Birthdays are those days when you repent ever being born July 2, 2009

( Carl Jung)

Mine is 1st July. That, I believe, was yesterday. I got older and heavier what with 30 kgs of cake cream shoved down my throat. I cohabit with cheap rats who didn’t give me any presents except for a 5 year old kazoo. I am a sodding loser for all thats worth so there was no point celebrating anyway.

Off to travel more. Will be away from the internets for a while. Not that any of you out there would fookin care, still it is my job to update you.

Want to gift me stuff or send me belated b’day wishes? nihilistwaffles [at] gmail [dot] com. I prefer weaponry of all sorts, in case you are running short of gift ideas.

Also, I would like to apologize to all those amputee sex googling christians who arrive at this clearinghouse of peccadilloes expecting vespery hymns and are offended by the crap here.  I never intend to be offensive.

Wow! Who the fruitcakes am I kidding? Of course, I am offensive.  And intend to continue with this way of functioning. That’s the mainstay of my business. Remember it. Or, never forget. Whichever is easier for you.

Absurdities of the world June 25, 2009

Ronaldo has bedded 80,000 raccoons. The Zambian president was peed upon by a daring monkey. Popeye is the new Rated R Superstar. And Berlusconi has never pimped his ride.
Yet, the greatest absurdity I fumbled upon today was a Celine Dion song that claims – “Once I was afraid, to let You near…..Now I have known that love can’t be made in fear.” 

Sung in the same bleating fashion that characterizes all her music.  Imagine it slowly. And then imagine slowly falling to your death from a pointy cliff. The cliff looks a lot more delightful an option.

Bloody absurd, even by breast-beating, French Canadian standards.

There are lots of reasons for loving Bombay. Here is a more obvious one. Conversation you can “eavesdrop” on.

Mrs D’Costa yelling at her son trying to cook breakfast : “Freddie stop playing with the sausage!”

Freddie D’ Costa: “Then let me bring home girls, ma!”

D’Costas are the nice people who take care of our plants in our absence. Which is rarely ever.

 

No obvious signs of cannabalism June 23, 2009

“Arrived in Nicaragua. Ate some cheese and cabbage with a pint of pinolillo. No obvious signs of cannabalism, yet. Though, the doltish runts flocking to me more than make up for it’s absence.”
(Werner Herzog’s Diary)

The man conducts electricity on chosen days.

That one time when we killed the drug dealer June 22, 2009

Technically, I haven’t yet murdered any peddler of narcotics. Nor do I intend to. That is not to say that I haven’t used the line above in wriggling out of undesirable social conversation. It trumps any other form of inappropriate activities you may describe to snivelling little losers that are draining your time and joviality in disenchating soirees.

“Yes, Cancun was exciting. The sun shone like a polished golden plate floating silently in the murmuring ocean. Birds giggled like blushing schoolgirls. We were snorting coke off of some mermaids. Then, suddenly, the dealer got all “funky” and shit and I had no option but to pop him a few hot ones from a .55. Croaked on the spot, the old mug. Though, to be fair, he did have a great forehand and made for an excellent tennis partner. But when you are  weighing your options, life trumps tennis. It was about survival, out there in the rainforests, red in the claws. In the end, his temperament got the better of him. Dumped his torso in the waters and quietly went to my hotel, I did. They found him entangled in sea weed, looking a shrivelled dill. Freaked out some American kids when his cadaver emerged from the saline flow. 

So, what did you do on your vacation?”

A mail comes in asking me if I’d like to do a column. A “Column”? What kind of savagery is that? As a civilization haven’t we moved beyond columns and tablets as forms of mass communication? Asking me to do “columns” is the equivalent of Moses tweeting commandments to Israelites.

Only a gormless philistine would condescend to populating columns - iron or stone, in this modern era of ham radios and telegrams. I, for one, consider myself technologically advanced enough to type-write my communique.

PhiloFishy Riddles by Mz Malcontent June 22, 2009

The most excellent of all margin aliens (marginal aliens?) has a set of Fliofishy riddles.
Please go, see and applaud.

It’s rarely that my discipline leads to any humor. Mz. Malcontent makes us look better and more colorful than we tend to be.

UPDATE!
The series started with my pitiful droning about Hegel on her blog.
For once talking about Hegel led to something other than a genocide or any form of mass murdering.

The new definition of frolicking June 19, 2009

SP (Bhopal) Jaideep Prasad said, “The couple left the Asaram Bapu ashram at around 8.30 pm. Since the ashram is on the outskirts of the city, they could not find transport to take them back to their hotel in Bhopal. They hitched a ride in a black Innova which had four men. But the moment they boarded the vehicle, the SUV made a U-turn and sped.” According to him, the men in the vehicle were drunk and “very rich people who seemed to be in a frolicking mood, not regular anti-social elements’’ and put a gun to the husband’s head and threatened him.”

Is that new definition of frolicking ? I have been away from fun activities for far too long to offer any valuable insights on the subject. When in the mood for mirth and merry making, rape women. It’s odious but I am sure the knob must have a pretty good reason for declaring them anti – anti social elements though I have to admit that the genius of this declaration is beating me hollow. Perhaps, I am too dense to perceive the incalcuable difference between men who adbuct and rape women while pointing guns at their husbands’ chests and ”regular” criminals. There just might be a proposition in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that could explain this asshatery in relative terms. Or maybe not.

Sexual predators, like menses, are prone to regular and irregular cycles, then.

A puzzle involving bouncing penguins June 18, 2009

That whole work shirking was going well except for an odd yank and some israeli majnoons who keeping popping in from time to time. Half of them seem to go native after landing in Bombay’s blistering heat. June is hardly the season to visit India. The current contingent seems to be doing miraculously alright, so, to celebrate their non-secession to tropical insanity despite being in the city for almost weeks, we have organized a “social get together”.  I am chairing the organizing committee for this dippy event. Tried searching for some appropriate ice-breakers. I saw something about a puzzle involving bouncing penguins that came highly recommended.

What do you reckon? Would you, were you to be jaded enough to warrant a senior management position,  like to watch a bunch of animated flightless birds jump up and down as part of a team bonding exercise?

It’s between that and playing prrrr and pukutu.

Your car may not bang my wife again June 18, 2009

I have the flu and that sucks the fun out of being unproductive at work given that I can’t really go to work. Ever since the corporate bag descended upon me, I have strived – meticulously so - to construct a revolution of my own. A personal shaking of the business truths, if you will. Everyday, I arrive at my work desk, bright eyed and bushy tailed, the kind of appearance you would expect from a deeply self-motivated corporate cog, only to remain highly useless to anything or anyone at my job. It might be an exercise in tedium –  to be a fruitless (in a manner of speaking) time-squatter is no joke  –  however I have invested too much of my heart and soul in doing nothing to now deviate from it without feel a wrenching pain in my spleen. I did study Socrates, didn’t I? It’s hemlock before honest labor.

 Hence, I am upset with the fact that the damned flu has thrown a spanner in the works. Though, technically, there is no work  when I am at work. Essentially, though there is work, I ensure I am not in it’s firing line.  Okay. This flow of thoughts is getting mighty confusing so I will abandon it now.

Since, all the time I squander on the job was left to me un-squandered at home, I decided to clean my room. There are only so many spider families you can co-habit with, without them planning a rebellion against you. I chanced upon a few assessment papers from a Business English class I had taken about 3 years ago. It was a bunch of dim-witted software helpdesk chaps. Honestly, I have met bags of turnips with better language skills. As I neatly folded the papers, so that I could cut ugly clowns into them to amuse myself by scaring the neighbor’s kid at night, I found a particularly interesting mock letter. As part of the curriculum, the participants had to churn out emails on topics that no sane person would ever really care about- thanking a neighbor for taking care of your cactus, applying for a job, asking for a leave once you get the job (it’s the correct chronology in an Indian office). Personally, these are moot points. I carry my cactus with me 24/7 and I have never really applied for a job by an email. I simply thundered into the offices of those who were hiring, decked in feathers and face smeared with red paint, perched on a stallion and roaring “Geronimo!”. That’s always clinched the best positions in the corporate world for me. But no one follows my style of functioning. As a result I am left to teach them how to write insipid, boring letters to apply to jobs.

So, this toad had to write a letter admonishing his neighbor for crashing his car into the wall they supposedly shared.  Not as boring as applying to a job, still pretty darn annoying, you will agree. Amidst all the nonsense that he had scribbled, the statement that particularly caught the eye went something like this :

” But you are not being careful while your car may not bang my wife again”.

I suspect he is heading a helpdesk team in a galaxy not so far away. This is why I am opposed to computers and those who operate upon them.

There are certain things men must do to remain men June 15, 2009

William Shatner played Alyosha Karamazov in a 1958 adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov. Confucius once had a successful career decorating sacrifice tables with visually appealing vases.

I,  somehow,  feel as though I am better equipped to process the events currently taking place in Iran now.

“He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it. “  (Confucius)

“He who exercises government by means of coercion and terror stands to rule Iran forever.”  (Later day Confucius)

Amongst other things men do or did and the erstwhile results of such things, good friend just delivered a soft spud or a “baby”, as some people were referring to it in the hospital. The infant looked distinctly uncomfortable with all the fawning relations that had streamed in. You would think they were screening a Rajnikanth movie at the hospital. Never have so many Tam Brahms and Kannadigas descended upon the same place at the same time, filter coffee in hand. Even the cursory peeing on laps, and new borns are so well known for it, didn’t help reduce the throngs. There has been some disharmony about choosing a moniker for the lump. The father wants to call it “Nirvana”, the mother wants to name it “Fyodor” (at my behest). So, either the kid is going to attain eternal salvation or die a snivelling, penniless death in a Russian suburb when he turns 80. In any case, please join me in welcoming Fyodor Nirvana to this polluted, scheming, gutless world. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint us all by turning into a bureaucrat someday.

Defiance June 13, 2009

Case 1

Diksha Sharma (14) believes her gender is stopping her from realising her dreams that of becoming a singer. The girl from Haryana was recently in Mumbai to audition for a reality show, but didn’t get selected.
She says she feels like an “outsider” in her girls’ school and wants to get a sex change as soon as she turns 18.

Dr Vijay Sharma, president of the Indian Association of Cosmetic Surgery, said, “Technically, a sex change operation does nothing, but offer aesthetic value”.

Ha Ha.

Case 2

Seated beside her ‘gharwala’ Rupa at a non-descript eatery at Khaparkheda on Thursday, Rupali (both names changed) narrated how their same-sex marriage, after Rupa had fled with her ‘bride’ in a scooty, had jolted their village.

To defy the prevalent definitions and roles tied to sex and gender, subverting one or either of them, will not – can not - go unnoticed in a country like India. Especially when the people at the helm of these affairs (err, die pun die!) are girls.  Without complete awareness of either case’s psychological history, its advisable to refrain from commenting about the specific details of their choices. Nevertheless choices these are, and they need to be respected, which I doubt they will be.  I wonder whether, in these two unrelated incidents, we are getting a glimpse of changing gender equations in India as well as how uncomfortable it still makes us to think or talk about it.  

A country where sexual orientation in itself has been a cloistered subject, especially in the post colonial era, there seems to be a rising consciousness of how archaic designations granted to sex and gender are slowly collapsing. Urban coupling has, in the recent years, extended itself beyond the obviousness of heterogeneity and broadened its scope to include those relationships that are generally refused a legitimate status in our culture. In my own social circle, moderately middle class Bombay, I have frequently witnessed a more fluid sort of sexuality that has violently refused to be shaped into something rigid and formal. Everybody experiments in their youth, someone reiterates. Everybody is expected to, someone else supplements. No one can disagree with that but if these touted experiments have outlived their expected or prescribed timelines then there must be something more concrete underlining these choices. This is no more a trend or a fad but is indicative of times that are changing.

7 years ago, while attending school, we were all herded into ill defined compartments of male and female beings/behaviors, people who could only fall in love or harbor desire for members of the opposite sex. I find it ludicrous that a society can be so invested in hypocrisy that  on one hand it can’t remove itself  from classifying human beings outside of the shape and function of the genitalia and yet, on a whole new and perverse level, decry any form of sexual freedom.  Technically, at that point in time, we weren’t suppose to want anything or anybody. Back then we also believed that woman on top and missionary were the only sexual positions possible. We were that young and that stupid.  Fair to say that social myths disintegrate in their own time and slowly, with the phasing out of our individual shyness, we each came to understand the complexities of our own sexual preferences, desires; whatyouhave. To be openly gay was still very difficult not to mention damaging at times; the amount of taunting and teasing it invoked from the average trolls was hideous. It was a quandary so frightful that many would have preferred nunnery or priesthood than to actually deal with the “plight” of being blessed with a sexual orientation that stood at odds with what was being prescribed by the society at large. But the young ‘uns persevered. Thats the advantage of youth: you feel the need to strongly preserve what you believe in, no matter how irrational the world might consider it to be.  Yet, the predicament was about utter subjugation in the end. About one group of people, a larger more visible group, dictating how another group of people should live.  There was no question of straight or.. It was always Straight. Period. To render yourself to the other side of the fence wasn’t quite an alternative since, you see, there was no other side of the fence. This was the whole playing field and its borders were closed; the fence was meant to eletrocute. You risked death, literal at times and figurative at others, if you dared to openly cross the turf.

Yet, people did. Friends came out to each other over the 5^th round of tequila shots or failed suicide attempts. The reality of who you are, under your skin, is not really negotiable. Who you are is who you will become. You can’t unravel for decades just for the sake of appeasing a society that possibly wouldn’t give a toss about you when you sliced your veins or threw yourself from a high rise because you couldn’t take the suffocating closet anymore. And, those wrist cutting incidents did occur. We went to funerals with heavy hearts and angry fists knowing fully well that something could have been done to prevent this utter waste of bright lives.

If choosing to be gay or bi was this difficult then, the situation facing those who believed that they were born in the wrong body, those wanted out of their biological gender, was even more thorny. There were times when you could hear the occasional giggle as we discussed Ardh Nareshwar, in a philosophy class no less,  while juxtaposing the dilemma faced by transgendered friends. The nature of humankind is such that, what it reveres from a distance, it somehow almost always denigrates up close. The possibility of gender reassignment surgery in India was incredibly bleak till even 5 years ago. To be transsexual equated to begging at traffic signals and weddings or childbirths. To so much as imagine for people to understand the difference between an hermaphrodite, a transsexual and a trans-gendered person was almost silly. I watched, with utter dismay and freezing horror, a documentary on the hijras of Bombay. A tradition amongst the older members of the community was to pelt their dead with stones and slippers,  so that the person wouldn’t come back to such a “disguting” life and destiny ever again. It was radical.  Negatively, of course. I coiled with shame and fear. We allowed for such absurdities to promulgate while declaring our superior nuclear strength to the world. 

Any country, civilization, community is living only as well as the most decimated members that compose its continuum.  Sexual minorities in India weren’t living well, I deduced. They still aren’t. My friends were packed off to faraway Universities once they came out to their folks. This was the better off end of the scale, what became of those who weren’t born to privilege and the culture of support groups? How did they reconcile what was theirs to know and feel in the face all that the world was enforcing on them? It made me uncomfortable to imagine the lives of those who had to live this obligatory schizophrenia.  The blackballing was dual – familial as well as societal. Mothers couldn’t, still can’t or at least choose not to, understand why their sons and daughters would choose to love others of their own gender. A wide array of possible reasons for such a “disease” was arbitrated. From divine curses to a genetic discrepancy to psychological fallacies. Quacks and shrinks were summoned to fabricate potential cures. If that didn’t suffice, then there was always the wise option of tying the knot and praying the problem away.

In the years that passed by, a tiny mutiny surfaced, and it was time enough for it, to finally proclaim that Enough is Enough. This is my body, my soul, my heart – I will give it to whomever I want. We were few in numbers but vocal enough. There wasn’t any support coming to us from outside so it we looked for our own sustenance. We weren’t seeking approval for our way of life. We were declaring that we were going to live it one way or another: whether you consider it okay or not is really your problem. And you need to deal with it on your own time. More voices  were added to this cluster. More faces started to figure at meets. More feet were willing to walk in marches. More minds were deconstructing that which was deemed “unnatural” and that, which was venerated as “natural”.

We, the rebellious mutants, have freed ourselves from the tyranny of imposed sexuality. I know that there is a wide gap between now and the time when same sex parents and gender queer friends could share the stage with other relations at civic receptions and marriage ceremonies of my friends. I also know that no one will tell my friends that its okay for them to continue to be honest to themselves and the world at large when they come out. Only a month ago I was embroiled in an unpleasant discussion with a well educated, psychology major no less, woman about town, who callously proclaimed that anything that was wasn’t straight was abnormal. I was horrified by the prospect of  someone, who could possibly end up practicing clinical psychology, being so deeply prejudiced in her view of the world and its people.

My LGBT friends are not safe in this country, I have realized that.  Niether am I, a self proclaimed heterosexual with androgynous inclinations,  for volunteering my time and energy to the cause. They have been persecuted and it continues till this date. They have been objects of ridicule and even undermined as a “non issue”. The question of sexual orientation/identity based discrimination is not considered significant enough, it doesn’t invoke the same keenness that race or religion does. I say, if you choose to bully me for being a Dalit/Muslim/Jewish/Indian/Hindu/Tamil/Latin whateveritis, it is equal to you bullying me for being gay/bi/trans. Segregation while dealing with discriminatory attitudes is a harmful practice. Every minority, on some level, is representative of another minority. This, despite my cynicism for generalizations, has manifested itself as an obvious truth many a times. Even history has taught us this lesson. How many trains will we watch, go by, while we walk in insulating silence?

There are flaws in every relationship. Even in the stories above. Whether it is Rupa beating Rupali as an assertion of her “husband-ship”/ assumed masculinity and hence superiority to her wife, or Diksha’s belief  that her loss in the competition has something to do with her gender; her being a boy could have guranateed a win.  They are young. They need education. They need support.

My generation is often advertized as young, confused and in a hurry/aimless. I admit that if one were to strictly go by chronological sequencing, then we are indeed young (25 is tethering on the brink of “old” actually) and despite that, we are in possession of pragmatic souls. We are vintage spirits - a close pal quipped. We are confused; I can partially agree to that too. Then again, life is all about being confused from time to time. To shape your identity, in tune with and apart from sexual orientation, you need to break every once in a while. I may not know what I want, yet, but I sure do know what I don’t. To live in its entirety, is to allow yourself the leeway to fly, crash, burn, reorganize. Return. Getting your heart broken will always feel awful. No matter who breaks it; a girl or a boy. Is it really necessary, then,  to add to that woe by delineating that you, by the virtue of being a girl, shouldn’t have fallen for girl, or that you, by the virtue of being a boy, shouldn’t have loved a boy?

About being in hurry : can you really blame us for steering our ships at mach speed when the world around steeps further into choicest forms of dogmatism? Work needs to be done;  if we don’t move quickly, we will never make amends, or construct a more tolerant humanity for the generations that comes after us.

Posted @ BrownGirlMatters

Emotion is lotion June 13, 2009

Woolf’s elegiac comments on the subject of deathly emotions notwithstanding, yahoo astrology predicts that for me (all Cancerians) – “Emotion is Lotion.”

Such eloquence stuns me speechless.

I have been  slaving over 60 pages worth of a grant proposal for a cow dispensary in Congo, or something equally farcical. Hence, posting here will be light. Till the cows come home.

There are days when you almost lend yourself to a supposedly valuable debate without realizing that the author/blogger essentially googled the keywords and posted the first in a series of random articles, links, whaterrthedamn. Sergei Brin and Larry Page have indirectly made intellectuals out of every random dunderhead around. It’s pitiful.

 

In the meantime :

The uncanny is many-sided; nothing, however, / looms larger than the human in strangeness. / He travels on the effervescent tides / driven by the southern winds of winter, / crossing peaks of ravaging waves. / The gods, even the most sublime ones, / he wears down, and / the earth – indestructible and tireless – too / overturning her from year to year, / plowing back and forth with stallions.

- Sophocles, Choral Ode from Antigone

Never mind that now you lucky to be alive,
Just think it all started you fussin with 3 guys
Nigga ya pride in the way but ya pride is the way
You could fuck around get shot die any day
Niggas die every day, all over bullshit, dope, money
Dice game, ordinary hood shit
Could this be cuz of hip hop music?

- T.I feat Justin Timberlake (Dead and Gone) 

Ancient and modern interpretations of the exact same thought. Wiser words have rarely been spoken.

A word of advice, never tell a student of Philosophy that there is such a thing as a nonsense debate. They are likely to get rabid and sock you in the jaw. Mostly because philosophy majors  are quite feral to start with but also because they are sexually repressed.

Dip your beak in my tumblr June 9, 2009

Here.

Hope you ungrateful crows are satiated now.

UPDATE!

The case of a soft Socratean cock June 9, 2009

Though he did not specifically name men as an endangered species, there was no ambiguity over who he had in mind when he said the “leadership” of the House would be destroyed by the women’s bill “in its current form”.

  I share in Mulayam (hindi for soft: translated for the benefit of the Hebrew readers of this blog) Singh’s diatribe and worry. This reservation bill must break his heart and it breaks mine too. Think about it, to have cheated, lied, pillaged, plotted, murdered, extorted, kidnapped, massacred people all your life to gain an upperhand in local politics only to have all of the hard work threatened by a bunch of undeserving “aunty jees” who saunter in and stake claim to the parliamentary thrones. Absurd and positively dangerous.

Who thought of this insidious bill?

What if, indeed, all our male MPs were to really  go extinct? You may laugh now but you have no idea how gravely serious a matter it’d be. Who the hell would the terrorists coordinate with before bombing us? It’d be most inconvenient.

Women have been detrimental to our collective health ever since they got the vote. (But, ahem, don’t say this out loud in front of Mamta Banerjee or someone equally political, angry, divorced and female.)

The Bill, he said, was like forcing poison down the throat of Socrates, a line already aired by JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav.

Now you know what became of the cock that Socrates  instructed Crito to sacrifice to Asclepius. It was reborn in modern day UP as the head of JD(U).

UPDATE! Have been (re)reading Leonid Tsypkin’s “Summer in Baaden Baaden” at nights; what with it being summer and me not being in Baaden Baaden or any German town for that matter.  Barmy Russians and their Dostoevskyian pinning. But its a pretty good book. A good book from a Russian always catches me by surprise.

Prickly critters taste like sweat, cause digestive upsets June 8, 2009

I am afraid I will be away longer than originally deduced. Something about plastic containers, pigs in Africa, UN busybodies and environmental causes. Al Gore has ruined plastic usage and summer vacations for everyone. Even the Africans.  On the surface though, this sounds like a great premise for an action packed George Clooney movie, I reckon.

Anyway, I was at the receiving end of an inflammtory rhubarb. Being accused of philosophical bigotry (?) and what not. Now, I am fairly comfortable with alleged fascism etcetra. However, to be accused of being a disciple of Hegel; that’s beyond insulting. I think the world has gotten decidedly barbaric since Anna Nicole Smith’s passing. What a moral decline we have suffered in the days gone by!

Sometimes, while provoking armchair activists into a verbosity stricken implosion of sorts, I ponder whether a particular social/political situation causes them to foam at the mouth with unbridled rage or is it that they were quite “wrath-laden” to begin with and are now just looking to work their way backwards, as far as the whole of pinning of their  anger onto something more tangible is concerned.  It is, as though, they are now in need of a reason, any would suffice, to focus all their radarless antagonism at. To expect  any working rationale in such discussions is a bit like smuggling African diamonds in a goat’s neck, past a border patrolled by a gun-totting, trigger happy  shifta army comprised entirely of adolescents high on hormones and narcotics. It’s ardurous, disgusting and will, in all probability, end with necks getting slit. The goat’s and yours’.  However, if you manage to pull through, no other achievment will ever measure up. 

So, on a whole other level, its bloody marvelous, if you go to see.

Also pretty amazing - the reduction process by which the larger world has now folded itself into one tiny digital village of sorts. This metamorphosis has essentially handed every perrennial idiot on the street, the illusion of a birth-right, previously unknown; to freely dissect and denigrate other peoples in other cultures  by thinly veiling it as “impassioned activism”. People who have never stepped a toe inside the Gaza strip are screeching about IDF’s reputation as ruthless war-mongers, Hamas ultras and their modus operandi etcetra. You will often walk into a supposed, smart people soiree and find clusters of 4-5 omletteheads discussing, hands flying and inflections all over the place, the threats posed by Afghan war-lords in Pashtun areas and you’d be all like  – “Have you ever been to the Frontier provinces in Af-Pak?”. And they’d be like, “Hell, no!”.  Well, I didn’t think so either. And then they get all offended and shit because you refuse to violently express your opinion about the Darfur émigré crisis in Netherlands or some such.

Unfortunately, most of the lot is not even remotely given to persuasive polemics, instead, they are just a bunch of  prickly critters who  leave me with a brackish aftertaste. Much like summer sweat. And then I have to drink a gallon of soda to subdue the effect. Hardly good for anyone’s digestion, I think.

His Hol(e)y Pants June 2, 2009

Favell Lee Mortimer once taught a donkey to swim by blindfolding it and then leading it astray into the icy waters of Ireland. She also dried a sheep, she had bathed it earlier, by burying it in sand. I support these manoeuvres whole-heartedly. If I had a child, this is how I’d teach it adaptability and resistance. Respect the elements, I’d say.  Ever since the discovery of computers we have forgotten about  our olden values.

I am taking the rest of the week off to work on my sword-fighting and poetry. I have bought enough latin American and East European anthologies to cleverly swipe off of for decades. Look out for a sensational masterpiece of newly minted/plagiarised librettoes from this cow-shed soon enough.

 I have also discovered that if one managed to string together “jojoba”, “kohl lined sky”, “inner yearning” and “my sacred centre” with some conjunctions one can produce the most masterful womanist haiku poetry. But at the moment I have other pressing issues than to write garbage no one would pay to read. I am busy cutting holes in my friend’s trousers. He is leaving for London to commence teaching in some division of Applied Physics at the renowned Mehta, Desai and Barnley Institute of Technology and Mental Health Studies in Wembley. Oxford, it is not but it is a lively place. Here sprightly,  third generation British Gujaratis postulate about ways to use nuclear fission for making glow in the dark snacks. The purpose of such experiments has yet to be established.

 Back to the friend. Imagine the old fruitcake’s surprise when he unpacks his pants. Which one should I wear to my introductory dinner with the other staffers.. he will muse. Oh! let me go with those cream colored ones… and then he raises the cratered chinos to his chest, only to  find beams of light filtered through each leg. Ah! He’ll be foaming at the mouth with maddening rage, hoping to strangle me with his bare hands. But I’ d be many thousand miles away smiling the gleeful smile of a girl who cut really large holes in her friend’s trousers.

In life, as in film, choosing your priorities is of immense signficance.

See you in a while. If pirates or senile astrophysicists don’t get me, that is. In the mean time, perhaps, you can let me know of the rudest bit of fiction you have ever read in your life. Go the full hog. You can use the comment threads. No holds barred. In any case, I see a whole of lot of communist sites sending me visitors. Wretched nuts.

Get me a pineapple salad and Sir Hendley’s dimensions/Brazen Parrots June 1, 2009

Some news updates from across the world

Brazen NZ parrot steals passport, heads into bush.

I too have been struck by brazen parrots on my travels abroad, these thieving creatures are worse than the highway robbers of Guadalajara. I kid you not. A most uncouth group of avians.
To go around robbing other folks of their travel documents is indeed poor behavior on any bird’s part. No wonder they make barbecues out of these trampling little creatures in Borneo. Or was that Guyana?
I don’t quite recollect right now.

Other than this nothing remotely interesting happened in the world. There was that bit about South Ossetians electing a new parliament but I had tears of boredom rolling down my cheeks once I finished reading the report. I wouldn’t want to put myself through the pain of revisiting it.

I am at work right now.

Have I ever mentioned how bereft of intellect most people I work with, are?

“What are the hall’s dimensions?”
“I am sorry…what?”
“The dimensions…it’s width and depth..we need to set a stage.”
“Ah! Yes, we have panels. We can set a stage. We can look at two screens this time instead of one.”
“No. No. Could you tell me what is the width of Sir Hendley’s ballroom?!”
*Wheezing sound followed by a lound bang.”
“Sorry. They do serve pineapple salad.”
“What are Sir Hendley’s dimensions, for chrissakes!”

