fuZZee scrawls

Elegy for the insomniac

2011-09-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

He lies side by side
As if held,
Under the absolute authority of sleep
And I lying beside
Gaze ,brood and ponder
In the still hours of the dark
The braying of restlessness
Denying me the soundless slumber
Notions of wakefulness have left
The face of the one entrenched
In a lasting spell
While I fight the night demons
Haunting me in this quarter life
Shape shifting in front,
Of the gaping eyes
Which the insomnia fails to quell
Oh hearken you dreamer
I will break your languor
For I have got my own vices
To ravage your beatific sleep
That cacophonous holler
Of the meddlesome devices
Which I switch and tune to the farthest
The sound aching to the harshest
And now he wobbles a bit’
Presumably shaken by the interference
Shifts momentarily his posture
And respires
Escorted by a bland melody
Overturning the effect
Of the electronic blare
And snores away to glory!!

Night

2009-09-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

It claws back
The fragmented
And broken senses
It motions
Into unison
The vacillating desires
It seeks
And devours
The Fear within
And wards off the gloomy plight
It casts
A dark blanket of nonchalance
And wakes up the nocturnal sight
It deceives
The inner maelstrom
And plucks the plug
To outlet the whirlpool
Spiraling inside
It musters
The embers of daily chores
To quash them
Into oblivion
Before the struggle ends
At the morning yawn
With the imminent arrival
Of the monotonous light
For its life lasts
Only between
Dusk and Dawn.

PS: Gaping above at the dark expanse, kissed and caressed by the cool night breeze. Just kindles that old-repetitive-optimistic feel.

"Avenger" for ease

2009-09-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

That breezy wind
That nature’s drifter
Sliced and spaced
As the motion
Approached its brim
Static leaves
Perched on twigs
That wont quail
In all seasons
Save autumn
Shuddered and shrilled
Subjugating
To the mechanical will
And that tormentor of ease
Those broken tar roads
With those dissembled
Patches of shallow
And uneven depths
Couldn’t snare
This maverick
Bedecked with zest
And this desirer of long miles
Kindled by the fuel it fires
Just breathes vigor and sails
Yearning for roads above
In those lofty open heights
Just to get that feel
Of "god" riding the skies!!

PS: No wonder you feel like god when you ride this piece...surely an "avenger" for ease!!

Perturbations of the month

2009-08-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

(Didn't have much fillers for this month...though there were few flutters in the wind)

*Had a revitalizing trip to Panchgani, Mahableshwar...on the slopes of the Western Ghats... A much needed break from the morose professional machinery.

*Caught up with the good old college days , banters, cussing and leg pulling, and that recursive yearning of having "figures" (babes, as we call them in the Madraasi jargon) in the all guy trip.

*Tested my new water proof camera in the resort swimming pool , clicking some dare bare , one piece clad, shedding-inhibitions-with-vengeance , underwater Adonis' (or wannabe adonis')....whom i commonly call friends...

*Vowed to have the next reunion trip only if male to female ratio is 1:1. ( Though the timeline for that proportion to be attained seems to be post marriage :) )

*The reclaimed vitality only lasted little time though, till the work related chores invaded and ended the momentary departure, fueling an urge of becoming that wanderlust escapist I always wanted to be.

*Bought a bike (my first one) the very next weekend.......with that fortifying thought of doing a bike trip across the Himalayas before turning 24....just like Che Guevara and his motorcycle diaries.

*Met with an accident the very next day......just to be reminded that Che knew how to ride a bike .

*Also learnt that bicycles to 200 cc power bikes is not the smoothest and swiftest of transitions...and that too when you last rode a two wheeler 6 years back (bi cycle ..as I mentioned).

*Started mild indulgence in beer (only socially). My teetotaler-till-I-die pledge broken. (Though can call myself quasi-teetotaler as beer is generally considered low on alcohol and I don't smoke )

*Educated myself in the art of 'making' whiskey pegs on one late night drive to Mussorie. ( I always thought of taking whiskey in the bottle in one straight gulp).

*The saying "Old wine is good" was practically justified, when my tongue fell hard on a 10 year old 'Lancers. Vowed never to sip another drop of 'old' wine of all drinks.

*Fell hard and down on an uncontrolled mental fission resulting after 6 glasses of 'light' Kingfisher during an a-high-on-ethanol office party. Awakened to the fact that a beginner is always prone to the most excruciating of reactions to the slightest infusion of alcohol.

*Finally reiterated to myself

-that there's more to life than just work and sedentary routine & that brothers can never frolic and fraternize the way they do with (or the thought of) ' figures' around , ;)

-that you don't scale mountain paths and highland roads on alloy wheels with disc breaks when all you got is peddle experience,

and last but not the least,

- that there is no better liquid than water, fresh fruit juices, soda water and few carbonated drinks (to be followed in that order), and that any organic liquid out of that sequence will be a quash to the natural existence of mind and body.

Never ever booze, never ever smoke!..An afterthought to sign off with!!

Try,Quantify

2009-07-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Try claim the measure
Of the depth of the oceans
For they still don’t match
The distending notions
Light years apart
Be that faint speck
Of red dwarf
Not hazier
Than the gloom
That human doubts scarf
Try mustering,
The fusion count
Lighting the core
Fueling the fire,
That,
Fumes in contrast
To the visceral desire
And the freezing arctic
May just
Enough congeal
The barometer
Which,
Won’t even shirk,
In the placidness
That the hatred sires.

Queries to the Vagabond

2009-06-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

Where do you wander?
Someone asks
Quiet and alone
From dawn to dusk
Where do you sleep?
Somebody inquires
Awake in the dark
Forgetful of home
Forgetful of rest
And someone speaks
To somebody
Curiously
Questioning your craft,
Your strange upkeep
About what do you do?
And what do you reap?
For you don’t look so prolific
In that normal garb
And simple sleeve
And isn’t there any
Pleasant lady,
On whom your love
pours and heaps
Or friends and brethren
Who share and mourn
Your sorrows and griefs
But how do we know,
Everybody queries,
The measure of your emotions
Set deep
In those impassive expressions
You keep
And if love and loss
In all the true sense,
Really make you feel?

But of all,
We at least believe,
That for you hope is
An unknown thought
Under imperceptible limits
Of the visible sky
And the long road is
Just a physical path
To traverse modestly
Without any urge
To pace and
Without any hurdles
To leap!

A short verse for the sloth

2009-06-06T09:38:00.001-07:00

Rest at ease,

Oh you impatient

Your day,

Depend on the hours

Don’t scamper

You ignorant seconds

Without you

Minutes don’t recede

And the sloth that sleeps

Oblivious of your stare

In perpetual peace

Unbeknownst of thy existence

Will only awaken and ask-

And that too,

If and only if exhausted by sleep-

“Well..ahh... when did the alarm beep??”

PS: Heck!!...5 months and I havent seen 7 AM in my watch!!..So much so for the somnolent morning air of Dehradun!!

Yearning and missing.... (the associated past)

2009-04-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

I will miss that
early morning warmth
Rousing me up from my sleep
To a strange urban calm
Continue dreaming, I will
About the vibrant and lush
Those distant yet inviting landscape
Of the unseen country farms
The sparkling white marbles
Of the holy ‘Sikh’ temples
Won’t weaken the timid eyes
While impassive feet so restless
Will miss the soft walks
On the fine roads,
Crested with,
Fallen leaves of autumn life
Only memories will remain
Of those pleasant winsome lasses,
Some with those chic dark glasses
Carrying that uplifting scent
Stirring the sundry air
And the open urban boulevards
Welcoming always ,
as if you are,
One among the masses
I will yearn for the solitary walks
Along the comforting lakeside
Where the gentle breeze
Bearing the listlessness
Of the nearby mountain peaks
Would set the thoughts free
And that strolls,
During cool late nights
In the empty market squares
Supplying the worked up mind
Much needed respite.

Do take me back,
If you want to, oh endearing sights
Even though I cursed you
During our first few nights
But I am not the master of my fate
At least, not for this while…..
So wait till the time bears
The change of tide
And I will be there
To fall again , into your arms
On the very first ride.

PS: Some entrancing aura this city wields, even to a impassive passerby like me.... No wonder they call it the 'city beautiful'...

Invictus

2009-03-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeons of Chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

PS: Sighted this first in Bhan's orkut profile. This one's got the kick and the last stanza is the killer.

The cause for the rebel

2009-01-02T13:04:00.001-08:00

Let the one loose its entity
Let the wholesome become vapid
May the voluble assume brevity
Let the constant flow,
Defy the rapid
May the layman
Command the maven
While the hunters,
Feed their tribe
In the arid.
Let the planter labor
Over the dry terra
To make the barren gravid
And let the time mistake
The dusk to be dawn
For the endurance of struggle
Will still be valid.

23

2008-12-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

It was at the end of his 23rd year when the "younger" Pitt, a precocious and often sickly youth, got his new address -..... the 10 Downing Street.....

