almost benignly on his poor subjects and went on.

I know that once I pass-away demons would take possession of my soul and burn me in hell.

He stopped again and searched their faces for some traces of emotion, however light it was. His subjects were not very intelligent, but from years of experience they had learned to keep everything like feelings from their faces if they could help it while around the old man.

He now went on:

But please remember that I fathered you all and it is your duty to save me from this fate. The only way you could do so is to make it appear that I have been punished enough in this life itself. Would you promise me that you would do as I say?’

The poor fellows (may be secretly glad that they are about to be finally rid of the veritable beast) promised this.

The old horror continued.

‘Then my children, soon after I die, you should strip me down to my bare essentials and should drive a large pike up my arse as a punishment for my worldly sins”

The listeners were stunned, but the Aandi Pandaaram made them promise.

He died peacefully (like all the heinous do) and the faithful children did as he had instructed. Poor morons, they must have relished the act, no doubt. But the repercussions were dreadful. The news of the act spread far and wide and all those who heard of it were horrified. To hate someone so and do such things to even to the corpse!

Some of the more conscientious immediately informed the Police and Aandi Pandaram’s offspring’s had to spend the rest of their lives inside a high security prison and had to do hard labor for life.

Some never let go even after they die!

What is it to be free?

Alright, alright, fear not, this freedom has little to do with the kind of freedom that a Buddha or a Sankaracharya were fond of, this has entirely to do with the supposed freedom that the humanity is said to have. Is there any such freedom at all, or should we laugh and say “Freedom is not free” with the unknown author of the quote?

Curiously Martin Luther King Junior seems to second this view. To him “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” No doubt he was talking from the point of view of those coveting freedom but sadly he never could achieve the status of a distributer of it. You need to be a ruler to do that. It is to be believed that the rulers would have craters full of freedom to dispose of.

We all have heard of things like ‘freedom struggle’, ‘freedom fighters’ and “one’s right to be free” and the like. There are still people rebelling all over the world against their rulers to obtain this enviable commodity.

The Irish have been at it for a considerable time now. The Libyans are fighting a bloody war to win it, against government troops. Several other people have also turned against their rulers (these rulers are then called “despots” or ‘autocrats’) for this same purpose. The same ruler can be both liberator and oppressor at various periods in his life. Some are both at the same time!

Don’t ask me how!

So then what is the content of freedom? Is it something that can be distributed by the ruling or is there some method by which one can bottle this commodity up and keep it under lock and key to deny it to some and serve it to some others, like serving it only to the moneyed or to one’s own people or one’s favorite allies? Are there different sorts of freedom such as the freedom to speak, the freedom to think, and also as Gandhi say’s the freedom to err? Yes, what is the content of freedom?

The dictionary gives us the following definition of freedom: “The condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints”. If we agree with the definition the only thing left to decide is who has this power and who else haven’t. For this power can’t be exercised by all at the same time. Maybe you could just get away with the freedom of thought, because it’s mostly incoherent and internal. Most of us have learned to not to mind that.

If somebody thinks us a dud we could manage to think of them as the ‘dud-almighty’ and can go on with our lives. But this could not be the case with free speech and free act. You would not let someone exercise their free power to call you a dud to your face. That might prompt you to use your freedom to ‘act’ leading up to certain terrible results and both being admitted to a hospital where the treatment is not free.

So who has this power and who has not? If everyone is out to exercise this power to be free there would not be any one left to exercise it at all. May be this is why some think that freedom is the product of order. It is a contradiction in terms I know, order is nothing short of restraint. And our dictionary says that freedom is free from restraint.

There seems to be some problem here. I believe in freedom, it is something inherent in my nature and I think this preference for freedom is inviolable. But there seems to be no sense in going for freedom unless others can share it with me. The trouble is the extent to which I can trust others and allow them to share it. This brings on talks or restraint and your freedom is only up to the nose of the other guy. Then I think about a consensus. It is reached and I start to take the consensus as the guardian of my freedom. That in turn brings on laws of conduct and that brings on more laws and law enforcers and over and top of everything a law-firm called the government.