As you can imagine, telephones are meant for people with more verbal aptitude.
In an email signoff, I found this gem.

If any more details required, pls do not dither to write to me.
Dither?
Really.

Update!

I am bored to my guts right now. I spent a huge sum of money buying old tomes last afternoon so I haven’t even the dosh to go out and get pissed. It’s sad. I am unravelling amidst talks of latex covers and mattresses. It’d make Tolstoy cry, this current state of mine.

What kind of an oaf have you birthed? June 1, 2009

Economic downturn or no economic downturn there is no dearth of boisterous kiddie b’day parties ruining a good weekend for everyone in the town of Bombay. Gone are the days when an 11 year old’s most glorious birthday celebration inventory consisted of such original ideas as a trip to the zoo or a pair of vertically challenged clowns splashing their faces with vanilla. No, siree. Such absurd episodes of utter humiliation – ever had a face-painted, possibly paedophilic midget chase you with a can of colorful springs? – have been replaced with  an even more irrational and discomforting sort of entertainment. 

I couldn’t sleep for a better part of last evening because some tubby 8 year old turned an year older and fatter. As though that is some sort of achievement. Two inconsiderate adults and a contraceptive failure doesn’t an achiever make, you knee-scratcher!

As is the case, parental love usually manifests itself in  some form of a ghastly parade of daffy relations, friends, neighhbors, all orchestrated to shower the cretinous being with expensive and potentially useless presents. Seriously, another xbox, like he wasn’t corpulent enough to start with; you wish to see his bones get lazier? This is usually  supplemented by ludicrous  forms of entertainment such as musical chairs to the tunes of  Kevin Lyttle songs. Some kind of cokehead MC encouraging “Leyddies, childrens and gants” to “Baaack Up! (Buck Up)”. Middle class parenting in India  is almost Kafkaesque in its disgusting desperation to conquer the noise barrier and raise the bar further. Plus, its riddled with an insane desire to stuff McDonald’s burgers down the throats of  all and sundry. I’d eat my tongue out before I made my progeny gyrate to weird Jamaican popstrels while slurrping mayo. This prickly birthday boy hollered like a pinched rat when he lost at the games. Since it was his birthday, afterall, they let him win by default in order to squash the incessant droning. If it were my child, I’d poke it in the ears with a  particularly bristly broom till it saw the folly of it’s own ways. Corporeal punishment should never have been revoked. But nobody listens to me. To no one’s surprise kids of other family members ended up with all the wins in all the games. Bah!  Blatant nepotism will be the demise of this country, mark my words.

When I was younger my parents dumped me in a boarding school (leading to some serious Freudian scale issues). The fun events on my b’day were of the type where you baked banana cakes with other pesky inhabitants of the dormitory (healthy and yummy, excellent for growing kids  said the matron and then died of choking on a large brownie) or planting saplings in the wilderness of Panchgani. A “green” birthday. Lousy to the core. There never was any annoying, blaring of speakers with songs of reggaeton mixed with Bollywood item tracks. Such a thing was not to be imagined, even.

Kids these days are tremendously spoiled and I despise them.

I slipped the following note in a kid’s birthday card recently.

“How easy it would it be to hurt your poor little body!
If it were to fall into the fire, it would be burned up. If a great knife were to run through your body, the blood would come out. If a great box were to fall on your head, your head would be crushed. If you were to fall out of the window, your neck would be broken. If you were not to eat some food for a few days, your little body would be very sick, your breath would stop, and you would grow cold, and you would die soon.”

- The Peep of the Day (Favell Lee Mortimer)

Better impart some Victorian morality to those rugrats while I am at it.

A journey to the ends of Chinese fowl May 29, 2009

Life is pretty darn unpleasant these days. Traveling sucks the fun out of most glorious mornings when you could  just be splayed on a stuffed to the brims couch, leading a happily sedantary life as opposed to getting suburnt in Alaska. I am not entirely against discovering idiosyncracies of a hitherto overpopularized culture but I lack the slippery insanity of , say, a Megan McCormick. That girl is delicately perched on the cusp of eternal madness and a writing deal with Conde Nast. It’s vile on both accounts. You are hardly to find me banging on about some prodigious horned melons brought to South American coasts by the first bunch of the Conquistadors or something equally surreal. Niether do I take any particular pleasure in encouraging the  culinary exuberance of the natives. In fact, I positively detest it. I didn’t just fly a gazillion miles, leaving mammoth carbon footprints (I don’t have kids and I am not likely to breed anytime soon, so to hell with the glaciers melting in the Arctic, get your kids to take swimming lessons if they want to survive my generation’s abuse of this planet), while subjecting myself to the torture of watching Eddie Murphy “classics” in a plane that was held together by some scotch tape and enormous quantities of gum, so that  you could hand me a bucket of chicken claws to nibble on. Hell, no. If the Good Lord wished for me to comprehend weird Chinese eating habits, he would have made me Chinese. That rests the argument. The widely renowned scientist, Dr Colonel Sanders, invested his blood, sweat, tears and mustard in determining exactly what parts of a bird should be served in an oversized tub to make an aptly fattening snack, and I don’t think talons were it.

On second thoughts, you may want to dispute that chickens are not known to possess talons. Then, if I may ask you – Have you ever encountered Chinese fowl (or even a fowl Chinese)?

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

Its just the me and the Tibetan goat herders then.

Update!

I keep hearing news about increased racial attacks on Indian students in Australia. It’s disheartening to imagine those peace loving buzzards from the Southern Hemisphere perform such damnable acts of violence. It tarnishes the island nation’s image of everlasting innocence. Perhaps, they have us (Indians) confused with the Koreans. Not that I would recommend hurling “suspected” petrol bombs at Korean people but other than that I can’t think of a more rational reason. Ozzies aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs on the tree anyway. I once met an Australian tourist outside Leopold, he insisted on addressing me as Sheila. Barmy rodent!
I repeatedly told him that Sheila is the name of the screeching harridan who gave birth to me. He couldn’t fathom the difference so I slapped him with a pink wig.
So, the gist of the story is, always have some false hair handy when you catch  sight of an Australian.

I spoke to an old acquaintance in Queensland about the sad events.
This is what he had to say:

Ever been to Brazil in the summers? Land as dry as a nun’s nasty. Me mate, bloody sandgroper, chucks a fucking sickie at landing, think he is gone troppo anyway – that gutful of piss. Don’t get me started on the grog, slimey shit and the cooks are top whackers, they don’t mind spitting dummies when torched. The Brazilian man is a pissing hoon I reckons. Not quite the full quid, any of them. The ladies no better. I says to this one tasty lolly, I says – Even been to the Lucky Country? What does I get? A bunch of fives, thats what! Touring Rio is hard yakka. The old fella hurts.

He makes little sense, of course. We can’t blame him for he is only half human. Like all other Oz inhabitants, the other half of him is a dingo wallaby.
In any case, 89.7% of all Australians are Arab. While 75.6% of all Arabs are from Delhi.
Aha! now it all makes sense.

Some gentle Aussie lads participating in an act of group revelry. Torchbearers of the moderatism that Australia is well known for.

Nobody wants to have a somewhat dead parent May 27, 2009

Mother is fast turning into a flaming hypochondriac, its either that or she is really edging towards eventual croakdom, one hypertensed step at a time. I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt, she is still very annoying in that youthful sort of way,  so I dearly hope she would not go belly up anytime soon. It’d be a trifle inconvenient to lose both the nagging progenitors  in a span of 3 years. I couldn’t do much about the first one but I’d be damned if I have to suffer the tragedy of living with a somewhat dead parent again.
The Oxford Poetry scandal is seemingly fatuous to say the very least and yet for all it’s melodramatic undertones, Matt Burnet still has to claim it for a nerve grinding reality television “feast”.
Though I am mighty surprised to see how little media scrutiny  it has warranted in the blogosphere. Are they willingly  ignoring this great “Miltonesque epic“, unfolding right before their bleary eyes, or have they all gone Stevie Wonder blynd?
Seriously, I suffer dismay at the measly count of blopoets (blogging poets) who have written their tiny little poet hearts out support ing one or another or perhaps both of the thespians. Shocking. No one seems to concern themselves with the advent of dirty politics in the poetry world anymore. What kind of blasphemed earth we have inherited! Hardly fit for civilization, any of these cavalier fools. For, what has all human evolution taught us but, to claw each other’s eyes out over literary fanadangos that threaten to polarize all of personkind worse than the Middle East crisis.
I , on my part, am delighted by the stupendous hand dealt to that  Bearded Indian Bloke/The Other Guy/The José Carreras of Oxford Poetry Teachers (you get my drift), who was always a non-competitor in the original race.
The only thing that could top this drama is if by some twist of fate both Barcelona and Manchester U cancel each other out of the finals leading Mohan Bagan or East Bengal to a thundering victory.
Miracles do happen. Ask Jesus. Or the guys at Gitmo.

*Insert your own lyrical musing here* May 26, 2009

Monday Playlist revealed on a Tuesday.
The Inner Dj is spinning …

Lie in the Sound – Trespassers William
Hugging my grudges – The Boy least likely to
Chasing Jane – Randy Edelman
Hanging on a Curtain – Morphine
Makeup – Everybody else
Give me the words – Nouvelle Vague
Set it on fire – Jeremy Enigk
Don’t Go Racing – Jeremy Enigk
Hang Wire – The Pixies
Darkest Light – LaFayette Afro Rock Band
Close your eyes – Christophe Beck (Instrumental)
Loaded Gun – Hednoize

Relish. In. The Rains.

My Things I Love Or Something Like That List May 22, 2009

Here is my list of 7 things I love.

• Listening to retro pop on a loop
• Playing darts. Or just generally throwing sharp, pointy things at other people’s heads
• Shooting frames; photography has replaced LSD as my expensive hobby now
• Dancing on tables, car tops, in  gardens when it starts to drizzle or a hose pipe breaks. In short, anywhere except a legitimate dance floor in a club.
• Discrediting theories during drunken arguments and symposiums
• Speed (I mean the actual speed, the scalar entity, you know that thing you get when you  divide distance by time. Though the other speed is not half as bad either)
• Traveling in dismal conditions (I don’t love this as much as I am reduced to taking boats to go from Russia to Japan since I mostly can’t afford airfares, its lovely nevertheless, to be stuck in a horribly overpopulated raft with sweaty vodka chugging Estonian brick layers)
• Midnight snacks. Actually, any kind of eating ranks pretty high on my list of things I love. I could eat any ‘roid heavy, redneck truck driver under the table

I am inclined to believe that those are more than 7 but given that I suffer from dyslexia, I can’t count upwards of 2.
Take it or leave it.

We were discussing Feluda at work. Actually, it started with Topshe and the resemblance a colleague bears to him; it ended with how hot Satyajit Ray really was. We are deep intellectuals, as you can gather.

So, like, funny stuff keeps happening man.. May 22, 2009

From South Park
Mr Garrison : So, Damien, where are you from?
Damien : The seventh layer of hell!
Mr Garrison : Oh! That’s exciting! My mother was from Alabama.

At a cafe
About To Be A Bride : Well, we are planning to spend 2 weeks in Phuket for our honeymoon.
Ex-Bride/Advice Giver # 1 : Hmmmm… Carry a lot of tissues. Like a 2-3 boxes.
About To Be A Bride : *puzzled mug*
Ex-Bride/Advice Giver # 2 : Yeah. I carried a box on my honeymoon. And I ran out!
About To Be A Bride: Do you only do it on the tissue then?

I thought towels were ideal to line the conjugal bed. Anywhoo.

I still haven’t compiled The List of Things I Love. Possibly because I have been spending time learning corporate rope-tricks, namely the art of poaching; not for black bucks but most definitely can guarantee some big bucks. If my career continues to gallop at this stunning rate, very soon I will be able to afford residence in a building that provides running water. Perhaps even air-conditioning at some point in time.

By the way, to say that all people in the business world are lying, thieving swines of first order would be a dainty understatement. We are, indeed, a lot better placed on The Ladder Of The Most Cunning Thievery You’d Ever Witness than usually believed.
The remainder of my time has been spent chatting some amiable and some not so amiable drunks in Bombay’s most scrabous watering holes. Apparently, everyone can speak some Malay after you put 10 pints of unadulterated bitter in them. What a revelation. I will post snippets from these delightful tete-a-tete session. Or as a SoBo faux fashionista proclaimed – tit-a-tit sessions. Some of my most well-spent and truly darling evenings, I’d say.
Now back to Jaakko Hintikka and The Logical Structure of Questions. And really, Who killed Roger Ackroyd?
And why the hell did they leave Dan behind?

Wonders never cease.

Kreativ with a K (and missing an E) May 21, 2009

A rather lovely poet type person has bestowed this (undeserving) honor upon me.

I haven’t had the opportunity to make my list of 7 things I love, which is tough given that whole nihilism thing I seem to enjoy so much. I also suspect that writing Diego Bunuel 7 times won’t count, so I am handing it out to 7 other people I think are godbleepinawesome while I think about my list. Thats when I am done haggling for room rates for my trip. Anyone from the Macau islands reading my blog, should they be willing to put up with a slightly deranged bipolar majnoon and not in the habit of eating octopuses (long story), please contact me asap.

Here are the 7 people I am giving it to:

Andrew
Szerlem
Mimi
Shilo
Adrianna
Fyn Scarlet Reed
Aimless Wanderer

Update!
If you speak Bahasa Malay or know of anyone who does please mail me – nihilistwaffles[at]gmail[dot]com. Its no scam, seriously. Need some people who can interview folks in that language.

Would you like to suck on Hitchens’ thumb? May 19, 2009

When comedians flatter the president, they become court jesters, and the country becomes a banana republic. There are probably even people who would wish to misconstrue that last phrase of mine if they felt “sensitive” enough. In which case they can take a number, get on line, and ask to suck my thumb.

 

All the same, you have to admit that Hitchens bellowing like a randy buffalo is just about half as sanctimonius as reading Slate. Which doesn’t bother me because I can now openly declare my love for poofy American “journalism”, Travis and frog print underwear, what with a new found sense of comfort in my own asexuality.
This world is nearing apocalypse anyway.  I heard Aung San Su Kyi is raising a guerrilla army of amphibian Americans and as a direct  result the  usual sense of bonhomie, that is the hallmark of the junta rule in Myanmar,  has pretty much crapped all over itself. This woman is dangerous, they tell us.  She has been telepathically encouraging Americans to perform tasks more laborious than finger acrobatics with a TV remote. She has powers. Pat Robertson must cling  to his throne harder henceforth. This is war. (Of some sort.)
In the meantime, clinical psychology papers are pissing the wind out of me.

Just a little inhouse info about academia, a lot of  seeimgly intelligent stuff they constantly throw in your face, is not half as erudite as it’s perceived to be.
For instance, when some random dweeb declares that he/she is trodding off to a “symposium”, laugh the thorough laughter of a sophist of yore and return his declaration with a “So am I” grin. And then promptly head to the latest strip joint that offers excellent happy hour deals and a dinner buffet for thats what all  real symposiums are technically supposed to be : fleshpots combined with a greasy spoon and bottomless barrels. The original alcoholic sod said so himself.

Trouble is my middle name May 19, 2009

..And my heart wants pleasure first.

Don’t tell my mother… May 18, 2009

..that I want to bone this guy really bad.

There are these confusing moments in which I don’t quite understand whether I really want to be with Diego Bunuel or just be him.

In my mostly iconoclastic sort of life, this man has had maximum influence on choosing what I do with my time and education. Really.

On the side, I thought I’d write about how blogging will be negligible given my travel plans but the day you have to write a blog post on how you won’t be writing more blog posts, man, that is when you should use the ugly sweater that Aunt Constant Chin Wag gave you, to strangle yourself and cut your losses.

Don’t tell my mother.
Warning: Terrible voiceovers.

UPDATE!

I was flipping through some TV channels now that the old whipping cane (my mother) is getting her BP normalized at my aunt’s place many hundred miles away and I found some interesting stuff.

On a channel dedicated to bringing “world movies” to our cramped Indian living rooms, the subtitles exclude offensive words like “sex” and “booty” but have no problems showing “cunt” (I will wash my keypad with soap and water, I promise) with multiple exclamation points following it’s trail. Wah!

I am dearly hoping for Kris Allen to record a duet with Gabriella Cilmi because I have been singing his version of “Heartless” forever. It’s replaced “Nothing Sweet About Me” as my commute song.

Who hanged Delara Darabi? May 11, 2009

You are forgiven for considering me a right git for even asking this question. We all know who did it. On the surface, we all at least seem to know. But to only acknowledge things swimming on the surface while avoiding inspection of what lies beneath would be akin to steering a ship into the Arctic Basin and not expecting to break to smithereens. It would be stupid and destructive.

A woman in a faraway Rasht prison in Iran is quietly hanged without any notification to her attorney. Minutes before the noose is tightened, she makes frantic phone calls to her parents begging them to save her life. They are unable to and she is executed anyway. She was a teenager when the crime she was (allegedly) party to, was committed. That didn’t matter. She made repeated claims of how her boyfriend had coaxed her into admitting to a crime she may or may not have committed because she was a teen and they expected a “light” punishment. That didn’t matter either. She slashed her wrists while in prison; a cell mate informed the authorities and she was rushed to the hospital and revived, in order to hang her two years later.
She is not the first and most definitely won’t be the last casualty of the brutal trend of child execution.

I read the papers and then put it all away.
How does this affect me? 
I am a self proclaimed nonchalant slacker of sorts sitting and sipping Kiwi flavored ice tea in a Bombay suburb. I enjoy spitting theories and theorems galore. How does this  one incident alter, if at all,  my reality when I can’t seem to see any direct correlation or experience a palpable threat to my life or existence?

How does it conflict with the choices I make as a brown Asian woman in a largely patriarchal world I currently inhabit, professionally and personally, and will continue to do?
I don’t quite know why but I can’t help feel as though some sort of residual guilt is settling in the moistened corners of my throat.
Didn’t we hang her as much as they did?
We, of this gender – born into, chosen, acquired whichever way you may perceive or box it – have been told, since the beginning of Time, that we are born to a set of disadvantages. An entire matrix of reasons that dissuade women from feeling any strength, pride or, god forbid, happiness in their womanhood, exists and increments with a rather obstinate sort of (male engineered) social approval. We are reminded, day in and day out, of how despite appeals, forums, movements, revolutions and discussions – not to mention aggression and violence – we are running at jet speed and yet covering only about fraction of an inch with each sprint. It’s acutely adversative and stamina sapping without yielding any particular, let alone a desirable, result. We haven’t been able to stop them from murdering us.

At the present time though, I wouldn’t want to invest myself in extrapolating dissertations, mine or other people’s, to make an “intelligent” point and escape the core issue. Nor do I want to entertain divisionism that’s sucking the life out of feminist movements in our times. Instead, I will invest myself in examining why some of us are still being hanged, shot, bludgeoned, whipped, burned and defiled in as many ways as is inhumanly possible without so much as a squeak from the larger populace – women. The silence over this death makes me blood-spitting, hair tearing mad. Insanely mad.
I was debating earlier, with a group of hardboiled feminist students and academics, about issues plaguing us and the choices that lay before, of how we needed to regroup to make ourselves heard. Soon enough, there were segements within segments of who identified with what brand of feminism and that proved to be our undoing. Amidst repetitive accusations and false appreciation, I penned a few blame missives we flung at each other like ill-gotten and really cheap nukes.

We are disengaged from the others. We are too taken in by a smugness as lupine and voluptuous as it is precarious. We are cherry picking issues and functioning from within compartments. We are focussing on fringe benefits and are too keen on empty subversion than to be of any particular consequence to the changing pace of the larger women’s rights movement. We are too taken in by academic theorizing without having bothered with grassroots volunteering. We are not talking enough, talking too much, talking to the wrong people and some more.

Scrimmage is possibly the only word to describe this congregation of cultivated, educated, civilized academics.

We still didn’t quite get around to discussing Delara Darabi though she was to be the focal point of this meeting. The kernel of our concerted effort to gather and ponder about our social and gender condition disintegrated and dissipated faster than I could yell Pop tarts!
I came back disillusioned with myself and with them. And with us. Without an answer, of course.
We speak so much, we write an equal amount, we raise our voices frequently and loudly and for all of it I am thankful. Very thankful. However, in this collective dissonance and some times  in the inescapable white noise cosseted within it, the voices seem to  lose their intent and purpose and in the mean time Delara Derabis are hanged, miscarrying mothers-to-be who lose their unborn child in traffic accidents are being dragged to courts and charged for homicide, young mothers are dying in battle zones ensconced in used up hand grenades, girlfriends are getting their faces slashed by broken glass, activists are raped when demands of better sanitary care are made. In short, we are as grossly dehumanized now as ever before while we fail to reach any concrete plan of action. We give up on issues faster than the issues give up on us.
There could be a (cyclical) debate here about how the Darabi murder broaches the broader issue of crimes against humanity, a particular reigion/religion’s inability to be pacifist on any account and whateveritmaybe: I am going to limit (unfortunately) my concern to the fact that this indeed is a feminist issue, a female issue and the issue of a woman treated wrong. The prosecution couldn’t provide with any concrete evidence to support their claims of her being anything more that a witness to a murder that her boyfriend had comitted. Iran also has a young age of eligibility for the death penalty - 15 years for males, and 9 for females and operates a fast-track to the gallows. Tragic as these facts are, they are equally concrete and won’t melt away easily.

 I don’t disagree with capital punishment neither do I exhibit any naievete about the prevalence of   controlled and uncontrolled violence (legalized both) in the world we live in. I do, however, have a very serious problem with regimes executing young girls for crimes they may or may not have committed while an adolescent. A multitude of women, young and old, languish in prisons of Iran without any smidgen of a fair and honest trial in sight.  Such women exist in my country too, as they do in yours. I am not claiming that all of them are unfairly imprisioned or that all of  are denied their woman and human rights. Some of them do manage to study and live as normal a life as the iron bars will allow.  However, most of them are not even blips on our radars. They are forgotten chapters, moth eaten and moldy, the language of their mourning is often in need of an interpreter. The ink in which these stories were written has dripped through pages – of a book left open to bleed in the downpour. Records of their existence are expunged till nothing but empty sheets stare back at us with invisible eyes.
In all their manifest forms and sparkling glory, how frequently do feminisms of the world concern themselves with the suffering of women in prison, especially if these women are brown women?
What kind of access can we provide to them where a just course for presenting their case is made possible?
We can easily become disappointed in the legal systems prevalent in the brown world; disappointment is easy to come by. Law’s purpose is to serve as an enabler and a defender. That often is not the case, since law in a majority of the world has been duly tweaked to bolster those who already are at the helm of all the power available and possible – usually someone white, male and monetarily endowed. Law in action should, technically, not be about power but about strength, it is meant to solidify our faith in the precedent of equality. We can hurl epithets of choice at the impotency of law, its inherent weaknesses when defending those who are not power brokers: people of the Other Gender, Other Class, Other Color. Usually the “other” is annotated as the lesser. We are not lesser. We are not equal, yet. Then where exactly on the curve are we sitting?
Some ignoramuses can counter us by relating incidents of how men and women are equally and constantly abused by the law without discrimination because ultimately the law is blind. Such laughable quacking aside, a very serious issue at hand demands introspection and action: the unjust treatment of women by the law (whether you consider sharia a law is really not a point of argument when a good chunk of the population out there swears by it and falls in it’s jurisdiction).
Every few weeks, months, years a story surfaces about a woman hanged, assaulted, tortured in a prison in some “godforsaken” part of the world. This is usually followed by tiny mutinous waves in the respective spheres of academia and media. Each uses the female tragedy as a suitable bait to further its own cause/s – sometimes they show limited concern to the female cause - but mostly the parallel discussions are not even so ancillary to our predicament or treatment or, shudder shudder, status. No real antidotes are worked upon. We remain unsafe, unprotected and open to harm, give or take a few freshly minted book deals for the newly styled prophets of modern feminisms. We, the ordinary ones, don’t really get much further towards the end of it.

You are not safe if they continue to hang more Delara Darabis. You must never let that thought perish.

Fisting for Christians May 7, 2009

Any comment would be totally redundant.

I have lovely friends May 7, 2009

I just received a heartfelt email from doctor friend (a suitable quack by all standards)  who was packed off to Jerusalem recently.

Hi,

Arrived a week ago. Limbs still intact. Sorry for not mailing earlier, they keep bombing internet cafes and my laptop was stolen upon arrival along with all my pants. Pants I can do without;  a computer is a basic necessity.

These people are quite violent and for a moment I thought I was back with the Mormons or at least in some part of Midwest.

Weather is not entirely unpleasant. Occasional shelling aside.

Had a question for you and Ram (another mendicant), from all your educational pursuits, did you ever gather any evidence of Jesus giggling?
Am I insulting the Catholics if I make Jesus giggling jokes? Or can I pin it on actual anthropological evidence later?

Just curious.

Let me know.

Love,
B

Some kind of an update/ Hustler Butler May 6, 2009

I work with imbeciles. Mating otters are better company than this lot.
Anyway, I am going to Boracay islands.

News is getting perplexing.

A Royal butler was caught watching pornography on his laptop just moments after laying out afternoon tea for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, according to reports

This is a scandal indeed. Who goes to Norfolk these days?

Royalty puzzles me.

UPDATE!
From Youtube comment board for a hip hop song

“95% of teenagers would cry if they saw the Jonas Brothers at the top of a skyscraper about to jump.
Copy and paste this if your the 5% that would scream “JUMP MOTHERFUCKERS!”
I am. I am. I am.
So, I copy pasted.

Lesbians:1, Men:0 (The sum of all wisdom) September 10, 2008

Kylie of the Minogue fame might go gay because there aren’t enough good men. Jack Nicholson might disagree but then who cares About Schmidt anymore.

Super!
My latent lesbianism seems to have suddenly received the kind of steroid boost that most Indian Olympians can only dream of.
However, in all her tiny silver spaceship styled leotard glory Mz Minogue has made a rather riddled with complexities sort of statement that could lead to some not-so-mild natured scuffling with a few not-so-mild natured militant lesbian feminists(including the one hijacking sprinkled yoghurt containers in my apartment right now!).

T(of  The Refrigerator Raiding Bandit fame) and I chatted after I rescued the items in my freezer from an early digestive death.

“She wants to go gay because there is a dearth of good men. So, essentially, my entire lifestyle choice has been negated with one swipe of oh-not-enough-cute-guys-to-boink-so-might-show-some-dyke-loving?”

“Stop saying dyke. Thats akin to saying macaca.“

“YOU can say macaca. I CAN say dyke. You are of the macacas, I am of the dykes.”

“Did you mother smoke hash all through her pregnancy or just the inceptive months?”

End of that conversation.

However, inspired by T’s doggedness, I decided to drop a line to kitty cat Kylie.

Dear Kylie,

We like ye, Kylie. We like your name more, so we shall use it frequently, Kylie. It sounds oh-so-”glauque” to me. But, point to be made – We like You. For all your teeny-meeny short shorts in tawrdy tones and ill at ease bleechers and corset combos you like to parade in at award shows and your incomparably shrill shenanigans (Public Health Warning: Not cutting English Grammar classes, kids, prevents Aliterationistis – a dreadful disease of relentless repetition.) and your valiant yet dignified battle with cancer(hurrah on that). But seriously, my little pipit, paucity of men is not exactly a priori for women turning to other women. It could be a teritiary reason yet not a very solid reason.  I recommend a serious sitdown and a heart-to-heart with one Mz. Melissa Etheridge. In the very least you will learn the concept of making- how do I put it delicately- “music” even if enlightenment on same sex relationships escapes you. All the best!

p.s.: You have a lovely bum and serious props on the Tallulah Bankhead reference in the times of LiLo and Ronson senility!

Much love,

Icon-o-Plastic

Go Medieval on their collective behinds… September 11, 2008

Thus spaketh the Bumbling Bushster of DC. And his word was done. Pervy(of the Musharaf fame) must be sniggering with Rafi’s songs in tow.  Right about now.

“Those bloody Geneva nerds *must* succeed in their cosmos ending experiment coz I can’t take this anymore!”