Ernesto was still 23 when he voyaged around South America, feeling the pulse of the impoverished continent and awakened to "Che Guevara".

James Dean was already a rising Hollywood star at the this threshold , only to meet a rash death later , as the "Rebel with(out) a Cause".

Barely into his 24th year was the idealistic Christopher McCandless ,before he decided to wander into the uninhabited Alaskan turf, and forever lost himself to the "wild".

Phew....today I slipped into the 24th year of my sustenance...dazed, diluted & with a shrug.

Floating without causal knowledge

2008-05-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

The rudimentary days of new found horizon has passed on, and they passed on with an unconscious mobility. They seem so conspicuous now, but then, it was just the innate tract of mind which made those moments ignorant, to dwell imperviously in the times of reaping. Now what lies ahead are the strange frictions of trodden roads, staring up at the overlapping sea of day and dark. And where every step seems heavy, loaded with the memories of casual existence, and where every flickering motion is strained to a precarious consequence.

PS: It never occurred to me that two months back and before, I was in a state of untailored existence, savoring the condiments of easy days. But again then, those days were subject to my obligatory cussing and flagellations. Realization is always a delayed process, echoing through the voids between the past and present. As every time, good memories always look more defining when you are standing on shaky grounds.

The jalapeño dip

2008-03-04T05:17:00.000-08:00

Oh what I felt?
A mollifying churn
In the salivating dip
Of the eager tongue
Oh how it mixes
And eases
Gelling smoothly
With the gustatory stir
Oh how it just slips
Pampering the gullet
Mixing with
The crisp crumbs
Forming small
Peppery succulent wisps,
Oh they add a tang, alright
Those jalapeno dips. .

P.S: I had just finished a pizza.

Random scrawls....

2008-02-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

I again got back into this wry pursuit of trying to exceed my average month count on this page which most of the time falls flat.But this time credit to my fluctuating mind , for dishing out a couple of coherent texts despite dwelling in what seems to be intransigent phase of inactivity. One thing I seem to have realized, though I had mentioned it earlier, is that if your mood is not involved in anything at all, then it simply lies dormant until it is thrust upon by bevy of obligatory tasks. And once this happens, the natural inclination, as in any case, of any reluctant psyche would be to draw away from it, reach out for those surreal images which would soothe your exasperation effectuated due to burden of actuality. Though the blogs appended by me for the month show anything but surreal traces, but it makes the person feel in better zone of mind. It makes the person feel that he can also think about other things happening around; evoke his own views and feelings towards something particular, and more so reclaim the unfettered articulateness, though raw it may be, in this ever enveloping vacuum of job-morbidness (amounting both the lack and load of work) wrought exhaustion. More than making or raising a point or sharing thoughts on any topic or reviewing movies or books, or anticipating the gratifying comments or even the increasing profile visits, this whole blog thing has become more of, a sort of self satisfying exercise.

'Sly' - Back & stayng Alive

2008-02-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

I have never been a great connoisseur of action movies and nor I believe in endorsing a particular action star or maybe any actor for that matter. But there is something about this persona which is eternally captivating , vaguely mesmerizing, and that too in spite of an awful raw mutilated speech delivery, steely deadpan grimaces, and a clenched granite jaw ,which always seem to drop at every moment of its release.

For Sylvester Stallone never bothered about being the idyllic, sturdy-rough guy who could dabble in serious and dramatic roles with a quaint ease, a la Marlon Brando. Nor he felt to cape the often glorified tough guy image, probably as a successor to the magnificent Charles Bronson. Movie critic Roger Ebert had touted him as the the next Marlon Brando after his 1976 'Rocky' success. But Stallone never wanted to step into somebody else's shoes. He set out to carve his own niche, his own image of an absolute action persona which at times came at the cost of experimenting new acting avenues and often panned severely by the ever harsh critics. And in this zestful path of creating his own identity he altogether created a new cult devoted to his style of movies and characters. Its a quiet well known fact that the modern breed of macho , muscle flexing and flashing actors which sprouted in 'Bollywood' during the early and late 90's literally looked up to Sylvester Stallone (along with Arnold Schwarzenegger) as their inspiration. Every kid in the 80's America wanted to grow up to be a 'Rocky Balboa' or a 'John Rambo' . Life size poster of 'Sly' as the wronged and rebellious green beret, started doing brisk business in the nondescript streets of Kabul and Herat and other middle eastern towns after the release of 'Rambo III'. His characters more than the person himself had become a global phenomena. In fact fans started to relate Stallone to the two iconic characters he related to so distinctively. And probably that is still the greatest honor bestowed on the actor who hadn't much of depth to try out himself in lighter vein roles . Though seemingly marginalized under the overweening unpleasantnesses perpetrated by his detractors on his acting methods, Stallone did try to show signs of variance in his acting style. One came pretty earlier in his career , following his thumping 1976 success, as an ambitious trade union leader Johnny Kovak in Norman Jewison's F.I.S.T(1978), where his powerful performance seemed to have drowned under the echoes of his past ' Rocky' success and under keen anticipation of its forthcoming sequel. He also tried his hand in comedy in the 80's and early 90's in the movies such as 'Rhinestone' (which he wrote) and 'Oscar' which were mocked as rather un-inventive and a big disgrace to the whole comic genre. Action remained his forte throughout though there also he faced constant failures. His next departing role from the trodden action hero path came in James Mangold's slow and thematic 'Cop Land'(1998). Matching shoulders with heavyweights such as Robert Deniro and Harvey Keitel , Stallone came out with a steller performance as a timid and weak New Jersey county Sheriff Freddy Hefflin who in the end awakens to moral righteousnous to take up arms against his own friends in the corrupt NYPD in the defining climax of the movie. People began to say 'Stallone can act' and an all new facet of the star emerged. 'Cop Land' is a must see for anyone who wants to watch 'Stallone the Actor'. But again he didn't fall to his all new discovered image. He struck back in 2006 with something he was always in grips with. 'Rocky Balboa' evinced the finesse of the star who had smoothened down with times and was widely appreciated for the role both by his fans as well as the critics. And if 'Rocky Balboa' showed any signs about a mellowed star then the recent 'John Rambo' duly conflicted that stance. Filled with extremely violent action sequences supplemented with blood spilling and killings almost in every frame, 'J.Rambo' is the modern day reincarnation of the reluctant action hero in today's graphic molded action-stunt technology world.And when there is hardly anything to decipher from the gruff husky baritone except for observing the wavering (though mostly rough and serious) facial emotions of the hero, then you know that Stallone is back where he belongs.

And with his rising status a global action icon, many have ignored that fact that he was also at the helm of most of his movies. The underdog 'Rocky' was Stallone's creation and the character of the troubled Vietnam war veteran 'John Rambo' was result of his improvisation. But still the actor who became only the third actor after Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles to write and act himself for an Oscar nomination dubiously also wrote and acted himself for a Razzie. In fact Stallone was voted as the worst actor of the 20th century during the 2000 Razzie awards. So much so for the person who gave the film industry such characters which will firmly remain entrenched in viewers memory. But Sly doesn't seem to have given up altogether. His last two movies show that he has much more to give as a director and writer if not as an action star, which might be constrained by his growing years (though he was as agile and spirited in both the movies). And with Rambo 5, very much on the anvil, there is lot more to look from the actor who defied the dictum of critical appreciation of acting skills to churn out a whole new sphere of cult following as well as mass admiration.

The Maasai

2008-02-03T23:14:00.000-08:00

In the brimming heat of the African summer
Clad in burning red,
As the ‘red god’ enkai himself
The Maasai, a vengeful hardened soul
As black as the black fossil coal
Teared down the approaching herd
Against the motion of the frantic swarm
With a rapturous steering heave
Surging wildly,
Through the shifting spaces
Effected by berserk gazelle hoard
The delicate wanderers
Of the grasslands
Scuttling frenzied and amok,
Trampling the lush graze
Of the savannah plains
Their veritable fodder turf.

The Maasai held on to his vantage spot
Armed with his lethal spear,
Whetted and tempered
Hewn in his heart
In those dark years
Of bitter cold
And now he grimaced over,
Atop a lonely rock,
Surveying the grassland
With his bloodshot eyes
He looked out
Seeking ardently
The shape of his prey
Near the chops of the African bush
At the end of the thinning dust
And beyond the last
Of the scampering hoofs
On the infirm trampled crust.

And then a defiant cry soared
Till the air,
In the lungs were lost
The slaver of the mouth,
Had dried
For the cry was of a silent soul
Survivor of a tragic past
Ready to settle,
The final score
And lo, what a vain!
For where he’s led self
In his quest of
A desperate vendetta
Though standing haught
On the solitary rock
Against the mightiest of Serengeti
The most majestic countenance
Of the beastly folk
For the war cry,
Got doused,
In the most gravest of roars.

The Maasai, now fraught
Though not rattled
Was hardly unfazed
As he knew,
For a menacing kill,
He had the knack
For he had cut down not long ago
On the foot of Kilimanjaro
Though lesser matched , but a feisty
Hyena pack.

