A problem for sweet delinquents

Oh my poor dears, you never thought that there would be a nice problem once you condemn an animal to its death, by placing it on a lovely chair and injecting lethal doses of subtle satire into its innards. You even thought that I followed such nonsense.

Not many are as brilliant as you are my dear! Even placing the one man in the whole human evolutionary chain who would have smiled at the irreparable torture were not enough for you and your staunch supporters. You had to proceed with the ‘sentence’s you uttered before hand. The vanity of the human soul! It would not be pacified with honesty even.

Now where would you dispose the body off? All sweet delinquents have to contend with this one problem my dearest. They have to hide the remains.

But of course you can take it to the lab and dissect it with the help of your friends and then can even incinerate it, provided that there is an incinerator at your haunt.

You can have a thandoori chicken afterwards. The world would look beautiful yet, all glitter and glamour.

The problem is the shell is not the same as the animal which generated it. Can you tell me when did it come in to existence? Before it died or at the time of its death? Is it the same as the animal it succeeded?

Am I laughing? I wouldn’t want to, that too at your wonderfully young heart. Should I go into more details?

It is just like a poor system to have such terrible pitfalls. They have to produce a carcass where there is none! What does it matter whether some one sits in a chair or not, whether any one is thinking or not, whence come these two entities and a corpse to boot.

It is all imagination my dear. There is nothing really other than yourself, let me tell you, you wonderful little child, you are that thing that I am, there is naught concealed, there have never been anything concealed, all was made crystal clear. Only that you did not see it.

You wonder whether I am competent to tell it to you. Who else is capable dear? If those who know do not say so with conviction who else would dare say it? The true would always discern truth in its subtlety, for what else have we something called the self?

Don’t be drawn in to all the nonsense which is especially cooked for you, to get you off track. It is what is called the veil; would you not prove it to me that you can see behind that, and that you have it in you to step beyond, and be as I AM.

Words and mind can only go that much far. In fact let me say it in reverse, the words can reach very, very far and mind can go on spreading. That is not what we are inquiring into, is it? We are searching for something very primary.

We are searching for something we forgot somewhere.

It is within ourselves.

Did some sweet delinquents find it yet?

God is taking a nap

It was a hell of a day! Whenever I put on the breaks, my bike would stall would not budge an inch from that spot again, the brakes were bloody jammed, I would be standing stupid in the middle of the traffic, gaping at others. The only thing saving my life was the condition of the highway-It was not really a bloody road; it was a fucking hole. After a glaring completion with the rest I would push the stupid thing with my legs to one side and kick at the breaks till they straighten.

Then it would happen again. I would go through the procedure once more. The poor bike can not be blamed, it is on its last legs, no, it is not that old, five years is not that old in this land. But I haven’t done any maintenance on the thing for the last three years. Surprised, well I am that sort of a guy, I believe in miracles, I think that the bike would obey me and run on its own whenever I want it to. And as hell would have it, it does. Why I don’t know.

I was damn pleased with the thing, for it had never failed me till this day. This was the first great hiccup. I was sorry for it. Yet it was still running smoothly, its engine was in good condition. The poor thing, I thought it looked at me in a rather abashed manner. I saw girls whiz past me at great speeds on their smart Kinetic Hondas. But I steeled myself to the ridicule. Passengers laughed at me from their high seats in the buses. But I was like a saint, immune to everything. Every time I had to push the thing to one side and release the breaks I thought about the tedium of human life and was content. This is just another instance of the absurdities that life holds.

Then I got to the office, things looked bleaker there, the girl who sits next to me is an inveterate talker, wouldn’t stop the useless effort if the world is going to fall down. She had already begun before I reached the seat. Every one else looked dazed and was immensely relieved when I came into their view and ran for a respite. Some were fanning themselves cool.

I put on my ear phones and played the music very loud into my ear because that was the only escape route, my ears have become deaf in the process, but at least it was music and I like music. Then there were other irritants, the boss calls and talks to me with her finger in the mouth. It is funny the way she does it, what for I could not yet guess. She is not young anymore and may have no such thoughts on her mind. I try not to smile, but the feeling somehow escapes through my eyes. She immediately detects it and withdraws her hand chastely. But then unconsciously it goes back into the mouth again and plays with her tongue and lips. May be she was thinking very hard! I had a bad time answering her questions. She gets very personal every now and then and that pisses me off, having this thing about personal life and privacy.