It enjoys a sort of monopoly in law making. It passes laws, implements laws, and protects laws. And suddenly it becomes law. The power to think, speak and act free belongs to it alone. It is sometimes called the king, the socialism, the capitalism, or any other cute names it can find to describe itself. In whatever manner it describes itself, it is god, and only it has the power to distribute freedom.

Well you see how freedom gets bundled out of the door the moment I start making judgments on others and becomes frightened of them. Sadly, I and mine have been making such judgments from the time immemorial. That’s how slavery originated, both mental and otherwise.

Perhaps that’s why Orwell said that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

The fixed

If you are sore at heart you don’t see things aright. The pain adds flavors and colors to everything you see and make them appear twisted or ill-shaped.

This is nothing new in the world; there have never been a human being who could cut off this strange thing called the heart from the scheme of things and sub serve the behest of the intellect.

In fact what we call logic is not something primarily based on the intellect at all. It’s mostly an effort to interpret a situation in the light of our hearts desire. Socrates interpreted beauty as usefulness, Schopenhauer as will. Who is there to hold that both the stands are not derived of some emotional involvements?

We fashion world views according to the most intense set of emotions that we encounter in our lives. For example poverty drives people towards socialism; no amount of preaching of the well-fed priests would induce them to think that it’s as hard for the rich to get into the heaven as it’s hard for a camel to go through the needle hole. To their minds the rich may find a way to enlarge a needle hole enough to get their camels easily through.

Such things have happened before!


They don’t want a heaven somewhere in the future, they want it now or they want a heaven they have some involvement in creating.

One cannot blame them can one? The guy’s are not really thinking about the general welfare of the people most of the time, what they have in mind are the things they had to go through in their lives to survive. Those hardships put them with others undergoing the same predicaments.

What I am trying to suggest is that logic and reason are subservient to the promptings of emotions than otherwise. The Alexander or the British Empire was only interested in conquests and not whether they were logical in nature. The ‘white’ supremacists believe they are the only race loved by god and it’s visible in their skin color. The Jews believe that they are the chosen race by god, the Muslims does not lag much behind.

To the Marxists the world would only be freed through their system.

If there is anything common among these different faiths, that is the total lack of real and hard thought behind their different and opposing stands. They are all constructed on the foundations of emotionalism. Volumes are written in support of these different faiths by their followers. All of them would quote the texts or situations or happenings that would be useful to their claims alone.

It’s all a matter of heart, not mind, all the materials that are introduced in support is prompted by an illogical desire to save one’s own faith.

I am not claiming that I have stated hitherto unknown facts about life; many others have done these in more logical fashion for us. But these thoughts came to my mind as I was trying to discern some meaning into the actions of certain of my colleagues who are in some sort of fix currently.

Who let the dogs loose?

I don’t know what the hell is happening; the world has come totally unhinged for me. May be it is not a new feeling, may be some of us feel it some time in their lives. But the feeling is intense.

It is as if the whole hell is breaking loose and the sky is falling down. And no I am not merely speaking of the disaster in Miyagi. It’s terrible, it’s sad. I have always liked those hardy and small statured people. The scenes that are brought by TV are painful, but as I said earlier, nature nurtures many such calamities in its clichéd ‘womb’.

Maybe it doesn’t like men anymore, may be it doesn’t like the sins that we commit, maybe it is after us in real earnest. On many parts of the world, rains are drying up, rivers are growing forests in the middle, and the temperature is in the heavens. Soil is fast becoming uncultivable.

It’s a total mess. The earth’s axis is also said to have shifted four inches after the tsunami.

Now don’t shiver up. We are not going to die immediately. We may all die off all the same, individually and socially, sometime in the future. We have not been promised by any god that we would go on inhabiting and surviving in this globe called the earth have we been?

