riki tiki tavi

A clutch of poems

2012-01-08T06:00:00.000+05:30

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been writing in private. Like most private writings these are poems that when I read back I realize are intensely personal. Here are some of the ones I'm most proud of.

London Streets

London’s streets turn cold in December

A gloomy pall undisturbed by Christmas,

New Year or the holidays in between.

The lanes are narrower, longer

And the warm windows far between.

I become the lonely traveller once more

My footsteps echoing down the alley.

28. Nov.2011

Maple Leaves

Maple leaves around me are different.

They crunch louder, harsher.

Their red is pale and wimpy.

They drop like a stone from the trees.

Their shapes are gloomy.

The Maple leaves I knew in Chennai

Were filled with delight

And tender cold snaking its way

In the veins, blushing red

Soon maple turns brown

And it flits to the ground

Waiting to be collected by

The young girl for her scrapbook.

29. Nov.2011

On these London Streets

Do I know these winds

Playing in my sleeves?

So distant, cold and reckless

Through the empty night streets.

A familiar tune they whistle,

Almost a lullaby.

But I’m far from home,

Here, on these London streets.

30.Nov.2011

A Wintry Paean

If I write a paean,

Would it suffice?

Would the skies stay dead still

And the wintry whiteness

Turn into an early spring?

17.12.11

Life is elsewhere

Life is elsewhere,

Perhaps in the soft folds

Of summery rays

I saw a few months ago.

I’ve left it behind me,

Like a lengthening shadow

Straying far into the dusk

In lands I’ve loved and cherished.

I’ve left it behind me,

Like a morning memory,

Of last dinner’s flavours

Tingling my tongue.

In London I live,

Amidst migrant dreams

Stacked on top, one another,

Till they pierce the ballooned sky

And the rain takes me back home.

27.12.2011

January

January blisters into being.

Heathrow soon shall crowd

And an overpowering smell

Shall fill the air once more.

Migrant dreams trickle in

Bringing tropical sunshine

And arctic winters.

08.01.2012

Interludes

2011-11-28T23:45:00.003+05:30

I like my quiet interludes

Served with tea on a Monday morning.

I like it next to the tall girl with blonde

Hair on the tube ride to UCL.

I like it short and intense

Like my breath on a crisp autumn hike.

But usually, I like it waxing

Covering whole of summer right till winter

And everything before and after.

I like my quiet interlude to dangle

Between sentences I read on Wednesday nights.
I like them to peek through my emails.
I like them between the red flashes of my blackberry.
I like them brewing in my lunchtime coffee.

I like my quite interludes in cold, empty London streets.

I like to find them in the uneven roads

In monsoonal Chennai, or even perhaps

Between uncertain brushstrokes of a Monet.

I like them sweet and succulent in

Summer’s first mangoes

Or bright red in the maple leaves outside.

But let them, right now, wrap themselves around

me keeping me warm through this winter.

On feeling stupid and other devious tricks of the trade

2011-11-17T05:03:00.000+05:30

I just came back from a dinner. It was pegged as an informal dinner, but it was formal for my taste. I came back a bit woozy, with a noticeable food stain and a menagerie of voices in my mind all accusing me of being stupid.
Fair enough, I feel stupid.

But I'd rather feel stupid and know that I was stupid than not feel stupid even if I was stupid, right?

What's the excuse? There has to be one. Indeed there is. The one that I've been bouncing around a lot recently is how young I am. In fact it has even made its appearance on my blog. It's an interesting coin really. I never really felt anything about it back home. When I came here it was as visible as the London eye, or as tangible as the cold (which is steadily becoming worse). With age comes wisdom, right? So give me a year, or two or a bit more and I shall not feel all that very stupid.

Let me digress and talk about my favorite thing right now: How to submit an essay in style. It's simple, just few rules really.

Keep a bottle of white wine, and pour yourself a nice drink. White wine is classy. Also, you can get drunk very easily and fall asleep. Good thing, cause then you won't re-read your essay and feel stupid.

Listen to Beethoven. What can get more classy than classical music, right? Excellent! So you see, when you are ruing about how stupid and insignificant your essay is, you can compare yourself to the musical genius that is Beethoven. And look where that got him. Personal struggles, long illness and a tragic tragic death. Yep, being significant clearly has its drawbacks.

Stay away from Facebook. Facebook is shit, everyone knows that. It can bring your class down like the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Also, you won't know that your classmates are still slogging away and make yourself feel even more stupid for submitting it early.

Anyway, I've achieved one part of classy today which is the wine. Let me go and wrestle with my dreams now.

The Drifter

2011-11-15T03:55:00.002+05:30

When the baby was born they said he was a drifter. The 7th child of that decade. The hospital was a small one, and it had the rancid smell of hospitals.
>So pretty the child is, someone whispered peering over the bald, smooth head.
Someone else was crying in the corner. It was hard to tell if she was crying out of happiness. But why would anyone cry out of sadness on such a happy occasion?
The hear nurse came in with her stiff, starched cap. She was quickly followed by two smaller nurses. The taller you are the more higher up you are.
>You can't give him that, he's a drifter.
The head nurse looked at the lady with the shrill voice. She next looked at the baby and almost immediately kept her syringe back in the steel tray. The two smaller nurses giggled.
>How much longer till we call the doctor?, asked one old man sitting on the low, wooden stool. He hadn't slept last night and the low drone of the generator was making him agitated.
>Only thirty more, grandpa.
The old man nodded and closed his eyes.

At exactly 12:46 the doctor came in. He was a large clumsy man, bumbling and flinging his unbuttoned coat around wildly.
>Yes, yes, he is a drifter, he announced to the room in general.
The anxiety melted and the room was immediately filled with hullabaloo. The small girl with pigtails squealed. The old man got up from his wooden chair and was smiling widely at everyone. Someone switched on the old tape recorder and immediately Nat Cole King was singing in his deep baritone. A large woman with a vivid, printed turban was peeling cutting mangoes and offering to everyone. Only the head nurse stood in the corner and yet, she too applauded politely soon after the announcement.

The doctor meanwhile had written a certificate and a letter. The certificate he placed in the crib next to the baby. It bore his status as a Drifter. He now had the freedom to choose his family.

The letter he gave to one of the smaller, giggling nurses.
>So luck he is, one whispered to the other as they set to call the local council member.

Alright everyone, the council member will be here soon to collect the baby, the doctor said loudly to the room.

>Does he actually get to choose his family?, the small girl with pigtails asked, in awe.
>Yes, Yes, the doctor was clearly annoyed.
>Out now everyone, before the council member arrives.

The tape recorder was switched off. The head nurse in her stiff cap began shepherding people to the outside. The lady who was peeling the mangoes was arguing loudly with the lady with the shrill voice. The old man now had tears in his eyes and left the room shaking the doctors hands.

In the room the drifter stirred in his crib. Something, he didn't know what, lay hard and stiff next to him. All sound had ceased, and he wanted to sleep. In the corner, in the still darkness someone was crying, softly. She got up and looked at the drifter. Then wiping her eyes, she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Personal Wilderness

2011-11-12T05:39:00.002+05:30

There is a wind blowing

Through the hills,

And it picks through the ripening,

Stalks of the wheat field.

The road is empty,

It is my personal wilderness.

Often, foxes enter.

Where from, I know not.

My wilderness stretches

Farther than the ends I know.

Its solid strength reassures

Catching my foot with every step.

I run, and when I leap,

The wind sometimes carries me

Up like the lightest thistle

Over my ripe wheat field,

In my own wilderness.

First Notes

2011-11-12T05:31:00.000+05:30

The Queen visited Goodenough College. The associated hullabaloo was even bigger. I was there in a silk sherwani ("national costume will get you noticed"). Needless to say, in a blink of an eye it was over.

It was a gracious event, of course. There is not doubt about that. I know that I'll talk about this for a long time to come. Actually, perhaps I might not talk about this, but I most definitely shall look back and remember this.
I am quite amazed at how efficiently it was all done. There were discrete emails, and occasionally, you could see people beautifying the college. Otherwise, you heard and felt nothing till the day. Bravo! Try that back home.

It's becoming increasingly hard not start a personal investigation again. I don't know when was the last time I did that. But I was expecting it. Moving is always tough and requires tremendous patience and will power, not to mention a steady stream of optimism. I'm surprised that I've not yet crumbled, what with my social awkwardness and mild xenophobia. The whole process has thrown me into a kaleidoscopic tangent, with different realities tumbling over each other. Life becomes a surreal dream, and I dream vividly of things back home.

When I got over the initial wave of excitement and paranoia, I had trouble falling asleep. I wondered if I should dream of the world around me or the world I left back home. It becomes increasingly frustrating when you know that you might not go back home. It's seems almost like a Sophies Choice. Don't get me wrong, I'm not melancholic. But at the same time, I can't stop thinking about all these things.

What really throws me off is the immense confidence, or rather how it seems that I am not confident. I keep wondering if people don't doubt themselves. How can anyone about me that incredibly confident? I would never want to be that confident. I need those nagging doubts to creep in. It's slightly unsettling though.

The other weird thing is how almost everyone around me are older, so much older. Add to that the fact that no one ever seems to post their year of birth on any social networking site, and I need to do considerable cyber-mathematics to solve their age. What on Earth is that?!

Work is exciting, though at times stressful and annoying. It keeps me occupied. But I have questions, quite a bit of them. And sometimes I think I need to slow down, look into them deeply and answer.

Dreaming abroad

2011-11-11T15:22:00.000+05:30

I dreamed of the home I once knew,

Dilapidated scenes rolling into my sleep.

In the exaggerated cartoon of my dreams

My fears disappeared and I,

Fell into a deeper sleep once more.

Untitled - II

2011-10-31T00:01:00.003+05:30

Where did my weekend disappear?

All of 48 hours swallowed in a giant gulp.

The trees have hardly changed outside,

Their leaves caught in

between yellow and red.

When greener ones grow back,

I’d have lost another month, another season.

Hurried memories, hurried days lingering.

And when I pause to reminisce,

Pushing through photos,

Calling lost friends, there goes another

Season, in the flutter of essays, papers

Celebrations and empty promises.

Another year has come to an end,

And just as I arrived, into celebration

I shall depart, into celebration.

Untitled - I

2011-10-29T18:58:00.002+05:30

How much would you remember,

When parting seas fill between

And the moons fill the sky above us?

I would, I say.

I should, I say.

But am I not a ship on choppy waves?

And will not my boards rot, crumble and fade?

We were two worlds twinned in time,

Two worlds drifting apart.

And soon we shall be too far,

Too far to string us with a single thread.

Is it easier to be leaves, on one giant tree?

Whistling when we are green,

And blushing red in fond remembrance.

To the ground we’ll fall,

And in the earth, we shall be reborn.

Dreamstate

2011-09-28T04:29:00.000+05:30

How wonderful is it to get carried away?
Is the cage bird the happiest when it's set free?

In the tepid doldrums
A plank that floats
on choppy seas.
My soul is tied to it
And distant shores
are a dream.
I surrender to sleep
And distant shores
are a dream.

Woodchips

2011-05-27T22:10:00.001+05:30

The college I studied in has a large campus that is a developed tropical dry evergreen forest. It is therefore unsurprising that most of the student endeavors connected with the college have the words 'woods'and 'forest' (They also have words such as 'grass' and 'green' but for entirely different reasons).

In the last year of my college, I was the Literary and Debating Convener which, I must say, I became rather reluctantly. Needless to say, the reluctance was quite unnecessary. Throughout the year, I was enveloped by incidents, planned and otherwise, some small but many not so. The very last project that I took on in the capacity of the L&D Convener and my favorite one was the magazine of the College Union Society - Woodchips. The magazine was developed over five lazy months. How good was it? I would definitely not call it perfect; nothing can ever be. But the very fact that I keep going back to look at it testifies that at least I think it is well done. But let me not influence you, please be your own judge.

You can view the digital version of the magazine here.

Retrospecting

2011-05-24T11:53:00.000+05:30

When I stop writing, I wonder who I do it for. I think behind the promise of reinvention is vacillation, and an overarching ennui. If I do write for myself and this I insist on doing on a regular basis, then why do I stop or rather who do I stop for? If writing is meant to be soul searching then by pausing, what am I searching for?

Perhaps a larger part of the problem was the intense need to come out of the cliche that I had been weaving for myself. Going through my blog, I realized that I wasn't discontented with my ideas but rather their repetition. Not writing, wouldn't help me to tackle this; I'm glad I figured this out.