In a your-ass-is-grass move, the big old cowboy has finally done something right and now its Pakistan government’s efforting to rearrange the deck chairs on the Hindenberg that takes the cake (firni, whatever other dessert you may fancy in the hinterland).(Thank you for that and many others Mr. Colbert)

This has a better viewership generating capacity than any last minute fuggetry by Raikkonen on every F1 track. I demand a reality show around this. Colors TV are you listening? And I almost never say this unless I cough-sypruped* an entire bottle of Absinthe the night before with the right kind of herbal mix for company.

“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” …….“We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.” – A senior army official(like Commander Shears?)

It’s now been proclaimed that Afghani(Pak-army-recruits-turned-Afghani-mujaheeds)militants take shelter in Pakistan. Really dumbkoff? And it took you so bloody long to get that straight.

On the side, its almost time for a Big Bang of a different sort from what Zardari and Co might be experiencing. Or not, in case they are in cahoots with the Big Dummy. The whole world ending experiment as reminded to us by the innumerable omnious incantations on the innumerable Hindi news channels has commenced on a rather bombastic note, don’t you think? And in any case since everybody and their blogging cousins have spluttered incoherently about it, it’s only fair that I – with my very special brand of private but intense astronautical joo joo – must show some timely link love.
Personally though, I still feel that McDee’s McMuffin was a bigger breakthrough and hence should be considered a standard for all scientific breakthroughs ever. Those Large Hardon Collider geeks would do well to oujja board some inspiration gathering from Herb Peterson. And they should do it frequently. Really.

* Bottle to mouth, single shot gulping as in the case of drinking Himalaya cough syrups. Only sick Indians can fully comprehend this. And I meant sick in a non Norman Bates sense.

Bare September 11, 2008

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

- Leonard Cohen(Anthem)

A slice of brilliance entwined with simplicity.

I’ll reserve my snarkiness for another day. Watch this for now.

Note from the director:
Two requests:

1. Ignore the subtitles, please. They’re not done by me. Maybe by the same person who put the video online? Which I’m quite pleased about because I don’t have the rights (to my own fucking film, but that’s a separate story). But yes, do make a conscious effort to ignore them.

2. Watch full screen even if the quality (already bad) is worse. It’s worth it, I’d say.

G:MT September 12, 2008

Now for something personal, penned and published a while ago.

I have become incommunicado, by choice. Exiled. Fenced. Disappeared. From their memories, from their lives. I’ve been cauterized by the overwhelming, exacting scoria disposed of this leftover life. To pen something evocative on a vacant page has suddenly morphed into this colossal task that I’ve purposely deviated from, choosing, instead, to tighten the lid on all that’s bubbling within. Cosmia rising. Ascending peaks of laconic silences. Whispering madness into the damaged pinnae.

Of what consequence is all this yearning? It will always be about finding, rewinding, regretting and finally, relinquishing. All love measures to this. All life unravels the same way. In different quarters.

There is an intense throbbing that everything is turning grayer than the skies outside, that the place of belonging doesn’t really exist but in some forsaken realm of a caduceus spirit. Its withering, this desire to stay and make good of whats given. What if this is not her life?

Body parts merge. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Numbers fall from space. 12, in banal literary gambles that paid off. 30, up in the irreverent smoke that screams his arrival, again. 5, for the blind towns that played reluctant witness to this unfolding. 2, for both of them. 1, for my only me.

Commence the pain. Inner Exit to Eden. Blasphemy, they’d cry! Do not catechize for comprehension. Do not seek. Will not disappoint.

I am a willing victim. I am a capable executioner. I am the fusion experiment, you can’t deny. I am dying in your embrace. I am disintegrating, one metallic piece per second.

I have to find a real antecedent. A better reason. A bigger door.

Life is still breathing remorse in my ears. I think I still am inept at readjusting the “feelings” vector. I am escaping this coz I need to. Not solely coz I want to. To avoid becoming the empty city streets, they never sleep. Or the solitary dawn in my own coffee mug. I feel turned inside out. I can’t procrastinate my living anymore. I shouldn’t. Haggling with Time is no more an option. I can’t wait for the next life to be the real one. Meantime is the Quarantine.

Venture out. Somewhere. Anywhere. But not here. Porcupine Tree for the Inner Music Whore. My words aren’t stringed together, perfectly, yet. My camera is new and my technique raw. But I am ready. In spite of me, I am ready.

“You are not close enough for me to dislike you..”

Is that why you wait for 6 months just to release your venom because of something I wrote or something I said in a fit of anger?
Denial is a bloody consuming game.

And you will find out if this one Love’s caressing some other Lover..

Cry, Beloved Country. Cry. September 15, 2008

Bombed. Again.

I could start with a caveat but that will just dilute my wrath. And I’m in no mood for that.
I spent 30 minutes on the night of 13th Sept tracing friends in Delhi. One of them couldn’t be found. It was a Saturday evening and he is a nocturnal creature. The bombs had taken off in 3 of the more prominent public places in the capital. I just didn’t want things to add up..

My mother’s eyes are misty as she looks at the plasma screen beaming lifesize images of destruction. She lived in Greater Kailash and has fond memories of walking to Connaught Place with college buddies on a lazy weekend, if at all there is such a thing in Dilli. She refuses to pronounce it any other way. She reminisces about how scenic and unforgettable Delhi is in winters. Karol Bagh is where her best friend lived. She still might.

But she possibly can’t connect all of that to the surmounting frenzy and chaos building up on our TV screen.

Did this really happen? Again?

The price your pay for being the world’s largest democracy is a bloody balls-less government. Very soon headlines in most national dailies of this country will declare which cities weren’t torn apart by terrorists. Everybody and their political cousin are condemning the blasts that shook the capital and the rest of the country but clearly that is a whole lot of hot air. We’ve seen the charade far too many times now. It is just not good enough. Who the fuck wants you to“condemn”?
We want you to stop it.
The political system in this country is miles deep in pure shit for playing the kind of gutless and mute spectator it has to the terror perpetrated by an increasingly peccant bunch of fundamentalists. And worst of all, they are operating from within the country. I still remember, about 7 years ago, flaming SIMI posters pasted around my college bus-stop threatening to annihilate the “qafirs”. Open call for mass scale defiance. Unhinged display of superior moral fabric or some such. Nobody was in a bleeding rush to exterminate the vermin when it first made an appearance. This is what happens when you ignore the first cockroach pacing around in your kitchen cabinet. Before you know, the population soars beyond imagination. Secularism suddenly seems a whole lot of hogwash. Yes, I am incredibly bitter. I have every right to be so. This whole forgive-and-move-on mantra is hardly working for us. We are still being hunted like a bunch of blind animals.
Apparently it’s a consolation that only 22 people were killed. Ha! Be happy that the number did not shoot through the roof. Take refuge in the fact that a few were people killed. It a good use of the barter mentality that’s been prevalent for eons. Statistics is often more significant than life.
Indian media is equally spineless. Why are the TV channels unleashing the little errand-boy, who managed to catch a glimpse of the terror triumvirate, upon the rest of the world?
Just to gain a few extra TRP points.
Is that the most ethical or even the wisest thing to do? Hardly. But in your quest for more ad revenue, ethics are the first casualty.
The most irritable of it all is the ticker displaying the “compensation” proffered to the victims and their families. The law makers and keepers grope for clues in the pitch black while the politicos shake their heads like a well orchestrated group of eager to please choirboys. This is not a competition, glassheads!
Seriously, dudes, pull your ankles out of your butts. For a little kid who’s lost about half of her family, 50-fucking-thousand rupees do not make any sense. The most basic of laptops average around that much.
Who are we kidding?
The devastation, the constant shadow of fear and a niggling sense of helplessness, the worse of the lot, is what you are left with in the wake of such a tragedy. We know it. We live it. The Bombay bomb blasts, 7/11, all of it is still fresh in people’s minds. I remember talking to a friend in a communication skills session and suddenly this kid shows up in her class with a stunned expression. And completely wordless. The incident snatched his sense of hearing, forever, but he didn’t think of that as the ugliest part, it was the mental scourge of what had happened that damaged his life permanently.
You hug your kid a little more before leaving the house because of the unsurety that clouds your mind about your safe return from a day at work. You blacklist your neighbors who doubled as your extended family because a few people, who probably have nothing to do with any religion or faith except that smiliar sounding first and last names, have wrecked havoc. You don’t know who or what can and can’t be trusted. That’s the output of something so incredibly vile.
And we are still awaiting some form of justice after two years of what transpired in Bombay. Nada.
Instead we have a new and more heinous, not to mention highly cowardly, sort of violence.
We live in this state, constantly. The climate of Fear. The culture of denial and sweeping things under the carpet. This is our genetic code as Indian citizens. Meanwhile, pot-bellied ignoramuses dedicated to protecting us sit by the roadside hoarding cheap and free noodles from cardboard shindigs, grinning, playing cards or harrassing young couples; all in the name of law.
Most of North Africa is probably safer than any cosmopolitan city in India – a country that takes pride in calling itself the Next Superpower. High ambitions! No amount of nuclear deals can help you keep your head above water in the next elections, dear incompetent mutts. Take my word for it.
Also, run a survey of how many Indians would like the local police force neutered and caged. The percentage of those who agree will be astonishingly high. TOI should take notice for their future polls.
If it wasn’t so downright nausea inducing it would be laughable that the most important question now seems to be that of the Australian team’s safety for some impending cricket crapfest. Bravo! Cricket in time of terror, how entirely lyrical and of course a clear indicator of where our priorities lie as a people. Only in this fucking country does an antithesisreceive such unflinching attention.
I don’t give a damn about the pussyfooting around the issue, the Mumbai spirit – grin and bare it-should not be replicated elsewhere in this country. It reeks of passive and masochist desires to forever play the victim. Its twisted but I think we revel in this. Its not good enough, to simply carry on without so much a grimace or a serious axe to grind with those who are doing this and those who are letting them do it. The terrorists and the government. Hand in glove. Something has to be repaired somewhere because things are mighty awry in this part of the world.
We let go of militants who threaten to, and almost do, blow up our parliament. Though, on second thoughts, that almost seems like a blessing in disguise given the general uselessness of the political cadre. We hide behind banal “human rights” banners to protect utterly repugnant non-humans who are scheming and plotting to maim, kill and impair our children, our parents, our families and us. These are people who are delighted by our destruction. They celebrate it. These are people who are aiming their guns at our public parks, schools and our homes. And no, I didn’t intend for this to sound like a speech mouthed by some deep South Republican vying for American presidency but this is how I really feel right now.
There are serious questions that emerge in the aftermath of another terror strike that has left the country paralyzed.

What will You do about it?
What will I do about it?
What will We do about it?
Is this really the place where I’d want to raise my kids?
I don’t know anymore.
As a 24 year old Indian, I’m starting to lose faith in India.
And that just borders on incredible sadness.

Where chilli powder aided gangrape counts as “molestation” September 16, 2008

Loud silences really don’t convey much except a sense of defeat. This is more than apt in case of  Khairlanji verdict.

Giving its verdict in the 2006 Khairlanji case, the Sessions court has held eight people guilty of murder. It has, however, acquitted three.
Rape acquisition(sic) has not been proved. The court has said that the quantum of punishment will be pronounced on September 20.

Indian legal system makes for a perfect SNM submissive flogging partner, given the amount of beating it enjoys from barbaric scoundrels who repeatedly flaunt their entitled dicks in its face.

Let’s provide with some background as to why this decree smacks of serious B.S.

Here is what occured in a rural Maharastra hamlet.(Btw, Marathaman, Mr Raj-Who Better Than Maharashtrians-Thackrey is probably screwing a sheep right now.)

Surekha Bhotmange was running for her life but was dragged by a mob that stripped the Dalit woman and beat her mercilessly with wooden sticks and bicycle chains. Her head was then banged repeatedly against a wall to ensure her death, according to the CBI charge sheet in the Khairlanji killings that shocked the nation.

Surekha’s 17-year-old daughter Priyanka was dragged out of her hiding in a stable and done to death in a similar manner and so were her two young brothers Sudhir and Roshan – the latter partially blind. While thus killing the four members of the Bhotmange family, the frenzied group was hurling invectives referring to their caste.

( linkage)*

8 proven guilty. 3 left scot free. Charges pertaining to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were thrown out of the court. Of course. Despite that I am not really inclinded towards politicising this whole painful situation, I can’t help feeling incredibly ill at the way this has been handled.

The worst part of the entire episode is that the rape charges against the men( who mercilessly butchered an entire family in public view) did not uphold in a court of law due to “lack of evidence”. It almost plays out like a mediocre Bollywood movie. Apparently, the horror inflicted on the Bhootmange women was merely considered  “molestation” . That’s legal for a little hanky-panky here and there, as this lawyer friend points out. It’s not a synonym for serious sexual assault. Not in the eyes of law, at least. Yes, just molestation. How is that for a particularly blood-curdling pun?
The mother-daughter pair was pinned down to the mud floor and chilli powder was thrown into their eyes to disorient them while they were raped.  Correct me if I am wrong but it’s not always about the quicksand justice meted out to such diabolical bastards(though a speedy judgement does help), it’s also about the real charges that should’ve been proven right in a court of law. Prosecution was sipping pinda coladas as opposed to working on the case?

 Rape is the one of the most toxic crimes and somehow people(read:men) can’t seem to fathom this.

Also, link this entire fiasco to the Dalit discontent that’s been bubbling in various parts of the state(and the country) for a while now. India claims to be constantly riled by what it so lovingly calls ”Naxalite nuisance”, yet it takes events like these to scratch the surface and enable us with the perspective to understand where does all this violence emerge from.
Keep passing such asinine verdicts and watch the surge rise.
Cheers!

 

*- This is an old news report from when this incident actually occured.

Les Assassins des Fauteuils Roulants September 16, 2008

That was one of the reasons I really wanted to study French. It sounded supercool and I was almost 13. You can’t blame me.

DFW  is phenomenal. A geographically separated friend, while discussing this tragic news, mentioned how a lot of people never really got around to reading him little earlier than now. Why must it always boil down to sudden death for a brilliant author to be catapulted into the public gaze?
Though. Better late than never.

Infinite Jest was one of my first prized possessions. It came to me through someone who annoyed me, with unparalleled consistency, by calling me Madame Psychosis. While running through the boarding school’s hidden wildberry garden with shrubs that peeled off your epidermal layer in seconds of establishing contact with it.
Fun times.

It dawned upon me a lot later. The real meaning of that *endearment*. Ahem.

Now, I am must find myself a new copy of Girl With Curious Hair for my sister. She will learn to read it with comprehension in 5 years or so.

The Final Cut September 16, 2008

After one gig in New Orleans, a thief stole all of Pink Floyd’s equipment in a tractor/trailer. Included was Richard Wright’s organ with stacks of effects boxes, a personal assembly. Instead of trying to find all the components again, Richard decided to use conventional components.

Trawling the web enough will get such gems to fore.
This is sad. Because before we all started our slump into indie kitsch and despite whatever alternative shoegazing misanthrope we are listening to right now, in the beginning there was Pink Floyd. Period.

On why I heart Mumbai Mirror September 17, 2008

Exhibit A.

Look at the second question for our rather snippy sexpert.
And the response.

Are you male or female?
Leave your nipples alone.
They are fine!

This sort of balmy riposte inspires much heart in the conuselling abilities of that arcane community loosely referred to as “Indian Sex Therapists”. And of course the original deviants who find sufficient time and courage to go where no man/woman(male/female) may have ventured without a little bit of fear snaking up on his(I can the sniff the maleness of this one) gonads.
A Marshall and Tanners homage will follow.

This is precisely why you shouldn’t drink coffee while reading this blog. Now you need a new keyboard, dontcha?
Ha!

Also, in the papers.

I almost thought I was in a Middle Eastern dictatorship when I read something about termination of Dengue workers. Of course, then I saw this. And that totally sucked the fun out of news.

Winsome journalistic ardor. This is.

Your Body is a Wonderland September 17, 2008

For my darling D. And the issues weighing on my mind.

In two parts.

Part Une: Model Behavior
I recently managed to excavate some really old pictures of mine from a relinquished photo album in my mother’s cupboard. I have quiescent archaeological tendencies and discoveries like these bring me unparalleled joy. The sort that allows me to detach from my inner Kafka for a good 20 minutes. (Dare not smirk, you!)
So, anyway, the pictures chronicle my life from the ages 5 to 16 except for two odd shots, one with my younger sister and another from an old portfolio that was shot when I was hovering 19. It’s the later photograph that got me thinking off tangent(again). That, coupled with a recent shopping excursion.
Let’s start from the beginning, then.
At 19, I was waifish, a twiggy replica albeit more chocolate than vanilla. I am not tremendously tall by Gucci standards; I stand 172 cms in ballerina flats. My height coupled with my weight(lessness?) gave me the undesirable aura of what Lagerfeld was trying so unimaginably hard to re-invent – Heroin Chic. To add insult to injury, I used to be – what some may occasionally refer to as – a “model”.
My modelling stint was short-lived since I have perpetually suffered from ADD and that coupled with my personal conflicts while negoatiating gravity and Newtonian mechanics often led me astray from the catwalk and frequently into the arms/lap of some unsuspecting corporate head honcho who probably was half way to a coronary already after the second bikini clad supernova zoomed by.

The seemingly incongruous point is that I was a reed thin model in the pre historic era of my life and there arose a conflict that has stayed with me till this day. Thinnity doesn’t please members of my family much. As a heady cocktail of part Indian and part latino being skinny is something that either side of my family just doesn’t comprehend or appreciate.
“You got to have the shape, no?” – was my paternal aunt’s frequent bleating over the phone during my teen years. No asking after my well being, just the usual apprehension about my body fat percentage. More is merrier in this club muchachas!
That’s a different kind of latin exchange that even South Central can’t front on.
You dig?
Now, I wasn’t raised on a staple diet of Vogues and Elles and till I was approached by the agency, I was led to believe that Elite was either a prep school for over-privileged nutters or a company that manufactured electrical appliances.
The dichotomous existence I started to lead before the sophomore modelling year was out was most apparent when I’d scamper from one audition to another whilst throngs of skeletal girls were being instructed to “lose the extra inches”(where from? the skin of their teeth?) and then I would come home to a large family(in ways more than one) and their constant shrieks of “You look emaciated” followed by incessant stuffing of my face with everything that’s fried, baked, grilled and sauted on God’s green earth. True love is calorie-blind.
Fortunately I didn’t suffer from any fashionable eating disorders even though I did, with immense sadness, watch a healthy amount of girls succumb to the pressures of fitting into a pair of Chanel’s cigarette pants. Nip, tuck and good luck. That was the mantra. Surgical Santa didn’t climb down my chimney but quite a few of my acquaintances did gift themselves a little uplifting of the spirit and more during many a christmas eve. Sometimes I’d almost feel guilty coz I was naturally thin. Metabolism has been a friend of mine though I wouldn’t have felt abandoned even if it wasn’t the case. The fashion industry can be terribly insular and claustrophobic. Despite the public hossanas in the celebration of unique and diverse looks, everyone ultimately ends up looking like everyone else and if you don’t then you are ostracized. Immediately. Barely out of their cradles, some of the 13 year olds already had furrows entrenched on their pretty little foreheads with the constant measuring of waists and busts.
For me, harmonizing the outside with the inside amounted to tight-rope walking,with the entire Brown Brady Bunch balanced on my shoulders, while they played YMCA in the background. The constant refrain at home was – “ You are thin. Eat something.” As a precarious adolescent you feel suitably schizophrenic trying to comprehend how is that one set of people think of you as scrawny even as another set makes you feel as though you are the cocoa colored, female Chris Farley.
Thankfully, none of it managed to break my sway. Thin or heavy, I was happy either way. I am thankful for la familia because I never felt the need to barf an expensive Italian meal just so I could manage perfectly for the fitting next day.
An ambition to equal Tyra’s tanginess or Naomi’s notoriety came to a screeching halt when in an unfortunate accident, a cup of black coffee ended on a particularly insolent stylist’s head. It was an accident, mind you.
Stepping into the twenties led to two important discoveries.
1) The Second Sex should be read once again and in a different light
2) I have a butt
Thinnity was replaced by femininity. My aunt’s countless prayers to all the patron saints of Womanly Body Parts to bless me with “real breasts” yielded results. Today, I am happily “curvaceous”. Loud yikes to that! The world I inhabit now is slightly more erudite than the one I discarded a while ago so my shape isn’t a chief determinant of my success. My self worth is not directly proportional to the size of my waist. Or so I thought.
After an important and successful client presentation, I made my way to the restroom. The time was 12 am and suddenly I heard muffled sounds of someone heaving. I am usually clueless about bathroom etiquette and so I mumbled my offer of assistance from outside the door to the person in the closed booth. No response. I stepped out to seek the cloakroom attendant but when I came back, the nauseous girl was missing.
A couple of hours later a colleague walked up to me and slyly confessed to the act asking me to stay mum.

“I told myself I wouldn’t eat but I was so nervous bout this client pitch, I overdosed on muffins/donuts/ whatyouhaves. I had to get it out of my system. I feel so large. The other girls looked so nice and slender in their suits.”
She is, by no stretch of my imagination (and I have a fairly elastic mind), large. She has a lovely, girly sorta figure.

I sat down with an undisguised smirk on my face even as I muttered something akin to – “Take care of yourself, its unhealthy..”.
This unsettled me. Enormously. An overt, almost rancorous version of me took over my psyche for a minute or maybe more.
Here I was, a whole 5 years down the line, in the posh environs of a well-heeled corporate establishment working with a team that prides itself as the brain-station for the intellectually sentient and one of the brightest stars on this horizon is essentially a 13 year old anorexic girl from my yesteryears.

It causes serious grief to be informed by every magazine on the stall that I need to “Say no to carbs”. I wonder if they asked for Mz Reagan’s permission before putting their own spin on her 80s campaign catch-phrase. You can’t and shouldn’t eat wheat, rice, pulses, egg white, citrus fruits, egg yolk, zucchini, tomatoes, potato, onions, red food, white food, brown food. To make this a lot simpler just staple your mouth and go live under a rock. You ain’t hot till your ribcage threatens to pierce through your epidermis and you essentially need a license for your pelvic bones, jutting out perilously, coz they are sharp enough for you to declare them at the customs while travelling out of the country. 6 feet Russian runway queens with sunken eyes and pasty skin(and hidden drug pocks) promoted so eagerly by Wintour and co don’t help the trend either. Then again, they are the fashion trailbazers and “regular” was never chic.
Fashion pundits allege that they promote a certain body image because women like watching and men like fantasizing about these stick insects on display and they are in the business of selling so they have to employ tactics to ensure sales.
Partriarchy is a solid enough reason to comply with, isn’t it?
I see women of all shapes and sizes, sometimes even the ridiculously elvin craving for, yes, a still thinner body.
In the Apple age of re-invention, you can never be thin enough. iFat is what haunts every woman despite whatever her weight may be. Its as though body dysmorphia is no more a tormenting psychiatric disorder but an indication of the hip quotient(pun intended)and hot water(and nothing else) has replaced Vietnamese food(or whatever else were we chewing on last time) as the latest culinary trend.
Malfunctions galore.

Part Deux: Because every me is every you

And now about that retail adventure I mentioned earlier.
I walked into a store. A fairly upmarket joint, the kind that caters to cretins with designer-collared Chihuahuas and reeks of offensive smelling incense to make believable the New Age Buddha Bar decor. Upon my arrival, the raucous salesgirl, with the entire supply of Riplon circa 1997 caking her visage, caustically remarks that the sections in front don’t stock anything in my size.
Incidentally I wasn’t even browsing for myself but for a friend obsessed with such grossly overpriced bibs. Usually I don’t relent but she was leaving the country for a while and it was her wedding present and other such soppiness.

But hold on. My size ‘eh? Whats that? Regular?

Everything on that rack would only fit a particularly malnutritioned gamin.

“Do you think am fat or stupid? And you can only pick one?” – I pose my question while thumbing their garish brouchure.
“Err…no ..madam.” She brays.
“Quickly, Betty. Which one is it going to be?” I wink.
“ Sorry ..madam” Words can barely make their way out of her mouth.
“Don’t be. You and I walk the same path in our size 4 chinos.” I smile.

I am 5’8’’ and I weigh 56 Kgs as of now. I was 66 kgs till about two months ago and I have also been 43 kgs at one point in time. No, I’ve never had to establish kinship with nausea to feel better about my body. I like myself just fine. I kickbox everyday and I practice pilates twice a week. I don’t do these things to make or keep myself hideously wiry. I do these things to keep myself fit and also to be ready for any street side scuffles I might get into thanks to my nonstop activism sprees or alternatively just coz I enjoy streetside scuffles. I also binge on curly fries every fortnight and though none of my parts are yet wobbly, however, if there were to be, I’d love them all the same. And I am now reaching for a bowl of toffee pudding ice cream. You should too, once in a while.

Micro-Blogging Address September 17, 2008

Hereshe
Emotion fueled by reason. Link Love while on the go and not sitting upfront.

Enter Gulag September 18, 2008

I commenced reading The Gulag Archipelago. Finally. It’s fairly ambitious of me to want to finish this 3 volume giant in record time. Despite a little bit of research that goes into every book that I pick up, this is far more brilliant than I’d have thought. Also, I have registered that I am showing a very strong inclination for books pertaining to wars, prisons and assorted crimes, these days. Vonnegutian fever returns? Perhaps. If I actually believed in psycho-analysis then I’d concur with those around me that it’s choices as mutant as these that lead to my infinite singledom.
Well, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is far better company than half the men I meet in this city, so no apparent harm.

The literary genius of certain writers sometimes acts an impediment for normal, non-lit grad bookends whilst actually reading them. More so in the case of a reclusive Russian, I reckon. Someone pointed out that the book is a study in “angry prose”. I have yet to draw conclusions. I confess that I am a compulsive book hoarder and possibly could go a step further to insert that much maligned self description – I am an avid reader. Biblophile or not though, sometimes, the serious emotional strain that a book can put on you is positively threatening and chimerical and hence exceedingly enticing. It’s almost a personal triumph to get through something like that. An honest account of a colossal, mass tragedy stirs something within you that can’t be countered easily by closing the chapters and putting the tome away. (James Frey, art thou listening?)

The KGB seized one of only three extant copies of the text still on Soviet soil – this was achieved by torturing a dissident Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, Solzhenitsyn’s typist who knew where the typed copy was hidden; within days after she was released by the KGB, she hung herself on 3 August 1973. (Linkage)

Meanwhile, cutting down on some of the acerbic commentary here, probably because when you are writing for human rights journals that chronicle disease, death and drugs you can’t afford the sardonic tone that usually colors everything that comes out of your being.
Tragedy, I tell you.

Also, this whole Sarah Palin brouhaha is endlessly frustrating and slap-worthy. Yet, the fun part of this exercise is that now I can backtrack it to Smile When You Are Lying which contains a rather wicked and succint observation of why Alaska has almost never managed to send a liberal to the Senate. By the eternally outrageous Chuck Thompson, of course.

Updated: Hereshe

I-m-modest September 25, 2008

I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer,
I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To everybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute—and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable (wo)man!
And I can’t think why . . .

Garnish it with a hint of child abuse…and your religious farrago is ready to be served September 26, 2008

I am a rude atheist and that saves me from the obligatory hedging that may otherwise be necessary for a post like this.
As someone who is unabashedly referred to as a militant feminist, with or without a premise, a plentitude of things piss me off on a daily basis. But none more than this utterly befuddling enterprise.
Who allows for such obvious abuse to occur without batting an eyelid?

I’ll be the first to admit that religious banalities do not make sense to me, possibly because I wouldn’t venture so far as to actually waste time with them. It doesn’t interest me. Children’s rights do. I have a 13 year old sister, the same age as this newly minted “sadhvi”, who is  the devil’s incarnate most of the times and I seriously wanted to set her up for an adoption when she was 2 and I was 12. I even made enquires at the TOI classifieds hotline if children were allowed in the commodities section.
Of course, that failed and she continues to jump on me every morning without fail. Her own sweet way of waking me up.
So given all of that, I can’t help the juxtaposition.

As a hyperactive kid, her daily routine encompasses activities as varied as basketball and art classes and the usual hour and a half of daily cribbing about how “no one loves her” when we refuse to give into her whims. Which is rarely ever.

