1.I realise that this post ends abruptly,it is because I got bored of it…

2.Whenever I use the personal pronoun ‘I’ it is not meant autobiographically but as an attempt to effectively bracket the people I was talking about.

Now we begin…….

O,My Love,you are my darling.
You are my looking glass from night to morning.
I’d rather have you without a farthing
Than any bitch with her ass and her garden.

I wish I could say this about my life.I am 19 years old and you could say that i am going through my quarter life crisis.Tell anyone you are going through that crisis then they look at you like you were some naughty little schoolkid just about to be reprimanded for passing a cheeky comment.But they will wet their pants in excitement at the idea of someone going through a mid life crisis as if it were a more meatier problem for them to wallow their asses in.This very belittling of ones problems gets to me above all else.Over the course of this article I shall tell you about some of the other things that gets to me and you will find that it is one long list.I intended to write a suicide note but then the idea did not appeal to me enough so i didnt pursue it and also I realised that to write one’s own suicide note as if is he/she were to commit it pronto seems a very morbid idea,but then I am a sick man,I am a spiteful man, I am an unattractive man.I am the underground man…(Read Notes from the underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky)                                                  I have always maintained to much chagrin of other ‘socially inclined’ people that I am by default very self centred,i just cant help it,its the way I am tuned.

Before progressing to read further I make of you one request,accept that you are a self centred individual who looks at every incident happening at any part of the globe through the prism of your own self and even though it is a socially regressive thing to say,you look at everything right from the flutter of a butterfly’s wing to an earthquake in Jakarta in a self centred manner.Accept this for the time being and you can go on reading or else you can quit doing so.

Assuming you have accepted my request,I am more than certain that you will be foolish to disagree with me that we are the kings and queens of our respective skull sized kingdoms.Our brain is our domain,atleast it is for most of us with the problem of acute consciousness.I have noticed more recently that there are so many people who do not have any conversations within their heads,they do not have any monologous storm raging within their heads.This surprised me a great deal,a lot of people among them are just plain dumb who go through life like an old broken down buffer.But there are some who like the old cliche ‘Learning how to think’ actually streamline their thinking process and remove the riff raff from their thought.Humans by nature are extremely territorial and our brains being our kingdoms detest to be tresspassed. By tresspassed I mean most of the time the dialogue inside our heads tend to be solipsistic but very rarely do we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.That is when we realise the futility of trying to understand absolute reality.I know to the man/woman of nature one devoid of this acute consciousness and one accustomed to thought only succeded by action a man/woman whom Ayn Rand would have been proud of,all this hyperbole would seem pointless and the stupid mental masturbation of a mystically oriented bum who sits on his ass doing nothing but crib. To be honest to myself I would more or less agree to the contention to the man of action.A person such as myself cursed with the disease of excessive consciousness actually respects the person of action but never quite manages to become that.Oh!Dear God how much simpler it would have been to be L’Homme de la Verite.It is here I wish to draw the distinction between the man of action and the dumbfuck who goes wading through his life like a mouse through its shithole.

The one great obsession for people such as myself is the chasm in the person I am externally and the individual that I perceive myself to be.This discordant image tend to be at a young age two almost coincident lines but as the lies begin to accumulate,as the hypocracies that we are doomed to be guilty of ,the men of action begin to get separated from the men of acute consciousness the almost coincident lines separate to a considerable width,only to merge into a single entity at an infinte distance.I know all this might seem rather pseudo intellectual if you have read a lot of Dostoevsky or Camus like I have.Let me bring to your notice that after almost every couple of lines I adress you the reader and almost seem like begging you to understand me, to empathise with me.All this I think reflects on my state of weakness in my nervous system and my constant self doubt.The dicotomy I am sure you are noticing is that the more I seem to want to be remote, aloof and distant from others validection the more I seem to crave for recognition and appreciation.I seem to have become a parasite who lives on the crumbs of appreciation thrown away by sympathetic bystanders.

The acutely conscious mind refuses to accept any tag put on it by a third person.I am saying this because I have been noticing recently how irritating to hear from mostly half wits the cheesy line ‘Oh!you are so different’.Now I hate it when I resemble anyone else and it also arises when I seem an isolated mental case too!It arises primarily out of the lack of awareness on how to balance the internal and the external worlds.Recently I met up with this girl and after a pleasant date,I mustered up the courage to kiss her.It was nice very chocalatey!Afterwards when we were going to part she said the onerous words-”Kissing you was a very Kafkaesque experience and I mean it as a compliment”.These words put me into such deep pondering on what exactly she meant.Was she trying to say it was a bizarre,nightmarish experience or was it funny to her somehow?I still havent come to a precise conclusion but I do think that she was just trying to act smart as if she had read kafka.She was too dumb for that,and anyway a kafkaesque kiss is meaningless!I am sure you are realising that the girl being talked about does not know about this blog and I am hoping she never does(there again I am displaying my helplessness and cowardice)!Oh no,again I am displaying my false sense of pride and that too at what and how I can be so spiteful.I try very hard not to be so but miserably fail.But what it has made me do is to obstinately detest her,not because I have stopped liking her or that she used one of my favorite writers in context to me but because she implied that I was different.That triggered me of.Then I avowed revenge but as many of you cursed people would vouch,we the acutely conscious very rarely manage to take revenge effectively,( in my case never to pick her calls up,etc).I shrunk back into my den after having built up strange arguements and obstacles in my path which come to think of them were non existent and then I became a tame little impotent mouser shrinking back quietly into its little craphole!