The other outcome of this small exercise of mine is that I shall now solely write for myself. I have been doing that, largely, but I digressed often to please the favorite reader. With this as my mantra, I shall proceed.

Hiatus

2011-04-26T13:55:00.000+05:30

I'm pausing the writing for the blog for a bit. I just realized that I have a large number of unread books in my bookshelf. That too some highly interesting and acclaimed books. So see you later, perhaps in June.

Jamboree

2011-04-22T22:35:00.000+05:30

There are many, in abundance

Like mangoes on the dusty summer tree.

Of some I am ashamed,

And paint them differently

But some make me laugh

Others still frighten me.

But this, that envelopes me now

Is like a giant jamboree.

You Never Know what Happens Below

2011-04-16T21:42:00.001+05:30

Ever since I started this blog, there has been a continual challenge. Challenge to write, challenge to diversify, challenge to sell. While I met the first one rather well, I have failed miserably in the second two. Initially I used to do meager publicity for my blog mainly through social networking sites. However, after a couple of months, this dwindled and stopped. A friend of mine inspired me to take up the second challenge - diversify. Now, I have been rather pleased with the flavour of this blog, something mildly whimsical. I like to think that one day this would snowball into something bigger (or get crushed under the weight of other more important things). Anyway, diversify is the name of the new game and my shots are called doodles.

I am rather adept at doodles at times. I guess it has stemmed from the years of art classes I took and my terrible need to keep scratching on a piece of paper whenever there is a lecture going on. Ideally, I'd like to doodle only during a rather important lecture (Don't get me wrong, like Beethoven calming babies, doodling helps me understand the lecture easier). There is a play of the subconscious which translates well in my doodles. However, these ones are completely home drawn. I have however let my subconscious come to the surface a bit here and now when I look at it, there is a story it tells. But this is a very sad story and I shall reserve it for some other blogpost some other day.

2011-04-13T23:45:00.002+05:30

Most often I write nonsense. Grammatically incorrect nonsense. Nonsense that requires lots of editing. Nonsense with lexical errors. Nonsense in dire need of punctuation.

But how wonderful is it to do so! Here, I disappear into my very own. It's the most special feeling.

I am now nearing a hundred blog posts. Though I've never had a good readership, it has never held me back. I guess I always write for myself. Now, I want to take my time to reach the hundredth.

I set the Drongos Free

2011-04-13T21:05:00.001+05:30

They talk of the tall, gaunt man who walks with a slouch. With every step, there is a jingle. From his pocket he takes out an old bunch of keys and opens the cage, every cage. The Drongos were the birds of the imperial overlord, till the tall gaunt man with the slouch set them free.

Personal Fastidiousness

2011-04-12T14:36:00.002+05:30

My personal fastidiousness stretches

Over me like cling film.

Under its shininess I gasp and pant

To keep up, and slowly turn blue.

It roars over me, like a mighty waterfall

And in the ensuing, dark dampness

I quietly retire into a fidgety work.

It lacerates my sleeps and fills

My daily dreams with tartness

Till in the warmth of my bedspreads

They burst with a resounding BOOM

And I am afraid to sleep once more.

It sharpens my thoughts into a keen pencil

And lends my tongue with the orators gift

But I am left with a caustic wit

Which soaks into my fabric of friends

Leaving me with tattered ends.

It polishes me day in and out

Till I shine like a nepotistic sun

But soon I combust, I inflame

In devilish passions that I set

And this heightened feverishness

Consumes me and I am spent.

My personal fastidiousness grows

With an epiphytic assurance.

But with my giant hedge clippers

I shall carve for myself a pair of wings.

A Colourless Painting

2011-04-11T21:17:00.002+05:30

Just perhaps:

All that is wrong is done.

Myopic strokes erupting in lesions.

Men are women are men are

Sexless tadpoles in a rain fed pool.

Plantains fruit better in Saudi Arabia.

Schools are strictly 60+, voluntary.

For the others, no height restrictions

At amusement parks.

When gold is a dishwasher

And opium, such a wondrous fertilizer.

Wear the bullets round your neck

And dance till they wither.

And with every burning record,

Another voice is heard around,

With the music, a soulful plea

And the world responds with equanimity

Then at Serengeti, Hyenas feed on air.

I’ve been looking through the wrong camera.

My soul is empty, my paintings colourless

And I sing a tuneless song tonight.

In the world I lived,

Auxiliaries are white, diseased

Spots on a wheat crop.

Then where is the bread

To feed the world?

And I was creeping into my personal void

Instead of wearing an everyday armour

And marching into battle.

All that matters lies in this rain fed puddle

Where we shall last till the end of our time.

But embolden me to look when the

Sun is white in the very high sky,

For then I shall see the colours in my painting.

A Ripening

2011-04-04T19:11:00.001+05:30

It threatens to burst,

Spilling yellow flesh

Like scattered sunlight

And great handfuls of seeds.

In the ensuing dolor

Amidst the putrid stink,

Gentle ships will be sunk

And broken into infinity.

But now with that large

Kitchen knife, strike the

Ripening stalk

And pocket the golden sunshine

As one lovely whole.

Teaspoons

2011-03-30T19:44:00.001+05:30

Little teaspoons of flavor

Stirring my soul,

Soaking me with all the goodness

That’s to be offered.

In Continuity

2011-03-29T10:44:00.002+05:30

And when I look back

I am threatened to be drowned

By my personal limitations

And the celebrations

Gone like a wisp in the wind.

When I look ahead

I am buried by my own

Monstrous expectations

The rising fears of incompetence

Shoving me into apathy

It is so, that I straddle

The transition

Looking neither up nor down

But a blind faith leading me

Like a mongrel on a leash.

The First Exorcism

2011-03-17T19:54:00.003+05:30

In every room there is a tyranny hanging, often unseen, like a small spider in the corner of the room. It breathes in and out, waiting with ever increasing patience, till you shrug your shoulders and slip off the guard. It leaps from it lair and strangles you in its powerful arms and slowly sedates you into an inarticulate and incapacitating sleep.

You are now trapped. Incoherence lolls on your tongue as you stretch for the perfect words but fall terribly short. Grammar befuddles you, and spellings have taken the space ship out of this cosmos. Anything you write, talk or even think becomes irrelevant, prosaic and terribly boring. You are flustered and you are at your wits end to make everything sound nicer and bring back the lost relevance.

There are the usual strategies. Lock yourself in a room filled with books and other enormously important works and start reading. After finishing a couple of them, you cautiously step out and switch on the laptop. The first lines are tricky, but soon, you are working brilliantly. Line by line the entire story flows out of your mind onto the page. But after paragraph three, you encounter the kink. The disparaging bastard refuses to be erased, or even moved. In frustration, you start reading your work again, hoping that the luminosity of your first few lines would show you an alternate, more exciting route. But you have been conned! What you have spent the last half hour on is merely a poor imitation of the genius of some other author. What you though was innovative is now cliché. Every line you’ve written is woefully insignificant and worse, demonstrates an utter and total lack of creativity. Your dirge has begun.

You retaliate. Armed with the tactics of the Greeks, you fight back with the classics. Tragedies and comedies are re-examined. Divine deities from Olympus, Amaravathi and Kailash descend down to bless you as you generously make them hospitable in your pieces. Every line uttered, however whimsical, can be retold, in the vicinity of modern wars, corruption, sexuality and show business. You croon in the vernacular, edging common English words out. More flavors you say, more flavors you add. You stir your piece tenderly over the flame and spend many nights till it boils. Then you cautiously taste it. What is that flavor? Is it the buzz of tangerine, or the mild kick of liquor? Is it too bitter as it clings to the back of your mouth? Does it fire up your nostrils and burn your throat till you gasp and cool it down with lots and lots of water? You can not decide. You need to sleep on it. In the morning, the first thing you notice is the foul odor that hangs in the room. It seeps into the curtains and threatens to asphyxiate you. Upon further investigation, you realize that your curry is slowly rotting. Your massive mixture has failed you, and you are on the verge of giving up.

You recuperate, however. You decide to go back to the basics and watch the world around you. You don’t need to write about the fancy Greeks when the stifling heat of your sleepy town can sprout any story. You watch for days and days. You spurn every book, trusting instead your inherent creative process. For days in and out, you wait on your third floor balcony sipping chai and watching the sun rise and sun set. You watch the middle aged lady next door hanging her laundry. You watch the raucous crows tease each other in the evenings. More importantly, you watch yourself as you silently try and gaze into the abyss of your soul. You try to kindle the most primal emotions and the most pertinent issues worrying you and tie them up together on a string. You suspect your emotions aren’t strong enough to either flatter itself in the flamboyance of your writing or subtly peep like a shy bride and open the gates to incredible depth in your art. You suspect that none of the issues that you have thought of are relevant, new or in any way pertinent. But you can not stop here. You bring out from within the cupboard the spools of thread that you have carefully stored just for this occasion. You begin knitting. But soon enough, you realize that neither the emotions nor the issues are enough in number to make your extra large sweater. You begin to stretch. Sunsets go on for pages. Your neighbors hang their laundry for hours together. There are so many crows in the sky that they blot out the sun. But you know that the pattern isn’t working. There are too many loose ends and in your frustration, you prick yourself.

Maintenant, que dois-je faire? I have no clue. I am plagued by the inability to write. Oh, I can write alright, but just not well enough to please myself. This may seem utterly narcissistic but that is what I see every time I peer into the mirror. With the Japanese earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear crisis, it may seem impertinent of me to not write on anything else. But what writing of significance can I produce out of that now? Whatever poem I write will reek of self-plagiarism. Any prose will sound farcical, distant and unaffected. It’s not that I don’t know what to write on. There are hundreds of ideas teEming in my mind, but after just a few paragraphs, I need to discard that piece. Even this writing thrives on cliché, drama, redundant metaphors and a large dose of unnecessary flavor. I need to exorcise the tyranny haunting me. But any writing before the exorcism, I fear, will be like a cloudy wine that gives you the worst hangover.

Crumbling Ships

2011-03-16T22:00:00.002+05:30

Amidst the waves,

In the rotting ship,

The angry sea

Splinters taboo.

The fiery sun the

Only witness

To the crashing masts.

Civilization a flotsam

And sensibility

Bundled and thrown,

Another jetsam for

Some lucky marooned,

Maybe to try again.

What happened at sea

Is lost in the deep waters.

Reality flounders

But soon, is grey

Floating in the East Pacific.

Plateaud

2011-03-01T21:08:00.000+05:30

I feel I've reached a plateau. My writings no longer feel significant. I also seem to have exhausted a quiver full of creativity. I am off to read a lot more and will return at the earliest.

Kaliedoscoping

2011-02-25T22:46:00.001+05:30

With every seed, an aberrant thought,

Like a bubble is broken.

Then how rich would Persephone be?

She is now flung form this land

An alien almost

Virgin, of mind

And unable to kindle

A screen to view the world.

In her purity, she sees in exactness

And life metamorphoses

Into a two headed dragon

Of increasing ire stamped

With discomfort

And a surrogate platitude

that bears death for a newer life.

Another Founding

2011-02-22T10:09:00.000+05:30

Gather them from the distance.

From the creeping corners

Under the mattress and between

Pillowcases

Knot them up and coerce them

Into shapes, into lucidity

And gently let the sun down

And it shall sparkle like the

Ganges of the north.

And like the river, the world shall

Flow, at first slow but soon quicker

And quicker till the lines are

Written and peace envelopes.

Shots in the Still Night

2011-02-11T21:36:00.000+05:30

Pour quoi?

Parce que Karma is an eight armed faggot, born out of an intercourse between wishful thinking and a spike in the cases of arson, dacoity and murder in the puritanical lands straddling the upper Ganges.

***

Non, je ne suis pas bien aka the second half of the eleventh shot.

Petra removes her pink wig and slips on a T-shirt. The room is dusty. She switches on the radio. The faint neon light streaming into her room falls on a cheap plastic time piece. It’s 4.21 in the morning.

“In other news, a young Hispanic male, identified to be Julio, a resident of Rome was shot dead. He was 32. The police believe this to be an act by a drug cartel, though they have, as of now, few leads. Sources in the police say that Julio had been shot twenty nine times...”

A scream! On the brown vinyl flooring a broken tea cup, the tea staining the old, dusty carpet and a girl in torn fishnet stockings, furiously sobbing.

