Stray Thoughts

When the mind lies vacant ideas enter into it through doors unseen. These doors lie unheeded in the subconscious, and correspond to the survival or sex instincts in man. These are primal instincts and are the most powerful that a person has. When some incoming thought targets this part of the brain there is little resistance and the mind becomes susceptible to be influenced dangerously. May be with a little help from intoxicants such thoughts and feelings could place one in compromising situations.

There is something in the saying that an idle mind is the play ground of the devil. The devil being the sum total of the basic urges that one has. When it takes over only destruction could be generated and nothing else. These annihilations could take many forms. Some could be mental, some could be physical and some may even have social ramifications.

Thus idleness becomes a sin against us and the world. It is not safe to be idle in mind. Yet most of us are like that and get lured in by the trickster at all times.

It is curious that the devil is called trickster amongst other names in the Judeo-Christian tradition. May be there is some sense in it. He tricks people into his domain and makes uses of them to undo what the good sense has done to make our lives better.

It may be well to say things like this, that there is an unseen realm within the consciousness and it can be influenced by even stray thoughts relating to certain aspects of man and can become the undoing of us in the end. But what could be the reason for it, what causes this chink in us? Are we born weak or is it some burden that we have accumulated in the course of the long evolution that we had?

There are no answers. What is within? What are these animal urges and fears and passions that get to us when something cracks in us? There is any number of instances of irrational things that we do when in the throes of such emotions. Are they emotions even or are they something subterranean trying to get upper-hand and show us it’s superior.

At those times we are not much different from the madmen. Nothing we do then would make sense. But even otherwise we are not much better than animal or robots. We are either programmed by the society or are quite outside it and would have no conscience to speak of.

Sometimes, I don’t know what to make of man

Loving to hate

Hate is a continent where sun never sets. The glare is so fierce that most of us would sneak out of the land the moment we get in. But some would remain there till they become prey to worms. They like it there, everything is so uncertain, there’s no shortage of events, there’s no shortage of friends. Birds of the same feather may or may not flock together, but birds of hate invariably do. Its hectic, it’s all very feverish and tense in that strange land.

Some like that type of existence. They can’t be blamed for their liking too. It sort of drives away the tedium of life from them. One would never get bored there. One might get defiled but never bored, that’s guaranteed.

Even the best of us have ventured into that sphere sometime or other, May be its something in us that made us do that, Most of the times that is the case with the normal kind of man. He stumbles against some unbelievable and dumb acts of insensitivity and gets incensed and takes off to this land he had been hearing all his life. The terrain is vile, the scenery is wicked, and so the decent scoots after a while.

All the wins fashioned out in that region would have an incredible odor of dirt. To some it’s suffocating, they can’t bear the stench, yet there are deadly pragmatists out there too. They get excited with the stink and revel in it.

It’s the most easy to find of all lands. Isn’t it strange how people become selfless in their selfishness? They may have a hundred reservations about the guys who are willing to help them to put their enemies down; they might quake within thinking of the kind of guys they are keeping company with. But all that would not prevent them from exerting themselves to the limit in protecting these same monsters if the occasion arises. By comparison the other party might prove to be the most harmless of beings.

Well that is how these things work out. Even harmlessness might generate hostility. The other guy has crossed them in some way, so the guy must have motives for everything that he does when they are around. It does not matter if the guy was right at that one time he came up against them. It’s not the right or wrong that hurts most, it’s the feeling of being done in in some way. Everyone knows how such feelings are, they would not let us sleep, they would not let us think straight. It’s like one has lost ones freedom to live.

That’s how some come in to the weird land of hate. But there are some purebred’s in there too, they doesn’t need any cause to take someone down. It’s a feeling in their blood, like Iago they are against all human virtues. To them such things are nonexistent. The hunter would never see the world through the eyes of its prey.

I wonder what made me think about all these, may be there’s reason or maybe there’s not.

Of a game one should hate

I am sadly all agog now and it’s unbearable. The Cricket World cup is just around the corner and we are going to win it, or so our caps Dhoni say. No wonder I can’t stand the tension. We had nothing like the ‘Idiot box’ to break our hearts in that distant and romantic 1983 and that was the only time we won it. We still are mostly in the dark about what guys like Sreeskant and Patil and Sastri did out there. They were capable of doing the weirdest of things no doubt and probably did it to. But we were luckily spared the indignity of seeing all that.