The other trait I see in people such as myself and I am writing this in the hope of reaching out to them and to reassure myself that I am not all alone,is the problem of over intellectualizing situations as in the above anecdote, instead of just going ahead and finding a soltuion to it.Whenever a problem confronts a person of acute consciousness he/she develops or rather creates obstacles which are more often than not figments of their imagination’s,they get overwhelmed by the monsters created within the four walls of their skulls and get consumed in self flagellating inertia.This is where the old cliche ‘Learning how to think’ comes into play and which I am yet to learn.Tuning out the riff raff in the consumerist hell type situation and actually getting beyond the inane conversations in the head and solving problems or atleast dying in the attempt.The key is to live life in such a way that you should be atleast capable of getting beyon 30 or 50 years without popping the bullet.Maybe that is why majority of suicides occur from shooting themselves in the head,because that is where the problem is.

The END

It has been a long time since I wrote; not just because facts started to be more fascinating than fiction more so ever. Not because of Voltaire. Not even because reason brought in more stalemates than victories, losses or even draws. The reason’s simplicity is as acute as its charm. There were no true causes. Thanks for making me put the thought to the key strokes.

Chapter 2:  20-40.

At age 20, most of the blessed ones can think on par with a 40 year old. But truth be told; far fewer can act 40. The feeling of this pseudo-thought range is perhaps the most dangerous cause for all the effects and side effects which come about at 20.

Chapter 3: Mulla Nasiruddin.

Preemption and preemptive thoughts are the children of the wise. Mulla, knew it all too well, and left his mark on generations to come. If wise is their father, safety their mother, often looks more prudent than wise. If that just seems illusionary then know your math, more in particular your statistics. If that doesn’t suffice; one needs to know relearn high school biology. Remember … “The Pond” ?

Chapter 4: Mulla’s Achilles.

As I mentioned earlier, the more deeper the reason, the more the stalemates. Preemptive protection broods negative transaction and just like all other dualities….

Chapter 5: The Domains

If one has to be successful, one has to maintain multiple domains, and more importantly, have the ability to move with such fluidity between them. This includes the part on how you handle inter-domain interaction. This is the most important weapon one has to have in his 20′s.

One has to wonder why there was a Chapter 5; and humility? out of no where?

There are two things here. The mere weapon you used to wield should not hurt you; and without it, you lose anyway. Caution is the key!

Chapter 6: Buoyancy.

Yes. There is a rule for buoyancy; and it holds true to the very end, if you are that wooden log. Yes. The vagaries of life can prove me wrong showing multiple cases. But of the things which we have control over, as long as you do not puncture yourself, there is a certain amount of buoyancy. Do NOT, put it to test.

Chapter 7: The Law Of Eternal Grounding.

After fighting through the internal strife, convincing yourself, consoling sometimes, breaking through the urge for a transaction stroke at the bell of preemption, we strive for that balance hanging there in limbo.  The words of advice would fade away like raindrops falling into a well. Mails, e-mails, post-it notes are a jolt of reminder after an event has occurred.

One has to adhere to the laws of science. See it through neural networks or through the lens of physics. The law of eternal grounding is true. You need to have “Eternal Vigilance”.

Chapter 8: The True Lord Of The Rings.

The ring tempts everybody, your fathers, fore fathers and beyond. Remember what the great elf said.

Put aside the ranger, become what you were born to be.

The thoughts have been left incomplete for a reason. Its not for you to ponder, more than just filling it up.  That’s the level I hold you to.

Chapter 9: Make Me Right.

PRAY. Let’s not file for Chapter 10.

Chapter 10:

THE END

Now a lot of my regular readers will find this particular post completely out of my character.Well generally an article that is in the form of a self help one is totally not my cup of tea,but very recently I started asking myself why so many people try and seek help and advice from books and some harvard educated motherfucker.I just never understood why people paid to be told that their life was screwed up and there needed urgent course correction.

So this here is an attempt on my part to write something for all of you out there who enjoy self help books without it sounding condescending and patronising at the same time.It is an article in the mould of gung ho,etc just devoid of the hyperbole.

Looking forward to your comments.

As if it were a miracle akin to the walk on water or water being turned to wine,the entire hullabola about Article 377 came eagerly into my ever ready lap in a not too dissimilar fashion as how the poor Palestine people get bulldozed and swallowed by the ravenous and premordial Zionist regime.It seemed to have become my elixir supplying me with some temporary fodder for my brain to chew upon.

Like making jokes or copulating with disregard to season,torturing and persecution are few of the activities that distinguish human beings from other animals.Inflicted both on our congeners and on other species,it marks us out as a pernicious race of little odious vermin(I have noticed a recent phenomenon in myself,i am increasingly sounding and behaving like a misanthrope).Torture poses a lot of uncomfortable questions for philosophers.Simple utilitarians have notorious difficulty to explain why torture is a bad principle.Along with other distinctively human traits/pastimes such as recreational killings,torture poses awkward questions to naturalists also.