***

Twenty nine shots painfully tearing the air. Shots, distilling time into singularity. Shots, providing a giant kaleidoscope to view the world with.

The first shot came with a burst of normalcy. Normalcy of bad news when a letter is ripped open. Normalcy of the first break-up. Normalcy of a loved one’s death. Normalcy of failing in college. There was hope after all. It was an accident. A hospital visit and everything will be all right. Maybe a scar even, as a trophy.

In the second shot Julio saw the anger. A vitriol bubbling across the dimly lit streets and damming him to death. He saw Cassius, in the long overcoat. He saw his arm, extended and frozen like a museum piece. Life had frozen. Instead of gently tumbling through the twenty fours hours, it had frozen and fixed with an un-abating anger stretched across it like a cling film.

With the third shot, Julio began to see. He saw the faint tilt in the world as it spun slowly on its own. He saw the hundreds of people sleeping, with girlfriends tucked safely in their arms. He saw Petra, in her pink wig and her fishnet stockings. He saw the moonlight dancing on her nose last night. What a beautiful nose it was! That was what had attracted him to her, when he thought about it. Her nose, so regal.

He saw yesterday all over again, when she had finally conceded to move in with him. Him in the blue shirt, with the red rose. She in her pink wig and her fishnet stockings. Her faint smell of lemon grass oozing over the pepperoni pizza and tickling his nose.

At the end, they walk up to the pier and get themselves a fortune cookie from the Chinese woman. He breaks it and reads out loud to Petra “Beware the ides of March”. She laughs and so does he.

***

Shots 4, 5 & 6 came in quick succession. Almost broken bits of one great shot. He heard it splintering his bones. Broken ribs, broken left femur, cracked skull, broken phalanges is what the autopsy would read, a week later. But Julio doesn’t know that. At this moment, no one does.

There were many ladies, dancing and swinging in the darkness. He could have had anyone. Any of them. There was a bar selling cheap liquor. But he wasn’t here for any of that. He was here for the girl.

The first time he saw her, she was dressed as a cop, complete with a pair of handcuffs and a badge. She had dark hair then. He came often enough after he first saw her. Each and every time she was different: once a nurse, another time a super heroine, and tonight an exotic foreign princess. Her eyes were darkened and on her arm she wore a bracelet.

She glanced at him, the first time in all these visits and smiled. He knew it was time and he makes his move.

Later, they are at his place, making love furiously.

***

He heard the 7^th shot wail through the air. In the stretched time, it came like the distress call of a dying ambulance. He could see bright red in flashes. It surprised him how red his own blood was. Earlier, he saw hope, but only in the darkest corner of the alley. But now it was beginning to sour and soon, putrefy.

Just like his friendship with Brutus.

In the faint light, he could make out the shape of Brutus standing behind Cassius. “Et tu Brutus ?”

***

Was there an eighth and a ninth shot? They all seemed to tumble over one another. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know.

When things began to go wrong with Brutus, he didn’t know. Was it after their first six months at rehab? But in his scrambled mind, he couldn’t tell.

It’s not easy losing a friend

When wishes of togetherness

That should have been

Keep coming back.

It’s not easy losing a friend

When groveling in this day

We see ourselves.

Now, in the blanket, a tear

Soon a patchwork

Roaring and rumbling like the mighty falls

Reminding how it can never be

Anything but a torn blanket.

***

The tenth shot split the air. It hung there longer than any others before, ending whatever dichotomy existed earlier. This wasn’t an accident. Julio couldn’t escape, and Petra would be heartbroken. It stilled the air with its surety. It stilled the air with the change it brought. The realization came crashing down on him in continuous giant surges, stripping him of whatever remaining connections he had with humanity.

Before the tenth shot, life was a psychedelic dream. Women all around him wore the shortest possible skirts and their bosoms were enlarged, as if seen through a magnifying glass. The sky wore a constant shade of the most vivid pink. Nights fumbled into days with ever increasing reluctance. Bills and debts piled on his desk but he didn’t see them over the dazzling colors that masked his eyes. Did he hear anything? It must have been difficult, there was always a constant music playing. Like the jingle at a fair, with life spinning on and on, carousel like.

The shot stretched on for three years. Three, long torturous years.

Even though the shot hit Julio in his arm, he felt it spreading through his shoulders, his chest, finally stabbing him in his heart. He had to change. He had to end it all.

Life, after the tenth shot was strict, straight and monochromatic. He saw his horizons clearly. But the skies were cloudy. They spread across, keeping the high sun to themselves. But all this changed when he saw Petra. Beautiful Petra, in her pink wig and fishnet stockings. Beautiful Petra with her magnificent nose. Petra with her lemon grass perfume.

***

Je suis bein, or the first half of the eleventh shot.

From The Passionate Ailurophile published by Barron’s; 1994.

Page 126

“ The novice cat breeder may have obtained a purebred cat as a pet. An immediate responsibility is to acclimatize the purebred to its environs. This might at first seem like a task not to be slighted in the least. The behavior of the pet would range from mild tolerance at your efforts to increasing frustration that should translate into torn curtains, raucous calls and a temporary cessation of all small talk with your neighbors.

As you grow to understand your pet, you are compelled to enter it into a few cat shows. You train your cat and train yourself with the ways of a cat.”

How did Julio end up with friends like Brutus and Cassius? Friends who in a couple of years would end up shooting and killing Julio. It happened very unwittingly. Just as someone would drop a bottle of milk on the floor early in the morning. Or how one would pass wind when one is having dinner with friends late in the evening.

When you consider his ethnicity, it’s not difficult to imagine Julio and drugs. We are told that the Police force in Florida arrest mainly Hispanics in connection with drug possession. But we are being biased and terribly so.

The lure of drugs is always strong. It formed a tight nose drawing Julio to Brutus and Cassius. There, it bound him and devoured him slowly, keeping him just alive to breathe in and out. Julio was their project. They tamed him to their ways, stoking his greed. They displayed him, like an exotic breed to their friends. A smart, intelligent Hispanic, winner of many scholarships, now reduced to the ways of Brutus and Cassius.

But they failed to see how an exotic pet might overshadow them. Their closest friends grew closer to Julio. They became dazed in his words and grew bolder in his presence. Brutus and Cassius grew worried. Their influence grew weaker.

Their pet cat began to tear down their own house. But even though the owners may get scratches and bites, even though they may be clawed, ultimately it is the cat that is shown the door, even if it is the most exotic breed of them all.

***

The twelfth and thirteenth shots were twinned. Double and muffled. Their sound faint, almost a whimper, like the barks of a dying, dirty dog. He felt pain more intense than ever before. Pain throbbing and slowly registering in his brain. Pain so unbearable that he wished it was all over. Pain just like it was before.

The walls of the rehab clinic are stark white. So white that it comes down upon you with a depressing intensity. White so that it pushes you into despair. All around were the most colorful people he had met. All of them struggling though. Just like him. Multicolored fish in a giant cesspool. All of them fighting to end the abuse.

It took Julio three years and 11 visits to the rehab clinic for him to completely get off the drugs. But the pain was terrible. It consumed him just as the drugs had. But he knew he had to get out. Bruto had failed. He gave up after the first six months. But Julio didn’t.

It was on one somber Saturday afternoon that he knew he finally had won. He just knew. On the radio, Edith Piaf was singing, in her nasal, throaty voice “ Non, Je ne regrette rein”.

He went out and got himself a slightly expensive bottle of cologne, to celebrate. And to get the stink of the drugs off him, once and for all.

***

The Fourteenth shot:

“I saw the coffin,

Black white and square

Like an ebony mask

A cadeau from afrika, ripe and red”

It is still early in the morning on a warm summer’s day. The sun wavers in the horizon, its earliest, gossamer rays reaching out to the sleeping world. In an old shabby street in James Town, Peurto Rico, a woman gets up violently. Her wrinkled forehead is beaded with sweat and her frail arms are trembling. At the edge of her throat, a cry rests. The person beside her stirs.

“What is it Maman?” the daughter asks.

The old lady doesn’t reply. She is shaking. Her hands are clenched and she stares at the portrait of Infanta Maria hanging opposite the bed.

“Maman, what is it?” the daughter persists. The daughter is worried now.

“A horrible dream, my chica. The curse is upon my poor Julio! We must call him immediately!”

The daughter asks no questions. She gets up and moves into the next room, to pick up the dilapidated telephone and make a call to the United States of America, the land where dreams come true.

“This morning, my son died.

With a winter’s cold spilling into

A dry summer night’s dream.

Outside it was six

And the tree tops stretching

Into the sullen sun.”

***

Shots fifteen, sixteen and seventeen:

Amidst glory, faint whispering

Fear not hold your head high

Let bells toil to the vale below

In this summer breeze, we sway.

A fright, widening, roaring

A somber thought now a flood

Roaring through your peace

A mighty net, now, around you.

***

Shot 18:

He was locked in,

Slipping in and out,

The sun and the tree barred.

With he in his own self,

Stirring in a summer,

Winter, spring and death.

***

Shot 19 & Shot 20

When you have been shot twenty times and you are still alive to watch life ebbing away, life becomes poetic. Colors drip into one another and the world around you becomes a giant canvas. Figures melt till all you are left with is faint impressions of things that were. A bridge is drawn of great fragility, and you see yourself in an intangible journey.

All around you there is a quite hum as the gears of the world continue to turn. There are squeaks and whines and gentle murmurs. A billion lungs breathe in and out yet yours slowly splutters and fades. Nothing separates you from the mouse about to be sacrificed for a study into Huntington’s chorea thousands of miles away. Or the shark lifted from the cold Pacific into a trawler’s net, soon to be skinned alive and eaten for a lucky Japanese girl’s 21st birthday. Lucky for her; unlucky for you, the fish and the sacrificial mouse.

Soon you will fade into the flowers lining your grave, if you were loved. Else you would be dumped in the sparkling waters of the Atlantic where you would rot and the vestiges of your life would survive in the collective memory of a few people and the transient files of the police team investigating your mysterious death.

***

The rest, till eternity:

Into sleep now,

Gentle, prophylactic

With heavens opening wide,

Let him be there forever,

And ever till patience dies

And time curls like

The purple flowers

Of the Jacaranda tree.

Amen

***

The Parting Shot

On the fourteenth of November in 2006, the local newspaper carries a small column on the third page. It reads such:

“The jury at the Tahoma court sentenced Bruto P, a resident of Rome, to 12 years of imprisonment as they found him guilty of the murder of Julio Ceaser and possession of banned substances. His accomplice Cassius Brown, a resident of Rome was found guilty of manslaughter of Julio Ceaser and was subsequently sentenced to five years of imprisonment. A close friend of Julio Ceaser, Mark Anthony said that it was a victory for Julio Ceaser’s memory.”

Breaking Levees

2011-02-05T23:44:00.000+05:30

They gathered, rapidement

With torchlights splayed

In the viscosity of the night.

Bosoms arched , poised like a

Freshly wounded snake.

The night is fetid and a loudening

Din stirs the air.

The window panes bleed.

Yesterday, the moonlight isn’t

Distilled and broken

By the hundred torches.

Tomorrow giant bricks crowd

The road and a current

Regurgitates lies yet again.

Casual Observations in the Zoology Lab

2011-01-29T21:14:00.002+05:30

The stuffed Brahminy Kite peers

Over bookcases.

At times the bulb muffles the vision.

But a hundred years more, so

Who cares for these seconds?

A bench accrues character.

Riddled with ink, and spilt blood,

Stains, dyes: acidic and basic.

Soon it’s made to boil

With the vitriol of writings.

The birth and death of many loves.

Would an atheist pray

If dropped in formalin?

Frogs should know.

A last minute rush to jump

Out of overpowering drowsiness

And the cheap plastic bucket.

The world is divided,

Classified and stacked into

Overflowing shelves.

Among many, the Corpus Callosum

Soon to be observed

And recorded and noted.

Immense power is not just

An attribute of the monarchy.

Stuffing a cobra must make

The taxidermist masculine.

A Tree

2011-01-29T20:50:00.001+05:30

Before the Forest ends,

A Tree, startling, rumbling

Begging though for protection.

A Deer

2011-01-29T20:48:00.001+05:30

A deer, a deer, a deer

Functionality reduced but

Fully empowered to

Push us into immense oblivion.

Strolling back when it leaves.