Now the things have changed and everything including the silly dances of Sreesanth is all out there for everyone to see. The kid is not above crying too, if it came to that. Then there is that ‘immortal’ Baji around. Anything can happen with that one. Saheer is not much behind and there are guys like Uvraj ( he is very free with his words if not with his sixes) ,Raina ( This gentleman has got the greatest respect for the rising ball, he freezes whenever one such come along) and the flying guy like nehra ( his balls sadly doesn’t fly. But his mind does it seems.)

I am only glad that Uthappa and Sharma is not in the team, they were having a good time with each other the other day in Duleep Trophy. The Umpire had to break them off. There was great pointing of fingers and slamming of chests and glaring of eyes.

As you know excitement is the one thing one should not have. You can have money, muscle, and even a mackintosh; you can have Marcus Aurelius, Mysore Palace and if worse comes to worst a moustache even, but not excitement. Well no, no, not ever.

The reason? Excitement befuddles the brain and makes you susceptible to the attacks by everything on the earth- Man, beast, mumbo-jumbo and mimicry, you name it. It’s unbelievable; it’s the worst place on earth. You are all open like a football team on field without a goal keeper and if you are football fan that’s as worse as it gets.

Hope the guys won’t make us want to cry once again. Dhoni seems kind of cool. He might pull it off this time, unless the South African’s or the Aussies don’t upstage him.

Nice is in France

Yeah, it’s so. One gets deluded into believing that there are nice people in the world or at least most of the people have their nice sides. Well you know what, you could not be dumber! There is none like that in the whole wide universe. Search and you will find out for yourself.

Search? Yeah search, can’t you put in a little bit of labor into what you want to learn. Aw, come on guys!

It is not the “seek and ye shall find” type of saying that I have in mind when saying this. The Christ may have meant only good things by it. The poor guy, other than being a little partial to the people he was born to; he had little bad qualities to speak of. But the saying is not anyway bad.

It is true about all other things too. If you seek enough, you would find the god or the devil or both at the same time. I must say that it is easier to find god than the devil in these times. Getting to god does not take all that long for we have been spoon fed how to do it from the childhood onward. Some say that this is done by the agents of the devil to create mischief and protect his subjects.

I would not go into that. Everybody has a right to believe in what they think fit and what they believe to be true. But fact remains, it is not easy to find the perennial trickster anywhere in the universe. You might believe that you are quite qualified to have a tête-à-tête with Lucifer, but it takes some real doing in our world. I believe it is not because any fault of the devil himself. He is probably frightened of the people that he has been given to seduce.

The honest fact is that some of my compatriots could easily seduce devil if they could once find him. That is the hardest part. He is not to be seen anywhere in person. May be he has been absorbed into those of his adherents by now. But I have my doubts on this. From what we learn about him, he is not such a bad sort. He is even constant to his companions and is said to be very protective of them. Otherwise the legions would not follow him from heaven to hell. There must have been something good in the guy after all.

Anyway he is not to be found anywhere now. My compatriots, they have not been slack in seeking the guy; in fact they are at it most of their time. May be that is why he is keeping away from the globe and is planning to send a request to god asking to be re assigned to some lesser worlds where people are yet to develop their ‘evil’ to this level. Even the devil can only take that much.

I say, god is easy, while the other guy is tough to locate. For one thing there are no methods or treatises on how to realize evil and the devil. Even satanic cultists envisage him as something benign. I must say that these guys are rather innocent and they would only have to check out the local celebrity to locate a better model in bad deeds if they really care about it. If the Satan, to them, is only a substitute for god it becomes only a fad and would do them little good other than having the satisfaction that they belong to some sort of an exotic church.
If you want I can suggest any number of guys who would shine better than the hoofed and horned entity of which they speak of in the Old Testament. I have been dealing with then in and out all my lives. There are some specimens nearby at this time too. You need only ask, I shall point them out to you one by one. Don’t be disappointed if they look like men, they are, they even speak like god, as I said that part comes very easy, we have been trained to do so all our lives, but make no mistake about it, they could drive the fear of god into any master devil that is out there.

I have been often taken in by their manners and smooth words and even tears. Not that it often clouds my judgment where my duty is concerned. I manage to hold on to my ideas even in the background of terrible pressures from the super devils. But on the levels of human emotions I may have some weakness. These congenital heirs to evil know how to make use of this chink in my armor. You would be led through the dumbest of paths and would only realize that you are done in for after you have had it good and proper.