No of course not, this is the general belief carried by most of us, barring some teleologists out there, who believe that everything is created for a purpose and for us to make use of. Well they may be right, who are we to say that they are wrong. These are the times that people are slowly shifting away from the scientific approach and are embracing all kinds of new beliefs.

Even the discovery channel is showing, ‘’psychic investigations”. May be they believe in the crap. May be the little light specks they are showing on screen are ghosts or souls or something like that. May be the creaks and tapping that’s heard are real and ghostly.

But they are not our real problem are they? The real problem that we face is of the ghosts that are amongst us and undermining everything that we have stood for. These are the ghosts that we have created, of misuse of power, misdirection or resources, misinterpretation of signs.

These go by the name of politicians.

I know you are on my side on this and shares this distaste of politicians, at least, that’s what makes me go on. You know this thing about being a member of civil society and having the need to communicate. On this point most would agree with me. There even seems to have been a guy who said “I may not agree with what he says, but I will lay down my life for his right to say it”

Okay it was not about me that he said it. But that doesn’t alter a single thing. As long as we are members of a free society (not all agree on this point. There are views that most of the race is only good for hard labor) we have a right to put our thoughts into words. None of these are big secrets too. We all know the world is where it is, is because of our mismanagement. And we don’t directly manage the world do we? We do, or supposedly get it done, though our representatives.

And these guys have totally made things worse haven’t they?

What could be the answer? Anarchy? Maybe not. But there has to be an enhanced awareness of what’s going on around us. Not the kind of awareness that’s created by the vested interests. But a deeper one, a positive and strong one that’s created out of our own uninfluenced experiences and analysis.

Let’s hope that this enlightenment would permeate into every sphere of human life and make it a better one.

When nature strikes

When nature takes on the role of a villain there’s nothing man can do about it. This has happened in the past in Sumatra, in Lattur, in California, in Haiti and is happening almost every year in Bangladesh. Lives are lost, structures are swept away, power sources are cut, and fields are turned into marshes overnight.

It’s a giant and awe inspiring spectacle when that happens. Mighty forces are unleashed and they pull everything down on their way to some destination the nature has set. We can only turn mute and look at what’s happening. Every time man finds a remedy for an impending disaster the nature invents a new one or ups the scale on which its forces are let loose. There’s no let up.

And there are no real remedies, the only option is flight. The history of man’s progress is the history of flight both from nature without and nature within. We fly from nature by fortifying our defenses against it.

When the nature wants blood it gets it every time. Men knew of this from the time they knew how to reason. They invented gods by reasoning thus but they were just children of our imaginations and knew not how to help us. The failed gods led us to the only truth that we could find- that of the unity of man and nature, that of the single truth of existence.

But philosophy wouldn’t forestall disasters. Even precautions do little to avert calamities. A part of Japan is under floods now, from the pictures that we see the floods have destroyed most of what man has painstakingly built over a lot of years. The waters seem to advance slow but sure on a path of complete destruction.

The Japanese are a resilient people; they have survived unimaginable natural and manmade disasters in the past and I am sure that they would do it again. They are the people who built an economic empire out of a land lacking in resources. It’s a tiny land with giant aspirations; it’s a tiny people with mighty resolve.
I wish well for them and I extend my sympathies with the people on my land to that devastated land and it’s currently suffering people... Let nothing get you down; let the calamity strengthen your resolve to be winners again.

Grab bangles sirrah

Fright makes even idiots do things that they have never dreamed of doing. Certain of them even hide behind women and scuttles to and fro from places of power to overcome it. They have this strange notion that crowd is a good place to hide themselves. Even the best among men do foot massage to the wicked to extricate themselves from situations that they are afraid of. Fear is a vast domain and its territories extend to places that one never remembers of. It’s mostly subterranean and transfigures one beyond recognition.


When the top-dog is weak and effeminate this affects the whole establishment. This has been happening to mine. There is no use in being not corrupt alone, this any fool can hope to achieve. It’s easy; one has only to recall what one is taught in younger days and develop an obstinacy to stick to it. It’s only a learned behavior and has little moral value in itself. Virtue is not very palatable when it has little thought process behind it.