Nobody Welcomes the Shrink

2011-01-15T21:38:00.002+05:30

“We are of course octopodes

Drawing margins with all 8

Soon boxed in.”

“By the fence they trembled,

The gunshots small, microseconds,

Stretching though.”

“They castrated his dreams,

Spilling them into textbooks

His virility’s for sale.”

“What’s Atrophy?

I think trust is,

Post September 11”

“This has many interpretations

Full for this, none

For that I’m afraid”.

"What is VIBGYOR?

It mutates, at 7 it's wonderful,

At 17 you should run away"

Policing

2011-01-11T14:31:00.002+05:30

They sit in their prudence

Outside circles raging.

It flies into the internet

Latches, multiplies virus-like.

It swells like a tide,

Booming and echoing

Great eddies swirling in its own muck.

Distant shores are filthied,

And there are deaths.

At first, not enough

But soon inebriates

And newer policies are drawn.

A many nightfalls later,

We quell it.

Not successful, the loss is great

But it won’t kill again.

And later, when we ask them

All they ever say, individually,

“I told you so”.

Doorway Shoes

2011-01-10T21:37:00.001+05:30

There are shoes by the doorway

Many, brightly coloured.

Where Narasimhan sat

And devoured flesh

A spillage of the times

Swiftly moving ahead.

Lateness Addendum

2011-01-07T20:58:00.002+05:30

“By accident”, she said,

One minute late, from nine

To nine one at the needle

One minute carried forward

In addendum to the letter,

Stamp smudged and

Arrived just a day late.

Not so terrible, as

A five thousand worded

Precision crafted and

Formatted essay submitted

On the table, a week late

Bundled and gathered,

Peered into through cups

Of brown, bitter coffee

Running in the arms correcting

Essays graded and marked

Returned a month late

And appended by a letter

Signed with green ink,

Congratulatory in message

But bitter in its arrival

As it’s prised from its

Expectant enveloped

A terrible year later.

Perhaps that’s why

Those lumbering beasts

We call mammoths

Did not die before

We were born, neither

Hunting or warm winds

But a lateness congealed

Hiding underneath conjecture.

Encore, repeat, encore

2010-12-07T10:04:00.002+05:30

In me a fluidity

Tossed in the sky

Encore, repeat, encore

Drops staining the floor

Trickling through searching

Encore, repeat, encore

What is this music?

Giant Ferris-wheel-hallow

Encore, repeat, encore

Why am I running?

Suspend. Distil not

Encore, repeat, encore

In me a world

In the world, me

Encore, repeat, encore

2010-12-05T11:34:00.003+05:30

I'm back to reading again, after what seems like lots and lots of time but in reality is lesser than 6 months. Perhaps I've fallen in love with the idea of reading, just like with blogging? But No! I've always been reading. I said so yesterday at the recorded talk.

I'm back to reading MBP winning books. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha a week before and The Finkler Question two days ago.

The first one was brilliant in the end. Only in the end, though I've always loved books that end wonderfully. The Grass is Singing, anyone?

Someone out there asked why recognized Irish authors write mainly about family dysfunction, abuse and the likes. The Gathering, anyone? I haven't read many Irish authors to add my penny's worth.

So, back to The Finkler Question. I hope it gets better.

M the favolosa

2010-12-05T08:48:00.001+05:30

Into the lengthening shadows of September M steps out.

_M! scream the women, hysterically

They clutch at their wallets tightly; there is a bead of sweat on every brow.

M and the Mysterious Tiktiktok, with their frenzied gait and the purple sword.

_M! scream the women, hysterically.

_Back off ladies! M has no time.

In the background, there is a scuffle. The earth slips before we say walpurgisnacht.

_M! scream the women, hysterically. Some collapse, some cry, for M is gone - into the skies and away.

Darling M hovering over the flaming building. Oh what a hero. In this ravenous world where all the skinny legs become models and all the top hats make you neurotic, hungry or late, where do you go for that sparkling hero with the trusty side kick?

The newsprint screams the death of Chi. Evil warlord, we are informed. M is scratchless, blithe and was last seen courting the charming ballerina.

_M! scream the women, hysterically. Beautified, boring, characterless women. M is waiting for the spunky, hapless lover. Quite a siren, yes?

Some say M is a vampire. M laughs and then proceeds to destroy Thu. Dreadful Thu is now rotting in the Arabian. We are warned to stay away from the fish.

Oh no! The Mysterious Tiktiktok kissing a guy. The Mysterious Tiktiktok is quite readily fired. Darling M, on his own with thousands of women screaming hysterically, “M!”

Sexy M speaks Italian. Sexy M speaks Italian to the women at the laundry store. Sexy M doesn’t need Italian to get the girls.

_M! scream the women at the laundry; big built, old and totally sexless.

The Vatican won’t beatify M; the sidekick kissed a guy hisses the radio.

_But it’s his sidekick, not him.

_M won’t die, he can’t. (He shouldn’t, not after the countless toasts to M’s immortality)

_M isn’t Catholic.

But later we are told that it is secondary.

Is the M Catholic? Yes!

Is the Pope Catholic? Well, that’s questionable.

The fabulous M, darling of the world. Quite the savior. Costumed, bronzed and worshipped. A toilet-paper wrapped bundle of ethos and pathos.

Atlas shrugs and the world falls and falls and falls into infinity.

Pollen

2010-11-28T13:41:00.000+05:30

Pollen in the dizzy wind

Higher and higher,

Wider and wider

Trembling tree-tops

And gently tumbling waters

Faster and faster.

Giant birds, flying and perching

Sullen leaves falling.

The whole wide world

Shrinking and falling

In the bulrushes

Brown and far

Into an everlasting sleep.

Pollen in the snoring seed

A day’s work ended

Many still to come

Pollen, at the end of earth

From dawn till dusk

Gently slipping in life

From whole to nothingness

Again and again and again

Internet

2010-10-10T21:52:00.004+05:30

Privacy slipping in, slipping out.

The borders disappearing,

But new fences, farther afield.

Across the globe, taps, clicks and grunts.

Let’s meet up, let’s eat out,

Another bunch of casual sex.

Friends confluence, ideas too.

Before dawn, a message stains.

Arts gasp, pant and writhe.

Fame for everyone: seconds, hours and days.

For me a new canvas, painted with caution.

Cries of a baby, cries of death

Twinned, canned and sealed.

Faith

2010-10-09T21:23:00.001+05:30

In faith, an alteration of history

Sewing for itself a sharp coat

With high collars, for all weather,

Protection and glare.

In faith, a knife,

Carving and gently cutting

Lines and words into sweet letters

To be read before sleep.

In faith, an education,

Private and strong,

And a re-assurance grounded

And immutable.

But for a bird in the lofty skies

Flying with the wind and ashes

Diving only to feed, nest and rest

Can faith help in its flight?

Beauty

2010-10-07T18:20:00.001+05:30

I am filled with a lust for beauty

It runs in me making me rabid

And sometimes choking me

Otherwise, it fires me up

And with my innards burning

I charge into a battle

Gathering beauty

And living its glory.

Don’t kill me yet,

I do not know how to die

For beauty lies around me

As I chug up the mountain slope

Steeper, steeper and steeper yet

Till I defy gravity

And I kill around me,

Searching still for beauty.

Moving on

2010-09-27T07:29:00.002+05:30

There is just too many commitments and too less time. Too much connectivity and too less energy. Too many opportunities and too many distractions. More than what a single person can handle.

I realized, I use Cambria or Times New Roman or Baskerville Old Face to give me that look. It is a thinning veil which I am trying to get out of. Introspecting, this is not what I want to be or what I want to have.

I need my space. I want it to be mine, pure and unadulterated. I am not recuperating, I am moving on into something hopefully better.

Shame

2010-09-24T18:23:00.003+05:30

On a Friday afternoon, along with the Parotta and Dosa ordered, this : ' This is the only country which lets down its countrymen'.

In the airports, a slimy snake

slithering amidst the Kenneth Cole bags,

defecating and hissing into the microphone.

People scatter, frightened

A big bully that I've become

with India tagged and gagging me

Like a masterful spirit

And waving me out like

a spectacle to be ridiculed.

We wait for time to gulp:

One wretched snake eating many others,

Regurgitating and soiling all

over history's warm pages

built with artery, vein and muscle; all ours.

Now I am seen through flecked glasses.

Dirtying toilets and jumping queues.

But pray, judge me not so.

For I am me before an Indian.

In an airport, am yet another baggage

safety-pinned and ribbon tied,

broken handled, perhaps borrowed

to low wages and longer hours.

All this I wore, a bright badge of saffron, green and white.

Now I sleep with the dogs under breaking bridges

With the reek of money from my groin.

And in every airport, they shall call me so

Nothing to be done about it.

Except wait, wait and wait

to form ourselves once again.

The Blog

2010-09-22T19:08:00.001+05:30

A private tussle is won. The blog is now open.

Waiting for the mail

2010-09-21T23:49:00.007+05:30

I convince myself that he is an internet troll. Isn't that spectacularly comfortable? It is my safety blanket for weeks to come in which I curl up and sleep, though not in entirety. I have lulled a part of me, a crucial part of my being right now.

If my time were dropped into liquid nitrogen, I would shatter into infinite pieces and each, after carefully transferring to a microscope, would have a story to tell, a fear to be allayed and a desire to be lived.

I move on; I always do. But in that brief hesitancy - an insignificant amount of time- my entirety congeals to tell a single story. And I wait for the mail.

The wait is endless nowadays as I throw myself into a constant flux of being. Through my mail, I live the most exciting life, voraciously keying in my username and password daily. I certainly hope for the pot of gold and increasingly so as it seems to drift farther and farther away. Yet, in reply, I stretch my arms longer and longer, sending more mails, replying to more and very systematically classifying the rest. Thank God for Priority Inbox!

If God were kinder he would, in his infinite might, never have let us fool ourselves with the mail. I spend far more hours checking my mail hoping to see an exciting bait for me to bite into than doing anything else that is exponentially more important. It is like the proverbial empty fridge. In addition, there is the impossible need to check it as often as possible. Not say at 4 o' clock when the normal snail mail would have arrived.

Sometimes I wonder what the constant fixation with the mail is. Is it quite purely that we are a social animal? I doubt if it something as simple as that. For me at least, it wears a shade of greed and that too very well. I chide myself by saying that I am an opportunist. But the word is bracketed - it has limits. Somewhere in my pendulous sway, I seem to have swung fairly out of the bracket and in this extremity I am now stuck. My wait for the mail has turned into an insatiable monster gnawing at me perpetually.

As I key in my username, I feel like a ping-pong ball, small and forced into being round, and stuck between paddles and paddles of checking mail. But I enjoy the speed and the intensity of each swing. I even think, now,that I have come to enjoy the loud crash as I land on the paddle to be fiercely struck at once again. There is no mail; nothing significant at least and he is becoming more and more human at an amazing, annoying speed.

Perhaps, the mail and the way we are at it is truly a reflection of who we are - as an individual, as a species. We move fast and our days are brief. Though I confess to be a mail hedonist, many days it wears me out so terribly that I wish to be instantaneously transported to a different era. One, perhaps, where I could write longer letters on papers and where the loss of a letter was a very real threat. It is not so much the mail -yes, I would definitely enjoy sitting and writing for a longer time, quite clearly - but rather the slower pace of life and more importantly the lack of so many opportunities and competition. I truly believe that our appetite has so terribly mutated that we now classify ourselves by the number of opportunities we have grabbed. We have become manufactured and so have our lives. There are so many opportunities that I quite plainly view most of them as distractions, a swarm of them pushing and prodding us into so many different directions. We never are what we want to be. We are manufactured and coaxed into something entirely different.

As the days wore thin, I realized I hadn't made it. He had; how he made it is entirely debatable. I had expected a few days of depression but I was surprised to find myself not slipping into it. I realized that I'd rather walk my own way than fit, however uncomfortably, into a niche carved by others. He would still be a troll, if not prefixed by the word internet. True, a bit of jealousy had cast those terrible shadows on him but I am now convinced that even if I do manage to get rid of jealousy his countenance would still be frightening. But what an amazing joy-ride it was! And though I many never climb on the same roller coaster again, I surely haven't developed a phobia for roller coasters.