So for a practice that does not find its moral premise in any of the multiple philosophies,how has it been so succesfully used as a potent weapon against homosexuals.There are so many instances through the bloody pages of human history where the pitch of atrocity and discrimination against the homos have reached their evil zenith and a sympathetic observor felt it could not have gone higher only to have been disproved a few years later with the advent of another even more treacherous regime.

This is more true for India than for any country.I will refrain from going into the details of the commonly known facts that there are historical evidences suggesting that homosexuality was not merely a ‘disease’ which the western imperialists brought to India but a commonly prevalent practice present in ancient India.Over succesive generations of rulers and the society in general(both due to internal and external influences)there was a  gradual loss of their liberal fibre leading to branding homosexuality a terrible vice that needed immediate pruning.

Just when one thought, 62 years of enforced constitutional morality and the increase in literacy levels accompanied by the loosening tentacles of the rigid social and religious traditions,would be enough for the legalization of homosexuality,we are once again plunged into a bizarre continuum created by the pseudomoralists and the religious bigots keen on preserving ‘bharatiya sanskar’.Article 377 is not only an outdated or rather shall we say a regressive act that interferes with the fundamental rights that any human being is entitled to i.e consensual sex between two or more adults of the same or different sex,but also makes most of us heterosexual’s actions with regard to our love lives illegal.By this law almost all of sexually active Indians are deemed to be lawbreakers and liable to be tried under the court of law.This is absolutely ridiculous and just shows the immaturity of the Indian state proving once again that it is at a nascent stage of development.

All those who argue that the development of the law of the land is a direct representation of the traditions of the people,certainly do not know about India.If that were to be the case then the Hindu Code bill could never have been passed in the 50′s as it was too ‘modern’ at that time.

In order for progressive law to be passed in India it must not only remain in sync with the aspirations of the people at that time but one step ahead,that is the lesson that history teaches us.Irrespective of the percentage of people with deviant sexual behavior in the country what is right is right and an act of legislation granting it the legal righteousness ought to be enacted with immediate effect.

For long India has been run on the basic premise that what suits or what is convinient for the majority is to be taken as gospel truth.That is a highly convinient model of governance for a nascent country with a riduculously large array of people from completely variant social background.But for a democratic country which has found its feet and which has been fed a diet of egalitarianism for so many decades,ought to have reconciled their differences to a great deal and should have learnt to look at differences not as a deterrent to growth but as a great harnessor of multicultural practices that are eclectic and forward looking.

To answer the question whether India has been a successful democracy Ramachandra Guha invokes the great comedian Johnny Walker’s lines from a movie where his answer to all the questions of life (like whether he would marry the lady he so dearly loves) is , “Boss, phipty, phipty.” Much the same could be said of the book. There could not have been a more daunting topic for a writer, especially Indian, than “India after Gandhi.” Guha handles this humongous theme in a “phipty, phipty” sort of way.

Coming to the positive phipty, most of the political events post Gandhi have been dealt with. Some like the five year plans in some detail and others like the IPKF misadventure in Sri Lanka only in passing. One area where the book breaks new-ground is in regard to the numerous separatist and insurgent movements in the troubled north-east. At least for me the background against which the movements took place and the enormous cost to the resident population became much clearer. A.N.Phizo of the Naga National Council is given an especial coverage which is thoroughly deserved. The states reorganization, the 1971 war, the emergency, Babri demolition and other important events are given their due. The numerous twists and turns in the Kashmir problem have been well delineated.

The negative phipty is heavier from my point of view. As for any book of such wide breadth, the depth is sadly missing. The whole Nehru era though occupying a third of the book feels shallow when compared to recent works like M.J.Akbar’s spirited biography of Nehru. The post liberalization India is given a cursory glance. To be fair to the author, his main intent is to chronicle India till 1989 from when on he reckons history is too close to the present to permit an unjaundiced rendering. Vallabhbhai patel and Rajaji, Gandhi’s hands and head to Nehru’s heart, who had active political lives after independence are given short shrift. Rajaji’s prescience when he warned of the dictatorial kernel in the Congress in the late Nehru – early Indira Gandhi days, so well chronicled in Rajmohan Gandhi’s biography of his grandfather is not mentioned at all. In fact if one were to read this as a biography the “Gandhi- Nehru clan” of post-independent India one wouldn’t find too much amiss.
Also the book fails to give genuinely popular movements like the Chipko movement, Narmada Bachao Andolan and Bhoodan movements their due. Coming from an environmentalist like Guha this is unexpected to say the least. Another aspect of the book is the remarkable absence of criticism of successive Indian governments and their policies. Other than the mandatory criticisms of Nehru for the 1962 defeat and of the RSS-VHP-BJP axis there is little to be found by way of criticism. As one browses one gets the suspicion that this book is meant for a foreign audience as much as one Indian . One has to endure such sentences as, “in the late 1990’s, the top three male actors were all Muslims with a common surname, Khan.” Indians are deemed to be successful only when acknowledged by “the west.”