This other 13 years old who has renounced the world, is not allowed take baths, has to walk barefoot(occasional cloth sandals be damned, it’s as good as bare), doesn’t even have the basic amenities in place and has to pee in a basin. As a semi-parent and more importantly as a woman, this bothers me immensely.

I am no pundit when it comes to the nitty gritty of Jain diksha. I have done some reading on transtheism to know and appreciate parts of the epistemology that serves as the kernel of this particular sect.  I’ll also readily admit that some of it is mind-bogglingly awry.
I’ll also confess to being fairly interested in exploring this brand of metaphysical platitude before I discovered kickboxing. All of that unrequited spiritual questing reached an effective fruition with the punching bag in close proximity.
Sacred threads of the conversation aside, I do find it repugnant to indoctrinate young kids and forcefully (psychological pressure can’t not be accounted for) convert them into ascetics. And that’s exactly what this bloody mess tantamounts to. I really don’t much care about the whole “it was her choice” argument either.
If she chose to shoot up crack, would they be as obliging?

It would be a matter of choice, after all. That’s what they’ve proclaimed.

Though, what choice is it?

“When child has no rights to vote or to make any legal decision on its own till 18 and needs parental consent, how can the child make this decision to renounce the world. Does a child of 8, even understand what lies ahead?” – Nishit Kumar(Activist, Childline)

Godbags of yore and the steeped-in-orthodoxy gurus of the iPhone age have aligned themselves with the “devout” followers of Jainism to protect their religious interests. Pot bellied gents from near and far are congregating in ritual halls to disseminate half baked wisdom (self concocted, of course) on this usually gentle faith. People are traversing through geographical boundaries to gather in my city so that they can advocate this acutely barbaric practice.
The larger Jain community, for most part, supports this. And that’s enough to send a tsunami of shivers down anyone’s spine.
Religious abrasions on the skin of humankind can’t be disguised in a hurry. This, too, is consistent with good religious behavior in some parts of the world. That doesn’t make the practice any less gory.

Disturbing Moral of the story: Support convoluted religious zeal. In the meantime, kids can go to hell. Or attain moksha. Or whatever.

The violent details of this intricate diksha-grahan are hard to digest. This kid had her hair plucked out, one strand at a time. She claims that didn’t hurt. But, of course. And all you shameless hussies scream bloody murder while threading. Then again, this child has been adequately tutored to hand over any personal ideas of freedom or liberation she might have originally gathered through her own experiences in life. She has lived with adult gurus since she was 6. No exposure to what it actually means to be 6 or 8 or 13. She doesn’t mention her mother or her younger siblings in conversations with the lawyers of children’s welfare committee’s rep.

What if this was a good way for the parents to barter their girl child for some serious religious props?

I am trying very hard to maintain a rational viewpoint and not cast aspersions but mostly in vain.

If she really knew what it means to be a child, would she still opt for this predicament?
And that’s exactly what it is. A socio-religious quandary.

This I knew prior to reading about it since my mum is actually some sort of an authority on Jain traditions and religious practice. Her frequent trips to Pawapuri to attain more knowledge on Jain way of worshipping, have aided me a little while analyzing this placebo.
Yet, I really don’t grasp the significance of making someone suffer terribly in their present life just so they can achieve enlightenment after they are done living.

My limited acquaintance with austere Jainism notwithstanding, a peculiarly bizarre incident springs forth from the caverns of memory. I was on my way to some odd spur-of-the-moment trekking jaunt and right before I could haul the backpack and myself into the already speeding bus in front of me, I had an errant hand pull me back. Before I could wrap my head around the hullabaloo ensuing around, I saw naked jain “sadhus”(read:young men with facial hair) passing through the street. I was asked by the owner of that very ugly hand to step back and so that they couldn’t see. I was enraged and piqued, so I called my Jain liasion to do a little QnA and she informed me that a woman is not supposed to cross the hermit’s path because that could lead to arousal or some such.
Ahem. In other words, you can’t control your stick but you want me to duck and hide so that dirty thoughts don’t set home in your head.

What can I say?

The philosophy abandons me completely.

You think of a caption September 26, 2008

Pic via 1x

 

Updated: 

Skinny Latte: “I just went to a fortune teller!
She said i’m very charmed (and that means?), life is full of exotic travel… but to avoid China..”

Nihilist Waffles: “This (showing her the picture above) is why you shouldn’t travel to China.”

I had a Zen moment after seeing this photograph and I somehow better comprehend the occupation of Tibet. And why no western nation dare meddle.

This girl alone can kick an army to the curb. I’d be afraid to tread. Very afraid.

Because we bring the gay September 29, 2008

There was some ensuing noise somewhere about the wonderful possibility of eradicating the institution of marriage . I forget where since I am in a ginger tea induced stupor. Yes, I am a pekoe drunk belle far niente. Deal with it later.

On the topic of making redundant marriage(or making marriage redundant?), I have precious little to offer. I am not married, I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t spend a lot of time contemplating it. Food and travel rate significantly higher on my list of things to obsess about. Closely followed by feminism, technology and behavioral sciences. All those combined is why I will never marry, I guess.

I do muse, wondrously, how is that it’s usually the happily married-we-got-our-mugs-on-our-mugs-and-have-matching-curtains-and-crockery-that-would-shame-most-BnBs-in-the-state-of-Virginia type of people who usually feel the need to extrapolate about the impotence of this “social construct/necessary evil”. To them I’d say – Yes and you forgot Poland. Ruminate.

Book buying frenzy shows no signs of immediate arrest. I picked Gunter Grass, Banana Yoshimoto, Luigi Barzini and Nadine Gordimer. And a dozen others. Also, I am really looking forward to picking up the The Jewel of Medina, if it ever makes to a bookstore near me. I know for sure that no Barnes and Nobles across United States of Dementia is stocking it, so I can’t possibly bribe an upstart up north to get it for me. Gah!

In the middle of all that bibliophilic glow that usually makes my face appear softer and more tolerable than it normally is, I saw something priceless. A copy of People, the Indian version.

Lo! and behold, homo-erotic front-pages have never looked better or, well, so homo-erotic. Our gilded Olympians, the erstwhile boxer and the wrestler, are in some sort of a WWE meets Playgirl grip that will bring early Christmas joy to many a gay heart. Men, of course.

Unfortunately, I have searched all the lands in all the internets to procure an online rendition, but to no avail. Much sobbing.

The inside of the magazine is splattered with more bare-bodied hugging and some serious m/m love. I am delighted. I really am. In a country that’s still debating, the repealing of Section 377, this is a harbinger of good times. Finally, I can say this with much affection – Congratulations to Indian Publishing!

We bring the gay.

Counter-point

Actually. No, we don’t.
The central government is yet not consumed by the yuletide/diwali/ramadan spirit and still holds reservations(hold it: a pun!) against the homosexuals.

“Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it,” … “It (decriminalizing homosexuality) may create breach of peace. If it is allowed then evils of AIDS and HIV would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to big health hazard. It would degrade moral values of the society,”

- Additional Solicitor General P. P. Malhotra.

Pee Pee is bang on the money. And if you wanton wench type people don’t see it then you are bigger pisspots than he is. Not that I would ever call him a pisspot, even if I thought he was. And I don’t think he was or is. Or something.
So, there.

Tough.

Forget what those pesky epidemiologists say about AIDS, this by far is the best way to put the brakes on it.
As a nation we must support this ideology. Else, soon we will be overtaken by a platoon of well coiffeured and nice smelling homosexual men, armed with strawberry lip-glosses and copies of Elle Decor, clad in a charcoal gray Armani jackets or alternatively a nice pinstripe suits trying to force good taste and an appreciation for opera into our simple ways. Blasphemy.

And what about those gay women?
I heard they pray at the altar of Pottery Barn. Pagan furniture worshippers!

*Shriek*

How do they even do it? (asked by a B.Tech, much grimace distorting his face)

Sexual perversity in Mumbai?
We can’t. We mustn’t.
Let’s restrict it to natural carnal acts.

I extended this post after I got this nagging little email from a *gay* person I know of. (If the government is reading this, then I absolutely DO NOT condone of such *sickly* practice.)
The gays and their whining, oh! we aren’t treated like people. We are normal people, blah, blah, blah. What’s normalcy in regular hetero eyes anyway? It’s not till you’ve fudged a couple of marriages and abandoned a few dysfunctional kids that you have even gained acquaintance with normalcy. So, homos of the sapiens, YOU aren’t normal. Sock it, really!

Anyway, this nagging *gay* person was disgruntled about the way this whole situation has shaped up(down?).

“I am a criminal for wanting to be with someone who just so happens to be a boy. All because, I too, am a boy. So, I can’t/shouldn’t love him?”

Of course not. Young laddie, that’s a serious crime. Loving people. Why! All you amorous *gay* persons must be banished from the kingdom for your illicit “love”, with necks tied to the shins, no less. Red torture style.
Also, what is this schmaltzy crap of wanting to be with someone?
Take a leaf out of the books of those thousands of unfaithful heterosexual couples incrementing like beggars outside a mosque.
Find yourself a girl you can cheat on. Forget this *perverted* line of thought.
Being with a boy! Hah!

For all of you *lesbian* persons. (I can’t even say that out loud without wanting to soap my own mouth with Margo, which btw has neem extracts to keep your skin oil free, the gays told me this too.)
You disgust me.
Vile. Vile. Vile.
I saw Fire, and though I got really excited at one point in time (but they didn’t do anything and that totally killed my mojo*), I absolutely abhor the concept of *lesbian* persons. Such persons are the plague of the society. How dare they not desire copulation with hirsute, virile, Indian men with efficient sperm count?
Isn’t it God’s will that we engage in locking lips, organs et al to reproduce?
Will God ever forgive us for actually making love for, say, pleasure?
Self expression and freedom are hardly what Nature intended for the most evolved being of the species.
Unnatural transactions, I say. There is a reason we have dicks running amok. You *lesbian* persons just don’t appreciate the abundance of dicks in the Indian society.
Bad.

Pedophilia, rape and human trafficking can wait for the time being. So can illiteracy and unemployment because we must first gut the sodomites. This is a far more serious issue orbiting our national conscience.
And what a clear conscience it is.

*- My Fire was cut. I didn’t even get to the good stuff. Edited DVD it seems. I should’ve sought a refund.

Global Comment September 30, 2008

Something I wrote is now on Global Comment courtsey the very lovely Natalia Antonova.

Sharp!

Updated:

The answer to the $700 bn question is - No.
See, now my tear ducts will go into overdrive.

Can you imagine what those poor banker type people will have to weather?
No more the measly benefits of millon dollar bonuses or swanky soccer stadium sized limos?
My heart breaks. Crack.

Just when the gringos were inching towards calling Paulson, ”Baron Von Moneypants”.

Bans and Kissing Girls October 1, 2008

T and I were huddled like two enormously ugly masai ostriches in the Nambian bushes when Katy Perry and her much analyzed anthem about kissing girls exploded on the TV screen.
T, the erudite observationist, made an erudite observation.

“..She kissed a girl. So did my mother. And a good 30 years before her silver knickers were born.
Is this supposed to be hip?”

Ahem.

Also, What is this talk about banning of RSS?
Something about extreme right wing activities.
That’s powerful.
Do we mete an equally cruel death to Atom too?
How the hell will people subscribe to insipid blogs like these?

Or is it some other kind of RSS.
I’m pretty sure I’m not following this.

God is Dead October 1, 2008

.. McDonald’s has replaced him. Or something. Nietzsche didn’t eat a Maharaja Mac in his life or else his quote would have ended differently.
Anyway.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s razor is not a disposable one.
I don’t know where that came from but it’s been circumnavigating the corridors of my mind for a while asking to be spit out eloquently in one of the posts.
I’ve noticed the rather sprightly ascent of communalism in recent times. Now if only the global economic markets could borrow a few leads from the communal front, we’d all be gay, err, happy. I was privy to an excellent photographic selection of gory imagery with just the right dosage of “those militant Hindus” underlining it to inspire helluva “liberal” and “minority” wrath. Due obescience paid at the altars of Blame Them deities. It’s the new fad to gnaw at each other’s sentient arm every given opportunity and chew it off, piece by piece. Feral tendencies are “in” this winter.

I am sure I don’t count in the vote bank politics so my actual opinions on this subject are neither courted nor considered relevant by the politburos. I am a godless, born-to-the-majority-religion-converted-to-godlessness-ideology in a country where political forces alternate between snuffing out the “minorities” or placing them on hallowed pedestals. All the while, very carefully, disallowing any attempts at dissolving that whole “majority-minority” issue altogether.

In troubled times that much maligned species of progressive liberals – Class Liberalia, Genus Libre – is possibly more at risk of extinction than any majority or minority community in this country. That term “Liberal” needs to be declared into a witness protection program for having witnessed some serious crimes against it’s own self and continues to watch the perpetrators still at large. People are flinging it loosely, arm-twisting, brutalizing, vandalizing, assaulting and generally abusing it as much as they possibly can. In some social circles my first name evokes disgust while in others my second. Combined together they probably make most zealots want to either kill me or commit suicide. Or do both simultaneously. I’m an atheist and I have fine tuned my personal beliefs to – “God is not the root cause of evil, Evil is the root cause of God.”

After channeling Diagoras of Melos and Barbara Ehrenreich for a while I devised an utterly austere solution.
If you want to avoid church burning, bomb blasts and temple stampedes, just institutionalize atheism. This movement towards the ubermensch must be signalled by turning everybody into godless wretches. Kryptonite for the current communal snafu. Do this and you will never have to deal with another charred train or angry mobs. Also, this is relatively easier than any social awareness run the very able central government may choose to run. The government doesn’t need to do much except run a quick PSA in an Ekta Kapoor daily –

“We currently have no more Gods in this country. Amitabh Bachchan included. Right this moment we commence our term as an atheist democracy. You can thank us later by donating to Rahul Gandhi’s matrimonial fund. Much Love. Sonia Gandhi Dr Manmohan Singh”

This message can be recorded and relayed from some European or American shindig where Dr Singh would feel more at home given the amount of time he spends in these areas, ralliying support for nuclear deals and designer pugs.

So there you have it, right there, thats how you solve a crisis as deep as this. Righteous indignation is all very pretty and awe-inspiring but seriously, you want to risk those frown lines ? In the words of Chris Tucker, Hell No!
Atheism for healthy wrinkle free skin. No Gods. No Botox. Just good, smooth, shiny epidermal bliss.

Now, allow me to continue with my delightful sales pitch in favor of nationalizing Atheism.

Currently, the debate between right wing extremists from all forts is that their God is the only god. Or gods. Their God is prettier and mightier than theother god. Or gods. They are faster, better and more kinetic than other god. Or gods. In short, each thinks that his/her God is the Energizer bunny of all Gods. You mess with my God and he’ll send a thunderbolt down your ass. We all know that given the state of healthcare reform, hip surgeries are not an option.. so, if you made all Gods redundant wouldn’t it automatically sieve out any prospects of athletic competition between the Gods of all forts as well as eliminate all possibilities of lightning striking your butt?
It totally would.

Ignoring the usual pejorative(yeah, atheism and this word is like OJ’s hand in glove. Or not.) undertones and the whole “Oh! You are going to HELL for not believing in it, you godless sodomite!” argument(it’s intelligence never to be doubted of course, coz if anything can make someone change their mind about evolution, birth control and abortion, it has to be the prospect of frying in a large vat of oil, especially now that it’s cheaper by the barrel) that may color this idea otherwise, I also would like to present other concrete ideas as to why atheism is desirable.

To start with ..

I’ve always believed that if you can be an atheist and still care for people, you’re a hundred times more selfless and genuine than anybody tickled in the back of the throat by the suggestion of divine disfavor, however subtle.

Technically not my idea but that of a well educated person I was talking to a while ago. Then again, this blog isn’t read by well educated people so why must we stoop to their level and make logical analytics the order of the day. That kind of intellectual excogitation bounces off my head like light on a shiny, bald surface, so I shall dig for more reasonable reasons.
Like this one.

Atheists, in my experience, look far dishier and have better fashion sense than the religious banshees.

This is what an an Atheist looks like

This what an Un-Atheist looks like

See the difference?
If not entirely convinced by this case study, mail me and I shall revert with my picture and thou shall be done!

The other good thing about Atheism is a significant decrease in the gargantuan traffic jams on religious days – and India is a hotbed of these type of days – when you want to pull out your car’s rearview mirror with your teeth, break it into shards and then scrape your face with the pieces. And then fling those pieces at other commuters.

It will also reduce the 375 government holidays in year that currently dot every government institution’s calendar. This is from a purely selfish standpoint. It will help fulfill my life long dream of owning a landline phone connection, a dream I have cherished for as long as I could spell Alexander Graham Bell. A dream that has been cruelly deferred because recurring festivities have ensured that the request is forever postponed. My application is pushed further and still further till they are done with Aastmi, Navami, Eleventnami, Bhai Dooj, Vat puja, Peepal Puja, Chhoti Id, Badi Id, mid-sized Id etcetra.
What else?

This, perhaps.

“All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.” – Baron d’Holbach

If that’s the case and say invoking Atheism ultimately turns us into children -at least mentally – then we, the middle of the class, can settle our scores by more evolved methods as opposed to battling it out with the judicial system as we currently do. Like mud eating contests and pro wrestling death grip matches. The bad kids could be made to sit on garbage cans and chased around the yard with iron knuckles. Courts could be abolished and lawyers made redundant. I know, they already are, to a large extent but this is the final solution.
This kind of legal remedying will be speedy and suspect to little or no misappropriation. The genius of it, I tell ya!

Also, absence of religion can prevent large contingents of growing up kids in the Indian sub-continent from listening to the nerve-grating “Bhagwanji/God/Whoever gave you to me as a gift so mustn’t do naughty things” refrains. Just tell them that playing doctor-doctor with the neighbor’s daughter is no way to ascertain a medical future instead of this pungent mollycoddling.

I had more illuminating points to make but in this sweltering heat I am at the risk of losing my second brain cell to the irradiation caused by constant cell phone usage (I don’t have a landline connection. YET). I am being called by people who inform me that I need to pay INR 500 for a Durga Pujo celebration where I will be forced to ingest huge amounts of Bengali sweets that I may or may not like, all of it made in desi ghee. And after that I need to shell out another 1000 odd to buy an Iftar gift for a friend who will then force feed me at least 6 kilograms of homemade biryani in return. Followed by creamy custard pudding.

Yes, religion is not ideal for the folds on the wallet and the waist. Plus the clashes.
Off with it!

May the Force be with You.

Kaisan ba meets Arrigato. Yo! October 2, 2008

It’s now a bloody Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

At this point in time any long-tailed posts about terrorism would be an exercise in futility.

But there is always something to make us feel a little happier for being an Indian.

Sankaralingam Jagannathan and his wife Krishnammal are among the five winners of the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “alternative Nobel prize”.
The two run an organisation called Land for the Tillers’ Freedom.

Also, Japan’s Madhubani homage.
This is a good sign ahead of my Japanese excursion. So long as they like merchandise from Bihar, I shall have a good stay.

The ignorant will, of course, ask pointless questions like what exactly is Madhubani art?
There.

The more important question is elsewhere.
Does this mean that Raj of the Thackrey fame is going to dispatch some particularly efficient rioters to good ole Nippon territory. He must at least contemplate it.
In the name of Maratha power, we can’t let them get away with this.

Megan Fox doesn’t have a dong October 3, 2008

..but she is as good as the boys. And she said so herself.
The world’s sexiest woman is actually a man with a vagina

Who knew that it would eventually boil down to B grade starlets to take forth the Trans Revolution?
But someone in the know informs me that, that wasn’t what she meant.
She was just trying to endear herself to the GQ readers of near and far. After all, decent PR is tres more significant than, say, women’s rights movement that took 20 steps backwards after this glorious declaration.
Partiarchy has been strong and rigid for a couple of hundred years now, so why not sit in it’s baronial shadows and shoot some asinine verbal darts to garner that much needed publicity. Let the uglies deal with the feminist agenda. Ain’t that right honeypot?
Permanently naked Hollywood nymphets and their dexterous foot-in-mouth actions deserve a special place in the Ukranian circus.

“That’s the upside of dating a woman that’s almost a man. She likes the same things that you like, but she has a vagina.”

Oh dearie! Where do we commence the correction surgery on this one?
I guess the easiest way to do this is through an open letter.
And I am really going on a limb with the assumption that this one is actually a literate person.

Dear Megan Fox(or whatever canine suffix you prefer)

You are NOT Angelina. I just wanted to get that out of my system.
You will never be, even if you claimed to be a poly-bi chola girl from the roughest part of LA who doubles up as  John Claude Van Damme’s personal dominatrix.
As far as this whole man-I-feel-like-a-man-with-a-vagina situation, really now, why must you even go there?
Playing games and watching sports and drinking beer are no more bastions of unbridled maleness. Those in possession of the female genitalia are fully capable of differentiating between Atari and Nintendo. And a kick off and a throw in. We sometimes go so far as to, shudder, playing “sports” and very frequently we kick the butts of those who are in possession of the male genitalia. Penis, as you might refer to it your land.
Also, let me break it ever so gently to you – Real Women with Real Vaginas drink beer too. And no, we don’t feel like exerting unnecessary pressure on the gender binary or tom-tomming our inherent “masculine” side because we just so happen to do these “male things”.
My lovely vulpine inanity, here is a pathbreaking suggestion – Why don’t you concentrate of forming something that resembles an original personality rather than bask in Angelina “She was so cool coz she kissed women and kicked man butt and wore blood viles and visited SnM dens and then adopted kids from every forsaken country and somewhere in the middle snagged Brad Pitt” Jolie’s leftover glory. Just don’t take after your sunken idol in her “real nerves on display” skeletal figure department.
Go load up on some Wienerschnitzels and cream puffs before an unfortunate and/or confused newby from a Mexican medical school comes after you with a scalpel (no)thanks to your current shape or his broken glasses. Or maybe both.
And really, like totally, just SHUT UP.

Love,
A woman who is a woman with a vagina.

Circles October 10, 2008

 

Well I stand at the crossroads
Of highroads and lowroads
And I got a feeling it’s right

 

……………………………………………….

The inherent soppiness can’t be done away with till I physically take a break. Condescending to posting pop song lyrics is indicative of serious intellectual depletion and emotional confusion.

I take a break. Now.

On choosing a certain kind of necessary deprivation October 13, 2008

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

If you don’t know him, get off my blog!

With this ring I thee bed October 15, 2008

I am of the “marriageable” age and yet my gamophobia shows no signs of receding. Perturbed as I am with the larger population’s need to set me up with eligible bachelors on a bi-weely basis, hiding is no more an option.
Yes, with woe in my heart I admit; I need someone to hold my head while I throw up after a particularly fun night painting the town scarlet. Companionship is much required during those moments.
On the side though, I have been meaning to invent an eloquent diatribe for a while but I’m all spent this week no thanks to dumping two boys successively, getting inked in a particularly painful place and generally developing a huge crush on this supersmart girl who doesn’t even live in my city. So, forgive my less than regular irrationaility.

As it’s widely acknowledged, my general lack of finesse(knowledge is more like it) while outlining marital fine points is notorious. I dare not speaketh of the M-word; the bi-syllabic utterance makes me run faster than OJ being chased by LAPD. But like all good Indian girl type persons, I too am looking forward to the day when am decorated a la Christmas tree in Trenton and subsequently proceed to make some lucky sod desperately miserable for the rest of his life.
Loverly stuff.

Given the dire circumstances that I am choosing to blabber on this precarious subject, it’s al dente, at best.
There has been much noise recently – in the media and generally everywhere – about live-in unions getting legal blessings in India. A particularly worried reporter from TOI chronicled the perils of this drastic step – It will encourage promiscuity. Shudder! I almost fainted. As a morally ambiguous type Indian person, I am very afraid of the possibility that every time two random strangers (not for each other but for me, of course) decide to test the waters for a long term relationship by sharing an apartment and legal rights, I will get relatively “promiscuous”.
Who knows, it may even make me want to start nude farms and streak at IPL matches. I’m just saying.
I reckon, and this reckoning is in no way an exhaustive summary of all that will go South in this country with this twisted new law, I am slightly upset with the constant moral collapse of the society I am forced to live in. No, really. I am foaming at the mouth, quite literally. Probably coz my sister substituted toothpaste with hand wash but that’s not the point. Like they say in Spain, We need to puncture this bull’s spine right away and live-in legalization is the next topical problem for this country. Other than The Gays, of course.
To let people wet their palate with some heady swigging of “marital bliss” without actually buying the bottle. Sacrilege. Why! I have never heard of a thing so absurd!

Who does it anyway?
Demented people, thats who!
People who actually think that they can hang on to their freedom and still establish a loving partnership without appeasing the Higher Dick-tats of Societal PoohBahs. And those who want equal rights. Insipid mutts!
Well, such people can stuff a sock in the socket coz it ain’t never going to happen.
In order for long term interpersonal romantic sort of relationships to flourish, we need a firm nod by the society and large familial receipts and lavish money burning ceremonies(aka weddings). In short, We need marriages.
We MUST not allow for our moral fabric to be unwoven and despoiled like this. We are good Indian people and must restrict all our copulatory and cohabitory activities to the confines of the matrimonial prison. I don’t care how badly it turns out for you. You should never live in sin. Committing it occasionally is acceptable though. Even if you are stuck in a marriage born straight out of Satan’s womb and it’s eroded your self-respect or any sense of liberty or individuality completely, please keep holding your “I Heart Matrimony” placard high above your head. Don’t forget to smile innocently for a good phot-op while you are doing this. Also, stick to exchanging saliva and other assorted bodily fluids only after you’ve exchanged rings.
Jessica Simpson did it, so how hard can it be?
Marriage is the only way that two people should be able to bicker bout property rights and monetary compensation. If you must go to court and fight extended battles for alimony, there is some purpose to your life.
Enlightenment occurs. Marriage is not just any damned form of incarceration. It is The Prison. Alcatraz of all the convoluted societal institutions we are conditioned to acknowledge and love, with much gusto. Additionally, it also adds to your street cred like nothing else. Walk into a bar, there is an army veteran, a former special agent and a married person. Who do you think has suffered the most? Hah! See, it helps elevate your social status a good 50 notches. Word!

Never mind that anthropology regularly has proven, and there is a sufficiently large body of proof, that human beings are essentially polygamous by nature, ergo marriage may not exactly be the natural progression for a male-female equation. It’s usually thrust upon us.
No, we must not listen to science because it teaches us bad things. Like evolution and the fact that God’s wrath doesn’t cause AIDS.
So there.
Dammit! Can we please just stick to moralizing everything till it bleeds to oblivion and dissipates anyway?
That’s the best defense against scientific or intellectual arguments since it requires the least amount of brain-jogging. And for Beezy’s sake, our intellectual faculties don’t need the additional stress after watching and dissecting the last elimination episode of Big Boss while plotting graphs of Shah Rukh’s career and Imran Khan’s HQ*.
Seriously, we don’t need any more thinking for ourselves, so save us Fraud!

I demand that we reverse this live-in law. Primarily because I can’t stand it. Also because We are being swept away by a bunch of bred-in-the-West liberals who are hell-bent on devouring the “sacro-sanct” entity of marriage. Think of all the bastard kids that could result from such evil unions.
Can you imagine the onslaught?

Such children will have deep psychological scars rendering them very vulnerable to the possibility of turning into criminals with a multiplicity factor of 9 – 10.

Worse still, some of them may even end up authoring imperious and jarring blogs, such as the one you are reading right now.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so!

*Hotness Quotient

My Dad’s Gift October 17, 2008

Musiqua.
Earl Hines. Or Bossa Nova.
A slice of music.
Charms wrapped in cellophane. Or a blue rhythm dancing on a mahogany table.
The notes spill over from a Celtic goblet – dipped in liquer, perhaps stoli.
Drunk music.
A cut through a song. And a cultic cure for the ailing spirit.
The fierce rapture of Nada Brahma, divine damage and the retraced path to reconstruction.
The rebuilt stature from earth’s magma to the opulence of nature.
Couplets piercing a stone’s heart, left singing in the Rock Valley. Dent in Order and a mark on Time’s inner thigh.
A Hymn of heavens – supine combustion sings of a slow churning of desire in Her devout chest.
Crests and troughs.The oblivion embowering calm. And vice versa.
Distortion along the edges of a metallic razor. Stings and sings and repeats it all.
The interregnum.
Pages of Ages. Written on the gaunt faces of redolent paper. Slam Poetry and the harmony to accompany the main course of verbal rapidity.
Sound- open to interpretation.
Silence- open to relocation.
Either in lieu or in abundance of the familiar auditory metaphors and despite a kinesthetic demeanor. Music lifts me up.
Completely.