Now this top dog of mine, he has almost undone the whole of my establishment during his tenure. The whole department is soon going to be extinct and the weakling is still trying to show off as the most moral of men. May be this fate was unavoidable, there are other forces working at it. But he had some sort of a responsibility to make the establishment appear as a useful one in the eyes of the public. This he has failed to do. But still holds forth as the best of moralists around.

“I have done this and I have done that for you” he whines. “I have not even taken a holiday in my service.”

Well nobody asked him not to take a holiday. In fact such guys should take frequent holidays and reflect on what they are doing. Forgetting one’s life for something else is not a good sign in anyone, it’s sloppy behavior. Installed moral code does not mean a single thing unless it helps one to understand something about life and live it accordingly. Such as he fails because, he has a foolish ideal within that says that he should do this and that all through his life. The ideal is not his own, he has not tried to develop one of his own.

But strangely he seems to think that he has some right to claim the imaginary fruits that the constancy to the stupid ‘ideal’ is supposed to have brought to him. We can’t claim others children as our own and try to bring them up. In ordinary life they end in mental institutions. But luckily the moral bogus-pops flourish all over the world and are doing very well.

Well I have nothing against a bit of egoism; I would listen to an unabashed egotist than a trickster posing as a people’s man any day in my life. The egotist at least openly admits his interest in himself while the other expert stabs us when ones back is turned. All his high and mighty speech is only in self interest but he avoids mentioning himself cutely all through it.

But the egoist cannot be irresponsible in life, even the worst among them would have something sensible to say. This is natural since he is bound to exert his brain to some extent to defend himself.

This all came up because the palpable fear that this guy exhibits and his idiotic misjudgments have made the other frightened chicken in the department still worse. Currently a guy who was suspended for misbehavior and has recently reinstated is scurrying to HQ and back in a true blood-hound manner. He is out to get some one’s vitals. And the still better idiot at the HQ seems of the same mind.

What drove such fear into these useless and incompetent morons is beyond my powers of guessing. They are like a frightened lot of women and are alternatively weeping and crying. Who made these into men I wonder, they would not even do well in women’s garbs for some women are at least capable.

The fat boy’s evening foray

Man, the fat boy was away on serious business, he was out on an inspection it seems. Of course he is not supposed to know anything about any ‘insp’ or ‘ection’; he is just there to look very fat and very dignified. This fact one can safely assume. I had used him in the same capacity once to save another incompetent from making us all a laughing stock in a situation, and he came up trumps. No no, not the unstable and incompetent flop, but our fat beauty. He would look dignified in any situation no doubt, because he already looks forty even though he is only twenty plus.

Talk about maturity. He has it all. May be he doesn’t open his mouth much, that is understandable, it’s a tiny mouth covered in folds of flesh, it’s not very easy to get it open at the best of times. But what of it guys, he manages with his bulk alone and could carry any situation with him by just being there and ogling at all those who are around him with a half sheepish look. This is supposed to drive the fear of god into the spectators.

In a poor land fat guys normally get great respectability. The poor and downtrodden wonders at the bulk and what goes into producing all that flesh. They can’t even imagine how that can be possible. They are in great awe of the rhinoceroses and would behave.

You can guess why the guy was taken to the place of inspection. I have no doubt that the inspection went very well. The incompetent I spoke about have been put in charge of the inspection team. The guy is mentally ill, but is a vast source of deadly poison and would make everybody else go nuts with his scary dramatics. He plays the roles of a real bitch most of the times and is very good at whispering campaigns. He could get people in trouble just by his viciousness. Probably the guys in charge of the station there would be cowed and removed by now. It’s true that everyone who was deputed for the job is better be gotten rid of. But you know sometimes it is like that in the world. Those who does all the real shit gets fired and the shitters get to bask in glory.