On a larger, more realistic scale, I realize that checking the mail can never entirely represent who we are. It might be a terribly altered temporal manifestation of our being. But this is something that can be changed. At the same time, I'd like to believe that the truth in our checking of the mail lies in one very important fact - the positivity of being. We never wait for bad mails and hardly ever expect them. What we do look forward to are mails with good news and this is what keeps us at it. Even though each time, I end up being smashed by a paddle, the thrill I receive in the flight afterwards is more than an incentive to want to do it again. And this holds true for everything. I glad that I am a mail hedonist and happy to say it out loud. For this, my friend, is my answer to the Ultimate Question of Life,the Universe, and Everything.

On Riki Tiki Tavi

2010-09-20T17:11:00.002+05:30

My blog has gone into hiding,

With stories only for me to see

And a heavenly sip of privacy

Charging forth within me.

With this shroud around me,

I write and write and write

Thoughts tumble over one another

biting, chewing, snarling and ugly.

Poor Riki Tiki Tavi,

How he'd fret and fume

to see such cowardice

In the blog with his name.

But I am no Hero,

None do I aspire to be.

In me I stand firm and tall

My own world in a gentle simmer.

One day, the blog shall fly again

And many posts within die

But my wings, I fear will be clipped again

And my passion shall teeter to an end.

Irreconcilably male

2010-09-17T22:02:00.004+05:30

In me a male

dragged and cajoled

into being

like an angry cat

claws out, hissing and spitting.

They said:

'Stoke it, slowly

Make it grow

Shine it, slowly

Make it glow'.

They pulled and

they pushed

It churned within me,

a giant storm in its wake

thundering over the seas.

And soon within,

a tiny spark begins

with it mighty walls too

a hero emerges,

Fiery and Proud

Muscled and Large

Bearded and Deep-voiced

Irreconcilably Male,

from within me.

But as I mothered this

nursed it into being,

(What terrible monstrosity,

I say and sometimes they)

I see forests flying

in which I had hid for long

I die once, never to live again

but here is a Hero,

Irreconcilably Male.

An Ending

2010-09-16T21:12:00.002+05:30

Time curls like the dying petal of a hibiscus.

The yellow surging forth in its leaves.

A Koel trembles in the tree above.

A sun slips quietly to its grave.

Reminiscence

2010-09-10T19:44:00.004+05:30

I remember Mrs A telling me: 'I sometimes feel bad for your generation. You could have had so many more opportunities if you were born somewhere else'. I was twelve then. I remember asking her: 'What about your generation?' Strangely enough, my mind seems to have blotted out her answer, like the missing fragment of treasure map.

I doubt very much now if her answer would have been as vital as the missing piece of the treasure map.

When I went furiously through my teens, the fleeting years told me otherwise. There was no thing as missed opportunities. I was largely at peace with the world on its sojourn around the sun.

Now, I know that is hardly true and Mrs. A's sentence hangs over me like a pale ghost, taunting ceaselessly. I look back, wistfully. I wish to start all over again, rethink my choices and lose my hope much more slowly, much less painfully.

Hedonism

2010-09-09T22:48:00.006+05:30

I am currently reading Anne Fadiman's 'At Large and At Small', a collection of essays. This is the most satisfactory book I've read this year. That's saying something when summer was dotted with Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, Matt Ridley and Chuck Palanhuick. This book is petite, almost ballerina-esque.I picked it up at a whim, indulging in my own personal sin. I didn't read the blurb sitting prettily on the back cover. Honest.

It was another book that got me using the word 'hedonism', and this book I did not particulary enjoy. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. But those were lean times when the city bookstores refused to stock anything I enjoyed. So, I trudged along completing all four of his books that were released then. But I didn't take another trip with Robert Langdon in the Lost Symbol ; a fact I am excessively proud of.

All credit must be given, however, to Dan Brown for initiating me to the world of Illuminati, Free Masons, and Mary Magdalene. Though the only vestige of all this that has successfully managedto post itself among my many interests is the concept of the Female. I use it now, rather too liberally, I'm afraid, in a lot of my talks and writings.

I caught lunch with my friend from Seattle recently. While I was ruminating over the choice of sauce for my chicken kebab, he casually mentioned that he had joined the Free Masons. Too casually, may I add. For some reason, I've become overly suspicious of any societies, even doubting the Greek fraternities. The kebab, however, demanded my attention almost immediately and our conversation drifted.

Anne Fadiman's essays leave me with a peculiar sense of jocundity. I wish I could say it is almost Dickensian but that would be an immense lie as I didn't particularly enjoy his novels. Perhaps Carrolian? But more importantly, they almost always left me hungry. As I read one of the last essays in the book, written on coffee, I was left with a terrible desire for freshly brewed, rich coffee. Not black but with enough sugar and milk to let the sweetness tingle on my tongue. I didn't however manage to make myself a cup.

I would never call myself a 'foody'. In fact I find the term immensely derogatory. It is quintessentially American and has little elegance to it. Indeed, it reminds me of the American hamburgers: quickly made and completely forgotten once consumed. Yes, I do take offence if you call me a foodie. Similarly I do not wish to be called a Bibliophile but for an entirely different reason. I just never have read enough to qualify as a Bibliophile. I enjoy reading, I read a lot, I talk a lot about books, I spend a sizable chunk of money on books but I still fall considerably short of being called a bibliophile.

When Abraham Lincoln said, 'It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues', he must have exclusively thought of books or food. Well, even if he didn't I do. For me, my life is twinned around food and books. Good food and good books. There have been many times when I got through the day only with one of them in my hands if not both. If I could build myself a pyramid, I would fill it with innumerable number of books and stock it with food. I would be sure, then, that I'd never go hungry or become lonely in either heaven or hell.

On Rhodes

2010-09-04T20:45:00.005+05:30

He was brought into fame by the Rhodes, that wondrous thing tagged as a scholarship. In reality it is more than a simple scholarship and most of us know this.

It propelled him to ‘cyber-famy’ just soon enough for him to comfortably settle into his niche. In the brief time from an enterprising student at Delhi University to a swiftly rising political pundit at Oxford he collected his digressing thoughts and crafted them into wonderfully worded, persuasive essays.

Not many read him, and this he was aware of. But the few who did were certain to ‘ooh and aah’ at his thoughts exposed meticulously online. This was what Rhodes afforded him – an intellectual suite, to be filled with poems, critiques and essays. Some say it borders on intellectual infamy. But then again, what is anything without a tad bit of infamy to spice things up.

The scholar in him decided to close down his old blog. It was one of those trite, poorly worded things that was weighing down his exciting ascent. What unbearable shame if one of his more industrious colleagues were to google him in a spot of inquisitive envy?

It left scars of course: a trail of incorrigible dirt that found its way to the defunct site. There were empty links hanging in vast cyberspace and there was hardly anything he could do about it. He had erased the board but not entirely.

For some of the others who were rejected by the committee (wishing them the very best in their endeavors simultaneously) his niche online provided scope for immense apathy. They saw him, rather jealously, disappearing further and further into the ethereal Oxfordian. They viewed this transformation nervously begging their personal Gods to do the same to them. For you see, not only was he at Oxford, he was there with the Rhodes.

A few of the rejects – yes, the truth is harsh – mimicked him. Doesn’t all life mimic each other? Right from infancy we are taught to mimic, perhaps consciously but largely otherwise. We mimic our siblings, our parents, our peers and good mimicry is always rewarded. This is the foundation for the rather redundant question on role models. The rejects swayed into increasing obscurity, quoting lesser and lesser heard of writers, academicians, scientists and thinkers. Suddenly, Virginia Wolf and E.M Forster became the Bloomsbury Group. Facebook profiles changed with time. Harper Lee and Douglas Adams gave way to Foucault and Camus. Some even took themselves off social networking in totality. It was a nasty addiction chewing at their time.

The others contended themselves with denial. The Rhodes did not afford the best. Oxford had innumerable flaws. The course they wanted at Oxford was far inferior to the one they took at their University. But most importantly, there was this gentle slippage of most scholars from scholastic promise to relative anonymity. How immensely gratifying this was, is!

Does he know of the intangible impact that he has made? Certainly not! He has no idea of the number of times his name has been googled. This lack of awareness coupled with his total disagreement of superstition helps him through all the curses and threats. There are only a few, but their intensity is shocking. Safe in ignorance, our Rhodes Scholar proceeds, rather leisurely, at the well planned out road set before him. We hope he doesn’t slip off this lofty path. And some day perhaps, the others can rest contented with the fact that they had tea with the Prime Minister.

2010-09-03T20:27:00.000+05:30

“In the town they tell the story of the great pearl - how it was found and how it was lost again. They tell of Kino, the fisherman, and of his wife, Juana, and of the baby, Coyotito.
And because the story has been told so often, it has taken root in every man's mind. And,
as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and
black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere.”

From The Pearl by John Steinback

Temporary Hero

2010-08-25T10:46:00.002+05:30

I am your temporary hero

One phone call away

I talk, I rise

To grins and smiles

And mad screams

And fainting crowds.

Then, I glow in my glory

I dazzle, I burn

But soon I smoke,

I stink, I reek

And news hounds me.

A temporary hero

Just a heartbeat in a day.

Adichie Talks

2010-08-23T19:26:00.002+05:30

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a truly gifted writer. Granted.

But what we don't know is that she is also a wonderful talker. Check out her talk at TED here.

The Mosque at Ground Zero

2010-08-23T16:57:00.006+05:30

Let me give you a brick for every judgment. Build yourself a wall, confident, and threatening to topple countless others in its booming shadows. Through the horizon it shall pierce, one wall destroying many others. Among the crumbling stones you search for gold, brighter than the sun tossed into the sky. And with gold you shall build your palace. Around you a wall, strong, impenetrable and entirely yours with bricks earned. Around you, gold inching up to your nose. There you shall lie, skies robbed, sunlight robbed and only the whisper of your breathing. A whisper that poisons your air , now suffused in the your very blood. Your whisper that finds its way around your neck and slowly kills you. Your screams muffled by your high walls. Your screams searching in vain for a tiny crack. Your screams ringing in your ears, a devilled dream now best forgotten.

And in your empty paradise you will decay in death. Your bones would lie for ever, your wall for centuries more after you die.

Are we truly secular? Is tolerance thinly veiled condescension?

"a love story, pure and complicated"

2010-08-19T12:53:00.004+05:30

In this blog, I've written a small piece on J.D Salinger's death. I also remember reading the New York Times obituary on this great writer; but here is a beautifully written obituary. Click on the picture to check it out.

2010-08-17T17:21:00.004+05:30

But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

- Alice in Wonderland

There have been countless times when I've curled up and wished myself a magic time machine. A time machine that will hurtle through the debris of lost pencil boxes, spilled milks, angry friends, mark-sheets brimming with red and finally find itself safely at the beginning, at genesis, at the immense relief of being nothing. Millions of complications would have withered and died, and now, a blank canvas would be brought out for me to start all over again.There are countless times I did that.

Not anymore.

There have been times when I was filled with an unbelievable sense of primitive joy - a red, frothy pomegranate juice gathered from secret groves deep within - when I sense the immense time stretching before me. Its a long string of wool waiting to be colored and knitted to my liking from my being. I needn't even knit. I can let the giant tigers, striped and bold, play with it. Giant cats almost purring and rewarding me plenty. I can floss a million teeth with it. Now emergewhite smiles with bits of my wool sticking in the gaps, along with yesterday's sambar and tomorrow's chocolates.

I am here post epiphany. My string would be dipped in rich chocolates and dark brown mud. It would tremble in the operatic falsetto and the bass chorus of mating frogs in the monsoon.

For its foolish to want to try again when there is much more to do.

Internet Woes

2010-08-16T20:39:00.003+05:30

How terrible is the internet?

No, really. They have graphic videos of actual murders. Something that seems almost straight out of Lord of the Flies!

This is one of my 'what are we heading towards' moments.

On the other side, I seem to be getting addicted to social networking sites. At least I don't upload terribly private things. I hear they have it stored for all eternity. Ouch.

I am still terribly shaken by the viral video that shows the violent murder of a man in Ukraine. I didn't watch it, but just reading about it on Wikipedia (God bless Wikipedia) has me disturbed. Then there are reaction videos to those on youtube. The ramifications of this could be disastrous. On the other hand, youtube has also videos of cute kids playing, babies laughing and that very sweet video: 'Charlie bit me'. Sweet isn't it? But then again what about the downside to all this?

What about privacy issues ? Who are the guys watching these videos? Pedophiles? And what about the endless negative and unwarranted comments?