Our this guy

Know what Rules are for? Oh, I forget you are no clairvoyant; you can’t guess what’s in my mind. No problem friend, that’s how things are. Nobody is blaming you.

We are all in the same boat. We mostly stumble along, not knowing what’s happening around us. May be there are some among you who think otherwise, that they know everything that’s going around them. They are dreamers, they know dogs hit about what they are saying.

Still you find them adamant? Ask them this, how many times did they blink on a given day, okay forget it, ask them how many times they did that in the last minute. The moment you ask them that, they would start calling you names and would be trying to put you down in any way they can. For they don’t know! We wouldn’t know too.

The point is people know dog shit about themselves and others. If you can just imagine the kind of things that’s happening at this very moment in your own sweet little body unknown to you, you would start looking a bit disillusioned about your own grasp of things and your own importance in the world. Admitted, it’s very nice having grand ideas about yourself. In the hard world they don’t work most of the time sadly.

No one knows what is in others mind. (There is mostly nothing in it most of the time. And whenever there is something that’s all bad) There were a few exceptions, like Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holms. Sadly both of them were fictitious.

We are a bit fictitious too. It’s no wonder we are like that, for if we take a good look at the contents of our mind at any given moment we would give everything up and would search for a way to end this misery that we call our lives. So we weave dreams about us, about our importance in the world and the sad fact that others are not as important as ourselves.

This was what our guy was doing too. He is not very intelligent (well who is). But that doesn’t stop one from learning rules by heart would it. No, it wouldn’t. He had created a world of Rules within which he was lord.

So what are Rules for?

Rules are for this our guy. They are made for no other purpose than this our guy would learn them and others would flock to him to have an insight to them. So you see, the rules have a purpose, it is there to boost the ego of this our guy.

And who is this guy? He is nothing; he is just a puny weenie individual in a sad and misshapen world who has found a use for himself. He learns every rule that has any importance in his line of work and is only happy to serve others with it. The guy yearn for recognition, he is crazy about it.

Because all others in the line are a bit lazy and have forgotten how to learn things by heart, they make use of this guy and sit passively around when our guy makes hay while the artificial lighting of rules shine.

There are some whispers too, that the guy has not turned in a daze real work till today. He is said to be in charge of some survey work for the last couple of decades and have never been in the field. What are you saying friend, would such talents be forced to survey anything other than the others ignorance of the mighty Rules.

I have been watching the strange airs that the guy gives himself for the last few days and could not get rid of the itch to say something about it. Well you know in an ancient treatise there is this dread pronouncement:

“Swadharman nidhanam sreya
Paradharman bhayavaha”
It only means this:

“The duty that falls to our lot, would always bring prosperity
While that of others (if we do them) is cause for fear”

Elaborated it means that, we are given certain responsibilities by the world after due consideration of our worth and doing that would only better us, but if we shirk those and tries to usurp to things that belongs to others we would soon end up in trouble.

Well our guy wouldn’t understand that would he? He has currently support from the right quarters, not because of any of his worth but because these guy are inept and lazy.

“You are so dead”

“You are so dead”

The little voice tells us and it never ceases telling us sometimes, it is as if something invisible is up in arms against us. It’s childish, it’s foolish but all the same, it could be the most insistent thing that ever was. Okay, it could be wrong, but have you noticed it never lets up at these times. We feel very low when we are like that.

The curious thing is that, this voice sometimes tries to drive the chills into you whenever you try to do something nice by the world. No, it’s not merely paranoia, it’s the truth. Call it fear, call it pessimism, call it a negative approach to life, and call it anything you want. But it is mostly a reflection of the animosity towards you that is out there. There could be some persistent minds that are functioning to do you in or wish you dead.

But why, you might wonder, what is so dangerous about you to make the most spineless of all human specimens to want you dead? Well, the fact is, hate is a condition that doesn’t require any thing as its ammunition and anything as a starting point. It’s often a prime requirement to life even and I am not being funny here. There are people who were raised and felled by hate. Some can’t even suffer to think of existing without someone to hate and someone to run down. There are a million hidden causes for hating somebody. These need not be obvious too.