I struggled like this for the entire day at the office, alternately listening to music and talking to my boss when called, and that happens every twenty minutes. Don’t take me wrong; the boss calls every one into her cabin almost all day that is her way of having control.

I felt totally mauled after the fucking day at the office; imagine having to listen to the local FM station non stop for an entire day and having to witness the tricks of the boss’s finger as a side dish, no I did not get any work done, other than the most routine ones. And again in this land who is interested in doing something to make the system work, no one, sadly including me. I loath myself for it, but there are some things we could not do anything about. The work I do is practically useless in the sense that it has nothing to do with the people or their lives. Our department is like a monopoly guarding its trade secrets, but taking a muster only at the end of the month to pay good tax payers money out.

Things again worsened the moment I left the office. The bike was behaving badly. It required some drastic repairs. The brakes again jammed and the biker behind me veered away calling me something very bad. I was in no mood to let it go by then. I chased him down and told him to never think of using that trap which he uses for other enjoyable purposes on me again. His face became muddy and was becoming muddier still. Then I had to stay back and further enlighten him some more- That even if he was the top fucking goon in the locality I would whip him like he was a filthy bitch and he would have to take it lying down.

I left him standing there considering his options.

He was not as big as me but looked mean and could have put up a good fight. He would have been in the right too, it would have been a bloody mess if we had collided. I am sure that I would have reacted similarly in a situation like that. Any way he did not chase me.

The things were not improving at all. None of the fucking shops would have my brand of cigarettes and at the last stop I had to be satisfied with a pack containing seven measly cigarettes. There were other events too….. I was still blazing when I took off from there. Every thing went into slow motion then. The bike behaved sweetly, the day looked all red and quivering. I arrived at my house still crackling all over from anger.

Then there she was, at the door, smiling trustfully and demurely into my eyes. My anger went, I became human again.

After that the nature took over, thunder raged and a terrible whirlwind uprooted trees all over the territory. There has been nothing like it for a long time in the area. Power went and rain crashed over our roof, one or two giant thunder claps sent jitters into our house and into my poor girl. She had her hands over her ears and pleaded with me.

“Why are you angry? Tell them to stop.”

For, I had jokingly told her sometime when we were newly married that the elements of nature would always reflect my current moods- I being one with nature! She feigns as if she believes in it and would come up with such requests when nature starts to go wild.

Like always I ordered the elements to subside -and they wouldn’t.

“You try “I told her “You do control me, don’t you, why wouldn’t the nature obey you?”

Then she said to nature:

“Stop it, don’t do this.”

And miraculously the storm ceased.

“Love is a touch smelly as well”

“Don’t ever look back; there will be blood and tears all along the path”

These words of MT (M.T. Vasudevan Nair, the famous writer) were downright brilliant; they brought an entire realm of expressive experience into us. He was always fond of the ‘white spaces’ between words, and talks about them a great deal - About that shadow land which lies between the terms and his expressions filled those gaps and filled our hearts with unmixed feeling. Perhaps none else could have understood the vital importance of those words at that time than us.

I came in to the scene long after he wrote those words, but the feeling was still alive.

We were a poor society then, trying to find our feet after the independence without anything to fall back on to. Our homes and economy lay in tatters. Our young were then like beggars on our own land. No jobs around and no hope of finding any in the distant future. Our wants were great, our determination greater and our exploits for them were almost global in character. In our excursions to all parts of the world to find wealth we only had one thing on our minds, that of coming back to this very land and saying a few terse words filled with feeling to all those who had discredited us before. I know it is all very childish, but that was how we were, none are intellectual giants when it comes to personal feelings.

We were very angry at the world and were willing to sacrifice everything to win the bloody fight to the top. We had made ourselves immune to our own inner core, our emotions and our blood ties. We were ruthless and very, very egotistical.

One character in a movie script written by the same author spat fire when he was asked whether he thought he was god, after his triumphant return from the distant lands:

“Yes I am God; I am the God of money!”