Do we need an Internet Big Brother? Not someone to watch over all our activities online but someone/something to check what is being posted online. Do we need some kind of censorship of content on internet? How strong are cyber-cops? But then again will all this lead to moral policing?

More questions than answers. I forsee the internet undergoing a major overhaul.

A Fine Balance

2010-08-16T14:34:00.004+05:30

(So, this may seem like a rant, but it isn't; it's counter-blogging. )

There are many things I have been accused of : procrastination, obtuseness, rudeness etc. But most recently, someone , rather dramatically accused me of entertaining cultural snobbery in college.

Let's get the basics right. As the convener for Literary and Debating activities in college, I am responsible for organizing various events through the course of the academic year. Among these many events is the college auditions for a Literary and Debating Team. 'Team' here is used to describe all those chaps interested in taking part in Literary and Debating events. Now the college in which I study, specifically the L & D teams over the years, have been accused of creating and entertaining cultural snobbery. Cultural snobbery here indicates the team's penchant for the ever present sexual and other innuendo. I'll extend it even further. It also indicates the teams desire to recycle events among its own cast members.

When I became the convener, I remember talking to P about making L & D in the college as inclusive as possible. I can say I tried to do it, but that would be wrong ; I did do it albeit in a very subtle, perhaps even invisible manner.

There is a fine line every L & D convener must contend with. L & D events must be intellectual, but at the same time they must also be fun. They must get brain cells whizzing but they must also have scope for spontaneity, innuendo and sheer entertainment. Now where do we draw this terribly mischievous line?

For me it is pretty clear. There are a few events that bring in the intellectual quotient and this includes debates, creative writing, WTGW, 90 seconds, cartooning and quiz . One might say these are peripheral, obscure events but hey, the intellectual is a rare species, ever facing the threat of extinction.

Then, there are the events for pure entertainment. Puritan? Don't bother taking part then.

The most painful part of the auditions is to tackle the freshers who think they know L & D. Yeah sure, they did take part in JAMs and Debate during school. But L & D in college is an entirely different ball game. To begin with, things will always be mildly tawdry, not putting it delicately at all. There will be a lot of innuendo, deal with it. But they also have options. They don't need to take part in everything. They can take part in the events where they are comfortable rather than squirming in front of the judges. But to try and make everyone, I made sure that the judges weren't vitriolic. Yes, rebuttals did exist, but that is necessary for any healthy competition.

The other necessary thing is getting participation, especially for Fresher's auditions. So what do we do? We give them a huge range of topics for things like creative writing and come out with easier topic for them to debate on. So this would include adding absolute nonsense topics like 'ripped fish-net stockings, samurai sword and rubber ducky' to the creative writing list which otherwise consisted of intelligent topics. This done in the hope that both intellectuals and the entertainers would submit entries for creative writing.

Then there is participation by the old students including my accuser. There is this air around many people that they are already established members of the L & D team and needn't take part in any activities. Boy, was I disappointed! There is always scope for improvement and this year I made it a point to increase the standards of a few events so that the team doesn't fall victim to complacency. The people who did want inclusiveness didn't take part in anything including events like debate, creative writing etc. The majority of the people who did take part were the ones who enjoy the entertainment events. Ah so much for intellectual renaissance and inclusiveness!

So far, I've just talked about L & D activities. I haven't even started on cultural snobbery. That shall wait for my next post!

Many Halves

2010-08-13T17:32:00.004+05:30

Half a face to be lent

The other, strictly mine.

Through many hands many faces,

Stories and secrets shared.

Half a smile globetrotting.

Now stop puckering,

Let's sew this half-smile onto you!

Personal Secrets

2010-07-23T05:53:00.001+05:30

How terrible we are with our secrets.

Wearing them like a gas mask.

Weaving our lives through their clammy fingers.

I've forgotten some lest they strangle me.

Is yours blue or does it glow in the dark?

Chance

2010-07-22T20:40:00.004+05:30

Like a tide you withdraw

The soft sand together in your water.

In you we come together,

A dark, fragrant whole,

Simmering in your glory.

Withdraw, you shall.

In the brown sand I last forever

Clumped to your whim and,

Soon powdery dry under the sun's glare.

Like a tide you withdraw

To distant shores I know of not.

With you fish, sand and toil,

bundled into an everlasting whole.

A Mild Period

2010-07-10T09:17:00.004+05:30

We should pause.

This is a meadow,

Dithering in our hearts.

A widening greenness

Ending our march ahead.

Now, feel the footsores

Let the skin drip

(And every insatiety)

Into a terrible puddle.

The gulping meadow rises,

Greenness spilling over, and

Now a mighty cocoon

Relieving us into

The deepest slumber.

A day fumbles into night

Helped only by

Our reticent minds.

A night, patient and strong

To sleep forever in.

My night has stars

And a silvery moon

Shaped like happy lips

Over a warm cradle.

This pause I take.

Let it not frighten me or

Wind its tender fingers

Around me forever.

And soon, I shall be

Traveler yet again

With aches, sores and scars

Till the road falls

And meadow welcomes again.

(But together, another road

Will we walk?

Happy travelers from meadow

Till meadow.)

Where to, now?

2010-06-21T12:10:00.004+05:30

I can't but help pen down the profound sense of shame at the verdict of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

For those who don't know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster .

More than 10,000 people have died due to both the long and short term consequences. Terrible even more is the judgement or the lack of it. Compensation only trickles in even after one quarter of a century has passed.

The whole tragedy has spawned countless NGOs and Bhopal has been the learning ground for many activists. Some, a bit extreme, demanding the disassembly of the entire corporate system.

But despite all this, despite the deaths, the cancers, the ectopic pregnancies, the countless malformed children, the lobbying by both government and non-government agencies, the scores of intellectuals who huffed and puffed in Bhopal, the endless grief and the long standing suffering, the verdict is a disappointment. A disappointment that will rip the judicial system in the country and let one of the most promising nations to wallow for decades in the injustice that earmarks Bhopal.

A century or two later, people might remember it. It would be a case, a study in an obscure corner of an obscure book (or e-book). The grief of thousands condensed and published as a golden caveat. There it would lie , proud in its notoriety and terrible in its implications. But where to , now, for the maimed and the helpless? Where to for the justice that the Constitution promises?

Ending Light

2010-06-19T15:30:00.001+05:30

Harishyam stops at the Peepal tree. The light is dimming and his legs are sore. He sits down and takes out a yellowing betel leaf from his bag. He wants to cry, but can’t , not at his age and so out in the open.

He slips the leaf into his mouth.

He empties the contents of the bag onto his lap, searching for the newspaper covered chapattis, now faintly smelling of holy ash. He needs to ration his food. It would take him three days to the next town, and even that doesn’t assure him food. He rummages again for his cowries, and then realizes that he lost them when he was running away from the villagers on Monday.

His father was one, walking from town to town, with a bag full of oddities. Those days, a coconut with red water inside would ensure a week of food and rest. A levitation would be better still. Rich landlords would want their fortunes told or young girls would come shyly, begging him to pray for good husbands.

Once, when Harishyam was with his father, they met a local Zamindar. His daughter was sick, coughing violently and overcome with fever. It was a matter of few hours for his father. With a flourish he trapped the devil that possessed the young girl and banished it. There, hiding behind the pillar, Harishyam saw the reverence in the Zamindar’s eyes. That was all that mattered.

When he was younger Harishyam had his fair share of success. People remembered his father and they would queue up to have their palms read or their birth-charts deciphered. Harishyam thought his fame would increase as he aged, just like it had happened to his father. But as years and towns passed, the crowds dwindled. People started going to doctors and trusting the Grameen banks with their money. The kids no longer milled to watch him levitate on the crooked stick, they saw better on their cheap, government-sponsored television sets.

It is difficult now. Last Monday, a boy of fourteen or fifteen caught him with the red fluid- filled syringe, just as he was about to pierce it into the coconut. He shudders at the thought of the commotion that followed. The crowd rushed at him with slippers and obscenities. He was very lucky to get away.

There was that other scandal at Narzipur. That whore accused him of raping her. This because he said her husband was cheating on her when she asked for a reading of the runes. Her voice still followed him like a wronged spirit searching for vindication.

When he was younger, he wondered what education would have meant. Probably a wife and a house somewhere. He wouldn’t need to walk everyday from town to town performing odd tricks to scrape together a meal. But that was years ago, when he could still walk for hours without getting tired. Now, he can’t walk long distances, tiring easily, and no longer thinks of a different life.

Somewhere up in the Peepal a Koel trills. Harishyam gets up, ready to leave. His bag is already light. He clutches his stick and hobbles onto the path, an old man against the last rays of the dying sun.

2010-06-19T11:46:00.002+05:30

I've always had a tough time with evolution and college. The college I study in is a Christian one and most of my professors and all my friends are staunch creationists. No problem over there. But the problem arises when they try to deride your anti-creationist stand with flimsy evidence. Some of them are often humorous but the majority of them are plain daft with a strong stench of ignorance about it.

Last year, we had a debate on the topic - which I fear is fast becoming a cliche not due to the overuse of the topic but the overuse of the arguments - Creationism vs Evolution. Now, Evolution is poorly understood by most Indians. We still adhere firmly to Darwin's views on the subject and even those are poorly understood. For instance, survival of the fittest, a phrase not coined by Darwin, incidentally, is often translated into plain physical fitness as opposed to reproductive fitness which is what it means. However, I digress. So, anyway, I didn't go for this debate as I was preoccupied with something else but I later bugged many of my friends who went into telling me what happened. So some of the arguments against which were put forth were these:

Evolution is still a theory - 'Darwin's theory of Evolution'
If Evolution did occur, why don't we see an animal between ape and man?
Dude, there is no way we could have evolved from apes. We listen to rock music and jazz. There is no way in hell apes can listen to that let alone appreciate it.

Now, you do realize how flimsy most of these arguments are.

Its sad really, how poorly understood evolution is. Its like gravity. All around us, yet not clearly seen or understood.

Evolution is not just a theory anymore. It's a scientifically proven fact. There are countless proofs and its up to you to choose to see them right. Explaining evolution would take a long time. But perhaps, if you could get your hands on few books then you can understand it yourself.Try the Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, and any of Richard Dawkins' books. If you still dont believe in evolution, thats fine, then don't try to dissuade others from believing in evolution.

Anybody out there?

2010-05-03T09:08:00.003+05:30

Hello there you anonymous reader. I hope there are a couple of you out there. Well not just the occasional cyber surfers who stumble onto my blog quite surely by chance, and not even the few friends who I've cajoled into reading my blog and who are even kind enough to comment on some of my posts. No, I am talking about the diligent reader who would check on my blog every week and now, due to the lack of posts, every fortnight or, perhaps, every month.

Yes, if there is anyone out there who fits the bill, I'm talking about you, to you. I know that I've not posted anything of late and I'm sure that has made you upset (assuming that you exist and, also, assuming that you care a hoot about my blog). But the thing is, I've been terribly busy over the last one month. Also, I think I shall change the course of my blog. Take it from the poetry and book reviews I've been posting to a more informal sort of thing where you get a sneak peek into my life and where I shall exaggerate the most trivial thing I have done quite simply to suit your taste buds.

There, I've said it. I think I should go and search for my towel just about now.

Tumbleweed Dawn II

2010-04-02T16:00:00.002+05:30

Tumbleweed dawn, tumbleweed bright

Through the deserts weary and light.

The swift sands under your feet

And the lonesome summer breeze

With you for miles on and on.

Tumbleweed dawn, tumbleweed bright

What in this morning do you delight?

The winds are harsh, still you roll

Over dunes and heaps and holes.

Let us not forget you yet.

Tumbleweed dawn, tumbleweed bright

Won’t you let me roll by your side?

Let me loose my way, just like you

Under stars, sun and morning dew.

With you for miles on and on.

A Battlefield Prayer

2010-03-31T18:18:00.002+05:30

Meet you at the café at the end

Sipping tea in languid delight.

I shall ask how you are,

Though we had hardly met but

On hoary plains, aged with war.

Bullets and swords rusting in great sorrow

Amidst the skeletons,

Of ours and our friends.

We shall discuss the Russian ballet

Or even Kafka and I would say

I disagree with Kafka.

You would speak of the date palms,

Of fragrant lands and desert dunes.

We will laugh at the distant times

When honor still mattered.

But in the end, your eyes smolder

Of injustice that’s been

And mine with the pain

Of things that had become.