Well the delegation of nit wits have not all come back in the evening. Only the fat one came back. It is said that the guy had to take something to his warlord who dislikes visiting the workplace and would be cocooned up at his house at all times in the day. He likes to play with children it is reported, and what more would be useful than seeing children grow up, it is the most important and time consuming of all jobs. Women might do it very well. But when men does it its remarkable. A short man gets to be someone big like that.

Yeah our fat boy, (he could be used as a buoy) has come back in the evening more serious than ever. He is bursting at seams (literally too) with great importance. He has to carry some papers to the warlord and the warlord has to take it to the higher ups. It’s mostly just plain crap and nothing else. But the way the guys behave completely beats me. What is so secretive about plain government work, and why can’t it be done at the office than somewhere else? Well you can keep asking these questions till you are hoarse.

There wouldn’t be any answer at all. The people may be are waiting for an answer too. But as you very well know it won’t be forthcoming at all. Answer the people, god forbid, would anybody do that, not even when you are in the deepest of hells, that’s impossible. Don’t we know how to manage people, don’t we know how to trick them and make them believe that they are not really being taken for a ride but instead their interests are being seriously looked after.

So this mysterious thing they are conveying to the warlord would be of the greatest shitty importance. It keeps them occupied and in good humor. No wonder why the fat boy looks down on every one now and remarks to me that he would only be by the Monday. Well he is so puffed up with importance that he was terrible to watch.
I Might have been unkind to him perhaps, he could be only doing what he is told. He just rumbled away on his mission making everyone else just unimportant. Would he get to his place of his destination in this apoplectic state? Let us hope that he would. He doesn’t use the normal kind of conveyance. He just rolls to his destination. It is also downhill and with bit of help from kind gravity he would reach there soon enough.

His foray was good. I am still trembling with the gravity of the great spectacle. Now someone says that he is out to get some spending done.
Man! The luck some guys has!

Turning an apothecary into a doctor

There is the field-work, and there is the work-field. One is a job and the other is a place. A job is done in a place; it of course is an activity. But a place doesn’t have to do anything, it doesn’t move, or at least it is relatively so, considering the ‘old-fangled’ ideas of earth’s rotation and its place in the universe. Nobody cares for such crap anymore; do any, in real life? Bah…….

One should put a wedge in somewhere, and there are enough places in our thought culture to do so.

So of course not, we don’t care for such nonsense in our daily lives. We still go by astrological charts rather than the rules of astronomy in what we do. I know some of you might oppose this notion of mine. But think some more, we live in the midst of superstitions; even the most scientific brain would have some.

Want to wager? Ask a scientist what shoe they put on first. You will be scolded out of the room, there is superstition for you! The scientists are not alone in this; there are brighter people around in the world that is unaware of what they are doing too. Want to hear about it?

Among the guys I know of, there is this superstition that the moment they do what is entrusted to them, their lives would be worthless. Think that you are a driver or plumber or surveyor or a draughtsman, you must not do what you have been paid to do. In fact you should do everything else and make it appear that you are somebody else.

Think hard, you say that you don’t do it? Are you sure, have there been a divine dicta or something that you were destined to do that particular job and nothing else? Oh I know you can’t immediately find the dicta in Toto. Okay I shall take your words for it. You know your limitations and you are satisfied with what you have got in life and occasionally you are even willing to perform the duties connected with it.

Well you are a blessed lot. You know who you are or at least you have a pretty good idea what you are not. Good going friends.

But there are some who are still unsure of what they are apart from the notion that they need money to live in this world. This is a general supposition and one can’t blame people for it. Money may be simply paper, but the paper has certain properties to be afraid of, one being the kind of value even idiots get if they have enough of the thing.

If you call yourself intelligent you know how to respect money and not to do what you are supposed to do. If you do everything as you are required to do wouldn’t you be like an automaton programmed to do certain things under certain specific conditions. You lose prestige that way. And prestige is important. Wonder why our guys don’t do what they are expected to do. It’s all about individuality and human essence.

So if you are a surveyor, you don’t survey, if you are a driver you don’t drive, if you are plumber you don’t plumb, you simply do what else you find out there to bolster your prestige. Let me paint an imaginary situation of what you should do if you are, for example a surveyor.