And that statement sealed the argument for ever on those turbulent times in our past.
I think these were all part of our process of growing up as a society. The Malayalee sensibility was never the same again, he brought to us the words we longed to speak then, words and emotions of an uncertain period in our social and political life. None of the younger generation would be aware of the immense force these words had on our psyche. They would think they are emotional and sentimental and boastful.

And they are emotional and sentimental alright, for that matter, what is not emotional and sentimental in our lives? They are what life is all about. A cold and practical approach to it might satisfy some, especially those living in the modern times with its accent on the brutal principles of buying and selling (the market place). I know that the times have changed; the present generation is able to use empty spaces alone to convey a wealth of meaning! They don’t even need words to do that! I have sadly experienced it recently!

Not that it is bad, no; it might also be a new mode of expression and communication which might later make all language superfluous. It might be a good thing too, if we can transmit thoughts and emotions in a condensed format like that.

All the same, the most beautiful words that I have ever seen (they are expressions rather than words, they are like soundless entities) are those created by Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, another great and original writer in our language. He often used exclamation and question marks alone to convey meaning, some what like in the following construction.

“Why are the poor kids so agitated?”

“? ”

“I thought you knew”

“! ”

A lesser writer (like me for instance) might have said. “The other man looked up questioningly” and “there was surprise on his face” or something like that instead.

He was great, Basheer, all other writers pales into insignificance before him. He was sometimes crazy in life but was immensely wise with words. They were simple words (I quail when I have to use the expression simple, the damage certain friends have done to the word is terrible!) I still can’t remember his short story “The Birthday” without being greatly affected by it. It is a repository of every thing that adversity does to you, and all through it his wonderful love for humanity shows like silver light.

He was a wanderer in his younger days, seems to have enacted several roles including that of a professor and a Sufi saint (without any qualifications for those trades) in his life successfully and perhaps that of a pickpocket too! There is a story of his about a gentleman pick-pocket who had returned his purse after a chance conversation with him on a street about his predicament. A Critic in our land chuckled that he would not be surprised if that pick pocket was Basheer himself.

Basheer was alive then and never denied it! He had such an immense wealth of experience than any of the other writers had in his time, he had been truly around, and those jaunts sobered him to the real wonder that is human life. Those who haven’t seen the very depths of human existence can’t write like he did and I am convinced of it. (Interestingly reading the first few chapters of Adolf Hitler’s Mien Kamf can give you a good description of what poverty can do to man!)

No wonder he was somewhat insane, it was a genuine sickness that he caught from living sincerely. He was so direct and honest that we lesser souls often shudder at that which we see in his works. He sometimes has a very disquieting style I have only found in Dostoyevsky. His book Shabdangal (Noises, or Voices) would be banned in any snobbish society even now. None dared to venture on that line in our language after him.

He was terribly funny sometimes. He says somewhere that “love can be a little smelly as well” and that is priceless, and don't ask me why!

I like these two for what they wrote and what they conveyed in between their words and lines. There is whole literary theory based on Dwani (evocation) in this land. It is old and it is in Sanskrit. They believed that the text is just a garb for something else. Some of our contemporary writers do not need to study it, for none can beat them at it, it seems!

A Visit to Make

I have been lax in visiting my mother for the past few months. We do not really live that far apart, she is only about 30 Km’s away by the road. But she lives in the countryside, a terrible one at that, though we, her children, were all born there. There is supposed to be all facilities in the place but none would be available when we were around. There would be no power, no gas, no cable and no other amenities when anybody is there. But there is this rumor that these exist in the place, though nobody has seen then in action for some considerable time now, at least we haven’t when we are visiting.

We dislike it there now, may be as we grew up our needs grew too! Both my younger sisters would come and depart mostly on the same day excusing themselves with the schooling of their children. My younger brother is abroad and would come only for a day when he was around. My mother also thinks of them as a nuisance because of the children. The children would make her run around so much that she would be sick for some days after they leave.