It shouldn’t matter

Here in the heavens

Where we sip tea in languid delight

And angels sing sweet melancholy

But it does and it wont

Never cease to be.

And in the end, your eyes smolder

Of injustice that’s been

And mine with the pain

Of things that had become.

Living through Munro

2010-03-29T18:51:00.007+05:30

If someone told me to write to save my life, I wouldn't be alive but I wouldn't be dead either. I would be a spectre stuck between the many different worlds without a magic ring to jump into the puddles.

If someone told me to read to save my life, then I would be an outright winner and many would live vicariously through me as I do so with , at the moment, Alice Munro.

Where do I begin with Alice Munro? If only Rodgers and Hammerstein had read Munro, they would know its never easy to start at the very beginning. Munro writes effortlessly bridging the end with a beginning and back again. We never start a Munro, we land in a Munro, our weight oddly out of place in her ephemeral world of human hunger and secrets that run wider than an Amazon caught in the Indian Monsoons.

This is precisely why one needs to be prepared. Let me give you a background check here. Alice Munro is a Canadian writer who is most well known for her short stories. Dubbed as Canada's Chekov, her stories delight, astound and twine around you like a newly sprouted, reluctant vine.

If you expect a superhero packed book with corny one liners or a breezy chic-lit which you'd rather read on a low day, I'd say give this writer the skip. You don't to want to read her and she, clearly, doesn't want to be read by you. Most of her stories have no fixed form, but one must simply flow with her as she takes you on her incredible raft. Expect ordinary men and women - clerks, writers, teachers, widows, lovers, students, storekeepers - to divulge their most scandalous secrets, kneaded and cooked to perfection, by her flawless writing.

Also, you get to sit in the coolest time machine ever as she transports you to Canada (In most cases, southwestern Ontario) during the 1940s, 50s, 60s and the 70s.

But where would she not score with the reader? To begin with she departs from a traditional format in telling a story. This is both the strength and weakness as she simply cannot gain the support of the common reader. Unlike Chekov, her stories have greater depth than the situation affords. This sometimes makes her ideas vague and disappointing when viewed through the hero, place and time. It feels like it forces itself into intellectuality. But rest assured, this is very rarely the case. One of the more realistic issues that I had was the acclimatization to her stories. In fact, I read two of her short stories long ago, disliked them with great fervor but then luckily chanced upon another collection of hers which has converted me into a hardcore Alice Munro fan.

What does all this leave us with? I'd definitely recommend Munro's books to those adventurous enough. She is a great writer and has the striking ability to draw upon something seemingly insignificant but which fantastically colors the human psyche. I'd suggest prospective readers of Alice Munro to start with her 'Selected Stories'. This is an anthology of her best and most liked stories and if you do enjoy this then head over to the nearest bookstore and buy her other works. Happy reading!

Fabulous Jackets and where to find them

2010-03-27T12:10:00.004+05:30

People who know me well enough know that I like art. I paint, draw and for some time was seriously considering a book-cover designer for a career choice.

But then biology happened and thats an entirely different story.

I am not ashamed to say that I am the first person to judge a book by its cover. What the heck, it takes a lot of creativity, patience and endurance to come up with interesting covers.

So here are some of my favorite covers of books that I've read.

Tumbleweed Dawn

2010-03-26T22:33:00.004+05:30

The winner's game is never begun,

It waltzes in timid agony,

And when in the mirror a hero is seen

(clothes torn and hair tousled)

The string quartet ends its piece.

If you let yours grow

Tightening you to the deed,

A miasma through the thickening air

Lingers with good fortune bereaved.

Let it all slip, that terrible insatiety.

Yours is the lighthouse from stormy seas

Gather in the light and rejoice.

You are free, through wilderness and thorns

With flowers softly by your feet.

A happy wanderer unchained again.

By the desert wind a tumbleweed.

Gather in the light and rejoice.

Tumbleweed dawn, tumbleweed bright

What in the morning do you delight?

Where from your heart is the strength

To gently float by, and not be bent?

But in your happiness winners gather

And wonder at weed, twig and all

In such glory, unbound and strong.

Let music end, but we’ll still go on.

Gather in the light and rejoice.

Nest

2010-03-07T00:02:00.003+05:30

For the little bird, a nest.

Wrought of perfection

With the choicest twigs and fluff.

Here, a softest feather

And now a vine

Nimbly running,

Hugging it all together.

And there a branch

Gathered guiltless from

The greenest tree.

In the middle

With all the love and care

Away from this dry world

The bird sleeps,

In this nest made of dreams

Gliding in an ever perfect stream.

The birdie

One day shall awake

And fly away

But men don’t.

White

2010-03-04T20:54:00.003+05:30

Secrets that bind me to the Earth

rise, freshly watered,

smothering me with passion.

White is a cruel colour.

It stays dignity,

romping like a pretentious cat

that purrs itself into our hearts.

White, take yourself away.

You are no peace

but carve us - mankind -

into bigots and racists

wherein it all begins.

For this I wish to run

through all my life.

This is why white should end.

I need to hide from my running.

White makes me run.

I see it burning life

and burning into my heart.

From white seeds, rising

smothering me with passion.

Out of the blue and into the black

2010-02-25T18:42:00.001+05:30

What tree withered in the desert dunes?
What sunny days forgotten?
My heart, a thousand beads
Stringed together with gossamer.

I am the horse on the carousel
Round and round and round.
Faces seen in spinning mirth
But none a smile to be lent.

Hope swells still
Like the sea bared to the moon.
But fear hugs, a lost friend found
And lets my hope flutter.

I am the wreck in the deepest sea
Rusty and silent and still.
The distant skies remembered blue,
and choices, a dry summer stream.

Wait, I shall for ever still,
Till the faintest stars fall
My world ends and I go
Out of the blue and into the black.

This was penned for a creative writing contest.

I Shall Know When I Stop Walking

2010-02-15T20:30:00.003+05:30

The forest ate my road

Letting me flap on the taut wire

In the fetid summer.

No bird comes near.

I crack like a foot

Walked long on the heated stones.

My mirror, a thousand shining pieces,

Yet none a true reflection.

In this dark pool I wallow.

Now a corpse stiff and grey.

Every plate and shield I search

But no star shines.

The wine spills to intoxicate-

A thousand paths, none mine.

I deny myself.

It shan't lull me yet.

I fester in the brilliant sun

Unable to find my shadow.

Where is my identity?

Today, I see me still,

Like a lip-print against a cold glass

Present but unclear.

A gypsy I see in my sleep.

A gypsy I am in my sleep,

Walking cursed from dusk

To dawn to dusk.

When I stop walking,

I shall know,

When I stop walking.

The Heart Still Beats

2010-02-11T10:12:00.002+05:30

Would the world stop spinning

If the unicorn was black?

Would the earth crumble if the

If the moon was square?

Would the sun shrivel

If a butterfly was blind?

Would your dreams sour

If mine flowered in a desert?

Why then does it

Cause such consternation?

Why all the creases,

The pouts and whispers?

I am not a ketchup bottle

To be labeled and priced.

Let me live as I am

Coloured,

Gay,

Poor,

Widowed,

Abused,

Handicapped,

Retarded,

Obese,

Orphaned

Hungry

This isn’t what makes me mad

This isn’t what makes me tired

It’s you, with all your slander

For within me a heart still beats.

Talking Pulitzers

2010-02-07T08:28:00.005+05:30

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has always been my favorite literary award. Why? Quite simply because it ends up bringing some hitherto unknown albeit great book to the limelight. Also I enjoy reading Pulitzer winning fiction more than say a Booker -which I'd recommend only with a caveat.

If you haven't dipped your tongue into Pulitzers and if you are that person who loves to lock yourself in a room with tons of fiction, then I suggest you drop everything else and read a Pulitzer. A few Pulitzers you might want to start with:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If you call yourself a bibliophile and haven't read this book yet, do the world a favor and disconnect yourself from all books. The same is true with The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway.

But if there is one book that I'd recommend to every person I bump into on the street then it is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It is unbelievably brilliant. Junot Diaz, who wrote this beauty, also wrote a collection of short stories titled Drown. You might want to read that as well.

Then of course, there is Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies which won the Pulitzer in 2000. A fantastic book. But her later work - An Unaccustomed Earth - is even better.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy got the thumbs up in 2007. Here, I must say, not everyone can digest this one. It took me a very many days of slow rumination to finally get this one out of my gut and into the cells. But once you get past its deeply disturbing visuals it is truly a great book.

The latest entrant is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. While I was reading this one, I couldn't help but think about Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. However, this one is very different. As the blurb on the back cover says, this is a novel in short stories. This is one book that has incredibly many layers to it. I'd even go the whole hog and compare it to To Kill a Mockingbird. Read it once, read it twice and read it yet again but it has, quite truly, a Chekovian air to it.

So I browse online to find the potential nominees for this years prize (to be announced in April) and here they are :

1. My father's tears and other stories by John Updike

2. Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Philips

3. Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctrow

4. The Humbling by Philip Roth

5. The maple stories by John Updike

6. American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell

7. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

8. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

9. The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich

10.Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

11. A Good Fall by Ha Jin

12.A Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates

13.Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates

14.Spooner by Pete Dexter

15.The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

16. Generosity : An Enhancement by Richard Powers

While the judges deliberate over this feisty list go read Junot Diaz!

Oscars 2010

2010-02-06T20:37:00.003+05:30

So, the Oscars are here once again. This time, the academy is nominating 10 films in the best picture category. However, oscars this year would be pretty tame with very little surprises.

So what are my predictions?

Lets start with my favorite category -Best Actress

The nominees are:

Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side as Leigh Anne Tuohy
Helen Mirren – The Last Station as Sofya Tolstoy
Carey Mulligan – An Education as Jenny Miller
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire as Clarieece "Precious" Jones
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia as Julia Child

And the winner - Sandra Bullock.

Best Actor:

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart as Bad Blake
George Clooney – Up in the Air as Ryan Bingham
Colin Firth – A Single Man as George Falconer
Morgan Freeman – Invictus as Nelson Mandela
Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker as Sgt. William James

And the winner - Jeff Bridges

Best Supporting Actor :

Matt Damon – Invictus as François Pienaar
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger as Capt. Tony Stone
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station as Leo Tolstoy
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones as George Harvey
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds as Col. Hans Landa

And the winner - Christoph Waltz

Best Supporting Actress :

Penélope Cruz – Nine as Carla Albanese
Vera Farmiga – Up in the Air as Alex Goran
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart as Jean Craddock
Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air as Natalie Keener
Mo'Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire as Mary Lee Johnston

And the winner - Mo'Nique

Best Picture :

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

The winner - I want The Hurt Locker to win, but I think Avatar might get this one

Anyway, I foresee a rather tame Academy Awards this time.

In Memoriam : J. D. Salinger

2010-01-31T19:55:00.006+05:30

"Matchsticks for sale to light those candles. "

"What else do you do matchstick boy?" asked the broad backed lady folding her paper.

"I read books".

"Have you read Catcher in the Rye?"

"I am the catcher in the Rye.Come join me as I follow the white rabbit on the yellow road."

"Oh, I wish I could. But I am not a dream. You are, quite surely. Aren't you?"

"Yes."

Thank you for the wonderful dream. Now let me weave it into a possibility, though you hardly could.

Darwin Through My Lens

2010-01-27T16:24:00.000+05:30

When your heart trembled like a caged bird,

Where did you go for comfort?

For you banished the Gods, Darwin

But weren’t you too human?

Forgive me, my mind is fickle.

But is not life herself fickle?

As time rapes her again and again,

She sheds her skin without guilt or pain.

In the Galapagos,

Did you see your gods dying

As they staggered through

Your mind’s reason?

Whom to did you cry

When your children died?

Who gave you their giant shoulders

On those sorrowful nights?

Did the finches sing to you,

Dousing your fears with hope?

Did they ease your pain when

You faced the crowds of Europe?

I try to search within for strength.

I try to lull my mind with reason.

I try to walk like you did, me my own master -

My strings not held by a divine watchmaker.

But I stumble.

I stumble, I stumble.

When things fail, I beg Them for mercy.

No animal or bird helps me through my folly.

Forgive me, my mind is errant.

But isn’t life herself errant?

Stumbling through the arms of time,

No single path does she choose.

Did you know that the tree you planted

Would root in the hearts of men?

Did you know that its branches

Would crash through the heavens?

Why then, did you place us at the top?

Where the wind bites and sun-rays scorch.