This could’ve been a month of Saturdays October 18, 2008

..but it’s not. Depraved and Insulting English makes this a lot lighter and eventful than it ideally should be.

Inner Dj’s spinning “Black Magic” on a loop (and I know that sufficient patience would help me unearth Urban Dictonary’s entry for this) and a lot of M.I.A right now.

Fractals.
Funk Carioca. Satori. Duende. Santeria. Bossa Nova(yes, yes, I know I repeat!). Darvesh. Gaia Hypothesis. Morphine(the band not the drug, though that wouldn’t be half bad either). Bombay’s Tadibya. I must be. Swollen Members(again, the band people!). Hip Hop. And another Hop. Mos Def. Darkest Light. Henri Cartier Bresson. The Decisive Moment. Purchase of a pair of designer strides. Yes. Decisive, indeed.

And a soft plunging into loud rants – “As long as You break hearts, it’s love enough for You.”
How 16 are they?
Plenty, apparently.

Hating this weekend: Exotica peddling, I-smoulder-therefore-I-devour “ethnocentric” poets(women mostly). And the fact that they(publishers mostly) are allowing such genetic discrepancies to get away with it.
If You are Mother Earth then I insist upon using every single polyethylene product available in the market to speed up your timely implosion.
No, really. I mean it.

Body of Lies.. October 21, 2008

..and plenty of other bodies line the circumference of this experience. The 90 minutes something extravaganza comes with enough “bodies” stretching across the Near Eastern chorography to make you think you were a post mortem specialist.

Somewhere in this rather patchy flick, Russell Crowe’s potbellied, microphone-loving, soccer dad-cum-CIA head honcho mouths off a fairly glossy, yet compelling statement – “They don’t want to negotiate.”
That’s the crux of the story. It’s not-so well preserved nucleus.
They, of course, are the terrorist squads hell bent of razing to dust “Western infidels/Capitalist dogs”, headed by a nefarious Al Saleem person(based on the notorious Zarakawi from the highest echelons of the Al Qaeda). These terrorists of the Islamic kind must be stopped. Enter Gringo – Leo Di Caprio. The rest is mystery! Or maybe not.
There has been a spate of Hollywood magnum opuses about lone American rangers infiltrating ranks amongst Middle Eastern terrorists and government agencies(simultaneously) to further Uncle Sam’s cause of wiping terrorism off the face of the planet. At least the American planet.
In Ridley Scott’s flawed but earnest fusion of Syriana with Munich with The Bourne Trilogy, something goes terribly amiss through the second half and you feel as though the director is piling explosion upon explosion to possibly seek an exit through the debris. This, he never really manages to find.
Body of Lies is watchable, at least once. It is. It’s not a masterpiece and the mediocrity bullet manages to graze it a little bit but you will live. The problem with this film, as with most American slick flicks about Roarke styled protagonists, is it’s weak research. And the usual jingoistic parade that is often the culmination of a possibly serious effort to diagnose a rather insidious issue. The movie shifts trajectory frequently. Geography and psychology wise. Syria, Amsterdam, Turkey, Jordan and good ole Virgina. The seemingly selfish CIA boss and his burdened-by-a-lopsided-altruistic fervor reportee have their moments. The verbal rabblerousing engages in parts and the chemistry between DiCaprio and Crowe plays to a different beat as compared to the one DiCaprio’s and the sizzling Mark Strong share. The polarity is captivatingly obvious.
Hani Salim is tranquil as an ocean before the torrent is unleashed. He inhabits that minute, generates the precise feeling of trepidation within the watcher. His eyes are magnetic and his words, minimal. His potential to hurt is evident. His power unquestionable even if his methods are. He reigns. And he is hot too!
Much of the movie is slapdash. It’s riveting upon commencement and suddenly Scott starts to get uncomfortable with the direction in which he ideally should’ve steered his ship, so he does the next best thing – Gitmo styled torture, over the top cowboy patriotism and a hastily pieced together climax that equates love and hope with survival. Or something like that.
I didn’t like the romantic angle, it was laden with superfluous valor. That whole infectious need to distinguish men from heroes, or some such. The digits-deprived DiCaprio sifting through a souk searching for pastries and dates is hardly the end I would have wanted.
Boy wonder is in excellent form though he looks a little too eager to please in certain frames. From Whats eating Gilbert Grape to this particular movie; Leo has evolved in a manner that most actors don’t and possibly can’t. Though, for some inexplicable reason, it suddenly hit me midway through the whole shebang – he is really short!

The technical glitches are glaring and plentiful. Linguistic, primarily. Leo baby speaks fluent Persian and Arabic – hell! with a skull cap and some serious hirsute pride, he passes for a local too – except that he can’t pronounce “Iraq” or “Iran. It comes out sounding like “I-rack” and “I-ran”. Tragedy.
The highpoint of the entire cinematic experience wasn’t actually an element of the movie, in fact it was the presence of Mr Yash Chopra in the theatre with the usual suspects.
I’m wondering is there will be a gentle change of scenery from sarson ke khet(mustard fields) to the grimy suburbs of Jordan for the next King Khan caper?
I doubt it but there is always hope. Like in the movie. Even if it doesn’t survive.

Also, Everything matters to Everybody.
French provocateurs are tres rad!

20 years for Questions October 23, 2008

I was musing about Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò (no thanks to Salon).
“Artists must create, critics defend, and democratic people support … works so extreme that they become unacceptable even to the broadest minds of the new state.”
Then I bundled up my baffling fixation with Italian avant garde, unclogged my nostrils, inhaled enough steam to qualify as an exotic dim sum that could be served at Royal China Garden and somewhere in between all of it, read this.

Prosecutors alleged that Kambakhsh disrupted classes by asking questions about women’s rights under Islam. They also said he illegally distributed an article he printed off the internet that asks why Islam does not modernise to give women equal rights. He also allegedly scribbled his own comments on the paper.

Sacrilege! To add to the specs. Always undesirable by the Mullahs.

My incensed faculties aside, I couldn’t bear to ignore the juxtaposition of the two non-linear storylines. In 1970s Italy, a slightly deranged poet promoting provocateurs and cultist concepts (almost unwatchable at times) and in the new millennium Afghanistan, a “radical” 24 year old student who was about to die – will now serve a 20 year sentence – for asking too many questions about women’s rights and querying I-slam’s patriarchal heritage and it’s need to evolve with times that are a’changin. (Or are they?)
The concept of radicalism can differ so widely across geographies: cultural, physical or plainly psychological. It’s amazing and slightly nerve rattling to deconstruct the boundaries of communal fear when it comes to what is and what’s not kosher in one specific realm. Especially, religious.
I won’t toil hard; I can’t regurgitate for hours about the debilitating portrayal of women in Islam. Anybody who doesn’t have a problem with a 60 year old “prophet” marrying and consummating that marriage, to a 9 year old kid, is plain jane insane! In my books, at least.
Focussing on this entire episode is just so unbearable though. In a world that is laboring hard to throw away the noxious beast of patriarchy that’s had a serpentine grip on our psychosis and lives for an infinite number of years, this predicament is like walking backwards so many light years, into a deep, dark black hole, an abyss we crawled out of. I am not even going to commence detailing the brutal disregard for Human Rights because it will have me gripping steel railings, if I launch into that invective.
20 years for someone whose sole crime has been to seeka cogent something and (or) scrape for rationale in an ultra-patriarchal mess. To promote women’s rights and equality. Of course, this repugnant verdict will be challenged, rightly so, in the Afghan Supreme Court and one can hope for a slight sliver of Hope. As tiny as that may be.
I reckon something like this must be so intangible for people like You and I; we live in carefully cultivated voids and possibly are, at times, completely inert to the Other Half.  It’s The Half that is not even allowed to simply ask “why?”

Islam’s overpowering fundamentalist bend has taken a beating worldwide in the recent years for reasons that range from lunatic to bang on the money. As an atheist I have to admit that criticizing a particular kind of religious school of thought comes rather easily to me. I do condescend to calling myself a nihilist, no less. This state of being is guilt free and often – since I am writing in the shadows of partial anonymity – I am not in that environment (the culture of lawful amputation in the name of Allah!) to bear the brunt of my comments or actions. So, it creates a particularly malevolent reaction in me, when I encounter stories like these. I begin to despise my own personal freedom just a little bit. The fact that I can get away with being reactionary protester.
And I know that I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t ever detest the window granted to me for self expression and for seeking to change my little corner in manner that’s constructive and intelligent. Without someone throwing me into a prison for the rest of my life. I know of the struggles that have paved the way for enabling people like me – to publish our ideology without unnecessary terror setting home in our hearts and minds.
Of course, there are times we take this liberty for granted, we call it insufficient, worse still, impotent and ineffectual. Very often in a blanched out world, voices of the so called minorities ( black/beige/brown), their own fights of resistance and their overwhelming strife. Our overwhelming strife.
This is to remind us that we are never to dismiss our voices, no matter the unevenness of tone and the irregularity of its inflection.
Without meandering too much, what I really want to say is – I am (We are) deeply indebted to people like Parwez Kambakhsh. They remind me to not dismiss my freedom easily. Also, it forges a sense of grounding; there remain vast unchartered bastions in the Women’s Rights and Human Rights movements that can very easily become a blip on our radar unless we look really carefully.
It’s not easy to be a feminist in the Islamic world. It’s not easy to be a feminist in any world, actually. It’s not easy to be a feminist man. But, we persevere because of the unflinching optimism that Reason will triumph over zealotry.

You don’t know me like dat! October 24, 2008

This is officially Cruise’s best work till date. I don’t know if Scientology has led to such amazing creative energy or it is just DreamWorks but this is awesome stuff.
Beyonce can eat earthworms, THIS is a really jelly. Right here. Word.

Evolution needs catalysts October 29, 2008

But, once the decision to eliminate her was taken by her father-in-law Zamir Solangi, she was taken to a local midwife Mrs Badshaan alias Baashi for forced delivery of the child. Soon after the delivery, the baby was thrown into the nearby canal and later the mother was put to death.

Linkage

My earliest imagery of Pakistan women, as a post teen, was shaped by the slightly asymmetrical and exaggerated (as duly pointed out by a litcrit professor) accounts of gender based bias and discrimination in Tehemina Durrani’s “Blasphemy”. Though, today, I don’t quite think it’s as exaggerated as Dr D’Souza thought but as young and heady biblophile you feel the need to form opinions basis what your “esteemed” literature teachers tell you.
Honestly, I was quite scared of ever stepping foot anywhere beyond the LOC and it had nothing to do with the perennial under-currents of violence and hatred, assumed or otherwise, between the two neighbors. India and Pakistan share a murky history and a superior culinary culture. Plus a million other things but despite celebrity proclamations of how it’s the “same” country both sides of the border, I know for a fact that’s not entirely true. We are different entities and the umbilical cord was severed quite a few decades ago. Even then, apparently, you can relate to the urban Pakistani ecosystem a lot better if you come from the Northern part of India and I have been repeatedly informed by friends and mutants alike that much of Karachi will remind me of some of Delhi. I haven’t travelled the length and breadth of our Northern neighbor to notarize that statement so I’ll make room for reasonable doubts than take it at face value.
My interest lies elsewhere though; a comparison of parities in the lives of an average Indian woman vis-à-vis one in Pakistan. Differences galore and similarities too. In lieu of the cityscape, I do confess to very little information about rural Pakistani women.
I am grown up enough now to believe that not every Pakistani household has its own feudal lord – though a significant amount of them are at the mercy of some lameass patriarchal messiah of sorts – even though I am also firmly aware of the bitter truth that a very stringent sort of sexism prevalent in a large part of that country (as in mine) means a daily, almost ritualistic, persecution and defilement of women – emotionally, mentally, physically – as well as a thorough disregard for women’s rights. If they have indeed ever heard of that term.
So, you see, despite my usual preparedness for the abnormally grim, stories like these still manage to scare me insane and fuel unbridled rage within me. Wrath is what I can feel right now, rising from the absolute pit of my stomach. Unadulterated and unmitigated anger. And I want to use this anger in a way that pulverizes the very core of our enforced patriarchal inheritance. I want my anger to be raven and brutal and as devoid of mercy as these murdering charlatans are.
I need revenge. We need revenge.

I could have chosen to satirize in my usual blasé manner because I find in humor – especially dark humor – a rock-hard and unshakeable crutch. Without agency. But, this is not the time to seek crutches, it’s the time to encounter and demolish;uproot the chronic plague of our system that’s left it moribund.
I beseech those academically fortified women amongst us, who love to deliberate about ethnocentric feminism’s strides in the warm comfort of their Ikea infested living rooms, to stand up and address this. Now. Without politeness and political correctness corrupting their ire. Because when young girls are left for dogs to feed on, very little room is left for civility.

What kind of monsters would force a teen to prematurely birth her child (who was subsequently thrown into a canal since he/she was deemed illegitimate by a killer father-in-law) and then based on some asinine rodent’s “wisdom” would throw her to a pack of rabid canines?
While this epic torture drama ensued, hitmen were sent after Taslim’s absconding mother to snuff her life too. However, if all of this doesn’t inspire serious fear and fury in your breast then take heart in the knowledge that a government official – a top level assistant commissioner, no less – was at the helm of these vile proceedings. Yes, officially signed, sealed and delivered et al.
How much more do the women in the sub-continent have to bleed, scream, cut, hurt, dismember, sever, turn sore before their voices can reach the world outside?
For every Mukhtaran Mai, a million Taslims are silently buried and disappear without a trace. But not this time. Definitely not this time.
This time the water has reached our necks and it is lashing at its nape. It’s gurgling in our ears. It’s dirty and infected and it threatens to enter our insides and wash us away. It’s a hurricane of pain and disillusionment. In the Macrobiotic Age of Madonna and IJesus, young girls are being fed to dogs. Literally, figuratively, really – take it whichever way you want, whichever way you like. It all boils down to one thing: Women are a long way from being ranked or even considered as human beings amidst some of the largest populations on the planet.
Who will speak about it? Who needs to speak about it?
We. We need to speak. No, actually, we need to do more than just speak about it, we need to scream, yell, shout, screech, holler, and tear apart the Universe if the need arises. This is not injustice to one, it’s injustice to all. From the teeny boppers in fluorescent pink tees jamming in make shift studios (my sister) to the high profile, jet setting corporate supernovas (Me) to the activism heavy, politically informed, divorced single parents of rambunctious daughters (my mother) to the fashionably illiterate still twin cell phones wielding, can-pound-the-husband-for-incessant-drinkking, sharp as a Jalapeno, lower middle class working women (my housemaid).
It’s all of us in this primal soup. In the remotest corners of the sub-continent, hell, the world, I’d say, we are still 18 million some flights away from fairness and equality, without taking anything away from Sen. H. Clinton. We all get torn apart when militant fangs dig into a pleading Taslim’s skin, soul and heart.
We can’t reduce ourselves to willing and mute witnesses to this century’s crimes against ourselves. We can’t afford to watch it till it simply “dies down” or “dissipates”. We can’t afford to be so static and unaffected.
We must do something. We must seek justice. We should, ideally, seek an eye for an eye because it just doesn’t work any other way - due to respects to the Gandhian dogma and Bollywood movies inspired by it. For all that chest beating/bra burning in the name of the Sisterhood, it eventually boils down to this. This is the reality for brown women in our world. It’s a large and fairly violent world but someone has to change it. Evolution needs catalysts. Theorizing and rationalizing will only take us so far. The rest of the journey is on foot. Without crutches. Mine, included.

After thought – Basis this account, is it just me who is grimaced by the recurrent abuse of religion to debase women since ancient times till date? To swear upon Quran (as an atheist the significance of this is entirely wasted on me but as a longtime lover and worshipper of Angela Carter I couldn’t lie after swearing upon a copy of The Passion of New Eve either though I reckon it’s more a literary than zealotry thing) and follow it up with a crime so heinous, seriously, why can’t the larger Muslim population see through the act?
Do we need a better reason to untangle from the religious mess?
Don’t strain your neurons too much, the answer is fairly simple.

Pocket Dictators and The Trans Genome October 30, 2008

Is Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, a pocket dictator? Is there no drop of liberalism in her veins, no concept of personal freedom, no fear of a repressive state? Or is she just another home secretary?

Simon Jenkins’ farewell column is fired by his usual gusto and makes me writhe about the non-possibility of writing something equally scathing in the Indian political paralance.

Linkage

Tranny Genes. (Sounds like a brand name that can sell enough denim in San Francisco?)

The more power we can take away from the argument that these difficult, alienating paths are willfully chosen, the more (one hopes) we can breed compassion and, eventually, understanding.

The accompanying picture of Tara Reid with soda-bottle glasses does actually confuse you if it’s representative of the trannies or the Oz scientists. Bewildering!

Café Américano October 31, 2008

Republicans. Sigh.

Madia, a son of East Indian immigrants and a marine veteran, is pictured in the spot with a darker face and long shadows cast upon it. The ad accuses him of wanted to raise taxes, but the superficial aspects are the ones that have jumped out to observers.

 

Did Tina Brown’s rambling bout Ariana Huffington allowing anyone and everyone as a contributor finally ring true?

 HuffPo political blogger Carol Anne Burger shot herself Friday, and police now believe she was responsible for the brutal murder of her former lover two days earlier. Burger was a scuba-diving instructor who brought an amateur’s zeal to her work, and in this sense embodied the best of HuffPo’s democratic approach, calling to mind fellow contributor Mayhill Fowler, who broke the “Bittergate” story. But the website will not be eager to associate itself with Burger’s energy in dispatching Jessica Kalish. Kalish was stabbed with a Phillips-head screwdriver 222 times, primarily around the back of her head and across her back, arms and face.

Falling like a pack of cards… October 31, 2008

The first of the 13 bombs, suspected to have been planted by Bangladesh-based HuJI members, went off at around 11.30 AM under the Ganeshguri flyover near the high-security capital complex housing the Assembly building, followed by explosions at Paltan Bazar and Fancy Bazar in Guwahati.

This time it’s the North Eastern trails. There is no further proof needed that India is firmly in the grips of the most vindictive terror fission experiement ever and any sort of governmental/bureaucratic condemnation is asinine, to say the very least. So, essentially, being the world’s largest democracy equates to rampant murderous sprees by anti-national elements working in cahoots with local politicos. The wildest form of anarchy must engulf our decaying political machinery to liberate us now.

So give me something to Believe.. November 3, 2008

It’s random and it’s weird. And it’s a vibe you can’t resist.
Because I don’t know what am doing here. Or, for that matter, anywhere.

So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for

Leave Him. Take Him. Leave Him. Take Him. Leave Him. Take Him. Leave Him. Take Him.

That I am just nothing
Now its just what I’ve become
What am I waiting for
Its already done

Updated:

There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re traveling with me

So, it goes. Or comes.

Hare Obama! November 5, 2008

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

Yes.

The end of civility debate November 12, 2008

The Taslim Solangi essay is up at Global Comment.

As always, ignorance amazes me.

Too busy/sapped/disengaged/tired/distracted to write much for the next two weeks.

Also, somehow this got published. And I didn’t even know about it.
Strange.

The Life and Death of Miriam Makeba November 12, 2008

Mama Africa is nomore.

Makeba, affectionately known as “Mama Africa”, spent much of her life in exile after being denied re-entry to South Africa in 1960. She was a vocal supporter of Nelson Mandela and testified against apartheid for the United Nations. She also appeared in the 1961 anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa, which showed at the Venice Film Festival that year.

 

Rise of the New Liberal November 14, 2008

…or is it?

“Someone whose interests are not special but general, someone who can understand and treat the country as a whole. For as much as anything it needs to be reaffirmed at this juncture that the United States is one organic entity, that no interest, no class, no section, is either separate or supreme above the interests of all.”

FDR to a journalist in 1932.
Prophetic.

You can have the Fish November 17, 2008

I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why
And I don’t know why

In which I wax eloquent bout my soliloquy. Or the lack of it. You know how sometimes you conjure these elaborate meshes of pure and unadulterated pain because, well, everything else in your life is so bloody boring and you saw Transamerica and Your name is Justine and the highlight of your weekend was eating cherries sent by one very verbose aunt and you want some drama. Or a pack of fluffy pink candy. Or something.
So, in my dreams I have been travelling to the Outback frequently. Any jungians out there?
No. Seriously. Also, I am being gifted a fish and any kind of moniker related suggestions are welcome. Till now, we have Cherry Coke and Martini Pie. And Lex Luthor.
So, yes, ante up when recommending.

Okay. So, I got up and searched for this old Nescafe song that made me feel a lot better about my current condition. Which is wonderful because I have no clue what my current condition is. So for an ad jingle to magically detect and eliminate elements of discord, its just plain fucking ingenious.
Also making me feel good is Vertical Horizon’s “Everything You Want”. It’s like every boy I have ever dated. I didn’t really want to be with any one of them while simulatenously wanted to marry all of them. It was a week filled with perilous thoughts that convinced me that I’m indeed niether Izzy nor Meredith but George’o Malley in life’s version of Grey’s Anatomy. And every street corner is laden with Isaiah Washington type of people ready to curdle my souffle. Biatches, I tell ya.
So, this Boy from the Past trundled in and, quickly, trundled out. Much gusto about nothing. I must emit some serious ultra-sonic signals that encourage particularly hormonal and irresponsible type of boys to consider me their transitioning device. Seriously. I comfort him and he wants to return the “favor” by helping me evict the lizard that’s been playing footise with my fridge lately. Yes, that’s even steven right? Lizard capture for an eventful night of snuggling bliss. Barmy.  
Now he has been abandoned in a jiffy because he was – and in a rather prodigious manner – remains, a perfunctory womanizer. Nevermind that I wrote copious amounts in my snakeskin diary about Dignity, Soldier (Always dignity!), because an honest dis is better than dignity. Ask Heather Mills. And the mother of one samurai girl fish from the capital.
Bout the petulant Boy. Well. Apparently his bitter half kicked him to the curb so he needed comfort. Some alcohol fuelled muttering bout being the Lost Boy. Yes. Of course. And I enjoying playing Schindler to the romantically disposed. As if.
Get off my camel! Now!
Anywhoo, another 5 years of a well planned disappearance from him will help my cause. So, thats exactly what I did. Told him to 1..2..3…skidaddle..doo.
So, I am currently in Congo researching malnutrition amongst the female of the Ngeye tribes. I am. To him, at least.
For the rest of the world, I am training my posterior to infinity trying to get into Terminator shape for the January marathon. And very soon I will have a tough time gallivanting on Brazillian beaches because people will want to surf on my abs. Or so am told by (spit) Juan.

A snippet from an enlightening discussion about sex and sexuality. (I have niether. Ever.)

“But gay is a good thing. Look at the word itself, it means Happiness. HAPPINESS. Doesn’t that indicate something? You CAN’T ignore linguistic symbolism. Look at straight – It’s a boring word in itself. What does it mean? A line! That’s what it reminds me of. A bloody line at the laundromat. Or the bus stop.
Being straight is indicative of eternal waiting. That’s what it is. REALLY. “

Yes. Yes. We’re onto something.
We don’t know what.

Also, I did consider naming this post Out of the Island, Into the Highway.

And I have decided to NEVER marry. It’s a decision made after overdosing on about a dozen East European movies but still it’s a decision that needs to be respected.  If you do hear me mention ice swans, flower arrangements and/or The One, SHOOT ME. If you don’t have a gun, go open a bank account in Souther USA and get one. And then SHOOT ME.

Cleopatra was Jewish November 17, 2008

Actually, that’s not yet proven. But if this was the kind of research that one needed to do then I should have never skipped anthropology classes. 

The evidence suggests that the first rolls with a hole, those of ancient Egypt and of the greater Mediterranean, came in two types: the soft, sesame-studded variety, called bagele in Israel today, eaten plain or dipped in za’atar (a spice combination of wild oregano, sesame seeds, and salt); and a pretzellike crispy Syrian ka’ak flavored much like taralli. Neither is boiled, a distinguishing characteristic of American bagels.

Mel Gibson is less likely to visit Cairo now.

Forget Islam. Tribalism is in. November 17, 2008

Moustafa Bayoumi muses if the search for roots often renders one rootless in people’s eyes, while pointing out the finers,err, points of tribalism in Middle East.

They are often created out of loose and contingent notions of relatedness. A kind of fictive ancestry is constantly made and remade to connect people to resources and power. The problem with the tribal theorists isn’t that they identify tribes where there are none; rather, it’s that they straitjacket and exaggerate the meaning of tribal dynamics; their version of tribalism explains virtually everything. But silver-bullet theories should always be taken with a grain of salt, or sand, in this case.

Something the Gringos may want to pay attention to if they are looking at military pull-out and some form of stability in that region whence the troops trot back home. Soon, hopefully.

Fun Frames is the Jessica Simpson of photo editing tools November 18, 2008

Hahaha. Ok. Stop. Enough geekery.

So, this is supposed to be an arresting contraption from LG. I don’t much care for LG. Personally, I am a Sony Ericsson person because, impersonally, my association with Motorola has been similar to that with men. It often died on me when I was most in need of it and no amount of charging sufficed. And it cracked when I threw it against the wall. Ahem.

The Lotus is compact at 3.3 x 2.4 x 0.7 inches and looks like, well, a makeup compact. True, this design increases the phone’s cute factor by a power of ten but it also lowers its useful index by a power of twenty. Because it’s so small, the QWERTY keys are crammed together making it difficult to dial, text or even navigate around menus — even if you’re blessed with dainty digits.

So that nixes any possibility for me coz I don’t have dainty digits. More like bear paws. Oh! And whats the deal with those ghastly floral prints? Looks like a particularly disdainful cheongsam made by an Indian (East Asian, in the name of political correctness) tailor in Florida. Or something.

Courage is a choice November 20, 2008

“I can never figure out how to make a case. But that don’t amount to fall from grace. “

I thought I’d come here and write a really enthusiastic, wit-laden post bout life, death and the interim where you are doing niether but just rolling post-its into long, fake cigarettes and shoot corn kernels through them. But in my hot pursuit of mindful blogging, I missed out one particularly crucial statistic – Wit and I have never really been on speaking terms since time immemorial. Not even an occasional good morning. So, badinage et al is hardly going to be the state of this nation, then.

I am holding onto hope. And its been duly noted that during times like these, Hope manifests itself either as a large tub of Haagen Das or a Sally Fields flick or a Lee Ann Womack song. 

It’s been a week, nay, month of Mondays. Blues and rancour. And  emotional dereliction. Like a walrus on acid placed in the Space Mountain, I have had no other option but to continue with the delirium, followed by sorrow followed by delirium, followed by sorrow. You get the digital picture. Because when storms blow, they blow strong in this part of the desert.

The day before last was catastrophic for reasons that can’t be intelligently elucidated. Because I am not an intelligent person during the week. Weekends are a different piece of a still rather crummy pie.  I kind of fell out with someone I was really super-excited bout. Resident Freudian followers pin my restlessness in relationships to my mammoth love for sneakers. I love skids, ergo I heart running. That’s my way to solve problems. To run. Not entirely true except for some loose strands of my love life. My relationships are almost always in three stages: Stage 1 – establishing initial contact, playing smart (remember, playing), getting the goose. Stage 2 – initial disdain at proximity attained. Utter and complete discomfort at proximity attained. Early signs of panic attacks. Stage 3 – Recurrent panic attacks. Disgust with cuddling/snuggling/other forms of affection trapping mechanisms. Final task.  Running. Far away. Mexico is a good place usually.

This is my modus operandi. Unfailingly, I am given to the flo jo routine at some point in time in the span of meeting, greeting, treating and finally displeasing boys. Such impassioned dedication to running should earn me a spot on the national decathlon team. Because, baby, I can run. And how!