Not that the place has changed very much from our younger days. But my mother, she seems happy at that house with her old TV set and her tele serials. I think I caught the movie/TV fever from her (It has subsided now). My father used to look down on such things with infinite contempt. But my mother and her family are the greatest movie/TV buffs I have ever seen. They would be always glued to the TV set as if drinking every image through their eyes of the screen. The TV is totally the magic box for them

To them too it is difficult to subsist without power. This would put anybody off, especially as it is insufferable to live in the countryside both in the monsoons and in the summer( the only two major seasons we have, we have six moths of rain and the rest of heat) without power. It would be killingly hot in the summer inside the tiled house and in the rains the old house would be so dark that it would require some guts to move inside the house. When we were little we were afraid to go to the second floor even, and that too at noon on the brightest of summer days as the shades inside used to frighten us. Well it is a little vain on our part to put off the visit to our mother because of these minor inconveniences, since we have been once familiar with the conditions ourselves.

She likes it when I and my dear one visit her, because there would be no fuss when we are around. I would have nothing else to do but sleep, my companions of yester years being all settled in life and very, very busy. Even though they would invite me once in a while to their homes that’s just out of politeness and we would be both uncomfortable if we pursued it further.

So I would sleep and my mom and my dearest would either talk about everything they think of or watch TV or cook. There is some sort of chef cum servant always around and they would not have much to do with cooking. They get on well together, in fact when I had to stay with my mother for some moths they were mostly on amicable terms, very rare in mother in law- daughter in law relationships, my mother with her old world ways providing the occasional irritants.

She is a tough lady, my mother, wouldn’t budge an inch once she has set her mind on something. If she says that a rabbit has three horns that is that. There would not be any further arguments, the point being settled once and for always in her favor. I do not know what technique my dearest uses to get along with this adamant lady. Perhaps mom is a little soft in her case because I have always been the trouble maker in the family. She is literally afraid that I would do anything in the world if I get really angry. If I was not entirely the black sheep, I was quite close to it in our family. I used to get into so much trouble when I was young that my grand mother had kindly predicted that I would destroy the entire world when I become a man.

I am sorry that I couldn’t fulfill her fond hopes. I think it would have been much better for the world had I done that. She said it when I was very young, but up to the point I got married, I would periodically steal my parents sleep for days on end. My father used to say to me:

“You are useless; you would become nothing in your life”

And would add as an afterthought “You are the Jack of all trades, but master of none”

And again

“You have a lot of fancy words in your kitty; you think they are great, they would land you in trouble”

He is no more now.

I grieve deeply whenever I think of him. We fought all the way, not because of any fault of his. He was the nicest person I have ever known in this life, very, very simple, very, very honest. He could not be called an intellectual perhaps, but he was steady enthusiastic, did all with a dictum of “do the deed and do not think of the fruits there of”. He was a great soul, I could never become like him. I sometimes ruefully think that I have not brought any discredit to his name though, for people often say,

“Oh he was so nice!” and would look at me very disapprovingly.

It seems that I haven’t done much damage to his name.

Well my mom and my dearest regularly talk with each other over the phone and I would hear myself being discussed again in not very flattering terms

One would be saying

“It is your son, you know!” and the other would be responding with a laugh

‘Why did I ever give birth to him?”

There would be more laughter.

This one would then say.

“What should we do with him?”

“We can’t pack him off to somewhere can we?’

My dearest would sigh.

“Would have been better for me’

There would be laughter and tears on both sides. I could not ever guess which was which. They laugh talking about the cruelest things that I do and they cry talking of the gentlest of my deeds. I am afraid I can never understand them.

Whether I understand my mom or not I should be visiting her soon.

So what was I writing for?

I could be in the seventh heaven now (if there is such a place); my blog is being noticed at last, may be for the wrong reasons, but who cares!

Much obliged to you, children, you have regenerated me, I have been idling and thinking of winding it up, and then you came along with your youthful fervor and enthusiasm, tore what I have ever written in the blog to tiny shreds. I was sorry to see my poor words bleed so much, always cared for the them you know, but then what of it, they are nothing but words, and they can’t cry.

I cried for them. They pitied me and came back to me although bloodied and maimed badly, but still loving me dearly, for I have been their lover ever since I first saw them , it was a love at first sight, they spoke another tongue then, a slow and heavy tongue .

It was great then, we were close together for ever so long, we got to know each other intimately, they became like wax in my hands, and I could shape anything out of them. We broke all precedents; we created a new land where the sensual was transformed into the intimately tangible, rising like sweet mist to take bewitching shapes, thrilling us with that which they subtly transmitted. We could even make the inanimate talk in pure ecstasy.

