Life, Death and Everything

A sense of helplessness, shock, grief and overpowering anger. This is what everyone must be feeling right now. The worst part is, inspite of the losses, we would all go back to our routine lives with a ridiculous ease. We are getting used to this, aren't we? Infact how many of us have deviated from our routine lives even under this situation?

Still it feels good to see people cheering our security forces, prodiving them with snacks and moral support as they die so that we can live.

I just wish I could be in Mumbai.

I am Falling...

Ardent followers of my blog (me, myself and my virtual pet cat, Bimbo) know that I have always accomplished the mammoth task of unravellling the mysteries of life, universe and everything here, be it the deeper meaning of life or the spiritual context of some monkey slapping the other. Now, It's high time I took another small step for a man and a giant leap for mankind - the one that might make people take giant leaps out of their balconies/windows into the nothingness below.
Today I will expose the biggest mistake in the history of mankind:
Long, long ago (in the 1660s), a middle-aged man who had as exciting a social life as that of a dead tree (comparable to mine, but I can atleast talk to myself; being a psycho helps), had nothing else to do on a lazy afternoon. He was meandering across his garden, watching the snails compete on a cross-terrain race, and shouting encouragements, and occasionally glancing at the clouds taking different shapes in the overhead sky. But he didn't stop there, and that's why I have to hit my keyboard hundreds of years later now, when I could have comfortably read out self-decomposed unwritten poems to my virtual companion, Bimbo.
Back in the garden, the guy sat under an apple tree and having been utterly neglected by the snails, started recounting to the tree, the incident when once he was standing at the platform, waiting for his train and was thrown a few yards away by an ill-tempered middle-aged lady who was rushing to catch her train and collided with him on the way. He had struggled back on his feet, taken his pink notebook out and written his sudden realization down: "Every body continues to be in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless acted on by some unbalanced force to act otherwise", when he was thrown off by a few meters in the other direction by another collision with the same lady who had realised that she was running after the wrong train.
The apple tree was so moved by the story that it wished it had legs to literally move away to save its life, but obviously it coudn't. The ordeal was particularly frustrating for the apple in the lowest branch, nearest to him and his words. As a last ditch effort to put an end to this, it fell.
It just fell and hit His head. He looked up, down, right and left; scratched his head and took his pink notebook out. The rest as they say is history.. er..physics, sorry! He noted down something which he called the law of gravitation which deals with how bodies with mass attract each other. The law, which is not consistent with quantum mechanics and even doesn't have experimental evidence on what actually causes it.
The mistake he made was to look outwards while the answer lay within.

What he didn't realise is that life sucks. It did then, as it does now. His life did, my life does. Gravity is a hoax.
Life sucks the happiness out of you as with apples from a tree. When your expensive vase tips over to fall on the floor and dissolves into a million pieces, when an important sheet of paper disappears into a man-hole, when a Sachin Tendulkar skier lands on Symonds' palms or when people fall (from grace) in love, it's only life's way of reminding us:
Life Sucks.

Acknowledgements: The discussion I had with a friend once and a T-shirt.

Apologies to: All my physics teachers from school/college.

P.S. The race was won by a snail called Appy Singh.

Street Hawk!

In the last few days, my literary adventures have been limited to filling in laptop declaration forms at the entry and exit of my (what Dilbert would call) sensory deprivation chamber. Having been too lazy to look at a workaround (not that it was dancing in front of my eyes, in a kathakali costume), I have been going through the daily routine of writing my name, project details, machine serial numbers, and striking out names of the portable media devices that I don't carry. Occasionally though, I have juggled with the idea of writing Sukumar Ray-esque verses or Didi-esque slogans on the margins to spice up the proceedings, but then I have, till now been successful in fighting that instinct.
It's been a long time since I last blessed cyberspace with my dripping-with-wisdom words and if some people had been celebrating the halt in server space wastage, I have only one thing to say: Sorry to disappoint you folks, but I am back and today I will write about my bicycle.