So I don’t wonder that I am hated. I do expect a liberal dosage of it in my life. It also motivates me to cling on to what I have and fight back. It’s all very exhilarating. Often I enjoy it too. One can also practice a little bit of the stuff on one’s own too, provided the causes are alright.

Yet there are times when you do something by the book and try to save something good from being destroyed and are still found fault with by the inept and are singled out for victimization. One’s imagination is that, by doing these little things towards making the world a better place to live in, you are working for the public in general and are doing the right thing. But man, if you want to know, that is where you err. You are not taken for what you are and everything that you do is twisted into something else and interpreted in the weirdest way to undo you.

At those times, if a person is human, he would lose patience with everything that’s around. One would rile and blaspheme and roar and would start butting the immovable and proverbial stone wall. It wouldn’t budge and your self confidence would receive a beautiful beating. It’s one such time in my life right now. Not that I did not have anything similar before. I had had enough of such incidents to warn me of it, but that would not lessen the heart burn the incidents occasions every time you are dealing with it.

Here I am now in the middle of a giant hating machine because of no reason. I wouldn’t call myself a grand individual; I would not tell people that I have the panacea for all the ills that abound in the world. But one has the desire to follow certain accepted norms of behavior in public life and though every idiot would laugh his heart out over those who try to adhere to them, he nevertheless would not try to deny the relevancy of these when called upon. These rules are what the human social structure is based upon. They are the bedrock of the civilization. The tricky had always found a way to circumvent every such rule and would even convince the tolerably straight guys that a bent approach is needed sometimes to overcome evil!

The poor morons so instructed would follow the advice too. I have seen too much of such things in my life to have any doubts about the veracity of the thing.

We won’t deny it, we are all fearful; one can’t console oneself with the thoughts of the heaven world when one is being threatened. No one is sure if such an idyllic state of existence is there or not. From what little we know about it, it would be much better if we stick to the kind of life we have here and that is the whole point in threatening. Everybody, even if the guy is seriously thinking about doing himself in wouldn’t like to be threatened.
So when others start whispering you dead it s not nice to be at the receiving end whoever you might be. It is easy to create mistrust and propagate misinformation in the world. The only thing you need to have is some kindred souls who are willing to lend you all assistance. These could be obtained by favors, friendships or coercion. Everybody likes to see someone denigrated because it acts as a tonic for them concealing their weaknesses and seeing the downfall of someone who they always thought well than themselves.

So beware of the little voice that threatens you. Even if these come in the form of desires alone and there is no overt move on the part of the modern witches to pursue it any further. There is a great danger in allowing these to flourish, it would dent your peace of mind and would interfere with your life.

Better have the redirected to its sources( I am joking, don’t wish any one die, but Collin Wilson has stated somewhere that it could also be effective in some cases), that is, counter them with sheer hypocrisy if you won’t, boast that you are the be all and end all of the world and you can’t be opposed. It would drive the rumor mill into silence and they would start bashing you about the hypocrisy that you are exhibiting. That is you have them where you want. It’s a good thing to make the others do as you desire while it is destructive to have it otherwise.

When the scales fall from our eyes

There is something in adversity; it makes you see the world as it is, shorn of all its trappings. And what you see is nothing to rave about. But then, you have known it all along haven’t you? That the world is a sorry place, where little goes aright. In your stupidity you ignored it and tried to cook up something fantastic in its place. Some call it creating your own reality. May be there is nothing wrong with it. You have seen madmen live like that, they are comfortable with what they have brought forth from themselves and they are not bothered about what the rest of the world thinks.

It’s a good state to be in. Every single feeling is then self- made; every single action then is genuine. There is no burden of tradition or custom or social norms sitting inside and criticizing everything that you do. You are jolly and delighted at what you do. Even when you cry, you do it with sheer abandon; you don’t try to suppress it and act happy.

Take the case of the ‘normal’ people, they are always on tenterhooks. They can’t do a single thing without making themselves sick about the consequences of what they are doing. The thing may be as silly as driving a nail into a piece of wall. It’s easy, the world thinks, you have the needed strength, added determination, you have the hammer , of course the nail and you have got the piece of wall to do all the mischief. What could be easier that driving a nail into it? Nothing really, nothing!

But have you tried it yet? Well go on and try it, just once. The experience would teach you something, or else you would have to be a carpenter who has it as second nature by not thinking on it anymore. To him it has become a mechanical activity, requiring no reflection and very little involvement.