Like what happens in all such great loves perhaps, we are at a plateau now The period of experiments are over, the feverish expectation for something new and exciting has subsided somewhat, there are certain insurmountable obstacles which we can’t cross, even in the lingo you know like the palm of your hand.
Knowing this, a great poet in my tongue despaired:

“Even now, the language is imperfect
A flawed understanding might breed errors.”

If he was so doubtful about it, what could people like me say? He was called a Mahakavi even though he did not compose any Mahakavyams( Great Epics, like that of Bhasa or Kalidasa) So there I was with my darling words at some place high but not rarefied enough for me. I looked around. There were legions there in the same predicament, trying vainly to break the shackles imposed by the form of their medium. It was a losing battle, once you reach there, either you ditch your lover for something higher and mystical or you flow downwards.

I knew the genius of my tongue and was not really a bad writer in it, though I did not do anything in it due to my deplorable apathy and perhaps boredom. I have this strange habit; once I become aware I am comfortable in any thing I usually get fed up with it immediately (ever the egotist you see!)!

This happened with my writing too. Perhaps the words of Umberto Eco may have also dissuaded me further.

He said that any moron could win the Nobel for literature, well if so the Nobel was out for me! So what was I writing for!

And then there were legions as I said roaming on the higher levels of my tongue producing like rabbits. There were also cliques, fraternities and what not. Not a conducive atmosphere to turn out pure world literature!

Well I hope that those who are reading this would take it with pinch of salt. I must admit that I was not great shakes as a writer, I was about there, could write a story or two and get it published. That was all.

It all came back when these kindly kids mauled my words with their subtle innuendos and in their blog.

I am happy that they brought it all back. There were some good memories too, seeing my very first story published (the very first I ever wrote) was one such. (God I could have been an A.J. Cronin perhaps only that my medium was short story. What a miss! ). This happened some twenty years back (don’t guess my age, you’d be wrong!). I don’t even have a copy of that story know.

All very sad!

The Circle and a Dot

The love-hate relationship between me and my dearest annihilators have gone through many phases by now. The sorry thing is that we do not respect each other enough, may be I am guilty of not respecting them at all, being not at all sentimental where my opponents are concerned( The kids I recently made friends with over the net are excluded, I have never considered them my enemies, though I would have still liked to vex them now and then! I wouldn’t mind what they do to me too, even if they kill me outright! I am saying this because they might take it to heart if I did not mention it here!).

I would like to trace the strange relationship between me and my predators through one recent incident.

For the last few months I had shown considerable interest in IQ tests. I wanted to learn that whether I had an IQ at all. I searched on the net for every free test on it and took them all. I tried to fail at every IQ Test I took at first (may be, I did not have to try at all!) knowing that every move I make on the net is being scrupulously monitored by my friends the predators. I got lovely scores of below 60 in most of them. I was thrilled, but not my darling killers, they were adamant that I was a genius. I knew the predicament they were in. They couldn’t hunt and destroy an imbecile. That would be too uninspiring and dull. It was a question of their ego. They wanted a good fight. If they could make themselves believe that I am star material and dangerous, the hunt is that much more interesting and justifiable. So they try hard to boost my confidence level up from time to time.

I felt sorry for them and started to score in the region of 120+. Even that did not satisfy them. I tried to pacify them by getting into two high IQ societies on the net. But no they would not be satisfied. They want me to take the supervised MENSA test. They are pretty confident that I would get in easily. In fact they think that I belong to elite class coming in the 99th percentile in the world. I am not budging currently, but who knows, my vanity might take over and I might do it too, with these guys to boost up my ego anything is possible!

But how do they get these messages across to me? It is like in that parable in which the man sitting under a tree hears some birds over head speak about him. There are other methods too. Well that is another matter altogether.

The strange thing is that I was never confident about the power of my intellect at anytime in my life. As far back as I can remember I had always felt terribly dumb. Honestly that might be the truth. While at school all the others seemed much more intelligent than me. In the class I would be the only one who did not know the answer to the questions which was put to me. I would be mopping all the time, constructing strange and improbable fantasies inside my head. Yet unbelievably I used to score more marks than others in the tests and that used to astound me no end, I ascribed that to luck entirely.