One aspect of the book which Indians will find amusing is the periodic predictions of doom undertaken by western intelligentsia about the survival of India and its democracy. Such predictions surface sporadically throughout the book and lighten it up. Someone had predicted that the 1967 general elections would “surely” be the last in India’s history for after that India would “surely” become an autocracy under Indira. Another example is of General Auchinleck who said in 1948, “ (India) is a sub-continent as varied as Europe. The Punjabi is as different from a Madrassi as a Scot is from an Italian. The British tried to consolidate it but achieved nothing permanent. No one can make a nation out of a continent of many nations.” And here I am, a Madrasi(i.e. a south Indian) living in Delhi, eating parantha for breakfast and rice-rasam for dinner, my friends coming from all the states on the Indian map and conversing with me in Hindi and the general’s mother tongue! A rather good performance for an imminent banana republic I’d say.

All in all its worth a read. Guha’s engaging style makes the book interesting if not informative. There are plenty of anecdotes – a standard feature of Guha’s writing. It is emphatically not for a very serious student of history but a good one from where to start one’s reading of post independence India.

P.S : one thing which distressed me was the fact that the book was released amid much fanfare in the author’s hometown of Bangalore by the CEO of a software company. Couldn’t Mr. Guha find a better candidate in the whole city of Bangalore to release his book?

With the commencement of my holidays and me being endowed with oodles of time to read lots of books, to get started on my ever expanding movies-to-watch list, to try out some new recipes that I have been dying to try out for quite some time and to keep a close track of all incidents occurring in the public domain, I feel I have a lot to write about. This to a dissenting reader who detests my posts yet loves them enough to read them and chew and tear them to bits after reading them, might seem an ominous thing as he/she will have to deal with even longer and more sundry philosophical and political bullshit(if that could be possible!).

Watching the English news channels, as I generally find myself doing when there is a shortfall of anything worthwhile to do, gives one an impression that Indians are the victims of a global conspiracy hell bent on undermining the soon to be Global superpower. The recent attacks on Indian students in Australia and some European capitals has brought to our ‘Breaking News’ crazy media and their die-hard loyalists among urban middle class’s attention that it is India’s supposed growing might in the international arena both economically and geopolitically that has made these ‘firangs’ insecure about retaining their hegemonic standing in the world and thus prompting them to unleash these brutal assaults on our students. Some of the channels are reporting these disturbing events almost gleefully. It seems as if the mainstream media is viewing these acts of mindless aggressions as a barometer for the rising stock of India amongst the big powers. When asked by an over zealous (pretty hot!) young female journalist about why only Indian student communities face the brunt of such attacks and the large Chinese population there escapes, the so called expert attributed this to the fact that Indians by nature are not very strong. Apparently he believes that Indian students are not good at giving back as good as they get, if it were upto him he would probably have setup ‘local street gangs’ (these were his words) to patrol the streets and ensure no miscreants assault any Indians by.

When one is dealing in International matters and involved in resolving issues comprising of crucial national interests it is imperative to ensure a tempered tone in the reaction of the public. The media serves a crucial role in this regard. Unfortunately in our case the media appears juvenile, crude and tactless.

Apart from some major chinks in the logic about which I have written, the so called campaign to ensure dignity to Indian students abroad appears mostly to border on insanity. The tone of most of the commentators especially the ‘socially aware’ celebrities mostly belonging to the Bollywood brigade about whose opinion there  is extensive coverage, is high pitched and harmful to India’s interest. Bollywood whether you like it or not constitutes a crucial component of India’s soft power which is becoming increasingly important. In the quest of making their simplistic opinions heard and gaining some mileage out of these events by voicing their concerns and giving vent to their idyllic activist credentials these celebs  are causing great damage to India’s interests by raising the pitch way beyond what it should ideally be. The responses and opinions of some of people range from sheer buffoonery to outright ridiculousness.

The people belonging to perhaps the most racist country in the world are crying out hoarse about getting a taste of their own nasty medicine. The blatant hypocrisy in some arguments is very hard to miss. It is ok for Indians to indulge in the worst kind of racial profiling amongst themselves and we take insult and call it imperialist propaganda when Amnesty International or the US State Dept points at our dismal track record in tackling the deeply embedded caste system in our country but we take it to be our moral duty to pontificate to the world community that India has always stood against racism and it hence must not be made a victim in that regard. Maybe it would serve as a better indicator to the world of India’s commitment to egalitarianism and humanism if it took more concrete measures to abolish the brutal caste system and ensure that reverse racism as it is so rampant in our country against foreigners is totally abolished.Any more of assault cases filed by foreign women against Indian men would blow a big hole into the whole campaign of ensuring that our students in foreign lands are safe and live a racism free life.

P.S- I made the most yummy Paneer Makhani Sabzi today, took even myself by surprise!