This time, I was mentally prepared to not run. But can’t change these spots. Nope siree,  I am habituated to occasional marathons, frequent sprints or even brisk jogs. We’ve stopped communicating. Coz I am way off the  GPRS horizon for him to establish contact with, anymore. He and I. Have. Stopped. And that’s that. There is this ugly churning in my butterflies-infested tummy that indicates, We are Done. So, to rid myself of the pathos,  I wrote bitchy monologues in my journal. To secede to the deliciously rich layers of heartache. Mousse of pain, I said. Loud proclamations about how I will disconnect from my waffling nihilist self. But a creature of habit, I am. So, I wrote some more. Navigated for some other object to blame for my collapsing life. Louder rants discrediting him and finding things from our shared past to blame the failure to launch on. Eventually they’ve settled. The feelings. No, washed away, in fact. Like summer dust after the first drops of liquid sunshine.

I like this disappearing act. Except now I am wondering how many lives will I need to disappear from to get it right.

The other piece of news was my aunt getting diagnosed with cancer. The Big C. It’s a pretty insidious feeling to experience. You hear it gurgling in that place slightly south to your navel that Zen roshis want you to concentrate at and it still somehow doesn’t settle with your constitution. I am sure it’s a lot of anger and then something else I can’t quite put my finger on. This is the fun-nest of all my aunts. The kind who cooks Konkani mutton curry and then carries it to the cemented water tank of her bungalow for us to perch on and eat it with mounds of basmati and a very silver moon for company. While she chronicles some of her wilder days working in a movie gossip magazine as a secretary. Her bus rides to Worli and her half day trips to Colaba for milkshake and pav bhaji. The life she had before she married my uncle and settled for the refined position of being a “shippie’s” wife. A position she has loved and hated subsequently.

She is on of the finest raconteur  I have met in my life.

So, it’s weird to imagine her head draped in a silk scarf post chemo and handing her papaya smoothies while trying to escape that piercing pain building blazing ringlets in her eyes. I don’t know how to deal with these things. It makes me uncomfortable. I am excellent at putting a handle on pain. Or pinning it to the sideboard for later. But not this time. I was up at 5:15 am when Ma left for Pune where Aunty is getting operated. I couldn’t sleep after that so I did what any moderately erudite person would do. I switched on the telly for some inspiration. Or signs. Or something. And voila – a musical documentary on Leonard Cohen.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

And I figured this must be it. The key. The ultimate sutra. The tao of sensible living. Besides, when Cohen speaks you are easily convinced that God must be a permanent resident in his geriatric frame.

 I think I am learning how to rise above. Above it all. I have finally realized that I am stronger than my circumstance. That it’s ok to encounter loneliness, live and appreciate it. Courage is a choice. Or so I heard when the credits were rolling on some movie channel playing a kiddie flick about adventure, magic and impending sexuality. That’s what set me free.

For a moment I stood still. I let life sink into my hideously visible pores (I have a T zone oily enough for Republicans to go “Attack and Divest” on). If you are truly still, you can hear the drops of the rains pouring into your soul. You feel as though your insides will explode with the water seeping in. In the most destitute, excruciating hour of the day, you realize the strength of you. All those questions about who you are and why you are, racing through your head earlier in the night, like Hakkinen on acid and sake, have started to dispel. You make that precious contact with some sort of divinity within. You fall apart so you can reconstruct. Everyone falls apart. And it’s ok. I guess. As long as you know how to piece it together.

I have been simmering with regret through most months of this year. Impending quarter life crisis is not helping. I should have gone to medical school. I should have a purpose.The DNA with a helix pattern coded with pure zeal and passion. A better life. I should have taken the trips that I forgot to. I should have bought the Mac when it was on sale. I should have started photography a little earlier. I should have completed the Journalism degree. I should have let him in when he wanted to. I should have let him go when I wanted to. I shouldn’t have met him when he came back. I should have taken up on her offer to spend the weekend in San Francisco. I should have met Dad before he died. I should use the  word “love” as frequently as I use ketchup and eggs.

But I didn’t do those things. I chose some other kind of life. And I still caught passing glimpses of happines.

It’s important to live. The way it felt right in that moment. Yep, that’s what I ultimately ended at.

Rock Chicks: Abaya, Accolade and Taboos November 25, 2008

They were already iconoclasts: Dina and Dareen wear their hair teased into thick manes and have pierced eyebrows. During an interview at a Starbucks here, they wore black abayas — the flowing gown that is standard attire for women — but the gowns were open, showing their jeans and T-shirts, and their hair and faces were uncovered.

Middle Eastern sisters from Saudi bend it like Joan Jett’s ilk.

Under Siege November 28, 2008

The Taj burning.

My city bleeds again. It’s happened before. It’s happening now. We are at war, quite literally. A sordid battle rages at our heritage sites and places of pride:  the pulse of the city has been hit bad. Our armed forces are braving this while the wimps whom we’ve entrusted the responsibility of leading this country engage in infuriating votebank debates and divisivness. Class.

I am going to avoid ranting because it’s easy to find solace in a very vile form of anger but that’s hardly the best response right now. Facts are as follows. The assault has clocked in atleast 1 and a half day. I have friends who live in Colaba and at least one person who is fairly close to the Strident. She lives in a hostel and I haven’t yet heard from her. So, I am trying to dispose of my atheist side while I pray for her. She has gone through some terrible times recently and this is not something that she needs to deal with right now.

I am also trying to avoid choking on emotions and copious tears forcing their way out because this is the single most painful thing I have been privy to in my 24 years of existence. These places – Taj, Strident, CST, Leopold, Nariman House -are some of the most common haunts for yuppies, like me,  who populate the city’s other supposedly “unfortunate” side, namely The Suburbia. I take pleasure in almost trekking to Leopold, which is a good 45 minutes away from space in the suburbs, just so I can order scrambled eggs and then trash their culinary skills. And I was going there this weekend. I was also to read at a poetry slam fest in South Mumbai next weekend.

I have spent many afternoons gallivanting in Colaba causeway. It’s considered one of the most prominent spots in the city. They have managed to not just destroy these places but put a crater sized dent in our memory of these places. It breaks my hearts to turn the pages of the TOI and see people crouching in the back alley of Nariman House and the gun shot holes in the windows of Leopold.

We’ve lost our grit, partially at least. Let’s not kid ourselves with the disdainful chutzpah about Mumbai’s “never say die” spirit. That spirit is what’s landed us in a soup so capital. We have always ignored the warning signs. Our credo has always been “chalta hai”. And thats just not good enough. We need to hold by the collars, those whom we have left incharge of this city. The callous political machinery of this state and the incompetent central government are the reasons why we are suffering this fate.
How is this sensible or possible? How can 16-20 zealots hold an entire to ransom? How can we so unprepared when we have been consistently hit by the terror brigade since 1993? They are in our city, they are killing us and we are mute spectators. Atleast our bureaucracy is. Neutered and high on inefficacy quotient.

We should have tired of being sitting ducks while a gutless political system brought the city – and the country – to the brink of destruction, repeatedly. An attack on the Parliament is worthy of being labelled an offensive against democracy however, in the world’s largest democracy, constant strikes against the common people isn’t worthy of any concrete legislation or a well thought through measure against terrorism.This is no ordinary attack: it’s war. We need to remind ourselves of this fact. It’s a war on our territory. Reports indicate that the terrorists have executed the whole mission with impeccable coordination and planning while 3 of our top cops lost their jobs in the first round of assault. Something is woefully awry here.

Where is the contingency management roadmap? ATS chief, <a href=”http://www.indianexpress.com/news/l-k-advani-criticizes-ats-chief/391755/”Hemant Karkare walked into a combat zone with a papery thin bullet proof vest and protection gear so ancient that even the Neaderthals could do better. Then, we conduct elaborate mourning ceremonies for the martyrs. How twisted is this? Why do we need to indulge in such charades when these men could have been protected with some modern gear before they stepped in to battle death headlong? This obsession with martyrdom and pop patriotism needs to be curtailed in favor of some intelligence and a consolidated plan for preventing death and duress. We can’t predict terror but we can most definitely find some method to the madness because two 20 somethings can’t – shouldn’t, actually – be able to walk around so freely with AK 47s and capture a police patrol vehicle, put a gun to the driver’s head ordering him to drive around while shoting at random civilians. Innocent bystaners, citizens, R.K Laxman’s common men and women: they were hit and they bled, onto pavements and footpaths while the politicians commenced the blame game.
This is absurd. Really.

There are plenty of questions hanging loose from everyone’s lips. The city has been under siege for almost 2 days now and we are not entirely sure when this will end though we hope it will be soon. The men who perpetrated this violence came with master-plan and without any personal desire to glorify that design, we must admit that if we have any hope of successfully tackling such catastrophes in the future, we need to establish an equally professional approach to cornering such barbarians.

These people are devoid of emotions, eye witness account includes a blood-curdling tale of the armed boys aiming for a woman and her child. They first shot the wailing mother and then silenced the child with a bullet to his head. Further, they fired at the strays barking nearby. Such cold detachment comes with steady practice and serious indoctrination. These are not ordinary terrorists ( in any case what’s ordinary about terrorism ?) but well trained serial killers and expert marksmen who were armed with some of the most sophisticated technology and a very serious will to maim the commercial hub of this country. They studies the interiors of both the hotels very thoroughly, according to the NSG commandoes who engaged in the gun battle with them. They were determined and ready.
We weren’t. Of course, no one is ever ready to deal with death and destruction. It only happens to others. In Kashmir. In Israel. In other places. But it’d been happening to us quite frequently. So, why weren’t we more prepared?

As I write this I am being informed that Oberoi has almost been evacuated and no possible hostages are being held there. Also, there has been atleast one incident of indiscriminate firing around the Marine Lines area and also at CST/VT, terminal 8. There has been media confirmation about this. So, this is not yet over. Probably far from it.

I was tuned into the press conference addressed by the Marcos (marine commandos) and there is a pattern emerging here. At least one terrorist has been identified as a Pakistan national from Karachi and the commandos have siezed a bag full of loaded magazines as well as Indian and US currency to the tune of 6000 INR and $1200 respectively. Also, dry fruit baskets were discovered since it doesn’t go bad quickly, it would have been easier to survive off those. That indicates a plot so heinous that one shudders: there were prepared to extend this carnage to weeks and more possibly.

The official casualty list claims 125 dead and over 350 injured. This is also a test for our medical community and hospitals in the city given the sheer vastitude of this situation. Blood donation is a great way to help right now. Meanwhile, I am can hear the decibels rise as the gun-battle reaches its peak. At least one Army Major has lost his life. I want to thank these men for their valor and courage. It’s not often that you find squad heads leading from the front. We feel a little safer because of them.

Also, can the idiots who abound in the fourth estate stop referring to the Mumbai attacks as India’s 9/11? I mean wanting to rechristen the Mumbai film industry as Bollywood is still a tolerable kind of sycophancy and upstart-ness but this is sacrilege. It would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so entirely pathetic a need to equate everything we experience with those that America goes through. This is NOTHING like 9/11. Believe me, I am here, minutes away from the affected sites and I can vouch for it. The pain and agony of losing your loved ones, parts of your cherished city and the gloom following such attacks, is universal. Yes. But, this is a different kind of beast. And we have been playing the dart-board for these type of activities way before Bush and cronies started the war against “terror”.

More updates later.

Updated : The reports of gun shots at CST/VT is a rumor. The noise heard was in fact from a dislodged metal detector. Also, the firing reported at Marine Lines was a constable’s gun going off, accidentally.

Updated: As per current news reports, the Army claims The Oberoi  has been evacuated completely and at least 2 terrorists have been gunned down.

Some of us did not die November 30, 2008

But some of us did. And for those who didn’t die, it’s important that we seek a revolution in this city. In this country. Recurrent chants of “Bharat Mata ki Jai”(Long Live Mother India) are not going to procure any respite by way of pop patriotism that this country is so well renowned for. It’s time for action. Studied and structured. Action.

“Fresh explosions. We can hear then loud and clear. What they are showing on TV is not even half of what’s going on. I am at the hostel. I am fine. Hugs. “

Frantic text messages went back and forth while trying to comfort friends and family that we will get out of this unharmed. Some of us made good on that promise. Some didn’t.

My beloved city was held hostage at gunpoint for almost three straight days while the fuckwits who are supposed to lead and guide us swapped accusations, blame and vituperative nonsense. Heinous is a word that not only accurately describes what the terrorists did to us but also what the political machinery of this country has done to us. Such lack of empathy and accountability bewilders me. It enrages me. Sets my heart on fire.
News reports are mounting with the obvious gaffe in the professional structure of the security and intelligence agencies of this country: the possibility of this attack was made apparent as far back as October and none paid heed to it. Questions and people have now poured out onto the streets of Mumbai. We need answers and solutions. Because we didn’t die and since we are here, we need to ensure that those who died for us aren’t forgotten in a jiffy. The ire and invectives will fade. But the memory of this carnage never should. What it represents and who needs to face the political guillotine is what this nation needs to decide. As a collective entity not just as disembodied voices. We need to rise above. We need to come together.
I have fiddled with this thought before and I am convinced of its dynamism now – Courage is a choice. For the 30 something army Major who was an all rounder sportsman at the National Defence Academy, Pune, it was. For the decorated officers of the Mumbai Police Force Force who lead from the front not the sidelines, it was most definitely a choice. For the almost unguarded DB Marg cops who were in possession of archaic arms at Girgaum but still took on the armed-to-the-teeth terrorists because it was, quite literally, about doing or dying, it was a particularly important choice. They chose to do something irrespective of the fact that they were in the line of fire.
We must choose to do something. Now.
Constantly displayed footage of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s mother weeping inconsolably while talking to her dead son, bent over the coffin that carried his body draped in the national tricolor, is a scene I won’t forget in a hurry. Her helplessness, her agony can’t be felt by anyone who hasn’t lost a young son in the battlefield. When I juxtapose this image with the state’s home minister R.R. Patil’s callous response about how such “small incidents” occur quite frequently in cities as large as Mumbai”, I want to rip this turgid buffoon’s darkened heart out of his chest and tear it to a million pieces. Supplement this almost brutal tactlessness with the irony-infused visuals of the central Home minister, Shivraj Patil, walking away from the Congress Working Committee’s meeting rubbing his hands together as though indicating to the nation that he has officially washed his hands off this tragedy. And many others that preceded this one. He claims to have resigned because he didn’t want his party to suffer. Nevermind the 195 dead and 300 something injured people, it’s really the party that he cares about. Such a singularly nauseous display of sycophancy coupled with selfishness is rarely found.
As of now, the Home Minister has resigned from his post following some serious pressure from his detractors in the Congress party/the ruling government, though it makes you wonder how different the landscape of terrorism in this country would have been if he had done this a few months ago when the whole nation was up in flames every second week. This kind of political failure makes one weary and livid, at the same time. We have been deceived by our central intelligence agencies and our politburos in equal measures. And you wonder what kind of black-hole ingested their sense of duty to the citizens of this nation when stretchers upon stretchers were wheeled out of the Taj and the Oberoi, carrying the bodies of those who were caught in the gun battles. The stench of flesh at these places made the rescuing commandoes dizzy. The plasma screens across the city – the country and the world – beam videos and pictures of abandoned footwear and food, cars turned into flattened metal sieves due to the innumerable bullet holes: the well coordinated dance of death and destruction rattled the very foundations of this city and the whole country but we are still without any solid post trauma action plan. And our government still looks as clueless as it did when the masses brought them to power.
The Prime Minister’s national address inspired disdain and nausea not confidence or faith, his ineffectiveness superseded only by his apathy and the uninspiring look of utter disregard for the inhabitants of this country. Brilliant economists don’t necessarily translate into capable leaders. Let this be a lesson to democracy everywhere. We need to create better leaders before anything else. Manmohan Singh’s apathy is further mirrored by the chief minister of this state of Maharashtra , Vilasrao Deshmukh and his cabinet cronies: he wasn’t even aware of the approximate number of the casualties at even one of the three locations and was constantly prompted at the press conference held to address the media, when the heat in the kitchen got a slightly unbearable, he did what he well known for – He ran. To a “party meeting”. Class act. The biggest error on the part of politicians was their strict inability to present a united front in the face of this national crisis. The poobahs of partisan political beliefs took no time in jumping to grab each other’s jugular. They could have – in the very least- waited to sling mud until the situation stabilized and we had averted the tragedy. But no! In these rabid times of impending national elections, the ticker is running fast and quick, so why must they think in favor of national interest or the people. How about a giant scoop of irony with some shavings of self-preservation in our dysfunctional democratic soufflé? You’ll like it kids!
As of now the state is in a limbo and so is the country. But if these attacks are indication of our preparedness for war – internal or external – then I’d say we are in some seriously troubled waters. Puns, unintended. The Marine Commandos and the NSG may have rescued us this time, with some significant damages in the bargain, but why did we land ourselves in a mess so capital to begin with? Yes, you can’t predict it but can’t you at least combat it with less damage.
Questions galore. Pertinent ones. The environment is dowsed in wrath and head-nodding doesn’t suffice anymore.

How does a group of 10 hold a whole bloody city to ransom? Where are the pseudo-intellectuals who aim their guns at the resident police force when it manages to trap terrorists, all in the name of human rights violation? To, Arundhati Roy – Go take a walk at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, you will know what violating human rights means in real terms.

Why do our cops have such ancient arms and communication devices? How can you go head to head when you have walkie talkies on one side while the other side is well equipped with satellite phones and cutting edge technology?

How did the trawlers and the mother ship used to transport the terrorists go undetected all the way to the Mumbai dock? Was the coast guard catching 40,000 winks?

Why didn’t the central intelligence agencies ainspect the warning – provided earlier during the year – about the possibility of a fresh batch of terror attacks that could be carried out in the country’s economic capital?

Why did 3 of the top cops of the Mumbai Police walk into the combat zone with little or no protection and with antiquated weapons?

Why wasn’t there a more refined and calculated approach to this whole situation? Also, why were they allowed to travel in the same vehicle when the threat levels were so high? (This vehicle was later utilitzed by the terrorists to travel through South Bombay shooting indiscriminately at random civilians and the media. )

Why weren’t the NSG commandoes given a clear blueprint of the inside of the very hotels they were supposed to comb and sanitize from the terrorists? They were working on assumption and the only assistance provided was not by intelligence agencies but by the brave staffers of these hotels.

Why don’t we have a resident NSG commando set for a Mumbai? At least some deaths could’ve been avoided if we could cut short the response time between the terrorist takeover of the hotel and the Marcos/ NSG stepping in.

When can we really stand up, as a nation, and make a clear point on the world stage that Pakistan – whether directly or indirectly – is involved in perpetrating terror in India?
These attacks may not find state sponsorship in that country – though, there is substantial proof unearthed that the men sent to cause havoc in Mumbai were in fact trained by ISI and Pak Navy in laying sea mines as well as intense warfare in the waters of the high sea– but their epicenter is the Pak-Afghanistan belt and this needs immediate addressing. USA needs to get this clear – global warfare on terrorism means Us and Them. Not just Americans. This affects all of us. We need to count too. Our lives matter.

A billion people have a billion questions that our incompetent politicians and bureaucracy can try to hide from, right now, but will eventually have to face. Public memory in this country is fairly short. We forget with ease, we take refuge in the so called “resilience” and “never say die” attitude that’s probably a figment of some bungling pen pusher’s imagination. It’s not the spirit of the city, it’s a need. We have to get up and move on. What other option is there? There is a livelihood that needs to be earned. Food that needs to be put on the table for the family of 18 that has lost tit’s sole breadwinner. Internal divisive forces (Raj “Navnirmal” Thackrey should shake out of his slumber and realize that it’s not his goons or even him who own this city, that remote is elsewhere) that bring the city to the standstill for flimsiest of reasons. Not so surprisingly, they conveniently disappear from the radar in an actual crisis situation. Beating up North Indians (who constitute a major part of the NSG, by the way ) : good, good! Taking a stand in testing times : bad, bad! Such shameful hypocrisy!
Our political nincompoops are smart enough to realize that someone so taken in by the mammoth task of just surviving in this city of dreams (and now, screams and gun shots) will probably have no time to introspect about its safety lapses or its future or its ability to actually deal with sudden warfare.
We mustn’t let them get away with this assumption.
Because we didn’t die. It’s our responsibility to seek justice for those who did.
This is a spiritual nation, one that doesn’t believe in unnecessary violence or bloodshed (at least it used to be), so it’s even more tragic to watch it’s streets colored an insidious shade of carmine every two months. My city cried for three whole days, I received messages from friends who were placed under house arrest while snipers lunged forward from their terraces and balconies, taking aim at the gutless and godless barbarians who wanted to maim and kill and destroy. This is not Beirut or Gaza or PoK. This is Bombay. Mumbai.
I had Coast Guard choppers circle my building and those in that vicinity because the creek is close by and right now the sea is not safe. The sea that inspires, nurtures our dreams and washes away our guilt, our sins. That very sea is suddenly our biggest threat.
Café Leopold has gaping holes in the wall from the shooting, the same size that encumber our political and national security system. The owner of this Mumbai landmark has already commenced repairing it and has decided that they will be back in business in no time while the policy makers and national leaders of this country continue to employ subterfuges, fairly transparent ones actually but existent nevertheless. It would inculcate a sense of victory in us if only they would have displayed some passion, a cherished zeal for this country they are so poised to ruin to dust.

We must never forget that we didn’t die. Because in this country we often do.

To the soul of my city.
It’s valor and laughter.
It’s food and feasts.
It’s shores and streets.
The color of life and light.
The sound of the sea.
It’s hearts and beats.
It’s music and words.
It’s fests and meets.
It’s films and stars.
And the moon in it’s night sky.
That lived. Despite
The bombs and the wounds.
Like I did.
To remember.
To never forget.
We didn’t die.
Because we lived.

*Title borrowed from June Jordan’s “Some of us did not die” – a collection of essays published after 9/11.

Revolucion es la Solucion – Part 1 December 4, 2008

We stepped out on the streets last evening. To seek answers, to raise questions. To find each other.

Salaam Bombay.

The Legacy of our Period March 16, 2009

..and other things.

To start with, I am strictly against talking about The Period and thankfully  TOI supports me. As does Ishani banerjee, a 15 year old - whose diatribe has inspired the writer of this magnificient Times piece - seems to have an axe to grind with a not-so-little book titled “My little red Book” that talks about(you are bang on the money here sistah!) The Period! Shudder! Whowuddathunkit!

It is not like I am saying there should be no awareness about it,” offers Ishani. “I am glad my mum told me all about it when I was nine. But it is so crude to read the details. Do I want to know what other girls went through? No thanks. Nowadays, all the info one needs can be found on the Internet.”

Ironic little Ishani. Just like you can find all the information you need to make bombs on the internet too and then it totally depends on you, what you want to do with that information. The antithesis that’s abundantly visible in this entire proclamation is so bloody stark – a tween who is comfortable digging dirt about a supposedly “crude” subject on some super information highway than actually read it in a book. Ah! Hypocrisy, lovely, hypocrisy! Yes, I agree that the said tween is allowed to voice her opinion – it is a free and dysfunctional democratic haven we reside in and that’s exactly what we do in free and dysfunctional democratic havens, we voice our opinions, no matter how muddled they may be - also, that her opinion may not entirely be her own but that of an imposing adult influence in her life that’s convinced her of the utter grossness that colors any talks of hoo-haas let alone the stuff that comes out of them. Grossity gross!

However, it is not so much this that I have a problem with but the list compiled by this erstwhile newspaper of things that, according to the enlightened writer of the article,  don’t deserve pocket guides or reference books dedicated to them.

Let’s have a dekko..

Sexual Intercourse – We are Indian women, we don’t need booklets that teach us about sex. We learn about sex by having it or when someone forces themselves on us in which case we most definitely don’t need booklets because the said rapist will teach us what we need to know anyway ( shame and repression come to mind here). It’s a well known fact that any talk about sex must contain graphic details like say information about erogenous zones, vaginal v/s clitoral stimulation, safe sex practices, your rights as a woman when it comes to indulging in or abstaining from sex, peer pressure and sexual politics et al. Such taboo topics can’t and shouldn’t be talked about in civil societies, let alone for someone to actually have the shameful desire to pen a book about them. I also applaud the assumption that everyone who is going to start having sex must be of the “right” age and hence must automatically know what do when it comes to doing it. This is an excellent standard for any literature on sexual behavior and practices that may apprise the gentle minds of the women (and men) of India. We must never forget that all the teens and young adolescent women in this country have secretly sworn* to seal their vaginas till they reach the rightful, sex-having age of 36. By then they will have figured out enough about birds and bees so as to start an apiary and be certified ornithologists. In case of those couple of shameless wenches who raise their cuckoo heads and decide to indulge in promiscuous behavior, we will always have Shri Ram Sene to sniff them out and set them on the path of chastity and regression by way of unadulterated violence. Till then, keep your chaddis on!

(*This oath, of course, can be broken in case the said adolescent’s suitable match has been suitably found by her folks in a corpulent, much married,  Arab man of 40. There also, we must presuppose that she will know exactly how to deal with the invasion and violation of her body and self respect by a virulent lardass who will later pummel her for her “lack of skills” in bed.)

Childbirth – Why, Of course!  It has been universally accepted that childbirth is an act of utter crudity, it’s coarseness must not be croaked about in such an arrant and open manner. Also, it’s a very “basic” process so why must precious ink be wasted delineating the vagaries of acts so basic as this one. Afterall, it’s just a matter of life and occasionally, death. I wouldn’t tell this to my mother - who suffered 14 hours of intense labor that ended with a breach baby – because she will probably have my tongue pulled out by a pair of rusty forceps for recommending it as a “basic” idea. But that woman is demented as hell so what does she know? Her claim to fame in the childbirth arena is two petulant daughters so discard her theories, we must! The bottmline is that the idea of women who want to share their personal experiences of childbirth with other willing readers is totally and utterly offensive; who wants to hear/read about water breaking, vaginal dilation and caesarian-section complications anyway? Childbirth is hardly a place of snags or last minute glitches, one doesn’t have to prefigure it. It always goes well. It’s a basic process and since we have all been practicising pulling out 10lb steaks out of our vaginas since we were knee high, I believe we are all set for the future. I bet my aunt - who has devoted 15 years of her life to gynecology - must be beating herself up with her old and trusty specula for imagining Ob-GYN as a challenging field. Hah! Basic baby, it’s all so basic!

Contraception – I think that the writer has acquired a slightly slouchy attitude here for she has okayed the frightening thought of knowing and conversing about birth control. Was she choking on her Xanex? (Or was it Mala D?). Anyway, she manages to return from the land of fornicating wenches to that of temperance and milk and honey by insisting that no one – and I repeat NO ONE – wants to hear about other people’s experiences with assorted contraptions of contraception. We don’t need none of that girlfriend! So, STFU about your IUD!
Really!
Contraception manages to run into hot water ( puns unintended, I think) periodically (really, unintended) in our discussions and communique. In a country that’s slowly starting to become AIDS choicest playground, any discourse on contraception may actually help save lives and dignity but it is important to know where your priorities lie and hence, politeness must always rate above awareness in the general scheme of things. Saving lives etcetra is a highly overrated and lowly endeavor. 

Losing your virginity – Ah! The V word. Losing your virginity is an unromantic act (especially with that whole oath of not having sex till 36 we spoke about earlier) and more so if you have no previous understanding of sexual intercourse and/or contraception. This little flaw in logic we may park for the moment to consider the seriousness of the issue at hand. First time intercourse equates an unromantic romp in the hay (I have been watching Surya TV at midnight for a few weeks now so this reference must be viewed appropriately) equates hush your mouth about the act. Eve Ensler take notes. Such unbridled brilliance is hard to come by; such powers of deduction are a direct gift from God. Then again, some gifts can be interpreted as curses too. According to me, The Hymen falls in this category and so does this writer. No, really, they are such gifts. In the case of The Hymen, its removal is a necessary evil that may result in happy stuff (an orgasm) and then some not so happy stuff (like teenage preganancy). Despite this, there is no doubt in my mind that the act in itself must always be an undesirable and an unhappy one. The lesser the details, the better.

Did you say your hymen slaying was a slightly better event and not as unromantic as it’s claimed here? Why, of course, you MUST be a man.