And with the final purpose
Clouding on his will
He lunged on the pride
With a manic rage
Attacking and swinging
As if possessed
The ‘enkai’ himself incarnated
Thrusting and piercing
The grievous hides
Amid the growl
And the shrilling hollers
As the predators converged
On their willing bait,
For they were deprived prior
On this deceitful shimmering day,
Shoving their sharp paws
On the unwelcomed
Inflicting ghastly wounds
With the deadly jaws
And the plains transformed
Into an arena
Of lithe maneuvers
And savage swoops
For a spear dangled restlessly
Amid the cloud
Writhed by ferocious scoops
And the Maasai,
Wrecked and into pieces
Still held to his lance
Fighting hard
With a maverick craze
And the blood,
Dripped and flowed incessantly
On the tawny yellow furs
On the sable black hands
And it spilled claret
On the unforgiving land.

The sphere budged
As the curtain dropped
On the blending horizon of dusk
And so lay a figurine
On the fluff tendrils
Of a shaggy mane
Soaked in a fluid pool
Of an indiscriminate
Cross-phylum mix
And there,
Visioning the hazy crescent
He remembered the gory night
Under the ominous moonlight
The days when no drop dripped
From the parched mirroring sky
And the familiar paws marks
The echo of fierce roars
Sounding starved and insatiable
Infiltrated the calmness
Of a quiet Massain hamlet
Leaving traces
Of rampage and savageness
The strewn acacia
Of dainty huts
The effluvium
Of the half devoured
Feral and human alike
And the carcass
Of his fallen brethren
Taken and scattered over miles
While he alone
Had departed
For a late dip in the dwindling brook
And he remembered the days of yore
Whence he was asserted
Destined to kill
And now he lay,
The Massai, the last survivor
Breaking the burden of his vow
The slaughterer of mighty four
Witnessed and hailed
By the yielding shadows
Of the night
Though he would now die a contender
Sucked as a stranger
In the recurring struggle
Of survival in the untamed world
And not his warm blood
Would keep him apart
From the league of the wild
But the Massain spirit and flesh
Harder than the most,
Tougher than the mightiest of lion pride.

Random scrawls..

2008-01-31T06:42:00.000-08:00

I just sat about staring at the screen, wondering what to write about since it’s been quiet some time since I last scribbled on this page. There have been few thoughts churning in my head but whenever I tried to gather them, they somehow made themselves look redundant. It’s just that whenever I tried too hard doing something, then it just didn’t happen as in this case. Frankly there hasn’t been sufficient amount of inspiration for the past few weeks to help me phrase a verse or two, or a rather over intrusive notion to kindle some effusive words. But nevertheless lots of things have been happening around, in the vicinity and far which rather don’t have any bearing on me.
The stock market crashed and I really wasn’t bothered because am still stuck up with my job or haven’t got any pay cut (for some minion told me it still affects you anyway), Hollywood actor Heath Ledger passed away, another addition to famed 20’s club of rising stars-died so young, but still its no way going to affect my urge for getting a pirated copy of the ‘The Dark Knight’ as soon as it hits the theatre . And yes there was also some news about a sport embroiled in a controversy over to whether relating an individual to a simian tantamounts to racial vilification whereas calling one a ‘bastard’ was a mildly harmful banter! There were many other harmless stuff' happening around , but these are what I can muster at this very moment, because reality seems to be a very perfunctory thought. And moreover I have inculcated this feeling of aversion, which may not be true always, to anything which is current, close to reality or far disconnected from my daily routine. More than anything I rely on my instinctive deliverance which may in its worst case may be a morosely lame topic or disjointed and undecipherable subject. And even that aspect has been put to inactivity over the past few weeks. But of all what fears me is that my resolve to be an escapist, bereft of actuality, is slowly showing pores of its permeating nature. It’s just that a quantum of inspiration can make all the difference!

Getting a push-start

2007-12-19T04:57:00.000-08:00

It just takes few minutes of shameless savage intent to push yourself through the swarm of similar desperate souls to lift yourself on to the ramshackle, just to get the sensation that your feet is firm on the footboard. It would have been a loss if the body was not set into drive after an hour of static wait, as it happens daily. But these are just the incipient kicks. Next starts the tug and jerk cycle to get possession of that nondescript looking piece of pulp, and one has to be sure that you thrust your hands ,in the crowd of other umpteen hands, fully stretched out towards the collector , just to make sure that he catches the glean of the exact change clasped firm between your fingers . And if you decide to let off with your persistence, then probably you might end up paying the breakfast bills of the ticket inspector waiting at the next stop.

The module, as is the case during most of the times, moves at a rickety pace. And that too at an acute slant, departing from its linear position, probably a consequence of too much burden it has to carry. And the average time of one hour to reach your destination, just seems to have been incremented due to the present constraints. As of now there seems no scope of taking the weight off your feet since the spots of rest have been filled. Now it’s just a little bit jostle to fill the empty voids of vertical positioning. And at the same time sliding beside one of the seat bound souls who (you think) might disembark from their stationery places soon. An effort under desperation it is, just to get out of the closely packed corridor, body interspersed with body, sweat draining on sweat, exhaling dioxide inhaling dioxide, reeling under depravity of freedom ,in the utter physical sense you can say. And one movement or sidesteps lands your feet on the equally irritated bloke adjacent to you, thereby making you his object of frustration exhibited through tender cussing. And you can always wryly thank the cacophonous symphony of the traffic snarl, enfeebling the effect of your words of apology; drowsing them as soon they escape your lips.

The irony is that you are still waiting, a static wait on a moving platform. The seat bound soul hasn’t wavered from his posture still, his face wrought with an unflinching expression of corporeal resoluteness. And the pattern continues, wherein blokes do disperse from the frontend, places do get vacant at the back, and one bloke just gets off from the very next seat besides you, all only to be occupied by scampering agonized zealots. The patience hardly seems to suffice your angst ridden soul, but still you persist.
An hour passes, and you are still standing, waiting for a sensation of ripple to emanate from that stationary soul. And all of a sudden there is a flutter, the unflinching looking guy takes off, and there is no reaction from your side. It’s all about completing a torrid routine without losing your patience. For you are still in control of your inner restive feelings as you descend from the bus along with the same bloke who made you do that.

‘Shit’ does happen, as they say in a more casual way , and let it happen if its going to hang as a prelude to physically ‘less’ cumbersome things to follow. For the fact is that even an hour of hour of trivial toiling can’t soothe the mental exhaustion suffered during rest of the day.

Cyclic redundant days...

2007-11-29T21:00:00.000-08:00

It again ringed
in my hollow ears
As it recurrently does,
Still too feeble
To usurp my mind bust
Coz I know the pattern
That follows
Coz I‘ve got
Adapted to
The cacophonous staple
Of redundant logic,
I’ve been,
Again and again fed...

It shines with intent,
Every single day
But it doesn’t matter to me
Coz my eyes are decked
With hazel oxides
And rusted dregs
Too stubborn to allow
Even a millionth of a speck
Too weak to
impact the crust
Of my full drawn shutters

Let it rub on me,
Provide me a passionate caress
Coz it can’t seduce me
With false dreams
Of raunchy delight
Coz the amour
Of once libidinous soul
Has been castrated
Craving and
Waiting and waiting,
For the now-repulsive yearnings
Of virginal nights

Now it’s just a static wait
For things to change
For the cries to mellow down
To a unison chant
For the brimming rays of the morning
To usher in fresh light
And for the stiff air
To reclaim its sublimity
And for a forward step
towards a brand new day..

At ease...

2007-10-25T04:04:00.001-07:00

Prostrate under the shadows,
In the receding footsteps
Of the autumn warmth,
Disturbing the dainty flow of air
With a relaxed stretch
Of recoiling arms ,
No path to trudge
No labor to bear and
Nothing to wait for,
Since the aura breeds defiance,
Embroiled in a conflict
With the gravity
Of the reluctant will,
That now worries look musty
And vital senses relentless
Heave a defeated shrug
Subdued and overwhelmed
By the enduring spell
Of the soporific mist
And all that remains
Is a pair of droopy eyes
And a hope of easy days
As the season gets encapsulated
In the carefree laid-back age…

Transitory mode scrawls

2007-09-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

More than the thought of putting something consequential, it’s that wry craving of having my monthly count flowing without a null which always forces me to scribble my usual non coherent drones on this page. I am following the same pattern for the past few months and there seems no progress in the count. It’s just that, in spite of twenty nine days of lullaby and dallying and inactivity, my finger muscles twitch just enough to sprout out few words in my irrational prose as if my whole energy for the accounting month had been conserved just to stimulate that organ of manipulation (I mean the fingers of my hand). Probably I am going through a transitory period, a self effacing stage of gnawing perplexities, ill defined by constant vagaries of thought process. It seems that my body can’t function with one track mind at a time. If it got to handle a thing, then it got to handle multitude of things at a single moment, kind of parallel processing. And I do hope that the coming days, which show ominous signs of suffering (thats coz am gonna do job) under global-manipulative-capitalistic-colonizers of reluctant minds (like me) will, in spite of its harsh eventualities, rekindle the dead embers of finer things in life. Gosh..!!...that makes it too much nonsensical mutterings from a transitory mind. I believe, for the moment, its better to pass out. Amen.