One thing you must not do at all costs is survey. Let them kill you for it, but you are not to survey at all. The best thing for you to do is to visit no fields if you can help it. Shirk all fields like the very hell and stick hard and fast to your work place. You should be able to do this for at least sixteen years running to be able to establish that you are not a surveyor but something else. All the while you must try to voice your opinions on everything about the work you are really required to do and manage to make someone else do it or find a way to blame every fault on others to get your money bag filled on a monthly basis.

There would come a time when the compounder get promoted to an apothecary (It is much better for them to promote and get you out of your area of work to safeguard the interests of the general public at least) and then you can start pretending that you are something else other than the apothecary.

Life is a great stage for pretending is it not?

Equal to a fault

Sure, I am not against women, and no, I am no sexist. But the fact remains that the dames that I have under me is a real pain in the ass. They won’t come on time and mostly leave before time. That is sufferable, but the kind of ‘cattiness’ they show sometimes drives me up the walls.

The moment I put my foot down on anything official which they don’t take to, they are like the porcupines with all their bristles out. They glare and breathe fire. To their minds I am the violator unless I see eye to eye with them on all subjects. I must admit that they do a bit of work and often are better organized than most of the guys around. But that is hardly any excuse for disobedience. This disrespect could be there because they consider me thoroughly inferior to some of the more saucy men around.

The guys they like have a ready smile and sugary words with them at all times and would go fetch the moon if the dames asked them to do it. I don’t think it is wrong at all, though I might not be so inclined, as some of these ladies are more capable than the guys that they make use of. But there is nothing wrong with helping others on anything unimportant and it is up to the person to do it or not.

The ladies are so pleased with this attitude of the men folk that they look up on the guys with great warmth, while they hate the sight of me for treating them equal with the guys (Well that’s the point about equality is it not, giving the same privileges to all?). But I have an inkling that the fair sex would still like to be treated with deference. They may be taking it as a right too. Nobody is seen talking about women’s lib anymore and with good reason. Who would want to change a state where they can have all the goodies and enough men to order about?

And everybody knows the kind of power a woman can bestow on men with a single supportive glance, let alone out right support. Their admiration would do wonders to the fragile egos of the macho male. Sadly I have overcome that stage now and do not any more ‘picture’ a girl as the spectator of everything I do whether alone or in a crowd. (I hear that even wizened guys go for it). I have got rid of that mythical goddess.

So I have few complaints, I have been with women and there is little magic left there apart from the basic need that one feels sometimes for them. That would remain with the best of men all through their lives. If there are some moralists and doubters who oppose this view read Gandhi and the lives of saints. You would either become humble and admit that this particular urge is stronger than you think or else would feel so puffed up thinking that you are better than these ‘poor sinners’ ( “man, why do people revere them so, it’s unbelievable!”)

I am not an unkind guy, I have not been denying the dames full freedom and am mostly supportive of all the better things that they do. It is not that they do anything bad; the point is that they would not do anything at all when they are put out. This puts one in some bother sometimes. The ‘invertebrate’ men that are being affected by this lackadaisical approach of the dames would invariably blame the guy in charge than any of the dames.

I have been in some such predicament of late. The reason? That I do not accord preferential treatment to the dames, I treat them the same with men and is as strict with them as with men. It is not that I scold them or dart black looks on them. God forbid! But I like to get things done in the manner they are intended to be done. The women (in this blessed land at least) do get the same kind of perks and the same kind of the money that the men get now. They get more leeway in some matters than men holding the same kind of jobs do.

So the least they can do is to do things the way they have to be done when they are about it. It would not hurt the public if they did so. But strangely their operative idea seems to be that all the guidelines are made for the purpose of being interpreted by them. They interpret them in the manner they think fit and there can’t be any opposition to this line of thought. They know how to process something and when. If it is not done correctly and in time the public may go hang or better still and go on and worship them.

You see the kind of lovely situation that I am in? I am in a fix.