Who can I look up to in despair?

Who will be with me up there?

No man can walk with you.

No man dares to.

But the footprints you leave behind,

Is for all to follow.

Darwin, I might stumble but I won’t fall.

I might doubt, but I won’t be walled.

Thank you for showing me a way.

Satyam eva Jayate.

Before You Sleep

2010-01-15T23:00:00.001+05:30

Did you water your dreams today?

Did you sing to them

A sweet lullaby?

Did you bid them good night

And kiss them on their cheeks?

Did you ask yourself today

If your dreams have grown lately?

Did you find any buds today

On those tender stems

Pushing to the sky?

Did you let the bees in today

To hover around your dreams?

Did you help them

make their honey?

For you’re only a wanderer in a field.

Theatre in Chennai

2010-01-13T22:22:00.002+05:30

Three interesting shows in Chennai. Here they are.

Winding up the Charm by Stella Maris on the 5th, 6th and 7th of February 2010. For more details contact +91 9840795390

SHSKPR in 30 mins - Madras Christian College performs a version of Julius Ceaser. Powered by the theatre group Evam, it is an intercollegiate theatre festival. At Museum theatre, Egmore on the 16th of January. For further details, contact +91 9840509418

Heroes, an Epic Spoof , A pantomime which will see Cinderella, Harry Potter , Superman and the likes trying to save the world with a 'time extendinator'. At the Museum Theatre , Egmore on the 13th and 14th of February 2010. For details, contact +91 98409 87186

Bonjour Benin - Ouidah

2010-01-13T18:49:00.008+05:30

Much talking has been done about the slave trade in Africa. Here are some pics from Ouidah, which was the largest slave trading market once upon a time. Now, it is a pretty little town with sacred groves, a temple of pythons, lots of museums and also the center of Voodun (which is the founder relegion of voodoo).

(The beach at Ouidah. This was the last point in the route des esclaves. The slaves boarded the ships from this beach.)

(The slave market. The big tree in the center is more than six centuries old. The European traders would stand under the tree and haggle the prices of the slaves.)

(Life in Ouidah today. The square has been opened up for visitors. Life for the locals, however, is still tough.)

Germinating Haikus

2010-01-02T14:17:00.002+05:30

Three Haikus were born in the middle of last night. I got up, switched on the lights and penned them down. Now, in the morning light, these Haikus still seem as ethereal as they were last night. Here they are:

Mangoes of success

Mangoes ripe, Mangoes sweet

Winter's dreams, Summer's fires

Dancing to the tongues desire.

The Blog

Each note a celebration

Air for a bubble

The pop is deafening

Options

Jumping ahead to look back

A tower far away

Rain before my eyes

A Morno for the African Moon

2010-01-02T00:28:00.005+05:30

The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery ...

- King Gezo of the Dahomey Empire, 1840s

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

- Maya Angelou in Still I Rise.

West africa has no calling cards - unlike the pyramids for Egypt and the Serengeti for Kenya - but it is riddled by a haunting past, that swallows every visitor in waves of horror and despair. What am I talking about? The hideous slave trade that spanned four centuries between 1500s and 1900s

Vestiges of the horror comes alive in various places. But its most affecting in the small town of Ouidah in south Benin. This sleepy town was once one of the largest markets for slaves. The slaves had very little choice. Ruled by blood-thirsty kings, humans were traded for arms including cannons and gunpowder.

Once bought by the Europeans, they were kept alive - barely- in inhumane conditions before they were taken to board the ships. Hundreds of slaves would be crowded in a small dark space where they would urinate, defecate and sleep on straw covered floors. If slaves died, their bodies were let to rot in the same room. There was no proper burial, which was very important to the West Africans, but instead, the bodies were dumped in a mass grave.

Many considered death the only answer. They were liberated and answerable to none. They could hardly ever escape and the few who did escape, they were decapitated by the local kings. On the other hand, they had no idea where the Europeans would take them and what further brutality was in store for them. They were torn from their land, their family and more importantly their customs.

As I walked down the route des esclaves - the road that the slaves took to board the European ships - I could but not wonder at the change in fortunes. Though slow to come, after centuries of struggle and oppression, the modern children of the slaves lead a prosperous and an opportunity- filled life, at least when compared to the people in present day West Africa - a region with the lowest Human Development Index. But we will never understand the struggle and the sacrifices the slaves endured.

A Morno is Portuguese for a mournful song. Its lilting tune and layers of interpretations set these Cape Verdian songs apart. To hear some of them, youtube Cesaria Evora – the undisputed queen of Mornos.

Verses in my treasure box

2010-01-01T19:49:00.007+05:30

I like writing poetry. But these are a few poems/ stanzas from poems which, I know I shall treasure.

Invitation by Shel Silverstein

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

(the last stanza)

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

End of the Noughties

2010-01-01T19:46:00.011+05:30

I write this at the fag end of the first decade of the twenty-first century of the third millennium. The last ten years, or the noughties as they are being named, were extremely eventful. But what were the events that shaped this decade and will contribute to the molding of the decades to come?

On top of my mind, I believe that this decade was made by the twin concerns of terrorism and security. The twin towers were destroyed in the early part in 2001 and the world has never looked back. The immediate fallout was two major wars - mainly preemptive. An entire socio-political region has been dubbed 'terrorist' sparking a series of vitriolic attacks on other cities like Jakarta, Cairo, Madrid, Mumbai etc.

What do you think this decade belonged to? The ever increasing politicization of global warming? The spurt of knowledge systems and infotainment through the world wide net and other technologies? Or quite simply, the awakening of two juggernauts in a largely fragmented world -India and China?

Swirly Colours Everywhere

2009-12-16T20:32:00.005+05:30

Turn off the lights,

Let the colors leave,

Pick behind my neck

And drop the mask below.

You go away, they go away.

The talks have ended.

Popcorn on the floor.

I move within me

To my home between

The empty seats and

The fallen straws.

The swirly colors are mine-

Round and round, as I fly

And the mask on the floor lies.

I wish , I pray for

Swirly colors to be with me,

A shadow bright and sweet.

I dont wait for

You and they to leave

But to be with me

While with you.

The mask on the floor lies.

Who are You?

2009-11-23T11:34:00.003+05:30

Who are You?

I am the God who tells you its all right.

Who are You?

I am the dreams that you see when you're awake.

I stick with you,

You, a pearl,

Me, an oyster.

Who are You?

I am the one that flits through your mind.

I speak when you speak not.

I weep when you weep not.

But I am there always.

Who are You?

I am the Devil that pushes you.

I am the scream in those nightmares.

I am the joy when things go wrong.

I am the sadness as you look beyond.

Who are You?

I am the life within you.

You without me , I without you,

Can not live.

We are bound in the holiest marriage

Holier than you, Holier than me.

Holier than the holiest.

We live throughout,

An irony on this planet you live.

Starting off with 'The Road'

2009-11-18T23:04:00.005+05:30

Right. I finally got some time to catch up with my reading. I kept buying books but I read almost nothing in the last three months.

So, I picked up 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy to break the ice. Big Mistake.

The road is a Pulitzer winner. Now, I like Pulitzer winning fiction. I liked the last two very much - Olive Kitteridge and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I don't like Booker winners much save the one or two rare exceptions.

The Road is widely touted as one of the best books in this generation. Now I hear that a lot, but the book also had other rave reviews staring at me from the back cover. And it dealt with survival in a post-apocalyptic world - enough said.

I won't review the book right away, I just finished reading it today. I'll wait for a couple of days, toss the book around in my head, and then pen down my thoughts.

Meanwhile, I shall move to book two. Now what would that be?

I bought Mantel's Wolf Hall. Its a huge book. Will take some time to finish it. I hated Adiga's 'The White Tiger' and Enright's 'The Gathering'. Lets hope that Wolf Hall is a better read.

Sepia Memories

2009-11-15T10:46:00.003+05:30

Sepia on a mahogany table.

Fading , edges frayed.

Not unlike the memories

Rekindled by it.

There was the joy,

A wild passion

which, now seems impossible,

Unattainable even.

A brilliant sun shining

Upon untroubles.

Soaring up, higher and higher

Free and loved.

Now, the lights fade.

Sepia ceases to exist.

Was it possible?

Or just a distant dream?

Waiting, Wanting

2009-11-14T19:07:00.003+05:30

An open door lies in front

a bridge to places far away

to wake me from my inert self

a beckoning gesture, leading me away.

I walk through hoping

to be entranced and whisked

by my very own feet

to places far far far away.

But I dont and wonder if

I can truly wander away

and all those places waiting

will despair.

Wicked Tambaram will smile

and slowly I'll go there

I hate not because I dont love

but everywhere else is waiting.

Clouds

2009-11-14T18:59:00.005+05:30

The clouds are there BOO and BOO,

White blue sky in black blue clouds.

They don't care for me -

My pain, my joy , my dreams.

On the strings from beyond

they hang low, wide and heavy.

I ask the gales

to lift me up above them.

Go and Go and Go away

I think, I do, I say.

This is not a place for me.

Gathering fierce within me,

The clouds of the storm

pass through my heart.

A knife slits my breast open

And I fall down like a tree on the pavement.

Facebooking the days away

2009-10-30T11:18:00.003+05:30

Facabook is quite depressing. There is very little someone like me can do on fb. I dont play any games, save poker which, after I lost a whole lot of money, has lost its charm.

So, I scavenge through various profiles looking at photos, updated status messages and add my cheeky two penny worth to some of the posts.

Recently, I got embroiled in a two-hundred-comment-making post. I was coming home when I got a text from my friend asking me to check fb out.

So I did, and there were some fifty odd comments about me (all in good humor). And the weird part was I didn't even know some of these people who were commenting about me. Oh joy!

Anyway, that was quite a fun episode but now I am back to my state of ennui.

I have my exams coming up soon - really soon - and I quite simply can't bring myself to study. I guess the nerd in me isn't stentorian enough.

I have decided to throw fb into a cryopreservant for sometime while I hit the books.

Oscars at midnight

2009-02-08T00:33:00.005+05:30

This is unlike me. Here I am, sitting in front of the laptop writing articles for my blog. Why exactly is it unlike me? I have written something like four articles over a span of 6-8 months. And now suddenly, I am writing two articles in a single day. Moreover, I am that guy who sleeps early. I like my sleep. All 8 hours of it. Since my knowledge in neurobiology has just crossed the threshold of elementary, I think I know the importance of sleep. But actually I dont.

Is it article? Some fuzzy corner of my brain tells me that the word is post. Or do they have a separate word for blog articles? I should check that out.

Anyway, I saw Vicky Christina Barcelona today. The dialogues were pretty wierd. I wouldn't talk like that. They were entertaining though. I wish someone I know would talk like that.

So with this I have watched 9Oscar Nominated movies. Nominated in various different categories obviously.
The Dark Night
Slumdog Millionaire
Doubt
The Reader
Revolutionary Road
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Milk
The Wrestler
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Pretty good I would say.

Winslet and more

2009-02-07T23:55:00.003+05:30

Well I saw The Reader today and I liked it. Though, I care more for Revolutionary Road. Winslet, as expected was stunning in both. She might have got Oscar nominated for The Reader, but her potrayal of April Wheeler is fantastic, even better than that of Hannah Schmidtz. She should win this year. Streep is also nominated for Doubt. Streep might end up winning. Its Meryl Streep after all.

So here are my predictions. Lets see how many I will get right.

Best film: Slumdog Millionaire. This is a sure thing

Best director: Danny Boyle

Best supporting actor:Heath Ledger

Best supporting actress: Penelope Cruz. Viola Davis may end up getting this one. Her short scene in Doubt is electrifying.

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke. I doubt if Sean Penn will get this one because he won for the Mystic River recently.(2002?)

Best Actress: Kate Winslet. Give it to her already! Streep might walk away with it though.

Best Animated film: Wall-E

By the way, did anyone realize that both Wheeler and Schmidtz end up killing themselves? I read somewhere online that Schmidtz is a more difficult character to potray than Wheeler. I am not sure if I agree.

Anyway, I hope Winslet wins. If that happens, I will be richer overnight.

A Late New Year

2009-01-16T18:16:00.002+05:30

I dont remember when I started this blog, I really dont. I have a grand total of two posts for people to read and zero comments.Nice

However, it is a new year, and though I am a bit late, one of my many new year resolutions is to be a more active blogger.

Ha . Lets see if I can finally keep a resolution