There were also a few people who called me intelligent when I was young; I had always doubted that it was a joke.

The troubles and travails I underwent to make myself intelligent on those words! I can not remember all those futile years without a shudder. I read and read, spent hours bent over books, from Kapila to Sankara, from republic to future shock, but to what gain I wonder? I became more bogged down than I was before with all that information crammed in to my brain. They took up a lot of space inside and I did not feel wonderful at all. I thought they did not answer the one question on which I was concerned about- the meaning of life.

I think I liked Zeno best among the old Greeks I read, perhaps because of his leaning towards our own style of thought (cultural bias probably!) That parable about the circles still intrigues me.

I greatly relished Voltaire’s irreverence. Candide is a great favorite of mine still.

For the rest, I preferred the dialectical approach the best, still do. I wonder where all those other words went. I could condense all those hours into these three or four lines! Not much learned it seems!

My very lovable enemies seem to be in error. I am afraid I am not very bright, I am still blundering along the mazes created by human intellect, learning nothing. Intelligent? Not at all my learned colleagues! May be my newly acquired friends would supply me with enough acronyms to combat that gross accusation.
But there is still a chance that there could be some one more intelligent within me (or is it more precise to say “with” me?). I might have told the tale many times before now. Yet….

From the moment of my first memories, I have felt a division inside me. There were always two beings within me. One, some sort of a witness, watching every single move that I and others make and the other the real person who is called by my name and who acts as me. (This is no Locke, Olson and Snowdon my friends, it is not a theoretical postulate, it’s a damn reality)

This witness who is within me, always have absolute detachment from everything that I do, it does not say anything, do not interfere in anything, but is always watching, thinking how absurd this all is. It wonders what this person is doing, what the others are doing, why all these deeds feel utterly meaningless to it.
This entity has been the greatest impediment in my progress in everything, It doesn’t approve of anything in the world, it is the eternal misanthropist, and looks down upon anything the poor mortals do. I have never been able to establish who this entity is. Is it a part of me or something higher or different than me? What is it, man, spirit, a part of my consciousness, or the whole of consciousness, is it a case of split personality- the MPS?

Whatever it is, it is ever watching, and grading my moves, the shrewder I try to become the harder it laughs, this laugh is not an audible or perceptible laugh, it is some kind of a deeply philosophical laughter, some supreme mirth it only knows how to make. I feel it despises me and my puny attempts at making sense out of the nonsense I experience. Or is it me despising myself? Could it be like what Spinoza said?

That “one who despises himself is nearest to a proud man?”

"Totally Ignorungs"

There is this wonderful rite among the Parsees; they leave their dead for the vultures to feed on.

It shows love for an animal people generally dislike.

Did I say “Animal”? I must have erred.

[Roar:

“Did you consult the visual thesaurus, minion”

I shake like a leaf (frr…shoosh ….mrrr…..jrrrr) “No I didn’t monsieur”

“Nor the Britannia…?”

“I was on social security”

“What”

“I did not have the money to buy biscuits”

“You super dense dotard, it is not biscuitary, it is a bloody dictionary

Oh I am terribly sorry, I didn’t milord

“WHY?”

“I was jijnoranj”

“What did you just say?”

“That I wos ignorungs?”

“YEAH”

“I wos totally ignorungs”

“Oh I see you were ignorant that such things existed?”

“I wos. I wos very much, right onerous knight of the holy empire,

Is that a shin sir?”

Indubitably, dolt, indubitably]

I am shaking in my tattered boots (I am all feverish and shivering uncontrollably) yet I can but hold on to my view.

Birds are animals too, according to the dictionary of the less wise.

Of course they can even be groomed, bathed, spruced up and even be placed on a throne.

And vultures are what? BIRDS.

Eureka!

Yes, yes, there are vultures and vultures. Some feed on decaying flesh, some on other things.

I have had the occasion to meet vultures in human form.

Pretty nauseating, to tell you the truth (truth? What in the name of hell is that?)

Have you seen a human vulture? May I point one out to you?

[“You eternal imbecile, you have no right to call us that!”

“Not even as per the right to information activation monsieur?”

“Veritably”

“That’s horriblific”]

Good god if I am not permitted to talk about vultures, what would I talk about?