In the vicinity of a 'forgotten' battleground

2007-08-09T02:21:00.000-07:00

A few days back while I was going through a newspaper article on ''The fall of Mughal Empire: early 19th century India" in the Asian Age, I came across a part which described various battles and little skirmishes which were fought around the city of Delhi in that time. The article described number of battles which sounded new and interesting , and as it was mentioned, these were fought in order to ultimately capture the city itself. Among the battles mentioned there was one such name which aroused my curiosity. It mentioned that one such skirmish, the ‘Battle of Delhi’, was fought on the eastern banks of river yamuna. Though the details were not mentioned but it did reveal that there was a monument built at the site of the battle. I had been staying in the Trans-yamuna side for a long time now and I always knew that East Delhi was impoverished in historical respect and did not boast the same medieval splendor as the other parts of the city did. So I was quiet surprised that in comparison to its much historically grandiose western counterpart it at least did have something as tangible as this ‘forgotten war’ memorial , as a memento from the past. After mulling over that thought for some time I let my interest in the thing drown but later happened to just pull a search on the topic while I was browsing through some websites on the internet. To quell my casual curiosity, I scrolled through some of the pages listed for the topic and tried to gather information about the site where the battle was foughtt. And it didn’t take much time for me to sink through the fact . I was queer and simply astonished. I figured out that the memorial was little less than five minutes walk from my house in Noida, a solitary façade among a vast green spread. And what stirred me even greater was the fact that my house stood right on the (if the battle is assumed to have stretched over couple of acres, which again is fairly obvious) present day location of the site of ‘Battle of Delhi’.

pic: General Gerard Lake

Noida golf course lies about two kilometers east of the Okhla (Yamuna) barrage on the Dadri road, between the sector-37 crossing and sector -36 and 39 intersection with sector 40 bordering its southern end. It may not be your international level classic golf course kind with exotic mix of water bodies, mounds, sprawling fairways and wooded area. Though it does qualifies as an ideal teeing off area for professionals in the making and organizes many amateur and sometimes professional events. On most of the days it is basically the favored haunting ground for retired army personnel living in Noida. Every morning, as soon as the first few specks of sunlight lick the green coverings of the expanse, you would start hearing repeated crackles of club hitting the balls, followed by few groans of disappointment, occasional chuckles, a woof of satisfaction here and there. But 204 years ago, at the very same place, you would have probably heard the roar of the continuous firing of guns, clang of blades and bayonets instead of the crackle, you would have heard the cries of war, wailing and moaning of the fallen and defeated, and not the seeming woof and groans of casual competitors. The ‘Battle of Delhi’ as it is called was fought on September 11th, 1803 on the eastern banks of the yamuna about 20 kilometer south of the walled city on the other side of the river. It was an important battle in the ongoing 2nd Anglo- Maratha war. It was fought between English forces led by General Lake and the forces of Maratha confederacy commanded by General M Louis Bourquien, a Frenchman. It was a decisive battle for both the parties as a victory would grant inroads to the Mughal capital of Shahjanabad (old delhi). Though the Maratha power was declining since late 18the century, the battle was their last ditch attempt to reclaim the lost grounds. For the British a victory would mean acquiring a strategic stronghold for their colonial expansion plans, even though they had a resident planted at the emperor’s court. At the onset of the battle the Maratha forces significantly outnumbered their English opponents, a contingent of 19000 troops against a strong 4500 army. Though they were more in numbers, the Marathas were no match for the tactically organized British forces. At the end of the battle which resulted in a defeat for the Marathas, the British army had lost a little fewer than 400 men as compared to heavy losses suffered by the confederacy. Delhi was the missing jewel in the crown and now the route to the Mughal capital was clear for the British who eventually gained full control of the city and the region after the revolt of 1857. The glorious years of the great Marathas in contrast ended with a tame defeat.

pic: The ''1803 war memorial'' : Noida golf Course

All that remains now as a testimony of that day is a war memorial near the 16th hole of the course, built in the year 1916, with a stone plaque giving a brief summary of the ‘Battle of Delhi’ or ‘Battle of Patparganj’ ( quite ironic given the fact that present day Patparganj lies about 15 km northwards) . Even though it is not much of attraction for the locals (may be because many people are still not aware of the site or maybe because of the fact that it is a memorial for the British army) the place does provides a nice ambience to unwind and relax thereby generating a few occasional visitors who don’t mind giving it a look. Well this ‘insignificant’ memorial may have secured for Noida a faint imprint on the sands of history, a token it can pride on. But for a bloke like me, always enraptured by things around with even a remote connection to the bygone era, it will always be like living interspersed with the faint echoes of the past.

Droplets from the drought days

2007-07-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

Some times days pass by without much of revolting activity and the things which u least expect to surprise you appear unwelcomed, slithering beside you, with a dissambelled approach , surreptitiously gatecrashing into your ( plans of ) joyous frivolities and thereby drousing any hope of furthering the (planned) process of carousal in the times so unpreturbed and marked by moments of eternal luxury..SHAAAWKS..!!!...I just got my date of joining..... 8: ( !!!

Addendum: the day after (edit)

Well just to continue from above , in a bizzare ironical cataclysm , I have just got the information that my date of joining has now been postponed by a month. Well right now am feeling like a bloke suspended in the middle of the trivial extremeties of untenable circumstances where my senseless delight due to the extended break struggles in a promiscous mix with my latent realisation of the dire effects of the same extended joblessness. Can't help much though, but the psyche is getting diluted..day by day..!

Seized by idleness

2007-06-30T09:56:00.001-07:00

A stolid companion sashayed with me
Rambling in the dim path of moodiness
Trapped in the web of redundancy
In the convoluted mess of indecisiveness
Trudging a continuous replacing cycle
Replete with self effacing ideas
Stirring sinister potions of hysteria
Till indolence overwhelmed the desires
Paving a route to escape the delirium
And so passed the days
Morosely dallying in the parched confines
As the mind got exhausted by…idleness

Home Call-eth

2007-05-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

As the affected mask drops away
And the mood of elation holds its sway
Your thoughts return for a walk
In the youthful avenue of lime tree’s
In the velvety bloom of gleeful spree
The long separated path beckons you
Splashed with memories of the past hue’
And a ubiquitous calm lies in wait
To suspend the strands of wistful strain
While swept away by the sense of belongingness
A welcoming feeling overwhelms you
And as you walk through the tangled cobwebs
Of the old days, with an insatiable longing for
The sunshine specks and busy bee drones
A latent storm brews in your captivity,
The void of disconnection reduces
As you are not walking alone
For the nostalgia keeps on following
Crying and calling you back,
To the tender embrace of native air

Heat.....(again)

2007-05-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

The heat is just becoming unbearable, the desperation of reprieve from its clutches is nearing saturation, i had to put this again.....

Begotten by the
Sun, as it shines in
Its mocking connivance
Of morning calmness.
The unforgiving rays,
Bearing the temperature
Of the flaming corona,
Prepare for the remaining day
Their merciless deliverance.
And at high time they liberate
The maniacal heat,
Sucking the gentle wind,
And the sedentary pleasantness,
Blazing and raging,
spreading without compunction.
The shimmering spirit
Of the earth and soul
Diminishes and dries
As the body wriggles
As if diseased and the
Dusty domain cries.
The unrelenting heat
Pounds and thrashes
With its whipping beat
Cracking the body
Piece by piece
And it prevails over the mass
Creating hell on earth
Drawing the moistness
Of the coastal bay
As it prepares the recipe
For intolerable malice
With a smoldering expression
And chronic sinister flays
And a shroud of defeat
So deep it crafts
Over the countenance
Of delight and hope
On the faces of pleased
It drowns the sweat of
Suffering so unsettling
A desperation for ease
It seeds in the anguished hearts.
And the sun continues
Glowing so threatening
And dire
Ignited by the flames
Of baleful desire
As the wait begins so long
Bearing the distress
Crammed by ire
For the season of warmth
For the liberation from heat and fire

Its yet to sink in...

2007-05-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

pic: walking the last steps out of college; snehit, suresh,me, mams and sud....

Four glorious years under the unrelenting sun, four years of trying to remove the ever accumulating dun, four years of makeshift sustenance, four years of self imposed reluctance, and four years of toiling and adjustment. Sounds bit heavy when you try to give a tangible thought. But all that copious culmination of indisposition ended in whimper last week. Definitely not a fitting finale to what seemed to me as almost an age of endurance.