]]> http://pussyhereicum.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/aisa-bhi-hota-hai-part-1/feed/ 0 memyselfandgigy http://pussyhereicum.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/looking-leftward/ http://pussyhereicum.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/looking-leftward/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 14:50:41 +0000 Nithin http://pussyhereicum.wordpress.com/?p=23 ]]>

To a self confessed left leaning individual the poor performance of the left parties in the election came as a jolt.Not that I had any delusions of them performing on par or any where close to their all time best performance in the 2004 election.But it did pose very challenging questions to the future of mainstream left politics and there seemed to be no good answers to them.

I am no big supporter of the mainstream left parties in our country,all they do is engage in defunct old worldly theoritical discussions.It would only serve as an indicator to the ideological stagnation and almost bankruptcy that they have reached,to listen to some of their television friendly leaders of the CPI and the several ancient members of the CPI-M who are old enough for their ages to be found out by carbon dating.The words ‘imperialism’, ‘ neo colonialism’ and ‘conspiracies’ feature
so often in their dictum that it reminds me of the recurring usage of the words ‘phoney’ in The Catcher in The Rye and the word ‘nymphet’ in Lolita.The only difference in the usage of these words is that they do seve a literary purpose to the novelists whereas for the politicians it serves to only make a fool of themselves.
Most Indian so called ‘Marxists’ and ‘communists’ are still struggling to grappple the basic facts about the Indian electorate because of their inflexibility in thought and action.A lot of water has flown down the moscow river yet they seemed to have learnt nothing from the failures of the various socialist experiments performed in 20th century,particularly the soviet one.Marx once said ‘The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history’,Indian commies seem strongly bent on proving their ideological guru right in this regard.The problem with them I think is that their understanding of Marxism is superficial,a few phrases such as ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ‘religion is the opium of the masses’ are treated with reverence and deemed unquestionable,meanwhile forgetting one of Marx’s fundamental beliefs that nothing is immune from questioning.All of India’s  mainstream communists forget that both marx and lenin had long before given up the idea of a purely socialist setup amidst the vast multitudes of a capitalistic world.Lenin had come around to the view that only an economically advanced state could have a sustained socialist model and it was virtually unrealistic for a country to aspire to be a socialist state unless its neighbours too were brought around to that way of life.

Looking through the narrow prism of good against bad,the basic tenets of Marxism, i.e material dialectics and an areligious state,its positives far outweigh the negatives.Just as so many other ideas and philosophies over the decades and centuries, the ideas of Marx too have been diluted and have got mutated into dangerous forms.I am not arguing for maintaning the marxist thought in a state of fossilised purity but I am merely questioning some of the dangerous offshoots of the primary thought.Throughout the 20th century, there were so many regimes which claimed to be exponents or followers of marxism or leninism but ended up doing doing mass murder and ethnic and racial cleansing. Cambodia(Pol pot),the erstwhile Soviet Union(Stalin),China(Mao tse Tung) to name a few where regimes that persecuted millions of people in name of a doctrine that nowhere grants licence to kill millions.Stalin when asked whether Marxism approved of the killing of so many innocents(estimates say that over 5 milllion were killed during his rule)?His answer was ‘The death of a single individual is a tragedy but the deaths of millions is merely a statistic.’ Such regimes claiming their allegiance to the marxist thought would have caused marx to turn in his grave.

To the mainstream media and the general public opinion in the world is concerned despite being in the midst of the greatest capitalist financial meltdown,Marx and his ideas are viewed almost with contempt and weariness.Due to continuous misrepresentation of his ideas the general collective opinion of him is that of a demonic individual whose ideas granted
license for the murder of so many innocents.I view this as a failure of leftists across the world(particularly in India) to bring about greater understanding and clarity to the people regarding leftist thought.
Since for most of us the capitalist framework has been the establishment in our country and across the world for so long,Marxism does enamour the youth and ignites the mind in many a case(mine too!)SOmehow the quest for a definite personal  identity and general cynisism towards the world order, rendered me like so many people in their youth to be anti-establishment.

Leftist thought has attracted and appealed to me for a long time.It gives me great pain when i see the false representation of its ideals,when the ideals are unable to be put in front of the people, when it is reduced to being discussed in libraries and in the tea stalls in Kolkata.One had to only view the post election coverage on the mainstream news channels,their distasteful glee in the light of the poor performance of the left parties was palpable.They seemed to be in a hurry to write the left’s obituary.Despite being seemingly oldworldy ideas, the left parties in India have by far the least corrupt credentials,it was their pressure on the Indian Government that did not allow the Govt to undertake big ticket economic reforms that would have meant our economy reeling severely from the effects of the global financial meltdown,they are probably the only political formation whose committment to the cause of secularism is unquestionable and their opposition to the Indo-Us nuclear deal had its merits just that the majority did not take their cncerns seriously.In a country with so much economic inequality, when people are bracketted into a particular caste or religion or region,leftist thought which rises above these narrow parameters,aims for a higher order and offers hope to this mystical country of ours that we love andhate to equal extents,liberal leftism is proably the only harbonger of hope.Even if this election were to be the nail in the
coffin for our left parties there is still a need for any party that forms the govt to invent a left for itself in order to stay in touch with the aspirations of the masses.