Abortion – You foetus-killing, heathen creatures now want to talk about the act of murder too? The audacity on you would shame the Palin clan into extinction. The premise is as plain and devoid of originality as the writer – you don’t want to keep your baby, I don’t want to hear your story. Spare me the nasties puhleez! There are those who would like to argue that terminating a pregnancy is perhaps the most difficult and confusing choice they have had to make, or that the path was riddled with doubt and fear and they could have done with some sort of support mechanism and literature on the subject but thankfully their number is minimal. We, the sane ones, mustn’t allow for any further debates on such crass subjects to breed and populate our pretty heads. Pro choice, pro-life – that kind of rubbish mustn’t resonate in our environment. Let the American lesbians and Republicans engage each other in mud-slinging while we wonder what kind of hair style will Mahinder Singh Dhoni sport next and is Balika Vadhu the best thing since chicken tikka or what! 

 Now that’s a book everybody should write. And read.

Cross posted at HereShe

Terra Negra March 18, 2009

Fishbelly white
is the paper on which
I pen this even
when the Night Breed
howls in my name.
A synonym it is,
for Kali and the calling.
My librettos are drafted
in my own blood ink.
Not carmine or cold, it is
navy: rich and rising
to search not seek
My Beauty in Black.
Dipped in dusk. An aubade
released in the thick
monsoon air.
It’s the She – of a small but
severe night, splintered
in Hades.
The ghost of a pirate ship
sinking in the navel of
an urban Medusa.
It’s She – of the mysteries
and machetes that cut
meat in Borneo, and praise Allah
in the aftermath.
It’s She – of the sang froid dancing
from behind the black fabric
that imprisons her face.
It’s the She – of the cicatrix
blossoming on a dark thigh
and lightning spells risen
from each black penny eye.
It’s the shadow of Yin,
a shaman breathing into the sky
from the surging oceans that
Birth, Purify and Destroy.
Light is a shadow
that never did learn to speak but
it’s the darkness, a castaway
voice that translates
the earth’s poetry
It’s geometry
It’s expanse
Makes room for something
between breath and burial.
To live by.

I am reading Mad Love. Again. And drinking sherbet while fantasizing about Saint Just. Again.
Was he is a lover in a previous life or just one of my own avatars?
More importantly, aren’t those two things fused at the hip anyway?
Here commences the oh-so obvious Rousseauean dereliction.

Man Booker List 2009 – Lifetime etcetra March 19, 2009

Man Booker’s 12 from 14 that made it to the Judge’s list

Mahashweta Devi. Yay! (Though, honestly would she even care much about this?)
No Pamuk? Boo!

Note: I am wearing fuschia lined with a rather frail variety of zari, eating kebabs and reading Organt. Perfection is highly abstract a term to explain this sort of existence. Also, I am contemplating going to a poetry reading I have been invited to, yell -”Au nom de la Convention; elle est partout où nous sommes!” and then get off the stage. I don’t think they’d mind.
This, of course, will totally depend on my making it to the said gathering which totally depends on the temperament of the sun this afternoon.

Gorgeous is Rives March 19, 2009

This is how spoken word should be. With a soul so sultry, you just can’t deny the s or the e or the x or the y.

Woman, thou art loose March 20, 2009

Cross Posted at HereShe

Stories like these defy the very basic code of being human, of feeling any kind of sentience. I am enraged and immensely saddened as I write this and much as I try to piece together this torturuous puzzle, I remain utterly anguished by the rapid depletion of our ethical and spiritual values.

A man rapes his daughter for 9 years at the behest of some demented priest (?) while his wife plays a mute witness to this unspeakable violence. The story has been flaming across all the broad-sheets and TV channels; unfortunately some of them have chosen to sensationalize it a tad too much leaving very little to the imagination. The continued breaking of codes of conscientious journalism needs a whole different post and a very different sort of rant dedicated to it. At present, my heart is bleeding for this young girl; such ordeals don’t leave you unscathed. I can vouch for that. Experience has taught me my own hard to digest lessons.

Apparently, in this case, the male progenitor (calling him a father is almost abusing the sanctity of that term) was faring poorly in his business and raping his daughter was the antidote recommended by the said tantric. God! Can you imagine the sheer brutality of such a proclamation? But wait, for there will now be an increment in the quota of disgust you are experiencing: the girl’s female progenitor, her mother (sigh), watched her husband assault her daughter: she was brainwashed by the tantric. Ah! I can almost hear the sound of fury circling my stomach right now.

This is a very twisted tale of sexual extremism and blind beliefs. One could almost risk oversimplification here but on the surface this smacks of sexual repression – a psychologist has claimed that the perpetrators were accustomed to orgies – and in their hapless child, they found an easy release. How much of this is undiluted truth is anyone’s guess. I have known of so called “babas” and “tantriks” who channelize their own heinous intentions through their followers. However, I don’t want to assign apparent stereotypes yet. It’s difficult to believe the mumbo-jumbo about being brainwashed, you don’t stand naked and watch your husband ravage your child and if you do then either you are equally emotionally corrupt or you have had a lifetime of being conditioned to let go of your humanity. Whichever precedes.

I will not get into that rather cyclical debate of whether the mother was an equal partner to this crime or was she just a taciturn contrivance. My stand on this subject is fairly simple: abetting rape is as good as participating in it. And there is no such thing as a silent observer of a rape. That’s the ultimate lie. Man, woman or beast, I have no mercy for anyone who allows for something so terrible to occur and worse still, sits on it for 9 years. However, I also recognize that there may lie at least a few slip between the known and the assumed. So instead, I will focus on what I know and what infuriates me.

I wonder about smaller things though, how did this family conduct itself in say social gathering knowing fully well the incredible brutality that went behind the closed doors of their home? The girl is almost 21 now and must have been 12 when this started, how did she manage to get through all these years? Did she confide in someone at her school, a teacher or a caring friend perhaps? Did they ask her to shush about it? Did they hold her hand when she cried her pain out? Why did she have to wait for 9 years to see the smallest sliver of justice?

These are questions that are gradually clouding my mind and are threatening to swallow my faith in the Universe.
Rape is a four lettered curse of women everywhere. The language of rape is as offensive as the deed. It’s an act of ultimate degradation and violation and yet, somehow, for all the media attention it receives, I am appalled that a colossal amount of it is purely aimed at the “sexual” aspect of the act. When will the world wake up and realize that Rape doesn’t only tantamount to a very obvious physical defiling but more importantly – because so little is said and discussed about this – leaves the worst kind of emotional and psychological imprints?
I cannot and will not subscribe to those widely circulated – and extremely repugnant to the core – theories about it being the end of life and how the “victim” is forced to live in a shell of some sort because of something she didn’t even do. Such anneurysm inducing patriarchal nonsense we can do without in this day and age. No, my concern is more focused on how will this young person view life henceforth if she is not provided the right kind of support system and much needed therapy. Why isn’t anyone talking about this yet? There arises a sense of cavernous depersonalization in the aftermath of a rape that can turn a person into a skeleton. I have seen this from very close quarters. Emotionally and psychologically. The constant harassment at the hands of cops, lawyers et al, with their cold-blooded questions and clinically inured perspective can sometimes become a greater abyss from which the so called “victim” finds it difficult to climb out. The worst blow is the unholy conversion to a statistic. To reduce someone’s ache to a number in an inconsequential file that is left to eat dust on some rusty shelf.

On the flip side, there is often this rather unfortunate glamorization of a sexual assault; girls become women after such humiliation. I call bullshit! This is not a rite of passage, no it’s not the sexual equivalent of getting inked, smoking your first joint or your eponymous drunken binge. It’s an ugly and perverse thought to equate something that is perhaps intensely scarring (and personal) to speak of them in the same breath. Women don’t always become heroines in the aftermath of such debasement (they don’t need to), it’s a very coarse mind that can device and perpetuate something so entirely vituperative. A burgeoning social need to turn survivors into icons or martyrs is equally dangerous. Here I must make room for some clarity that I am in no way rejecting the empowerment that accompanies a strong woman’s ability to transcend her personal sadness and loss (post an assault), stand up and let the world hear her voice, however to expect every survivor to pen their autobiography and spew quotes is not only unfair but also undesirable. It’s excessive, to impose wants of heroism on someone who, herself, needs strength and support to first get her life back in order. Also, it is important to stand back and be prepared to hold them when they crash. And they do. I have seen it closely. I have known it even more closely.

There is also this absurd assumption that rape is often the victim’s fault, that they encourage such aggression against themselves. If ever there was a more laughable and yet pathetic stance, I have not met it yet. No one wants to be injured and humiliated. No doesn’t mean cloistered yes. It’s sardonic that generally men can’t read between the lines when needed. One person’s intent of causing harm is not a function of another person’s attire or attitude so let’s not even go there. There is nothing ambiguous about not wanting to be raped.
Off the tangent, it is surprising how none of the moralists who find a sense of purpose in attacking hapless girls in pubs find such incidents worthy of even a quick wave of their saffron flags. No one wants to pick up an issue like this though honestly on some level I am thankful that we have been spared some of the unnecessary mileage-gathering by disparaging politicos who usually like to flare their nostrils in public about law and order before getting back to nursing their gin and tonic in their whitewashed mansions with their whitewashed lies.

Rape is a reality. You may choose not to look into the mirror but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have successfully halted the ageing process, poor analogy this, but what I am getting at is this harmful double standard that either lets us perceive it as a somewhat unfortunate incident which must never be spoken about in polite society or a rather detrimental sort of glorification and sensationalizing that mitigates the possibility of actually conducting fearless communiqué on this subject. Tabloids thrive on gory and juicy tid bits, the masses start clamoring for hideous details; the more nausea-inducing, the better the sales. A brief discussion follows each of these gruesome reports (one that usually pins all the blame on victim or paints her an unfortunate victim without sparing a thought for any rehabilitation mechanism) followed by a quick disposal of the issue and the whole look-the-other-way routine regains momentum.
There still exists a primal mentality that raping a woman is essentially aiding her in coming of age process, it make her feel like a woman. Or that you can show a woman where she belongs by forcing yourself on her. As much as I detest pop culture-ish paw-waws I can’t help be reminded of that whole “war is menstrual envy” paradigm that makes turns me red with wrath (puns unintended). So going by that pronouncement, is rape another and much more brutal extension of the pillaging and plundering psychology, like the familiar war chants that resonate in training camps where soldiers make light of raping women. I can’t help but feel that link is missing here.
I feel a subsequent chills run up my spine as I type this because I have been privy to such vicious and utterly revolting sort of logic (?) in upscale bistros, the new age temples of the yuppie puppies as much as in rural chaupals smelling of cheap hair oil and a very morbid sort of masculinity, meting out tribal justice. This frustrates me no end. I have almost come to blows with similar kind of aggressors in both those environments and I felt sick for not finding any voice of support in either of them when it eventually boiled down to pinning the brass stacks. What does it take to really understand that rape is not just a physical act? The course of this much polluted stream of thoughts runs deeper than you can see. When you rape someone, you invade their mind as much as their body. That it takes a lot of courage and heart to be able to not constantly replay that moment, that scream, that pain, shot by shot like a particularly gruesome snuff movie, in your head. It’s about subjugation. When you rape somebody, you intend to make them feel inferior; you want to make them feel guilty of no particular crime except that of being at a certain place at a certain time. Rape denounces liberty. It condemns freedom. When rape occurs over an extended period of time, it’s trauma on wheels. Its a complete collapse of any form of ethical life one may imagine. Can you bring yourself to imagine the sheer agony that a girl has to live through in the moments before and after the act, – anticipating the oncoming attack and then trying to wash off its memory – let alone the actual, monstrous destructiveness of the attack? It’s unimaginable. No comparisons can be drawn, no analogies can be constructed. You will never know that pain unless you live that pain. Yet, one must make an attempt to assist those who did.

Let’s face the facts, people in India are fairly scared to even say the word Rape out loud, as though it might have some sort of acidic after effect that will eventually burn their tongues and gut their innards: a single, mortifying syllable that will burn their being. There are a lot of words we are afraid of – AIDS, homosexuality, child abuse, prostitution, drug usage et al. The irony is that some of them are even interrelated and if we could manage to flash even some light on even one of them, we could possibly engage in conversations about the others as well. But Utopia waits for Godot too. We have a long way to go before we get comfortable in our own duality and the secret lives we lead to actually go out there and seek a confrontation with the injustice that’s permeated out system.

First, as acutely painful a situation this might be, let’s not tut-tut too much and sound the death knells on any future possibility of a stable and happy life for this young girl. This is slightly difficult because the other extreme is that of asking a rape victim (throughout this write up I am continuously reminded of how much I deplore this term and what it represents) to forget it all and move on with life, as though the past has suddenly been discarded to a vacuum.

We don’t live in voids, life is a connected series of events but despite this, it’s not the sum of its parts. That’s the message that rape survivors need to see from us. That the answers won’t rain down on us courtesy some sublime divine entity. We need to stand up, enable a change, speak about it and help collect pieces of a rudely interrupted life. More importantly, we need to reaffirm that there still is life. A life that awaits this young girl, a life that is willing to accept and replenish – without judgment or a sense biased morality – all that broken.

Note: I wrote this after I read two consecutive stories about women/girls being assaulted and that decided the tone and the scope of this article. This in no way represents any prejudice or bias on my part when it comes to the subject of male and transgendered survivors of rape.
Rape is an abhorrent crime irrespective of who it’s aimed at.

In need of an attitude* March 23, 2009

Cross posted at HereShe

*Borrowed from a June Jordan essay.

The man who is responsible for the unthinkable, almost decade long brutalization of two young girls in Bombay has decided that he can compensate for his violent crime by getting the younger sister hitched to his own offspring and after this rather respectable solution, he recommends, the matter should be shunned for further discussion. Wonderfully inventive, this man is! Or is he too cliched, given the history of rapists offering marriage as means of “solace and comfort” for survivors of rape?
One might ponder about the reason/s for not wanting to offer this sort of blessed marital proposal for the older girl – one who was abused for a longer period in time – and he has a justifiable explanation: she is too used. Ahem. Sample that.
She is too used because this devil incarnate has raped her over a period of 9 years along with recommending to her father, incest as the best possible leeway to Kuber’s pot of gold. He abused her since she was 12 and also tried to prey upon her younger sister: his final act of viciousness that enabled the elder one to speak up and bring this whole sordid affair to light.
According to new reports, the three accused – the purported astrologer and instigator, the demon father and the contemptible mother – have been doing mighty fine in their respective cells that will hold them for a little while before they get bail. They have, in fact, shown no signs of guilt or shame during the span of their interrogation and incarceration. Senior and hardened police officials have been quoted as horrified by the sheer lack of anything decent or good in these despicable criminals. However, why does this shock us so? We should have been habituated to this evasion of ethics is our society. We have allowed for it to desecrate women for as long as I can remember. Women being abused is of no consequence to anyone including women themselves, I am told.

It’s shameful that we have no serious woman lawmaker in this country who will rise to the occasion and pledge her resources and faculty to fight for these girls. Where is the collective voice of the brown women of this country that will gather under one roof and seek a change in this system that asks for a bribe in order to arrest incest offenders?
Where are the self aggrandizing ethno-centric feminists who love espousing about culture and trees and every other insignificant aspect of life and living but do well to stay clear of something that truly deserves their benefaction?

I am amazed that no moral cop of assorted religious affiliation has chosen to criticize this and/or vowed to take action against those involved in this utter travesty of humanity. Beating up people and blackening their faces is not really a longterm alternative.
I am ashamed, indeed. I am ashamed because the female people of my country are not willing to change this all-pervasive attitude that it’s okay to cut open a woman as long as you can stitch her back; she is a frog from the zoology class back in high school.
That it’s ok to incinerate a girl’s childhood in the most unapologetic manner ever and then light a cigarette from the embers without so much as batting an eyelid.
That it’s ok to degrade someone based on the shape and function of their genitalia.
That’s our attitude. Our current attitude. Our widely prevalent attitude.
And why is it so?

Media brouhaha: A woman is not just a body, dear idea-starved PR/Marketing/Advertising bozos. Unfortunately for us, every bit of sexist media around us is hell bent on dispproving and discrediting the work done by our foremothers – the brown women leaders, thinkers, doers – of the feminist revolution in this country. Every second advertisement around seems to make me wince with the way it uses the female form to sell everything, from chewing gum to engine oil. A recent and fairly pedestrian ad has two insipid teens, a chubby cretin and a wiry twit pulling a fast one on wiry’s girlfriend. They take pride in the fact that they just lied their way out of a slight pickle wiry would have gotten in with the girlfriend. Apparently – and this is what I gathered of the flimsy premise – the boys go clubbing and do not wish to share this tiny little detail with the girl, instead, they build up some bird-brained story of how chubby’s grandmother (notice, not the grandfather but good ole “naani”) is on her deathbed in an ICU et al. The gullible girlie falls for this, offers her sympathies and scoots before she adoringly asks the biatch boyfriend to call her later. The boys decide to plan another party. Without the girlfriend, of course. Bravo! We are setting the right expectations and designing the perfect role models for the next generation of women-beaters and haters.The best way to sell a mediocre phone is to lace it’s trite advert with some not-so-subtle strains of chauvinism. The tragedy of this piece is that it features a bunch of freshly scrubbed adolescents, common kids who would lounge in a college cafeteria and in that casual representation lies the exact problem; the fact that they are so identify-able.
A crude thought is no better than crude action. Its worse given it’s ability to serve as the origin of crude actions of the future (Camus). TV shows abound with marital rape and scenes of a peculiar sort of media-land Disturbia where “untouchable” girls are married off to wealthy lords and masters and have to constantly face harassment and insult at their hands as well as at the hand of their family. Abstruse arguments about financial viability of such ventures aside, mass media – whether we like it or not – is key in constructing new social paradigms. Is it any wonder then that the country is fast slipping into a dirty drain of violence and fanaticism with healthy dose of sexism for that extra spice?

We are complacent about this type of sometimes-subliminal-but-very-graphic-at-other-times sort of messaging we are constantly bombarded with. In another pop culture phenom of sorts, a bunch of 8 girls and guys slug it out for fame and money and “love” in a heavenly Goan villa. Much to my chagrin such stale fare seems to enjoy a steady and enthusiastic viewership across the board and on a more disturbing note, some of the tweens who are tuned into such disparaging stuff have even commenced with emulating their new age idols. By the way, in this land of TV love, the girls are expected to be “hot” – that’s the single most important criteria for them to win contests and rule the middle earth. (In a manner of speaking of course, though to be fair they don’t expect the boys to be Socrates equivalent either)
The bigger tragedy: most of these shows have women as their executive producers and assistant directors. There you go, we not only refuse to change the hackneyed and biased portrayal of our own kind but we are quite helpful with extending the miasma.
What will it take for smart women in media and advertising and television to throttle to death these dogmatic depictions that undermine and debase their own kind?

I am a feminist but … I love the lot of those brown women who readily jump into any debate that concerns the global feminosphere (feminist blogosphere?) but very conveniently shy away from the more burning issues right here at home. I am not asking you detain yourself from the larger movement – it’s the cohesive that holds us together on many levels – but do you have to constantly seek shelter in the flim-flam of comfortable obscurantism and complicated theorizing that is the bane of any real grass roots movement anyway? There are very real issues that are of a severe nature and pain us all on a level far deeper than any of us care to give them credit for; these issues need to be recognized and addressed. It’s very nice and dandy to type dreary passages out of University textbooks but are you in any way actually “doing” anything about the real problems aiming for our necks? There is this other, rather petty, tendency to not pick on desi womanist issues because someone else, somewhere else has already written about it and so its no more “niche” enough to deserve your precious feminist intellect or analysis. Ah! Hallowed hegemony! In a country where new born girls are still being drowned in vats of milk, can we really afford for such a self-destructive ideology to perpetuate? We need to add as many voices to the the symphony, not carp about tonal variations in it (and we will have time later to adjust these frequencies). The more you write and converse about a problematic subject that affects all of us, the more you are allowing for it to gain exposure and quite like the Vlad of lore, this light you shed on its body will ultimately aid its destruction. Try it.

The Upper Echelons … of a selected women people who revel in their own brand of gender deception. It’s a common phenomenon for women in certain higher stratum of politics or law or any other powerful branch of governance to relegate their identity as a women people right to the dumpster after they have used that very identity to garner support. In their rather superficial quest for “individualism”, they seem to forget that they are women and are viewed as women and always will be. And thats not really a bad thing. They resign from those very ideals that they had engaged in their earlier avatar as Young Brown Women of Courage before they become Slightly Older Brown Women of Power. And that’s a very blurry line right there: to enunciate the difference between courage and power is to recognize the path you need to take if you want to remain honest to yourself and your people. And its not a pretty road but its worth its wars. I can’t seem to pick one brown politician worth her salt (save Renuka Choudhary) who has shown any interest in uplifting the cause of the women in this country. Even with Mz C, her prerogative is clearly of a more urban nature and usually does seem to preclude the issues haranguing rural Indian women. Where are the brown female voices in urban Indian political system that place feminist agenda on a new and well-carved platform? Voices that demand for a change in perception. Voices that are firmly devoid of the calm lullaby-esque tones of a gentle sort of motherly creature and instead have the fire and brimstone of a warrior sort of creature. Voices that summon the old goddess of Mayhem who danced on naked bodies of beast-men that dared disturb her sense of balance and justice. The hand-waves and head-nods of a Sonia Gandhi may land her on a power list compiled by some fancy magazine(?) but what really has been her contribution to the upliftment of the peasant women of Bihar who are still chained to zamindars as bonded laborers? Zilch.
Too bad for one who is considered to be one of the (if not the most) powerful woman in the world.
I would like to see some of these women pick up issues that impinge on their own gender but I’d like to see them do this without the mandatory softness of approach that seems to color woman’s issues in this country. I would like to witness some fortitude that ricochets through our entire system in this country. I am tired of patience and I would like to see some productivity on this front.
Also, our lovely-in-Armani CEOs, the women who hold in the cinch of their artistic scarf-knots the power to create and destroy industrial empires, it would be nice to have you clear your throats a little bit and speak up for the other half that’s having a tough time just plain surviving in faraway hovels. You may never have to step your Gucci covered feet in any of those hamlets but that doesn’t erase their existence (niether does it berate yours, just in case). These nameless, faceless mothers, farmers, mill-workers, just plain and simple women all, are in need of your voice. It’s needed that you flex your corporate muscle and do it for the betterment of an entire people. Brown women people. People like yourself. Your people.

Sticky –Icky Issues.. like this one, right here. Incest, paedophilia, bride burning, child marriages are usually like hand grenades in intelligent discussion circles. Even the most enlightened shy away from picking up cudgels on the behalf of the survivors (not victims, mind you). The icki-ness of an issue doesn’t make it less important or more sensational. It’s relevant to find a middle path that focuses attention on such excruciating topics without making them sensational. Brown women everywhere in this country are affected by the incidents such as these but very few of them choose to speak about it either out of fear (very palpable at times) or simply because someone somewhere else (with a “better” understanding of this sort of stuff though god alone knows what the hell does that mean) will pick it up. I call b.s.. Pick up these pieces, discuss them damn it! Raise your voice against it. Scream if you absolutely must (your need be louder than your aggressor). Refuse to be raped. Refuse these modern beasts their ability to scare us into a shameful hole because they are blessed with a fleshy tripod between their legs. Refuse to die in childbirths that force you to give birth to your fifth daughter, prematurely. Refuse to compartmentalize issues that affect us all. Every single blow against every single brown girl is significant and one direct to each of our (your) faces. How long will you continue to get slapped and murmur gently apologies in return?
Defiance is a word so powerful that it can melt skies to oceans.
Brown women of India, please change your attitude. Change the way you are wired – to accept and never retaliate. Change this nauseating habit of folding your life away so that you can enable others.
Why don’t you resent the fact that an IPL bid seems to carry far more importance than the living conditions and deaths of women in this country?
Why don’t you revolt when your bodies and faces and skins are constantly criticized and objectified at the same time?
Why aren’t you tired of looking the other way and asking the auto driver to speed up when a bunch of Neanderthals in their VIP vehicles chase you, make obscene gestures at you and expect you to fear them?

This is not the way you should have to live.
You should choose differently. Starting now.

A lot of bottle and some wafting Eudamonia but wait.. March 24, 2009

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time – is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

- Cesare Pavese

Oh! But now I feel like an insect drunk on its own peculiar delirium.

I, on the other hand, contemplate suffering during those darling trinkety moments in the tub waiting for my somesortofwheatgermish conditioner to work it’s magic on my tresses, which it never does because they always tell you to pour just the right bit – the shape of a coin – in your plam, and gently rinse it but avoid the scalp. They tell you nothing about the country of origin for this conditioning coin – is it a modern coin or an ancient one? Because if it the size of a 5 rupee contemporary sikka then I think I am on the right rasta here but what if it is to mirror the bronze chips from the Chola dynasty or something more Ancient Grecian, then I am way off the margin.
And so I suffer, in bubble-filled silence because I have run out of shampoo bottles to make holes in and I am firmly inept at making conditioner currency in my upturned palm. Also, I am reminded that I don’t seem to have the kind of name that would do justice to a wedding card and hence there is another reason to not get married. (No really, think about it ..Nalini weds Rahul (cute), Chris weds Raj (odd but doable) and Scherezade weds um..err…???)
I have suffered sufficiently to agree with the Italian.

Murder and the Girl(s) March 25, 2009

I have a fever but I am sure that’s not the only reason my temperature is rising.

In the early hours of September 30, these same men were cruising along Nelson Mandela Marg in a drunken state. They spotted her driving at a moderate speed. They tried to wedge their Wagon R in front of her vehicle but shot her when she refused to stop.

It took the cruel death of another woman for Delhi police to get off their keesters and actually try (I use this word rather loosely in the given context) nab the murderers of Soumya Vishwanathan. The Headlines Today journalist/producer was shot at point blank range by a man who is(was), in fact, a police informer and known to dress up in a cop’s uniform and prance around (quite literally) the city while flashing the police beacon on top of his car.
This callous killer and his compadres had actually visited the emergency ward at the hospital where Soumya was taken to ensure that she was dead.

The men — three of them detained on Monday — are main accused Ravi Kapoor, Amit Kumar Shukla, Baljeet Malik and Vijay Kumar. The police are on the hunt for the fifth accused, Ajay Kumar.

Said Commissioner of Police Y S Dadwal: “The murders of both Jigisha Ghosh and Soumya Vishwanathan have been solved with the arrest of these men. Ajay Kumar is still on the run.”

And why, your prickly little brains might query, did he feel the need to put a bullet in some young woman’s head?
Our bobbies claim that Ravi and his cohorts found Soumya’s restrained driving a slight nuisance and so this drunken coterie decided to kill her. Better still, when her car – out of control and skidding – hit the side of the highway, they stopped their own vehicle, got out and went to check if the girl was breathing or not.
After confirming that she was dead, they got in and sped away.

These men were also responsible for smothering to death Jigisha Ghosg, an IT professional, a few weeks after murdering Soumya.
An important note – Both these women were returning home after a late night shift.

Another important note – If the cops had actually made some effort to trace the killer after Soumya’s meaningless death, they could have avoided Jigisha’s murder.

I resume my frequent barking – what are we doing about the safety of women in this country?
I would really like some answers. Now.
:X

Mud Moon Shine March 25, 2009

Heart is the sky and its open mouth that
codes silence blue and gray is reciting a

deferred hymn. Let the language of rains
slip in. Let rivulets flutter on a tawny arm that is

outstretched and upturned. Like the heart in which
the sky lives. Smokes. Gets high on the hill-fire smoke,

breaks bread, dunk s it in psalms and taadi
spins it around before a sudden swallow and belch

before the mercury swells like a patriarch’s ego muscle
it down and feed it mud. Wet, slippery and chocolaty mud

will mould feet flip flopping in lightning. It’ silver
anklets rhyme in a pair. Thunder fills in the empty corridors and

groans, grimaces – barks at the moon, a rabid pet. The heart stills
it’s motions, clocks it’s movement to the scuttling little

fish in a trough. Omitted travelers. Blind like the quad
bathed in darkness – listening to the beats of the

Heart that hangs from it’s own sky. A moon in
Silence. Penance. Patience.