It has got two tyres, a seat, derailleurs, handle bars and a sense of humour.
In the early nineties when people my age were crazy about cycles with thick-as-a-boa constrictor tyres and herculean frames, I got myself a black, sleek, "super light city bike" - as it used to be advertised. I learnt cycling on it, something which the wise men advise against. This learning business, according to them, is best done on other's machines, for it's quite taxing on the vehicle.
My bicycle took the blows generously. I have always been a fair weather friend to it, always slipping away at the last moment whenever I sensed a tumble, specially while learning to get down. I have banged on walls while trying stunts, on other cyclists while trying I dont know what; I have skid through the road while trying to swap hands on the handlebars (try it, it's not that easy) and knifed through every pool of stagnant water on the road just for the fun of it. But it has never complained, except for making strange noises, especially after a mud-bath.
Oh and yes, it has got a wicked brain too.
Whenever I'd be on the middle of a crossing with vehicles charging in from all directions:
1. The brakes would stop working.
2. The bell would get jammed.
And I would invariably have to:
1. Throw my legs at the ground to get some friction so that I can bring it to halt before I bring someone down on the road.
2. Be amazed at how smooth the brakes and bell would work just at the next moment when not needed. Especially infront of the mechanic who would, in turn be amazed at someone bringing a cycle with perfectly functioning parts for repair.
But riding it was/is great fun. You cannot compare anything to the feeling of the breeze sliding through the crew-cut hair (specially the region above the ears and back of the head!) while pedalling through the beautiful roads of my hometown.
Our relationship has suffered many lows, like the one when one of my friends rode it to meet his girlfriend (you don't need to lend things to school buddies, they just get them from you when they want! ) in a cybercafe and completely forgetting about it's existence, took a romantic rickshaw ride out of the shop to her home. The next afternoon saw a whirlwind of activities including:
1. My calling him to get my cycle back and his rushing to my place and declaring that it was left in front of some cybercafe.
2. The two of us rushing to the cybercafe, obviously not finding my cycle outside, quizzing the security guard, being told that probably it might have been picked up my some mobile police van and that we need to go to the police to have any hopes of getting it back.
3. Under the advice of the security guard, going to the nearest police station, meeting the Kader Khan look-alike inspector and his taking out a map of the city and after many minutes of pan-chewing, telling us that area falls under some other police station.
4. Our calling up an uncle of my friend who besides being a blind Ganguly fan is some high official in the police force, his tracking the cycle down to some police station, and finally our reaching there, finding it reclining against a cell and getting it without much hassles, thanks to the background work done by our beloved "Ganguly-Uncle".
5. My kicking that friend on his backside - one that would make Roberto Carlos proud (Well, not really. I was infact too relieved to get my black beauty back. So much so, that I even dropped him home, on it of course).

It's still there. The roads, though changing quite fast, are still quite pretty and the air too has more of oxygen than carbon monoxide. Even now, whenever I go home, I take it out, dust it and go out on my royal excursions.

As one wise man had once remarked:

If you have a perfectly conditioned cycle, you don't need a girlfriend.

(Go hang yourself if you haven't yet figured out who that wise man is!)

Acknowledgements:

1. NC for that rickshaw ride and the discussion on rickshaws and bringing back memories of my black beauty.
2. Hero cycles for making "Impact". As you can see, that had quite an impact!

Imported Wisdom

Here's something a friend wrote. I am her first publisher!

The red lights blazed across the inky black sky-a devilish concoction
Down on the street the mobs swarmed out in hoardes
Painted faces, macabre masks
Loud banners screaming freedom
there was nothing subtle about this independence
A stupid boy raised his voice above the blaring horns
Are we really free he asked a sea of callous faces
They shoved him, pushed him, pulled out his unstained shirt
Another aberration with the order of chaos
Traitor Traitor-the crowd rose to a crescendo
they read out his order of execution -the justice of the mob
The neon lights blazed brighter-
the devil loved the stench of human blood
-- RR

Paranoid Celluloid

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.



Hats off to the makers.

"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free..."

It is difficult. Trust me, it's damn difficult to create that kind of an impact again.

He chances upon, amidst hundreds of books, a long playing record. He slides it out of the blue cover, blows off the dust and carefully places it on the player. The officer, busy with attending nature's call is caught totally unawares as Mozart starts flowing and filling up the space. The officer calls out to him. He, by then, is in another world altogether. He locks the restroom from the outside, with the officer caught within, switches on the public address system and brings the microphone close to the record player.

Music fills the air in the prison. His fellow prisoners, who were on with their daily bone-crushing jobs stopped for a while, amazed, staring at the loudspeaker which till then had only blared out orders, abuse and the siren. The warden, with the other officers rushes to his office and finds it locked from the inside. Through the glass pane he was visible. Sitting, leaning back on a chair, his hands behind his head and legs crossed on the table. And with a smile on his lips.
The warden barks at him; asks him to open the door.
He leans forward, turns the volume higher and looks up at the warden. At this moment you can catch a glimpse of the sparkle in his eyes. The smile has broadened.

Yes, they broke the door open and he was switched from his prison cell to solitary confinement for two weeks. But even there, as he says later, he had Mr. Mozart for company.
But how? They surely wouldn't have left him the record player in the "hole", as solitary confinement cells are known.
He taps his head and his heart and smiles. and says "I have it in here".

One of the best cinematic moments ever, this definitely would have had Mozart smiling from the heavens. Also the Lumiere brothers and definitely me. In my case, though, from my room. (Not that it can't be called heaven. After all this is where I sleep hours together, keep staring at the ceiling, day dream, get nightmares, and keep making plans for taking over the world.)
Was it the sheer defiance or the celebration of freedom that makes it this special?
It has to be both.
For those few moments, the man was nobody's prisoner. He could unplug from the constraints thrust upon him by life and create a momentary world which was entirely his own. That is freedom at its unadulterated, purest form.
Probably therein lies the lesson for all who keep being led by life rather leading their own lives. It's always a free choice whether to create "the prison" around, or to dissolve the constraints or rules that tie us down.
There can be no 'statue of liberty'. Liberty is alive and fluid, like the red viscous liquid in our veins.

And squeezing out even one such moment would be enough for a lifetime.

What cannot be helped...

Let us all observe a two-minute silence.

The world deserved better.