Pussy(dint want to use the desi version of the word!) woh cheez hai jo aadmi ko ghar ke bartan bhi bikwaa deti hai!

Wow!That seems to have come right out of a madur bhandarkar film!Over the top! After a long hiatus from my mundane writings i am back to doing what i do rather extraordinarily:write.What with my upcoming exams(for which i am doing all it takes to flunk again),gleefully watching manutd trounce every opponent in its way,salivating over the wide collection of kim kardashian and nicole scherzinger sextapes that i have managed to collect,i have been kept quite busy.

Compared to my otherwise rather dull and seemingly pointless existence the past few days have gone smoothly without too many hiccups except maybe the declaration of dry days out here in delhi due to elections, which prevents me from getting sloshed(but there is always badli that keeps me going) Watching the voluptuous and note “sultry” babes(i can amost see my friends in college smirking at this!!) fucking and getting fucked in the videos seems to highly COMICal to me these days and reminds me of the old times.Their big well endowed boobs move around in all directions seeming to cover the entire room in which they are getting intruded(read literally!),their smooth and curvy buttocks and thick thighs are jumping around helter skelter leaving very little to be imagined.Oh my god aren’t they fuckworthy!I must stop this,how much more can i salivate.

Now to readers of my previous blogposts this one might seem to be sexist,disgraceful and highly juvenile at a surface level. Accepted porn has ceased to be a turn on since my puberty days but i am merely writing this as an attempt to understand the changes in preferences when it comes to sex.NOw just as any other kinda generalisation,the one i am attempting here maybe as far away from reality as so many of the psephologists predicting election winners.The analysis i am gonna make i think holds true for both girls and guys,lest i am called a sexist just as freud was called unjustly. at the age of 14-15 when our sex drive used to be raw and uncontrolled,for most people their first experience of sexual gratification comes not from their respective girlfriend or boyfriend but by lusting about and masturbating by fanatasising about any celebrity in an extremely compromising position or about the sexiest girl or guy in the glass.I write celebrity because celebrity porn holds a special place in the minds of most adolescents. All our lust,passion got satiated by the few minutes of shagging in the toilet,bedroom,living room,class room(for some) any where and everywhere.We were almost like animals doing it anywhere and everywhere.Total lack of control ,it could almost be equated to total anarchy.Just that it is unfortunate that the lessons on learns about sex are majorly theoritical,either from magazines,internet or friends who are as inexperienced than us if not more.But such is the irony of life.

As time went on the pure carnal desire moves from the loins upwards to the mind.But t is not as if one day you wake up and you realise that you ahve gained sexual maturity. At 16-17, dating and greater interaction with the opposite sex,and societal pressure shapes our mindset into thinking that viewing the opposing sex from the standpoint of a sexual object is immoral.it gets ingrained in our psyche that the sexual objectification of the other gender goes against the societal norms.We are time and again by sexual education sessions and by parents that lusting after someone and sex devoid of any emotion behind it is against human nature.Due to this most people who grow carry extra emotional baggage with them throughout their lives.At this time adoloscents start outgrowing the need for porn as an outlet for relieving the built up sexual feelings.There develops almost a distasteful feeling for porn almost condemnable.i think by this stage there is a bit of control but still it is on a knife edge.Not to be relied upon.

Moving further in the chronology in life,at 18-19 most people encounter their first sexual experience.This will probably come at a younger age if you aren’t a guy in an engineering college!but if you are in one such college,bad luck you have gotta wait a little longer.It is at this time that one actually realises that the real location of the sexual organs is not figuratively in the loins but in the brain.Sapiosexualism strikes.Porn seems trivial and comical,most guys and girls who we once used to drool over seem like bimbos.Due to constant grooming or rather grounding we feel the need to have a Connection or rather spark is what we go for. See i do not know what further changes in my sexual prefernces will take place.But they say “The mark of an educated mind is to realise that what we think now as the gospel truth is actualy far from it” may be that is what is called coming of age.

BANG-GALORE!

It was in this context that one of Indian cinema’s masterpieces ‘Pyaasa’ was made. Just as how the cliché states that ‘art imitates life’, Guru Dutt brought onto screen the souring of the dream and the disillusionment of the people with the path being trodden by the country. The merits of the film in terms of the narrative of the film, technique, music and direction are known and enough has been written and discussed about them but I am more interested in questioning the underlying politics and the philosophy of the film.
Guru Dutt plays Vijay, a talented poet disregarded by a cruel world devoid of integrity and compassion. All his efforts at having his poems published and thus reaching out to a larger audience fail due to lack of professional and personal integrity in the world. He thus plays an alienated character in the midst of a spineless world. Any story having an alienated protagonist brings to mind a masterpiece ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Dostoevsky. Pyaasa too like several other movies borrows quite a lot from the novel. The close resemblance between the character played by Waheeda Rehman ‘Gulab’ and Sofya Semyanovitch are unlikely to have been a coincidence. Here too a troubled individual tormented by poverty, a seemingly irrational world and the conflicted state of mind of the protagonist consumed by his own hyper rationalism. But that is where the resemblance ends.