After watching this. (Hriday Aakash)
Also, remembering a gonesoquickly childhood. (No alleigance to Zaro Weil though)

Hell, yeah! March 26, 2009

Via The Sartorialist
Exactly the sort of sandals I would wear if I were to take Lacan to a samovar.

Hellhole – So, if Solzhenitsyn had attained samadhi, we may never have really gotten an honest account of The Archipelago ?

Via Sepia Mutiny

Updated:
In the memory of John Hope Franklin, a brilliant tribute in photographs.
Chapters open. Chapters close. Life ink never fades. Never will.

But what of the Vodafone families, do they get anything? March 26, 2009

Seer : Congress promises 25 kilograms of rice at Rs 3 a kg every month for BPL* families…
Mendicant : *eyes jutting out * Hain! Aisa??…. What the fucks!
Mendicant: *a suitably puzzled mug*
Mendicant: Arre yaar….yeh kya…Mere paas to Airtel hai! Also, what about the Vodafone people?
Seer: Mar ja saale!

In news related to wimmen of the species, some good stuff. Somenot so good stuff.

Okie.All the wily ruses aside, now I will go study Winnicott’s Transitional Object. And try to quash any thoughts of it being a synonym for The Current Boy and/or my love life.

*BPL – Below Poverty Line. (Not that I had any doubts of you not being familiar with that term. Ahem.)

Mouse on Mars March 27, 2009

Live performance today by spacial chooha*.
Venue: Sophia’s Audi
Time: 7:00 PM

Cell phone theater. Call Cutta.

“Imagine, somewhere in the world, someone is buying a ticket for an individual theatre show on a specific day. But instead of being led to the auditorium he gets the key of a room and a sketch of how to get there.”
Who have you discovered. Denied. Wrung out. Dry. Like an old table cloth.
ohwellitgoes type of mood today. The shade of a shallow ditch. Plus, I have the floo. Boo Hoo Hoo.

Note to the Sole Sistah: Dear Romancer of one Blister Mister, must I always remind you that Romeo Must Die? At least once.

*chooha – Hindi for mouse.

An ectomorphic somatotype with just the right amount of hirsuteness March 27, 2009

..Or this gent. Goes by the name of Roberto Donadoni.
(Like you didn’t know it already.)

go ahead. objectify. i dare you not to.

yes. i am fiddling with the archives of sexual behavior. for a study. just for a damned study. dammit.

How I create my father March 27, 2009

In a bowl of paella steaming with sofrito as rich
as his voice – smooth and heady denuding
the wilderness of his palate, a dash of
culantro; the smoky memory of his smile
like aji dulce

In the rhythm of coquettish panderos, mad
musiqa to swim in my quiescent veins the lust
for a soul star. To break in the bario and serenade
my ears in the mist of mornings. I exhalethe lightness
of a grinning dawn imagine his hands
casting the tempo of my earth dancing

In the blushing velvety tent of an upside down
hibiscus, trembling in my impish fingers. Ready to
disperse its yellow dotted secrets. Murmuring it’s
desires to the wind that will take it to unknown
lovers. A trail of rumors that will discover a still
newer world it’s flowery scent will steer to
another raw coast.

In the wise tongue of Orula – thick, coal tinted
incantations of primal power – my shadow, a treatise
for my self and the Other selves I encounter, adore and
abandon because I am my father’s only daughter and
the only ritual sacred is. Departure. I know.

I also create my father in the brownstone
stacks of a roughness so urban and so ancestral that
it fashions its own elegiac manner, an environment,
a book. Called New York. In it I draw
my dad a retired Superhero. Or a dying
Phantom.

Returns. In the filament of the lone bulb
incandescent sometimes blinking at my sleepy
face and rocking me to slumber is Cugat’s guitar
weeping, caressing , devouring, learning to sleep
in the small interims. A noise colored snow. Arms clasped
tight like strings on a new violin. Or the love of a
trying child.

I create my father in a language not
my own but rented; dipped in cachaca still
sultry like caballeros. Deviant and stormy, it
rages against the cage of my teeth that threaten
to block it’s exit. I create my father in the shape
of a calabash, a god so green and ripe, a god so
readily filled with peace and sometimes wine or tea. A God
within a god outside.

I speak my father in every pa’ ca and
pa’ lla and the raised eyebrow of a Que va?
And the addictive hook, a smiling inflection
of Mi Boricua! In the swigs of tequila drowned
the echoes of his boyhood in La Isla del Encanto,
the hemorrhaging of his heart, of living in an Oxcart.
With collars torn and a consolation - La piña esta agria

I create my father in fat little bagels and falafels, lettuce
and bacon.Tomatoes on the side. In the unhurried
chewing of fries with coffee, finger dipping in mustard
and staining of shirts with tobasco. In the whiff of oregano
and roasted chilles. In the dry hunger of immigrant kids. Holding
signs and their bellies in their mouths.

I create my father in the unfinished kitchen of a forgotten loft
in East Village with dents in the expensive disliked mahogany and holes
in walls. With clouds for curtains and rain soaked windows sulky,
empty flower pots, a of row refugees crouching
in defiance and fear. No one will fill their blanks.
Like him. His brothers.

I create my father in the gluey, coy parts of my memory. Distilled.
Like mineral water, he hated. Gold and rust geysers of fall expanding
with each syllable of an inveterate baritone. His depth a gift
of tonsillitis and cigarettes. Hot, heavy breathing with a book
on the belly glasses peering in a delicate balance. I create this map
of my father. His grip. His smells. His displacement. His bones. His skin.
A color of him.

I create my father in ways similar to these. And sometimes
different too. But this is how I choose to know him. Bless him.
Make him my father.

For my Puerto Rican New Yorker dad. Who died. Suddenly. Not in my arms.

(there must be errors. its stop and go. will correct them when i am less weighed down by fever.)

have you ever had your pullets whipped by a capon? March 30, 2009

“You compare yourself to a cock (the bird); a cock (again, the bird) never has his pullets whipped by a capon. Pattern yourself as much as you want after animals; for my part, I want to love like a man. As for wine, it may be evil to drink in Arabia, but in Germany it’s praiseworthy!”

– Originally from Bin Abul Kiba’s Mirror of the Faithful.

Delivered by German commander to a vizier in Soloman’s court paying back in kind the insult of being called an alcoholic wuss (well, i summarize, it actually went something along the lines of i-have-four-wives-don’t-drink-no-lager-so-i-make-strong-children-for-my-God)

Some there are who are so ashamed of all they do not know that they strive to disguise themselves as wit or philosophers.

- Voltaire. (Who, I am secretly convinced, may actually have been a woman, if that portait at 24 is anything to go by.)

An astonishingly gnostic summation of my discipline – and most of the blogging endeavors I have encountered – by it’s own Godfather (mother?). I rest my case. And fold the books on it.
I would ideally jump into a barrel of beer but as the other renowned mug Plutarch has deduced, women can’t really get drunk what with that whole liquid constitution thingummy. Mine more so. No wonder I get jelly knees when faced with the prospects of a real job or relationship.
Bah!
And thats the mercurial synopsis of a culture, a gender and a civilization. I have solved three quarters of this world’s crosswords.

Johnny Appleseed of Sound March 30, 2009

“I’ll get the lonely little sentence with a real error in it ..”

Also. I want to put him in a bottle and gulp it down. Mockingbird Remixed. Only you, beautiful man, can do this. Awesomeness. Yes he is flawed. Yes he is fractured. In places. Yes he can have my heart on a plate.

But, this, oh! this. It’s Einstein of Emoticons!

Highly likely he is gay. I don’t care. I am marrying him either way. (Poetry, Rives style!)

And. Roy Dupuis. Bonjour mon ami! il faut souffrir pour être belle – I determined that he must have suffered a LOT to come out this delicious.

Okie. I now understand the conceptual mechanics of the desire that births a menage-a-trois so much better.
Why choose?
I want both.
Please.

p.s.: In his younger pictures he bears more than a passing resemblance to Saint Just, n’est-ce pas?
Sample it yourself.

Well. Except the eyebrows.

While I was contemplating turning my mother’s vintage chalice into a spitoon April 1, 2009

..unnerving events occured. Starting with a pertinent, if some what befuddling question – Why does my mother possess a chalice to start with?
Never mind that. Questioning psychologists about their choice in crockery/cutlery is like paying Gaultier to design a saree made of nails that is meant to puncture your lungs once you drape it. It’s complicated.

So, while I was deciphering and color-coding my phlegm cups, Hameed Karzai decided that marital rape is ok. (To applaud his act of debasing an entire population, I am tempted to dispatch some of these cups to him.)
“The law, which has not been publicly released, is believed to state women can only seek work, education or doctor’s appointments with their husband’s permission.”

(Honey I think I cracked a rib carrying your kalashnikovs and rocket launchers!)
(Hold on woman, I have a kaffir to behead…)

The law is aimed at legalizing rape within the confines of a marriage. In a country where girls are married off at the ripe old age of 12 (to 40 year old warlords at times), this law was much needed. Wasn’t it?
Of course, the “civilized” western world has possibly already swept this under the carpet while prepping to pump another couple of billions fighting a “war on terror” that really doesn’t seem to have much room for women’s rights.

From a 2003 study conducted by UNIFEM on this subject. But I am inclined to believe that Karzai might consider UNIFEM some sort of a bleaching product for women to make themselves less hideous for their future rapists, err, husbands. Pity, that.

I have noticed that despite an unofficial embargo on the usage of the highly inflammable “Islamic terrorism” in media debates (secularists have much in common with communalists – lack of originality is perhaps the most significant similiarity), the continuous and gleeful smattering of “Hindutva brigade” continues to spice many an NDTV tete-a-tete. I would make requisite noise about the unnecessary association and how Hindutva v/s Hinudism is a pretty crummy differentiation to commence with but that would amount to taking the Indian electronic media with some seriousness. Now that I can’t muster.
So. Fair it goes.
I must return to de-clogging my nasal passage.

Queers against capitalism and other nasty things April 2, 2009

Well. That title just wrote itself, didn’t it?

I’m confident President Sarkozy will
be at the first course of the dinner
and that he will complete the dinner

- Gordon Brown| BRITISH PM (His hair seems a tad more real than Blair’s)

Thankfully Sarkozy did stay for the final course and what, may you ask my sprightly readers, was on the menu for the G-spotters?

Here it is.

Organic salmon from Shetland, served with samphire and sea kale, a selection of vegetables from Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and Irish soda bread. For the main course, they munched on slow-roasted shoulder of lamb from the Elwy Valley in North Wales, with Jersey Royal potatoes, wild mushrooms and mint sauce.
Dessert was an old teatime favourite – Bakewell tart and custard.
Vegetarians at the meal were offered a goat’s cheese starter and lovage and potato dumplings for the main course. ( I don’t get vegetarians but I don’t get goat cheese either. )

This hearty fare cooked by Jaime Oliver whose orientation in condiments seems limited to rosemary and thyme. And pepper. A whole lot of it it too. But his unimaginably cute lisp negates all of that. 

Nevertheless this is a good start to impenetrable discussions about the financial apocalypse and a general sense of anarchy rampant world over. Personally speaking, roast lamb in mint sauce is precisely the sort of antidote we may have been looking for. Besides, nobody achieves gallantry of any sort on an empty stomach – how many Rwandan savants have you had the pleasure of deconstructing the symbolism of Sartre’s sun glasses? None, I bet. Ain’t no fame in hunger.  Unless, of course, your first name is Bobby and the last name is Sands. But then you can’t possibly frolick at 10 Downing street with that moniker anyway.

 

This is a Bakewell Tart

 

 

These are capitalism hating rioters outside the G 20 summit.

 

 

Who would you like to eat? (If you are a banker of some sort then refrain from answering this.)
I’d go with the tart. Definitely, the tart.

Clap Trap Crack Slap April 2, 2009

This Rhythm Is Infected. It totally is.

Chris Cornell is much loved but admit it boy, even You can’t top this.

This is so funny that I’d gladly sacrifice my spine – it has been making squeaky noises from all the doubling over – for all the cacaphonous joy I have been experiencing since reading it.

But seriously, can you imagine Timbaland’s strident falsetto with Reznor’s original, industrial grunts?

Though I would genuinely love to see how ” Even Closer [feat. Justin Timberlake and Maynard James Keenan]” would shape up. I really would.
Provided that Keenan doesn’t carve a six course meal out of Timberlake’s torso. (Which would be excellent to watch too.)

Here is the entire track-listing from Strobe Light. (Ha ha)

01 Intro Skit
02 Everybody’s Doing It [Feat. Chris Martin, Jay-Z AND Bono]
03 Black T-Shirt
04 Pussygrinder [Feat. Sheryl Crow]
05 Coffin on the Dancefloor
06 This Rhythm Is Infected
07 Slide to the Dark Side
08 Even Closer [feat. Justin Timberlake and Maynard James Keenan]
09 On the List (She’s Not)
10 Clap Trap Crack Slap
11 Laid, Paid and Played [feat. Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas and Al Jourgensen]
12 Feel Like Being Dead Again
13 Still Hurts [feat. Alicia Keys]
14 Outro Skit

Via Pitchfork Media

p.s.: Reznor in Kanye glasses. Awesome blossom!

Doesn’t holding her down like a barnyard animal invoke any wrath of the blazing fire? April 6, 2009

…or so asked me wise mum when she was confronted by the ghastly news of a teen girl’s public flogging in the “peaceful” (wasn’t there a peace treaty signed between the pakistan politburos and the “good” taliban?) Swat valley by a bunch of Talibs.

“She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross.” – Muslim Khan (spokesperson for the Swat Taliban)

There is something so poetic about militants questioning boundaries. Isn’t there?

Besides, if 3 varmints must pin a halpess young woman while one tries to detach her skin from her bones in order to save her from moral ruin then, thats exactly what MUST be done. Mustn’t it?

My mother is a godless woman of psycho-analysis anyway. She is to be forsaken to the hell-fires for even questioning these rather fine bastards and their perspicaciousness.

37 lashes . And not the ones that you coat with Revlon’s water-proof mascara either.

Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe April 7, 2009

 Belt up you heathen critters! I am not going biblical yet.

A rather angry looking Dainik Jagran reporter – possibly the reason why he was so angry to begin with - threw a shoe at our bespectacled and fairly genial (glasses make people more sentient) home minister at a press conference this morning. Electronic media outlets everywhere across the length and breadth of this country are clamoring to get a “different” take on this subject. I just watched a 15 minuted special on a Bangla news channel detailing the velocity and dimensions of the shoe with diagrams et al. Our dastardly laws refuse to prosecute anybody who throws shoes at ministers without knives or bombs tucked in them so in all probability the footwear-flinging turbantor will walk out fine from this fiasco, with one less shoe of course. In the meantime,  I also see busloads of half-pint journos descending upon the venue of this attack though I am suspicious of their intent; I don’t think  they care  about the story as much as they want a free shoe. In these recessionary times even an imitation Nike is a good deal.

As for the swinish culprit who dared hurl the said shoe: he must be hanged. Not just for the brazen act of insult but simply coz he was so bad with it. I mean this is a slacker of a shoe-hurler and tars the names of  greats who’ve come before him. Look at the distance from which he had to, quite literally, plop the footwear  and he was an utter disaster even at that. P. Chids wore a sardonic “This is all you got” smile after playing what is possibly the most sedantry version of  Neo this side of Zion.  This is the standard problem with our countrymen; we can’t plagiarise right. This is nowhere close to al-Zaidi’s range and power and if can’t even copy the Iraqis well then who the hell can we copy?  

I think Bush would agree with me on this matter as would the government of Iraq. And how can we not follow laws decreed and mutually agreed upon by a republican moosehat and fundamentalist oafs.

So, hanging it is.

 

 

UPDATED! I was in the mood to grace some trampy blogger pages with my lambent presence and was frequently cheesed off by the insidious word verification counters. The affronting words included – iNERD, SCOURZZ, FLOOSINESS and MUFFER.

Is the government trying to tell me something by way of blogger zonkboards? Huh?

We could use Maieutics to explain this April 8, 2009

So Osama really is a Girl Interrupted. That explains a lot of his actions.

You might have expected a mighty witty commentary on the subject except that I have to go and dig up information on methods used by Wittgenstein to procure grade A cocaine.

Really. That’s an important discovery I am about to make. You can thank me later.

Also, whatever happened to Meatloaf?  I have been pondering about this for a while now. I had contemplated using his genius lyricism to provide some amendments to the current propositions of Tractatus LP. (I will call it Prop 8. )

 

 

Hint: One of them commited a heinous crime - shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue. The other lives in caves.

Who is born a donkey can’t die a horse*… but can most definitely become the Italian premier April 9, 2009

This chap can garner immense success in our country’s electoral politics and also feel right at home with our homegrown brand of uncaring that permeates the system. BJP should ditch the other old geezer and field this one instead. He demeans victims of natural catastrophes, yells racial slurs in public, gropes women, spits sexism wrapped in racism and pisses the Queen off too.

Hell! I have a nagging feeling that he possibly was trained by one of our own electioneers.

They should nominate him. He will win hands down. He is a tad busy but we can lure him with some authentic gajar halwa or a discounted tanning machine and some lotion. And in the event of a sordid loss they can at least expect a healthy pep talk. Besides we are much in need of some political candor in this country. It’ll do us all a world of good.

Berlusconi for Prime Minister. That’s how you can get me to vote, you Jaagore bumble bees. That’s how.

* Chi nasce asino non può morire cavallo (Some Italian tosser coined it. They are all barmy anyway. )

Toddler likes Bitch Fest April 10, 2009

I had the misfortune of travelling in a local* today. I would ideally prefer getting a moko inked while someone is piercing my lady parts than venture out in this grotesque heat but times are such that one can’t always ask one’s ruthless employers to go stuff a cow when they ask one to make one’s presence felt for a conference at the southern most corner of the city (knowing fully well the amount of pain this trek would normally involve), can one? No, one can’t. Not till one hears from the Venezuelan cabinet on that aide to the president position one has applied for.

My bucket of woes flooded when a pair of Gujarati blabbermouths parked themselves next to me and with a kid in tow, no less. I don’t much care for the Gujarati and their women, maudlin beings that they tend to be. My derision for their kids only about exceeds my loathing of the mothers. True, it is. So, whilst I was contemplating possible ways of making the trio swallow some sweet lime seeds they could possibly choke on, the pint sized cherub snatched my book from my hand. Like that! (The book in my hand, if you care to know, was, Bitchfest.) The mother expressed happiness over the kid’s choice of tome – there was another twee lass next to them with a rotten copy of an equally rotten Dale Carnegie self help guide, open to a chapter about “Thinking Big” (guess I showed that illiterate big dreaming goat didn’t I?)  – primarily owing to the largesse of the volume in my hand. She beamed at the toddler’s penchant for “fat” books. I suspect she wouldn’t have appeared so radiant if she were to read the said book and/or encounter the chapter on lesbian macaques of Kyoto and combating the new trend of vaginal reconstruction in The Vulva Goldmine.

Despite that, this unprecedented event has raised my hopes in this nation’s children and as a result I despise them a degree lesser. My hatred for their parents remains untarnished. Thankfully.

I am also thankful for the heat actually, it has started to melt the extra body fat I had accumulated by sneakily setting residence inside a McDonald’s outlet .
Also, there is something to be said for the Indian summers. I just don’t know what that could be.
One of these days I will buy a chicken and christen him Immanuel Kant and then have him tandoor-ed. That way I can then say that I ate Kant’s soul.

p.s : The soul is a person but if the person is a chicken then the soul is a chicken. Isn’t it? Paralogism of pure reason.

p.p.s :  If your parents were less pedantic than mine you have had the good fortune of never descending upon a philosophy class and hence should thank your lucky stars (and all the constellations you can name ) that you have never heard of Transcendental Logic.

It’s the weekend and I have a ton of skiving to do.

 

* Local trains in Bombay. A journey in one of these behemoths would  typically serve as a rather efficient practical for all of Newton’s motion laws as well as theories on linearized gravity, both together.

Canada not on the route of the Gravy Train April 13, 2009

So said that neo-classical Swinburne scholar and mega-intellectual from the American South - Billy Bob Thornton. He likened the Anglo-Franco riff raff to “mashed potatoes”. If you ask me, it serves them right, for actually paying to watch a band fronted by Billy Bob. That’ll teach them to put their money and resources to better use, like say, paying to watch a band fronted by Keanu Reeves or Ed Westwick (Body hair-challenged but nevertheless a fine pretent rake from Gossip Girl, also the lead singer of a musical outfit called The Filthy Youth. They do ricercars mainly.). Those boys could have benefitted from some altruism shown by the  dimwitted Rockies people.

In any case what kind of a country considers “From sea to sea” (A Mari Usque Ad Mare) a suitable motto? This sort of slackness in choosing your motto encourages vitriol from redneck twats from across the border. Appraise this – “Our Homeland or Death”. I have not an iota of doubt that Thornton would have considered twice or even more before making any sort of vile culinary comparisons in Cuba.

Important Fact# 121 about Canada: People in Manitoba take canoes to work. This is whats ailing the auto industry: the damned canoes cut into all the business that Chrysler could have done there.

I will now repair to the air-con milieu of my office and relish the donut shaped candy offered to me by a fat American (as though thats not an oxymoron of some type). He wonders, why is it that their babies tend to be so militantly obese. Well,  primarily, because your country makes donut shaped candies, that’s why, you ninny git.

Though, to give them credit where it’s due, their’s is not a bad motto either – “E Pluribus Unum”. Translated from Latin as  “Let there always be  country music.”  Fear inducing, this too.

 Mashed Potatoes

A peaceful Canadian (with a WWE championship belt adorning his muscular shoulders)

Billy Bob Thornton dressed like a creature of wonder born out of a menage-a-trois between a Las Vegas bartender, a Coleridge merman and a Machiavellian clown.

 

UPDATE! In my opinion the greatest song ever composed is, infact, The Police’s  – “Wrapped around your fingers” and I am pleased to inform that I now have it on my Ipod.  It’s marvellous, indeed, and I am not even chosing to type this under the influence of sauce and/or speed*. Also, is Stewart Copeland related to the wrestler presented earlier in the post (name: Adam Copeland)?

Or is he starting a new band with Meatloaf?

Do tell us Stevie.

(*I don’t do drugs on Mondays as a rule.)

Get thy freak on April 13, 2009

Dear Writers of Dull Blogs,

What you concot is so insipid that becoming Christopher Hitchens personal geisha seems less perfidious in comparison. Such prolixity, such paramount dysfunction over gadgetry choices for pets. Who really wants to read about your ludicrous theories on Milton Friedman and Orphism? Really, man! Can you please be less mind-screwing? 
I don’t usually condescend to calling people animal names so I resist from employing choicer epithets but for the love of God’s tail, as Pope* once said, can thee get thy freak on? And write about the last time you got laid or did something slightly more exciting that picked environment friendly bag to collect doggie poopie?
Isn’t that the whole purpose of inventing bloggery? To effectively use it as a tool for voyeurism. Or are you in some kind of narcissistic moshpit laboring under the assumption that you are revolutionizing the world by link-bombing other people? Darn, if that were to be true, I feel for you.
But on a sterner note, people like myself can’t forever be crying tears of boredom on blistering summer days like these because of your non-imagination. Give us something to letch at. Seriously.
Show me the money! (Also originally by Pope , reinterpreted by Rod Tidwell)

Else, try another hobby more suited to your skill base. Like suicide or fisticuffs.

Love,
A Reader of Dull Blogs

* The writer of excruciating ryhmes not to be confused with the opposer of contraception, AIDS denier (well, almost) and the official, moral leader of Texans and Italians everywhere. Though, I believe that if you do manage to recite some Pope to your lover, it can serve as an apt contraceptive too, by preventing any possible sexual activity from taking place. No sex. No children.

Rush, mi padre! April 15, 2009

I had a pretty crummy yesterday but my troubles peaked when I came upon the revelation that my biological father isn’t who I thought it was, instead, it’s this badger.
I wrote to him immediately.

Dear Rush or Dad (Or Racist Bastard)

How have you been?

It was only last evening that I was made to realize that you, indeed, are source of the sperm that maketh my form. I would like to launch into my earnest communiqué by thanking you for contributing to my chromosomal sequence, as muddy as it seems now.

We have much to chat about, you’d be happy to know that your little mongrel has grown into a fierce slumdog and is reasonably adroit, at stealing jobs from deserving, but admittedly flabby, Americans in your mother country. This is not purely out of choice, I must say, since working in sweat shop conditions for cyclopean Septic firms for less than peanuts is as much fun as reading Hegel by the candle light in a Nicaraguan border town (your people had rightly bombed them leading to absence of power, food and other luxuries but more on that later) but I manage quite alright. I seem to display some inclination towards committing fraud and swiping the yanks for their money. I have only now completely guaged my proclivity towards illegal activities. It’s in my genes, apparently. I have none to thank, but you, for that.

Enough about my criminal activities though, let’s discuss yours, shall we? How is the career coming along? I am curious though; how did your mighty nation of  hardworking, white – deplorably obese - bible thumpers let a lanky Namibian sodomite claim the throne? All they had was a piercing chant. You had John McCain and balls of steel. Still, they did upstage you. It’s most upsetting. Pains my heart till this day.

Tell you the truth, I have always wondered why is it that I don’t bear any likeness to the man my mother formerly claimed to be my father. He was severely handsome in a typically Hispanic way (spics to you, I’d presume) with some amount of black blood too (I don’t think he was as magical as other blacks in America though, you or Paul Shanklin would know better). I am, on the other hand, unusually deformed with a mouth shaped like a grizzly’s and a protruding belly big enough to set it as a table for some ad hoc al fresco dining. Such a disparity between my own shabby looks and that of my “supposed” father’s did arouse many a vicious remarks in the last 2 decades of my life. Thankfully, with the disclosure that my original father indeed is a genuine tub of Trans fat, such indecency will cease.

Also, many a times when I dozed off listening to Peter Steele, high on LSD or whatever analgesic I could get my hands on, a shrill voice in my dreams would raucously proclaim – “Rush, Mi Padre…padre…padre…padre” (I tend to dream in Spanish, thanks to my old father who really wasn’t any bit my father.). I thought it was the ghost of Eric Estrada but am told that he still lives. So, I had to nix that possibility.

Plenty of chit chat for now, I eagerly await your arrival to my Slumdog Nation. I would have loved to visit but I find the idea of Missouri unpalatable, and frankly, a little sickening, hence I am forever afraid to tread into the United States of Dementia. We could find you a job here too, given the pervasive surge in communalist politics in India; we are much in need of bellicose polemicists like yourself. There is serious money to be made and a whole lot of psychological disorders to be wind up about. We could discuss the possible ways of uplifting the Church of Creator while pelting the Indians (dots not feathers) with prunes or some othe suitably cultured fruit. Nothing native, I promise.  
Also, you could bring along that lovely Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham (Are they two different people, I get confused.). Heard she is into adopting third world orphans and if it doesn’t work out between you and me, perhaps, she could take me in. She is better than that other tattooed beast with an adoption abuse problem, I often forget her name. Some Lara Jolie Croft Pitt etc. She is outright scary.

Do you like The Police? I dearly hope that you do.

May the good lard bless you!

Your loving daughter
Nihilist Waffle*

*Why did you have to boink a shrink of all the people populating this filthy nation? They tend to name their children real weird.

 

UPDATE! No response yet but I will persevere. Like rats in a cold  Scottish barn, I will persevere, dammit. And win my father over.

MORE UPDATES! While awaiting for a response from the Big Limboo, I had a breakthrough. As part of my new dating etiquette/ guidelines, I insist any and all of my future gentleman callers to recite Beowulf in its entirety on the first date. This will help me separate wheat from the chaff and have a little fun in the process.  I will test this in the next 15 minutes and report on the success/failure of the experiment.

STILL MORE UPDATES!  Scyld Scefing - thats what my first born will be called. And I will bathe him in ice water each morn to ensure he never forgets his Aryan roots. (Daddy Rush will most definitely approve of this move.)

STILL MORE UPDATES ETC.. Asking for a Beowulf recital on your dates is counter-productive. It distances one from reaching a place where one is likely to get into coitus positions, thereby erasing any possibility of an offspring and hence eliminating the possibility of naming it – Scyld Scefing. Depressing world.  Such a cyclical tragedy!