My hands were still aching, trying to force me to screeching halt, when I was just scampering through the last few questions of what would be the last exam of my graduate education phase. There would be certainly be some other time when my hand in coherence with my mind would be put into such circumstances. But definitely not through the same rigors as they had been put into these last four years. The repeated cycle of tests, I mean accounting the full glossary of them, the class tests, monthly tests, model tests, and the final ones, and not to leave the repetitive assignments. Just makes me feel relieved that I haven’t warped any of my finger muscles for permanent after enduring such hardships!

And so what happens , at the end of all things, after you hear the bell knell for the one last time. You step down the stairs and an eerie satisfaction welcomes you. There are smiles all around but the thrill is missing. The figurines that you would on other cherished days call friends, come up to you, exchange a few warm gestures and bid you one final adieu. Everything ends in a polite way. Even I am not all that excited. I recoil with a rather civil handshake and a cordial hug. The spark to effectuate the moment is surely missing. Probably nothing has changed yet, probably nothing will change. It just seems you won’t miss anything. At that moment the only thing I thought I was going to miss was the campus environment, the lively canteen atmosphere, the routine of bunking classrooms, the frequent train travels to and from the college, and not to forget the nooks behind the college, the dhal fry at the UP dhaba, the sumptuous meals of the Andhra mess, the chaat shop, and the pool club. These things will always occupy my mind, an iota, to ignite small flashes. But the emotions are still stable. Over the past few days after everything got over, I have been trying to release myself the from the vacuum that always enveloped me and I which I believe I have always existed. Its not that I have never felt an emotional pinch in my life. The last time I happened to get consumed in the void was four years earlier when I had finished my school life. I just couldn’t bear the thought of moving away from the circle of my crony bunch with whom I had spent ten bright years. But in this case the feeling of detachment, parting has still not prevailed over me. Inspite of my egregious loathing of this place, I have spent some quality time under the sunshine bliss with my enterprising coterie of friends. The weekend escapades, late night saunters in the beach, shuttle games in the evenings, glittering birthday bashes, and also the last minute lucubration during the exams. We have done all that together, exploited every valuable time. But when everything stops with an abrupt period and time ceases without a sign, then for you it is simply acceptance without willingness.

Probably there is nothing called detachment in today’s world, the nodes of time and souls are some way or the other interconnected. People you have known, your friends over times immemorial are still connected to you. Probably there is nothing called as saying goodbye to friends. And those fine memories of days bygone will forever remain etched in you, only to present itself when you have nothing else to think about. Things may seem plausible at a particular instance but may be more defining and evocative in retrospect. And as for me nothing has dissolved yet. Maybe it will just take a little more time for everything to sink in.

Procrastinating in the time of exams..

2007-05-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Exams are here !!! I gotta dig into my books !!! I got no time to do anything else !!!! no TV !!! no games !!! no movies !!! no dull drone fiddling !! no morning walks !!!no evening saunters !!! just studies....thats it...!!! nothing else !!!

Thats what your average visigothic, porcupinic, steadfast, inveterate.....over responsible, over concerned bookworm, nerd...i mean whatever u call them would say. But for me procrastinating is the best thing. Be it exams or whatever demanding moment. If I intend to do something then aptly it gets replaced by something drastically different in few fleeting seconds.....thus continuing the cycle of momentarily induced, ephermal, extravagant, albeit harmless thoughts. And thereby continues my daily pattern of morose dallying, dwelling in the farcial fanatasies when reality is whiping on your back. But again this guy is not all that bohemian as he sounds to be. The desperation of the last moment heat will be enough to blaze the body to hair raising convulsions and the denial of the so called exam induced anxiety will evaporate. Sigh....what a sinister letdown to the conviction of a pseudo-iconoclast! You may sound unpreturbed, you may try procrastinating. But the truth is that the heat of the moment always catches up with you and well, its gonna last another one week for me.

Talking to the mirror

2007-04-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

All these days I have had conversations in a one dimensional span. It is not that it was bound to be like that, it’s just that I feel content within the bounds. I am not that pliant a soul to be not unnerved by criticism, or to accept any appreciation with a bashful acknowledgement. I exist in the world of my own conceptions, I believe, a microcosmic creation extracted from the universe of knowledge. And shall I call myself, if you do pardon my egotistical tick, as the one who can be judged only by a linguistic myopia , using the grandest of words to put down simplest of things. And thereby creating a barrier, where the language itself becomes the hurdle to understanding. But it’s the way I sail, in the eloquent boat. Well you need some individuality to define yourself, to single you out from the crowd. But the fact is that now the same reason is playing against me. The quest to achieve this exclusivity has put me in solitary confinement. I have started suffering from this so called talking-to- yourself phobia. Looking at the mirror and talking to your reflection is such a dull routine. Now I need more reflections, not mine alone. And I do have space to accommodate an ample number and it need not be that you may try to look good every time. So charge in folks and expand the scope of my mirror.

I have stopped writing songs!

2007-04-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

I used to rise to the morning calm
With cold winds from the yawning woods
Thrusting an elevating balm
The chirping and humming of birds,
Nestled in the tall trees
The first sounds I would hear
And the gushing of the river
Running down the slopes
Would charge me of my wear
Bright and gay I would settle down
And transpose myself to a meditative reverie
And before the clatter of the daily activity
And the resounding old church gong
I would sink to my dreamy thoughts
And start writing songs!

I would write of veritable fantasies
In the world of endless mirth
A basket full of warmth, optimism
Where worries would suffer in dearth
A song about the nature
Dappled with scenery of mesmerizing bliss
And the sundry flora and fauna
Living with the amalgamation of peace
And my hand wouldn’t stop even if they had too
For the imaginings would be tantalizing
Until the sodden eyes would drowse again
And drown to a fleeting slumber

But now I have grown old
And I exist within limitations
With vehement denial of the past
The mornings and night are interspersed
And the sun wakes me up
With a mocking call
The chirpings have stopped
For the foliage have been uprooted
And the river's weakened to a stream
An insignificant brook on the face of earth
And shady desires have taken over imaginations
While I get affected by dementia.
And whenever I try to dream
Some old sounds do resonate
The clatter of the daily activity
And the old church gong
Breaking me back to the reality,
For I have stopped writing songs!

Confessions of a qausi-reticent

2007-04-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

Phew..!!! Being silent is such a big fallacy inducer. Just the other day while going through some of the testimonials referenced upon me on a popular social networking site, I happened to notice a striking pattern in two of the character depictions. It stated with a rather veritable impudence about my visible indifference to the opposite sex.

Well to be frank I was equally bemused at their assumed bafflement about my behavior in this respect. You never expect a silent bloke to thrive in talkativeness with anyone, leave alone the opposite sex. To have these observations come out of my close friends, well I thought I should have a casual reflection upon my own character. And at the same time I believed, with a rather over exaggerated scrutiny, that it did allure to the fact of my male integrity!

It’s a rather agreeable factor that your socializing tendencies are majorly measured as the direct result of your interactions with the opposite sex. But then you can never expect silent folks to socialize much. And at the same time you can’t call them indifferent. To be honest I believe that silent people are the greatest indulgers when it comes to things like flirtatious revelry. Being a quasi introvert, I believe, I don’t fall into the same bracket .But to be candid; I would rather put it this way. When it comes to matter pertaining to the feminine theme, I would say that I am a great observer not an ogler. I believe in keeping the safe distance of an onlooker rather than the approacher. And to say that I have never talked to a girl is blatant false. There have been a few polite conversations, but that’s how it ends; the polite way. You are never observed with distinct keenness until you cross the line of civility. And once you cross the line, regale yourself with teasing and flirtatious carousing, you become a bohemian and a true blue reveler. But all this is just the general conception and in my case I believe that am a victim of self inflicted limitations. These observations are bound to arise but it’s always not the same as you think. People may seem simple on the shell but they may be as complex in the interior. And it’s not only limited to what just I have discussed above.

And as one old wise guy used to say, “Never underestimate the resolve of a silent man”, I believe there should be lot to analyze before taking the plunge.

Pacified by sanguinity

2007-04-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

He stood at the end of the land,
At the shores of the forbidden sea.
Seized by the endless horizon,
He woke to the gentle breeze.
Dreary and hollow he looked over, and
Comported himself to a stance.
And in the milieu of contemplation
His attention wandered,
All of a sudden
To the limb of an undone tree.

‘Wrecked and solitary it stood alone
Firm on the unsteady sand
Never did it move, nor did it slide
Bearing the torment, of the scathing tides’

Shaken and Stirred by the incredible sight
He comforted and induced himself, and
Gently closed his eyes,
And started to dream, again.

The picture in the frame was the consequence of timely cooperation between the Mr. ‘Sir’ Srinath’s momentary patience with his rickety hands and Mr. Baldy paps’s seldom seen photographic composure.And that too to bring a solitary serene image in the chaos and crowd which was prevalent around (it wasn’t exactly a pacified atmosphere out there), it was the sheer rarity of the perfect timing to pop up.

PS: The above verse bears no semblance to the character (in the photo), his views or aspirations. They are just a figment of the versifier’s instinctive imagination. Shalom.

