The Mirth Of The Miscreants!

Belle, begotten of belladonna - the beauty you hold is as fleeting as mirage. You enchant men in the night, but as the morning rays of the Sun enter the room there is no proof of your being. You are such a minx, only that you get a little too violent in hammering our medulla oblongatas so we swirl and sink into swampy thoughts. Had you existed in the land of the living, we could have asked you to audition for Kill Bill. Oh wait. My mind is at work.

I have something to tell you. The word Kill Bill has triggered in me, a fabulous idea. I'm sure this would interest you. Why don't you become a hit-woman and cleanse our society! Well, I cannot officially hire you for two reasons - one it is mystically illegal; and two - what do I pay you in when our realities lie in different poles? I know you would voluntarily agree. Ah, look at how you smile! That sweet villainous smile. You truly are a charitable assassin!

There are three targets you would need to go after. Make sure you are in hiding throughout. Hover in the shades like you always do. Leave no clues. Use weapons of your choice - no restrictions on that. But get the job done. Kill them all. Do not worry about the repercussions on the ethics of our world and the related moral issues. You do not know how changeable they are! The so-called moral system of the world bends itself to save the affluent but gets harsher to indict the poor. So kill them. Kill them all. Slice the dagger right in. Let the cut go deep inside and let all the intestines gush out.

Lies.

Lust.

Greed.

Lies. The boyfriend lies about the other girl he dates spontaneously. The wife lies about the man she is with once the husband goes out for work. The employee lies to make the rights look wrong and the wrongs look right. He flatters to go up the pay grades. She spreads rumors to taint the others. The Pastor in the Church lies about his spiritual experiences. The Swamiji spins puranas out of lies - the lies that divided the ancient Indian Society. The Imam at the Madrasa lies to instigate war and activate terrorism. The US invades Iraq. The Libyan Spring. The language of the politicians. Everyone wears multiple masks and go on living lies.

Lust. Perversity is the new cool and provocative is fashion. Five-year-olds are molested. Old men sodomize little boys. Women are gang-raped. There is incest. Adultery is in the open. Flavor of rights is added to pornography. Lust is the dispense toolkit for stress. Saints and sinners, the powerful and the powerless - lust has infested all lives. Swami Nithyananda. Strauss Khan. Tarun Tejpal. Justice AK Ganguly. The list goes on and on. Popping out cleavages, hardening penises and wet under-garments. Such is the contemptibly pathetic state of affairs.

Greed. Yes, the greed that breeds materialism. Stirs disputes. Starts wars. Everyone wants to taste what's in others' plate. Jealousy intensifies. Egos shoot up. Wanting to own everything. Addiction to the smell of fame. Betrayals. Conspiracies. Scandals. Murders. New world theories emerge. China establishes its Air Defence Zone. Illegally takes control over Aksai Chin. Powerful countries sign discriminatory Nuke deals with developing ones like Iran and India.

So, 'who are the targets?', you might ask. Well, go up and read for yourself. In clarity, have I presented them to you. Do you still not get it? If I had so desperately wanted to kill men, I would have done that myself. Oh, now you get it. Yes, yes, I can see that from your frown. Your targets - my dear - are lies, lust and greed.

I know you would want to yell at me now and scare me with your foot-less dance. I can understand. Chill down. Yes, these are abstract things. But so are you. I thought you could easily spot them all and kill them one by one because the source of these three targets are present in your realm of reality and are in your close reach. Well, if you are not skillful enough to do it, get help from your dark lord Satan. Oh no, would he help you destroy his own designs which he has purposed to spoil the world? I'm quite affirmative that he wouldn't.

So what can we do now? Well, do you still not get why I have been writing this. You have no intelligence at all. Its pretty evident how you might have managed a landing into the arms of the devil. Hell yes you schmuck, go tell your lord that I have been mocking him so far. May all his forms and evil works burn with him in hell. Let love sprout on this earth. As far as I'm around - be it you, your lord, or his other lady companions - I would do my best fighting all the evils to establish love and hope. Yes, I'm at war with you and your dark lord. And I would breach your dark defence with ease. Because it only takes happiness that emanates from that priceless laughter of the pure in heart - to smother all your deadly plans.

No More

Death.