Unlike Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s work Vijay does not retaliate against the world aided by his own ideas and his delusions of serving the larger cause of humanity. Here rarely does one get to see anything more than frustration and helplessness on Guru Dutt’s face as he plays Vijay. Episode after episode he continuously takes beating from one source or the other be it losing his love, or the rejection of his works on flimsy grounds or the betrayal of his family. There is no anger in him which results in him renouncing the seemingly despairing world. Rather than fighting for his share in the world or rather calling for restoration of sanity in the world Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa becomes a work that is seeped in Ancient Indian works from where the final philosophy derives its inspiration. Renouncing the worldly affairs (as is preached in our Ancient works like the Upanishads) and giving up the world to the people against whom the filmmaker wishes to gain our sympathy during most of the film, are two different things but end up getting muddled up. Just like how for Raskolnikov Sofya serves as the spiritual guide and a corner to turn to in his darkest hours, for Vijay ‘Gulab’ is the same. The scene at the end, of them walking into the horizon reminded me of the ending of the novel too.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of re watching Pyaasa and recommend it too one and all.

Just as I perceive the dark clouds gathering over my college life, India too is gearing up for a couple of politically stormy months ahead. In either case the outcome post the tumultuous period is unknown. But just like how I would like my life to take positive shades, I hope for India’s sake she is able to find her path through the difficult and anarchious maze she finds herself in.

The giant wheels of India’s political and electoral systems have already been set in motion with the electoral model code of conduct being out in place. Like always the participants in these games or rather elections treat the code with total disdain. Now at the very outset let me tell you what this article is not about. It is not an adolescent agonization about the state of affairs in Indian politics nor is it a clichéd and naïve cry for educated public to jump into politics.

Indians by and large have naïve political ideals. We like to kid ourselves into believing that we are politically a knowledgeable country. Speech after speech our leaders and so called intellectuals enthuse the mass mentality into believing that despite far spread illiteracy about 65% electoral turnout takes place enabling India to undertake the largest democratic endeavor ever undertaken. This point has been rubbed in mindlessly for the last 61 years of independence. What the Indian people largely have is a faint idea of the various political parties in fray of elections, an acute awareness and a strong adherence towards their respective caste or religion. Just like how the Indian politician has an accommodating, flexible conscience, the Indian voter too does not have any strong ideologies he or she sticks by. For example, all it takes for the Brahmin voters in U.P to vote for a former Brahmin basher Mayawati as Chief Minister of that state was her offer to include a couple of Brahmin leaders in her cabinet. Similarly the Marathi speaking people voted and brought to power India’s most violent and fascist party in Maharashtra, when they talked about the so called ‘Marathi Manoos’. So before I move onto my next point let me reiterate the fact that India is a politically illiterate land.

For the past couple of decades the vote bank of the traditional national parties in Indian politics has been in a steady decline. This has given rise to the ascent of several regional parties due to the fragmented nature of Indian society. Sixty one years of failure of Government policies to cater to the needs of the micro segment of the population has been primarily instrumental in this. Most urban, bourgeoisie Indians see this development as negative, leading to parochial tendencies and a fractured, indecisive polity. This represents nothing but a borrowed mindset influenced by the bipartisan nature of the U.S polity or the nature of U.K’s parliamentary system. Their thoughts are not in sync with the voice emanating from the villages and small towns of India. The rise of coalition system of Government has ensured the voices of the most marginalized sections of Indian society’s voice to be heard in marbled floor of India’s parliament. Even a small tribal village consisting of the Kurmi clan in Jharkhand whose voice would otherwise be ignored has the ability to influence national political events through a regional party like the JMM which enjoys political support there. Hence the rise of small regional parties must not be taken as something detrimental India’s development but rather as a trigger for more egalitarian and effective policies.

Most of the writing on politics in India focus consistently on highlighting the problems but seldom provide the answers. The problem lies in the weak framework of Indian politics. Our constitution makers failed to envisage the frailties of the system seeped in coalition setup. What is the need of the hour is, for constitutional amendments to be brought in to bring about political reforms, which are as important as the headline grabbing economic reforms, if not more. It is vital that every party irrespective of the size of its vote bank ought to project its respective prime ministerial candidate and enter into pre poll alliances based on common policies. After the pre poll alliances, each political bloc that has been formed should project their respective P.M candidate after transparent negotiations among the different allies in the bloc. This would make it easier for the voter to make an informed choice. Any attempt at realignment of parties post the results of the elections should be made legally untenable as it is a mockery of the people’s choice. In the 2009 elections that are just around the corner there is very little choice for the voter in terms of wide ranging policies. Most regional political parties are not clear whether they will enter into the fold of the NDA or UPA or the fragile Third Front. This makes it impossible for the voter to make a choice.