Affliction shrouds

2007-04-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

Another decamped dull day and the dry routine of a boring summer day beating on my doldrums like a relentless whip. And the heat, the irrepressible heat sways with its blandishing pliancy right through into the night robbing it of the dazzle, (I mean the psychological thing, when the mood is more vigorous ) casting a shade of gloom and lull. Suffering by the torments of the nature is one thing but the other affliction, the suffering caused by the lack of mental exaltation, now what should assuage that? I always believe the mental thing is directly proportional to the physical aspect, the anathema of the nature. Oh how much the heart yearns for the picture of sun hidden behind caricature of clouds, with occasional furtive glances brimming out rays of light riding out with amorous delight. And the balmy breeze cuddled with the coolness of the coastal bays and the elevating scent of the sodden earth, how invigorating feeling they give to the senses. But what a grief, for these visions are just spasmodic cravings, very much similar to the carnal desires of a lecherous body. And is in the case of the analogy I just mentioned, the desperation and wanting only uplifts the distress, until you are mad and paranoid before you get the gumption of what actually you are doing. But the problem is there is no room for emendation. The place of my obligatory subsistence, exists with an irresponsible atmosphere which refuses to follow the seasonal pattern, showering rabid curses upon the denizens, the weakest of whom I suppose is me. And what a strange alchemy of affliction it brews in my mind, that forces me to exist in the convoluted fantasies of my ‘wants’ and ‘don’t wants’. And again it’s hardly a surfeit of contentment, that I atleast have a vent to put my exaggerated yammering under the test of your patience, if at all. As always , I every time think of penning a wondrous canto, but it turns out to be a ponderous stanza crammed with errr… affliction.

Delayed by distortion

2007-04-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here and now, time and again, I feel
The poundings of the incessant rain
The hardened rain showering bane
Bedraggled, soaked in the acerbic waters
As it fills the wounds and gashes
Adding salt, the sourness to the pain
Oh what wrought’ these elements?
With concoction of suffering inflicted upon me
Leaking my energy to the swelling drain
Is this my fate, the rigors that I have to face?
Or is it the caprice of time that plays upon me?
Why I get delayed in the walk of my life
Am not scampering, not even that sluggish
To be faced by the dissonance and burdens of strife
A strange distortion entangles me
Beseeching and cajoling my usual gait
Holding me on for a perpetual wait
Creating a dilemma, a hysteria of unmarked proportions
Brewing a conflict of opposing notions
The time, it seeks the answer
Which I never can’t ponder upon
It seeks those things
That lies beyond my want
Probably it’s just a trick for the time to withdraw
To cast upon me the slurs of turmoil
So that I wobble my hold on the reigns
And fall into the abyss of turbulent clime
Or maybe it’s just a test of time
To help regroup the wavering thoughts
To wash away the metal drought
Nevertheless, I want to strive
Match the temporal flow
I can’t just give in, even though am slow
But as of now
Stepping back seems the only option
A step behind the moment
Retreating back the motion
But getting delayed isn’t all that bad
For the chance next you will get
Would be the last you would have
And it will be enough to seize your views
And you would be ready to pivot yourself again
But with a greater caution and hunch for gain.

Black or White

2007-03-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

There was nothing
And nothing was everything
The domains were darkened
The vastness dismayed
By the engulfing blackness
So mystifying abound
Until a flash occurred
A bang so propelling
That the dust cuddled
Broke Into crumbling
Pieces and swarmed the
Emptiness with a color
Never seen in sight
The stars and odd
Celestial pieces they were
Fire and feisty ablaze
Though red they were
At close but blackened
Eyes from the ends of the
Realms saw the light
Shining a glistening white
And a colorless speck
Threatening it was to the
Color of the dark
To challenge the brooding black
And filled it with spite
Though it never relented
And existed with a bitter
Duplicity of existence
Blinking eye for eye
And thus heralded the era
So stodgy with hate
Opposing in range
And the clash between
The extremes took the center stage
Which passed on and on
Through periods and eons
And the conflict still exist
In today’s bitter age
The conflict so uncertain
Between the choice of wrong
And the choice of right
Whether it should be black
Or whether it should be white..

But they dwell together
In a strange harmony
Veiled in the cloak of
Undefined hegemony
Isn’t the paper white?
Isn’t the pencil’s ink black?
Don’t they together fetch
A perfect emotive sketch
How can the sky in the black of night
Give the jitters give the fright
If it hadn’t got the pallid moon alight
Well let the desire
Of humans be black
The greed be black
Well justified it maybe
If the purpose is peace
The aim is for kind
A river of benevolence
Flowing sublime and white
The colors may be different
A fire to dominate persistent
But edges can reside together
Ends of the same thread they may be
But they bind together the same cloth
And even if the canvas wanes and dries
Of the hues so bright
The shades will be there
Black and white
Holding steady the picture of life.

Oscar hopefuls 2007: Pretender’s choices

2007-02-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

Well, as we say, the Oscars are here. And on the 25th of February, in their usual custom will be the fervent movie maniacs around the world glued before their TV set with keen anticipation as one of the most watched and most covered movie award ceremonies in the world takes the primal center stage and the countdown for crowning of the best in the Hollywood movie business for the last year unfolds among the glittering galaxy of stars and personalities at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. And as an avid movie buff and and an ardent follower of Hollywood art, and with a rather humble assumption of myself as a connoisseur of good movies, I put forward my own choices for the top honors in the favorite categories.
Starting with the least favored category of the lot-

Best Foreign Film: Pan’ Labyrinth (Mexico)
Dark Horse - Water (Canada)

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls
Dark Horse - Anyone of the two Babel nominees

Best Supporting Actor: Djimon Honsou for Blood Diamond (bookies are vouching for
Eddie Murphy but Honsou’s performance is too powerful to be sidelined)
Dark Horse - Mark Wahlberg for Departed

Best Actress:Helen Mirren for The Queen
Dark Horse-None (Helen Mirren is undisputable)

Best Actor: Forrest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland
Dark Horse: None (Forrest Whitaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin is certainty, Though if one has to go by sentiments then Peter ‘O Toole does stand a chance, but when competition is the criteria as it has always been then there is no beating Whitaker)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese for Departed (almost 50 years in the industry, dishing out some quality cinema over the past 3 decades, seven worthy but unsuccessful nominations, now moving into autumn of his sparkling career, the guys deserves this time)
Dark Horse:Paul Greengrass for United 93

Best Picture: Well the slot is wide open as a result of surprise exclusion of Dreamgirls. So any of the remaining big three Babel, Departed or The Queen may take the big one. My pic: The Queen.

PS: Well I just wanted to add, with a bit of candid confession, that I haven’t seen more than half of the movies which have been nominated in the above mentioned categories for which I have presented my vital preferences. Even without seeing any specific movie, I believe that my clairvoyant judgment based upon my self conceived notions of being a volitional movie enthusiast and my definitive understanding of the story and characters based on various edifying resources will be as good as that of anyone who has seen or studied the movie in entirety. Do pardon me if you feel my paranoid reasoning to be inexplicably hard to digest. Amen.

Heat

2007-02-18T10:22:00.001-08:00

Begotten by the
Sun, as it shines in
Its mocking connivance
Of morning calmness.
The unforgiving rays,
Bearing the temperature
Of the flaming corona,
Prepare for the remaining day
Their merciless deliverance.
And at high time they liberate
The maniacal heat,
Sucking the gentle wind,
And the sedentary pleasantness,
Blazing and raging,
spreading without compunction.
The shimmering spirit
Of the earth and soul
Diminishes and dries
As the body wriggles
As if diseased and the
Dusty domain cries.
The unrelenting heat
Pounds and thrashes
With its whipping beat
Cracking the body
Piece by piece
And it prevails over the mass
Creating hell on earth
Drawing the moistness
Of the coastal bay
As it prepares the recipe
For intolerable malice
With a smoldering expression
And chronic sinister flays
And a shroud of defeat
So deep it crafts
Over the countenance
Of delight and hope
On the faces of pleased
It drowns the sweat of
Suffering so unsettling
A desperation for ease
It seeds in the anguished hearts.
And the sun continues
Glowing so threatening
And dire
Ignited by the flames
Of baleful desire
As the wait begins so long
Bearing the distress
Crammed by ire
For the season of warmth
For the liberation from heat and fire

MADRAS , 18/02/07: And thus departed the misplaced warmth of the winter and the summer dawned with its usual severity.