My point is, as long as we are rolling along without any tough obstacle to scale, we are comfortable with our fantastic concept of life and in this we are not very different from the madmen. They are fixated on some particular thing and we are on several. The sad thing is, both the groups are not really free, they become somehow conditioned from within or without and go on performing things that the really sane would rather not.

This is where the benefits of real adversity come to the fore. When one is jolted out of the strange dream that one is having then some filament falls from our sight and everything becomes clear. You realize that there is nothing in this world great as you have imagined and it is and has been drab and dull and painful all along. You lose faith in everything that’s around, you see that nothing is reliable and no one can be trusted.

That brings on some hard thinking. And thought in that form does not fail to bring you wisdom!

The 15th it is

“Would it get done this time round?” The absolute master demanded imperiously (meaning ‘would they manage to finish ‘somebody’ off this time?’)

“It would” the second in command roared in reply. He is mighty confident that he would single handedly accomplish it by whatever means he could get hold of and currently the ‘somebody’ is tremulously waiting for the hoards to arrive to do the deed. Would they maim him or decimate him or harpoon him? Who knows!

The action is criminal no doubt. But when everybody around the place decides to play dumb about it, it has a chance of being viewed as an accident. And accidents do happen to people don’t they?


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The 15th it is

So it has come to this! They are having a bash right now after having put me in my place! You want to know what the place is. It’s known by the cute name of ‘restriction’ and it’s a mighty dangerous place too. It’s mostly invisible and is only known by the words and deeds of those who are its wardens.


The name of the place was kindly intimated to me by an ardent advocate of ‘technical’ excellence around here. Yeah the guy is a representative of the technocrats (though they seem definitely very ‘low tech’ as circumstances seems to prove). They currently rule the place by proxy. If you have any doubts on it ask this self same guy, he would enlighten you about what they are and what they are capable of.

This guy was called a ‘criminal’ by one of his long time colleague. Though this techie is small in person, he knows several ‘useful’ rules by heart and he is wont to use the most deadly methods to cut his opponents down, people claim. A guy, who was once victimized by this commendable technical maestro, had sobbed into my ears through phone about the kind of things the techie said and did to him. ‘Those things’ had questioned everything including the man’s parentage, and reportedly the deeds of the techie is said to have just fallen short of manslaughter.

The victimized guy had even told me:”you know, if I had your kind of physical strength I would have smashed his tiny vicious face into smithereens.” Well I thought he was being hysterical!

This poor man had also cautioned me when I was coming up here that this guy would stop at nothing to put me down and ‘control’ the environment. But I told him that I had little to gain by coming here and so felt sure that the guy would see the good intentions on my part and would be willing to second my effort to save the station as it was about to be closed down due to inefficiency.

Well, he was concerned about saving the station and was ready to come to the aid initially when the things were precarious. But then eventually the station was saved (I wouldn’t claim it to my own credit, as I was but an actor in the play) and new recruits on the technical side were appointed. A new master was also put in place as the place had regained trust from government.
The immediate effect was, all forgot those things they had said and done to get things to such a pass as to make the government close down the place, and started putting me down on a consistent basis. This was supported by the new entrants as well as the old hands as they soon realized I was a bit strict in my views about how to run things. I was sort of impartial and tried to stick the middle path and that is not generally liked by anyone.

They started by working on me through the mechanisms they knew well. Well one can only take so much of personal victimization, covert or overt. It doesn’t require a grand grasp of psychology to learn the best way to destroy a person. It may be by feeding lies into the rumor mill, and creating an atmosphere of hate against him. They have done it well and even the girls who had come crying to me saying that a certain guy and his cronies had verbally abused them are transformed into their supporters.

Well they say that they are my enemies and want to save the world from me, so the restriction. You know guys; the place called ‘restriction’ is a most inconvenient place I must say. It has no doors, no windows; it has little air and no light. It’s made so because the well-meaning is concerned about what the guys inside would do to them. In their terrible humanitarian kindness they have shut the place up well and good.

No one can ‘file’ their way in. They guy inside can’t ‘file’ his way out. And all the ‘file’s are safely kept out of reach, especially ‘file’s’ that cost a bit, that are bulky and secret. The knowledgeable say that they have ‘postponed’ filing by this timely action.

What wonder they are celebrating about this place that they have constructed out of their own ingenuity!