As a student of DCE it is very easy for me to be cynical about the entire process and take up an apolitical stand and say that all parties suck! But at the risk of sounding preachy, let me say this, we need to inform ourselves about candidates in our respective constituencies, look at the local as well as the national perspective and vote for that candidate (party) whose vision most closely matches ours for India, for no party’s vision will perfectly match ours. So I ask you to maintain trust in democracy, I know it is a difficult thing to ask. Democracy is the only hope we have. GO VOTE IN THE 2009 GENERAL ELECTIONS

For me, my world happens to be the campus of DCE and life on it.I found Gulaal exceedingly eerie because of how closely the way the filmamker vents out his ire against the establishment resembles my frustration at having landed in a place where i do not get any inspiration.I feel I deserved to be in a better social milieu.Maybe it is just my arrogance coming out.I do not know. I am a novice to blogging and this is my first post.For long have I contemplated jumping into the fray but I have allayed this due to my constant and yet sometimes irritating pangs of not jumping onto any bandwagon and being different.I felt and I still do to a large extent that a lot of people out there blogging have got got their priorities wrong and have missed the point of it.They either do it to prove a point to someone or the other or they wish to fit into the league of those so called new age ‘intellectuals’ for whom blogging is their lader to intellectual nirvana.I know not why I have chosen this time to jump into the arena,maybe I feltt I needed my own personal domain uncomtaminable, raw and from the heart not manipulated by coercion and deceit.

When I was in school I was a blue eyed boy with an idealist kind of spirit.I thought I had all my ideas and idealogies chalked out in my head.I had a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong.I fashioned myself as a socialist, hated the institution of religion and caste,liberal and free spirited.I think I am still all that but what has changed is my realisation that when you only think in a vacuum, live inside your head isolated and therefore insulated from the world you tend to get a false sense of comfort. For me college has completely burst that very sense.All that I thought which was distant and I was seemingly somehow protected from seems scarily close now.Things like caste wars, communalism, etc are all ideas that I believedto be detestable things only,when I sat in a comfortable DPS classroom.There is I now realise a tendency to underestimate these problems,because you think all this happens only in some remote villages of Bihar,UP or Tamil Nadu.You think you are distant from it all.No college for me has opened my eyes in the sense that there is such a strong undercurrent of casteism, regionalism,religious and sexual bias right under our noses.All that we do is to live our lives in denial and feign ignorance at it all.I speak of ‘us’ in a collective sense because in Delhi particularly my world DCE there are all sorts of evils and I am taking Dce to be a quagmire of all sorts of people from different backgorunds and hence a sort of representation of Indian society at large.

A caste war brews right in front of the authorities of a GOVT. institution and all they do is to to look the other way instead of tackling it head on.An example of how much a sense of identification is responsible for the way in ehich you deal with other people-How a senior deals with his junior is largely determined by whether there is any commonality in identity that he can derive from the junior.If there is anything in common you are in luck,you will get to have a free drink,smoke or a taste of his experiences in jugaad techniques useful in and around the college, if nothing turns out to be common I wish the ‘best of luck.’ When looked at from the big picture I think that more than 3 centuries of subordination has made Indians insecure in their own skins.They are on a constant search for identifying themselves with a particular group or community.Like in Gulaal Duky Bana played efficiently by Kay Kay Menon exhorts his followers by talking about how Rajputs(his community in the move)have not been dealt with fairly by the State.His followers identify themselves with the cause due to their sense of victimisation.

In India a sense of victimisation permeates through all segments of society.Every community,caste,class lives in a sense if victimisation.They thrive on that very feeling making them happy and content at just expressing victimhood.This enables them to indulge in mutual masturbation.They are happy doing this and this alone, indulging in a futile excercise of satisfying themselves. This false state we live in also makes us hypocritical and a people living in a delusionary world.We are self indulgent peopke who lie to ourselves about our false sense of grandeur and excellence.Rarely are we ready to face reality.Indians by and large live their lives dancing around problems rather than wrestling with them.In Dce specifically this is more evident than anywhere I have been to.People are so satisfied and proud of themselves that they live within the imaginary walls of the fortress of their minds living as kings and queens in it.This makes them unable to look past their mediocrity and foolishness.

In Gulaal none of the human relationships was based on trust,respect or love,they were all based only on mutual requirement.Each on of these relationships had an undercurrent of lies,deceits and use.Maybe it is my hyperactive imagination,you may call it whatever you like but in the large world outside your personal domain I sense a lot of interpersonal relationships motivated by pure need petty thought.This is also true in DCE (i will refrain from calling it my college as is I still don’t feel comfortable doing it).People tend to live in their own illusionary world where they are omnipotent and measure themselves against other folk on their own parameters an example how trivial they are-like who has a higher drinkin or smoking capacity,etc.They derive a small sense of pleasure from denouncing others and living on a false higher pedestal.All this is testament to their insecurity and constant need of self praise and ego boosting.

In Gulaal towards the end of the film as the camera focusses on the logs in the pyre, and the soul stirring song Duniya plays despite the ruthless and senseless anarchy in the world,one does get a bit of perspective.I felt that even though I could not make sense of the world the only way to live in it was to be idealistic and remain true to what you beleive in. In the end one dialogue particularly among several others stayed with me,it was when Rananjoy Singh played brilliantly by Himanshu Singh was held captive and he is told to withdraw from the elections,he retorts back to his captor “If only your father(His Highness) had withdrawn from your mother at the right time maybe you needn’t have to be born as an illegitumate son!” I think it is time for me to withdraw now!Until next time..