The Last King of Scotland- The Whitaker effect

2007-02-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Some say that life imitates art, but after watching Kevin McDonald’s Last King of Scotland manywould have to think about reversing the old saying. Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of the ruthless Ugandan dictator Idi Amin gives a perfect personified justification to the thought of art imitating life. With an amazing flair of mesmerizing aura Whittaker aptly balances and intersects the wavering personality of Amin, be it his more child like comical and colorful side or the much more sinister and real Amin, the callous and brutal totalitarian who sought no repentance while committing mass genocide on his own people, and who called himself the life president of Uganda, conferred upon himself CBE (read conqueror of British empire) and gave himself the title, presumably because of his hatred towards the British, “The Last King of Scotland.”. Whitaker, whose early notable roles came with Platoon and Good Morning Vietnam, was catapulted into instant fame with Clint Eastwood’s award winning biopic about musician Charlie Parker, Bird, in which he played the titular role. Whitaker won the best actor award at Cannes for the role along with a golden globe nomination. But the ninety’s saw the years of dormancy for Whitaker in which he appeared in not so prominent but effective roles and also dabbled in producing and directing. Perhaps no other actor could have fit in so perfectly in the portrayal of the late Idi Amin as Whitaker though there was equally talented Michael Clarke Duncan in contention. And moreover Duncan could have easily fit the bill because of his bizarre resemblance to the despot .But his brooding figure of well over seven feet, would have dwarfed the huge caricature of Amin himself. Nonetheless Whitaker adds punch to his role by bearing daring affinity to the character. The enigma and the eccentricity of the character can be clearly felt in the introductory sequence where Amin is cheerfully addressing a large crowd and singing and dancing with them, and within a few minutes of the rally after the accident, where he is hurling abuses at a farmer whose bullock cart collided with his car and whose cow is now dying with pain while he is moaning for what appears to be a seemingly harmless hand injury. And the character remains a mystifying personality to the other protagonist, Dr Harrigan, played by James McAvoy, whom he takes as a personnel physicist after he treats him for the accident, and who considers Amin more of naïve colorful leader, until the real Amin snaps open in the later reels of the movie. Even though the movie covers a part of Amins’s life, the Last king of Scotland and more so Forrest Whittaker succeeds in capturing the true nature of the nihilist tyrant close to what had been described about him by scribes and books. The ruthless barbaric military leader whose exploits and mannerism were limited to newspaper reports and TV stock footage gets his menacing real life imitation in the form of Forrest Whittaker. His role is arguably the best portrayal of a real life personality by a black actor clearly surpassing that of Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X. And justifying his simply awe inspiring performance are the accolades with which he has been bestowed and the massive worldwide critical acclaim. And after having collected almost all the important awards for the role, such as the Screen Guild and the BAFTA, probably there is one more trophy which would add the finishing gleam to his already glittering showcase. And on the night of twenty fifth of February, as Reese Witherspoon announces the Academy Award for the best actor in leading role, there would be hardly anybody with a greater sense of impassiveness than the person himself, the incredible Forrest Whitaker.

Picking up the pieces

2007-02-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

The war is over now
The earth spilled with the red
Of the raw blood of the brave
And those slaved by dread
Has dried up.
Towns have been ravaged
Bodies decaying and scavenged
Hopes so spirited ,they were one time
Now frayed beyond salvage
The tears have been spent and shed
By the mourners of the dead
The cries of glory inhaled
By the tranquility of the air
The moaning and wailings
Of defeat lost as echoes
Beyond the present
The pride and desire
Once a resolve so unfazed
Lie sunken and bare

The time unpretending
Recoils as a testament
Of the greed so lecherous
Ruthless power and ambitions
Of the great but maddened
Some of whom lie now
In great despondency and sadness
And about the wasted sacrifice
Of those passionate departed souls
Who gave their life and
perished, unworthy of their goals
The time recalls those days
So bright and prosperous
Though the light lived a short life
With constant aspersions of strife
In the minds of the debauched
In the hearts of darkness
Which seeded no moral aims
No humanity, no repentance

And as the insanity of tyranny ceases
Ephemerally though
The moment has come
To rebuild
To pick up the pieces
The scattered dust ,the broken remains
If it all they exists, Or have they vanished too?
Bearing the pains bearing the shame
To the fate they had been marked to
To the doom they had been chained

Seeking the alternative path

2007-02-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

The memories are still fresh about that day, years ago when I was still in my primary education stage. I had just returned from the school proudly flaunting the certificate I got for securing third prize in a sketching competition. I was quiet thrilled and ecstatic about my first achievement in life. But ironically the next day I had my year end results out and I knew I hadn’t performed well. The whole excitement of the previous day was extinguished at the very instant my parents got hold of the mark sheet. They expected me to perform well as I seemed a quiet smart kid to them even though it were my fledgling years. I had personally shown keenness in everything but studies so they implicitly assumed that I was an academic inclined fellow too. Disappointment was quiet evident on their faces and I was given a severe scolding in the evening by my father followed by few encouraging but stern words which was quiet expected. But those words never smeared my wounds. The pattern continued till my last years in school and every time I achieved something in my avocation, the actuality of academic non competitiveness diminished the interest. I felt my spirit doused every time. I felt my interests subjugated and dictated by the chariot whose reigns I could never hold. Well, I lost my purpose in life , I presumed with a tad exaggeration.

The fault was not with my parents or effects of peer pressure or any other in particular. Our minds are the pawns of the society. The culture of our glorious nation may be vibrant and colorful but the ethos which binds them is so impervious that in one hand it can proudly claim to resist the affected western infiltration but on the other hand ,in a grave note ,it also detriments the winds of positive change. Thus creating a vacuum of blatant unipolar thoughts sucking every feeble minded within its girth, as we Indians generally are. For us studies is everything, it is the single make benefit path towards all achievements in life. One who masters his academic life is the the one, the one who doesn’t or even the one who tries and falls back is just one among the crowd. And my three and a half years of stay in the capital of conservatism and archaic conventions has only reinforced my view. I go to my relatives place, and the first question I am posed with, “How are your studies going on?”, “what percentage you secured in your last yearly?”, “what’s your future plan- MBA or MS?” “What should my son take –commerce or science?” “My son is weak in math, interested in history but I won’t let him choose arts? There is no future in that you know na.” Phew! Give me a break. “Forget studies. Throw the books out. Aint he interested in music? Drums? Give the poor guy the sticks. Let him thrash the drums. He’ll be a good drummer” I say, as a frown of outright rejection is thrashed on my face. Same questions everywhere albeit, a saving grace, there are other pleasantries exchanged.

When people start differentiating in studies then there is no stopping the hysteria. But individuals are not to be blamed for this, the society is. The society of ours which pledges to march on the modern path as a multifaceted world but which is trounced by the moralities of the gnawing tradition. It’s fine that we need fire to propel the technological and scientific rockets of growth, but do we need a million for that? A population of a billion a not even a single gold medal, this fact has become so popular that it finds itself graduated to the bracket of triviality. A musical heritage spanning centuries but only a miniscule international appeal. Football is the game of humanity, some people call, and its brutal murder to grasp the thought that your country is the biggest tragedy of the sport. Why not use the languishing but still active sparks to ignite other dreams? The dream to gain an ingrained but progressive culture of exceptionalism as it’s evident in countries like US and Australia. Though differences are there as the rigid culture of ours deprived of dignity to labor, caste distinction and other synonymous ills evinces itself as the main culprit. Inspite of all this we have many rivulets of progressive and different aims flowing out of the gorges of culture warp but hardly most of them meet the river .The boulders of convention fall somewhere in the journey and impede their flow in the path less traveled. Nothing can widen the narrowness created except our minds. It needs the philosophical approach if not practical to broaden its parochial horizons. And this will come only if there is an attempt to trudge this path. And why is this getting delayed? Because most of us as victims inflicted by the indecisive conflict are waiting meekly for someone to cross the line and succeed.

Asphyxiation of sanity

2007-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

There I lay forsaken
The desperation of calamity
In my dim consciousness
Tending my soul
Holding me wide
The odd senses so strange
Keep me awaken
I lay in the bowels
Inside the crust
With embers and fire
Smoldering smoke and haze
Filling as I crawl and creep
In the labyrinth I created
In the ravines of craze
The mnemonic past
Of the wondrous sights
Fail to redeem
The demented plight
The colors so bright
Of those wanting days
In the iota of my brain
Shake in the ends
Of the brushes so stale
Writhed with the
Blackness of the fanatical age
Nothing can mitigate
The decaying rot
Nothing can remove
This tumor the clot
A requiem so somber fills
The silenced corners of sagacity
The pyre burns in perpetuity
Ashes crumble mutilated
And the flames so fiery blaze
Glowing bright from distance
Creating an envelope so thick
That I breathe only smog
And lose sight of right
While the mind loses its sanity

resumption of hope- redemption

2007-01-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

(lyrics for the Hard Rock wannabe!!!)

The road diverges straight ahead
Which to skip, which to trek
Which leads to goal, which lies dead
Why such a conflict for my head

Dichotomy of my mind seeps through my tender pores
I feel the noise of the daily chores
Deprived of motivation, my spirit snores
Oh what is this phenomena
Testing my hold
Which seek my name hunts my soul
I crave to run cant bear no more

The dichotomy of my mind seeps through my tender pores
I see the blood the knife and gore
What my aim has in store
Which it loathes what it abhors
The existence is parody existence is sham
Pestilence reeks out and out as the dinghy crams
Of rust n the road is marsh and swamp
Oh nowhere to go nowhere to ram

The guy is not so bold
He will give in he will fold
He aint got the heat to beat the cold
I feel so numb I feel sold

The dichotomy of my mind seeps through my tender pores
I still feel the noise of the daily chores
Deprived of lust my spirit snores

The wound is split the blood spurts out
The drop falls down on the deadpan ground
For the time has come to decide
To yearn for salvage to yearn for pride
I seek my name I seek my soul
I seek my single path of goal
My ultimate goal

Beating past beating convention
I start for the dark road without hesitation
Whatever is my final destination
The quest is for reinvention
A journey for self redemption

The dichotomy of my mind can’t beat my hardened soul
The noise is out silent is my core
Filled with hope….my spirit soars…..

Aimless

2007-01-21T09:31:00.000-08:00

As age diminishes an hour
And miles reach distant and far
I find myself slowing and
Horizons reaching vast distances
With shadow foreboding

The mountains begin to stoop
Tired sustaining the height
Before they even endure the
Weathers harsh and unkind

The meadows green so bold and gay
Sag and submit their lushness rancid
Its patience suffocates burnt to cinders
By fire and acid

The water thriving at the shores
Laments and recedes from the coast
Giving up its pride and boast
And the Sea remains dim and placid

The solitary ship in the demented ocean
Loses its path, its guiding beacon
As the pole star vanishes in the misty night
Its everlasting quest weakens

And in this point of turmoil
Let my body be absolved
For its soul is tattered to ashes
And its resolve dissolved
In a whirlpool confounding
As lamentation makes
The realization hard.
But still I feel shameless
Anything but blameless
My hope floats, a feeling, aimless

the year of lust

2007-01-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

He called me and said
‘Happy New Year’
And I asked – ‘hey pal
Is that you I hear?’
Nothing strange in the phrase
The caller was an odd case
Never heard him uttering the phrase
The guy was staid
Tastes equally insipid
Never to party never to romp
The card I sent him last
I heard, he’d crushed n stomped
The guy would quail at mirth
Glee was beyond his girth
Rhythm in his heart
As solemn as a dirge
The spirit of occasion
Was beyond his verge
Confused I was
What’s wrong with him?
What’s the cause?
What made the scrooge?
Undertake a radical change so huge
And the guy replied
With affability spawning
‘Mate, I know it sounds strange
But I have started feeling
The winds of change’
Now, I mulled for a second
What did the fellow portend?
He continued with a sense of urge
Talked about the strange things
I had never heard
He spoke about his dream
A fantasy seeding beyond the realms
The guy was mad
His wisdom scantily clad
His words hardly made sense
The tone striking a weird cadence
Then the truth came out
As swift as it could
He blurted, ‘I am in love’
Confounded by the bizarreness
I found it hard to stow
“Oh what a fate!
For those who yearn,
its an erratic wait
For unlikely of all
It opens its gate
Well, Strange things happen
And Strange things occur
But just this time,
Oh the year anew
For this lustful soul
Bring some succor “
And with that desperate thought
I hung up abruptly
With an impulsive stall
But not before greeting
‘Happy New Year to you too, pal ’.

as i turn twenty one..

2006-12-26T10:17:00.000-08:00

The age dawns the age of sun
Rising with dreams, beating the dun
The age of mellow youth
And an age to dissect,
The young raw years uncouth
An age of remembrance
Of the old forlorn days
The unripe wispy adolescence
And the recurring moody sways
A day to think of morrow
And to ponder on the road ahead
To redeem the past sorrow
With renewed passion and a firm head
An age summoning the change
A departure from the years of dependence
With a new found liberty in exchange
To chart a life with vim and vigor,
And a hope with eternal prevalence

But some thoughts only seemingly engage
As things are better said than done
Oh! The mortal pretense takes me hostage
And my optimism subdues and shuns
I try poise myself worthy of this stage
Affirming myself and yielding to none
As I turn....... twenty one.

Sanity and vanity

2006-12-14T09:35:00.001-08:00

Days have have passed by and no ejections from this nozzle of a mind....sometimes there persists a feeling of what to do now and what to do next. This very travesty brings a situation of pulverizing and perplexing confrontation with the very idea which you want to put down or which you are trying to put down. The conflict here is more about conventional wisdom and the ever escalating ego factor. The former being more humble and forthright notion stresses not to be vexed and meandered away by the latter. The latter sees more of pride. Well of course I want (and surely most of us) this space to provide a significant amount of self promotion and at the same time an iota of good sense information or talk (positive criticism , always welcome). But still some elements do exist in this fluctuating mind which forbid you from existing in the banality of the majority (that’s the ego talking).. You are supreme you are something different..your thoughts should be heralding..and then...you were never a born genious….you are not going to die a great man…mark something which vents out the person in you….some degree of respectability…phew..!!...such contradictory and trivial thoughts…same mind but so much parity. Well its quiet hard to fathom that the very soul which encourages you overtly kind of gets subdued when it faces the stark challenging realities of life. Well why did I change gears suddenly and dropped into this silly talk is just to provide a relation between our thoughts and realities. I believe that our scribbling and scrawls in this space is nothing but the reflection of our mind set. Some do –maybe not to a fully realizable extent- express our aims and goals and what means are enabling and catalyzing to help achieve them. Its all about the choice of humility and pride. And so the next time I append a blog I honestly hope that wisdom prevails and not ego…..chuck that..!!!

P.S: the blog's marked for major changes.

Perplexed

2006-09-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

Staring at the queer expanse
Without any spite without any stance
Nothing to savor, mock or prance
Darkness bordering every nimble glance
Triviality and farce filling all the blanks
Nay! This is not reality but a very knotty trance.

a fuzzy thought on existence

2006-08-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

If one looks back down the line, over the unpredictable years gone by with its magnitude of gains and losses, adventures and misdemeanors, the bright and the blue, the blessings and the curses. The one single thing that seeps equally through all the layers, prodding through the fissures and the one, which forms the vital cog of the series of events to continue- the mind. The vortex of all the desires, the bowel of fire, the elixir of life and signifying many more undefined and undesignated, the mind has been the most enigmatic associated feature of an individual’s life as many will rightly justify. Though spiritual and non-existing it may be, a consequence of our being and state of consciousness, its affects and influence are far from being just assumed within a limited scale of corporeality. Well while stressing on state of mind one really can find more comfort in talking about its distinctly related counterpart and a more colloquial expression- the very state of existence. A cliché it may sound at the very utterance but it has a much deeper and grave connotation below the trivial veil that cloud over it. One may wonder whether our existence is result of choice or the result of some bizarre and unexplainable scientific occurring. By the former we may suppose that we are the progeny of the cosmic masters, an enigma itself, one that has been assumed and bestowed with blindfolded superiority and for which giving respect is just a mere formality. These are the conclusions that are held by the parochial, those who give into the fact that we are just mere slaves entrusted to these definitive forces which hold the reigns of our survival on this terrain. Thoughts like these pose the very obstacle on the forward river of thought that nudges its way through the rough and wild towards the wide sea it ultimately seeks. As a naïve perplexed bloke I would rather give into these assumptions unless the justification of our existence is proven. But the seesawing mind with the turbulence of unrefined, struggles to release itself of the dark clouds in the process emanating views, which pose as self-repudiation to the established beliefs. How we the samples of a mystical occurring evolved into the finest specimen to dwell on the terrain, ingrained with a functioning biological system as complex as the cosmos and its elements? Why were only the primates bestowed with the supernatural gift of evolving into the greatest of all and harbinger of the mankind, bestowed with responsibility of progress of the earth and its life forms in totality – why didn’t the boon fell on cats, canines or the aquatic?? What if Darwin was never to be a hominoid? What if origin of species talked about some other genus evolving to ultimate pre-eminence? All this might have strong semblance to anything but existence, but these are the very foundations of our search to know the secrets of our existence which is the ulterior motive of our being. And there are other kinds of sparks. Why do I exist in shiv’s body? Why not in siddharth’s, why don’t I feel what rahul feels and why I don’t see the world from his eyes…why should I be born a Hindu why not a Zionist, why was I begotten by a bourgeoisie Indian couple and why not by a Romanian gypsy?? A straightforward answer to these queries may point to a three-letter word. But again religion and faith are a result of existence, and can we settle for an answer so easily. I think to unlock the codes of our life, of our being, the proverbial existence is the biggest task of the mankind which will be difficult or probably will never be deciphered if at all any conclusions makes man satisfied. But one thing is for sure, our existence is no accident, we are here for a purpose. We just form an iota of larger scheme of things and there is lot unknown brewing up at the alien confines of the universe. Any revolting thought may be quickly rendered ineffective by dominating religious elucidations but the flash will suffice and that’s what is keeping the quest on. The trials and process to crack these riddles have laid the very steps for the path of human progress. The luxuries of modernized world are just perks of a greater demanding job. The task wont be finished unless the truth is known and that may well sound contradictory, because the very thing that has to be known is driving the whole process.

P.S: the blog's marked for some minor changes