In the dark early hours of the day, my sweet pet Cherry slept a deep sleep not to rise up again. I kept watch over her till 3.30 AM today. She had fever and was shivering. She was too fragile a creature to take that shiver. I couldn't take her to the vet at that time of the night. I tried all I could to revive her. And I prayed. Kept praying. But nothing could stop the inevitable from happening. Sometimes we do not understand why things happen. And in the morning, Berry keeps searching for her. He will have to wait till I get him a good friend soon.

Yesterday night, a good friend I had known from college passed away - infected with rabies. Alan is dead. It shocks the marrows out of my bones. He was fine and smiling two weeks back; but now he is no more. We have been praying for him the last 7 days. But he had to leave. It had been scripted that way - by who else - the Sovereign Lord. If only we could question Him! Yes, anger magnifies those little doubts. Pointless rage sets in. What do you think you do, God?, I want to yell at him on his face. The face, that no mortal has ever seen.

I was in 10th class. Right before the day of results, I lost my friend Sajan. His nose was hit when he bent to drink water from a tap in the night, and he fell unconscious into the water sump that was unfortunately open and soaked till morning to death. He couldn't celebrate his board results. We were best of friends. I still very vividly remember the way he lifted me on his shoulders and rounded the ground with other friends running along as we won the Kabaddi Tournament at school. Those scenes lived long long ago - bring tears even now.

There was a Gautam in 12th class, who was a vibrant kid. We were a big bunch, used to group-study - those sessions were more fun, the teasings, discussing crap and laughing our intestines out, ah - the new things we learnt about life, and as exams approached - getting more serious with studies. But right after the exams, he died trying to cross the road.

I somehow feel God should hire a scriptwriter to write the stories of our lives. All these friends of mine - had they lived - would have become renowned men. But the One who sits on the throne chose to give such pathetic ending to their beautiful stories. Look at the end of each of these sweet people. This cannot be justified at all. And what pains us more is the intolerable fact that these things come from 'the Most Just Of All'. Is it not unfair to pluck a flower when it is still a bud? Oh, if only I had the power to bring people out of their graves by just calling their names out!.. If only.. God, I only ask you this. Let there be no 'no-more' scripts written for any of my friends in this fashion anymore. If you want, take me away. I can help you write great scripts.

I am not against God. I believe in Him. I agree, our human brains cannot comprehend his ways. May be when we shed this mortal body of ours, we would understand things more clearly ourselves. I do not want to rage more and disturb those sweet ones from their sleep. Hush, hush my stupid mind. They must be resting in the other realm of life. Who knows, my own story might have a silly ending, though I hope for a fabulously blood-splashing finish. Whatever be my script - I will pass onto the other shore to take Cherry into my arms and keep kissing her beautiful rodent mouth, play Kabaddi with Sajan on my side again, read school textbooks with Gautam just for the fun of it, and see Alan say - hi da - and smile.

The Voice And The Noise

Whispers from the clouds

Hush hush, be thou still

The gentle voice - soft and sweet!

Flora and fauna, hills and terrain,

Rivers and streams, the Sun and the Moon,

Stars and Supernova

All but man could hearken to it!

Why could not man?

Well, his thoughts are cluttered

Greed and pride, and malice and lust,

Money, material, make-up and masks,

Clogged and swollen - without direction

He lives to please what is not to be

Death comes by and lo, he's gone!

Misnomers and Misdemeanors

A good critique demands positivity in the underlying faculties of our minds. Dickens. Oscar Wilde. Bernard Shaw. Or, Orwell. All of them, great satirists. We know the amount of positivity that bubbled out of their literary works. Thinkers prepare the world for progress. It is in the restless janglings of our minds, wonders come into being. One should be able to challenge the status quo and set things in the right order to reap benefits. Well, it might not happen in whimsical ways buttering our hyper fancies - as many would gladly presume. It takes the hardest of efforts to stand out from the crowd - to merely prove the point that only dead fishes swim with the flow of the stream and live ones strive against the current. 

Yes, people have faced death in their pursuit to scripting a better society. But that cannot be reason enough to hold us in the recron cushions, in the prevailing felonies, yes, in the safer back-seats. Someone has to take the wheels, drive the vehicle, yes of course 'safe', face reality's brunt, take the first hit and get hurt if accidents occur on the way and if the air-bags do fail, die a blood-splashing death on the spot - Tarantino style.

I recall my dad's words. My brother and I - we were school-going kids when he sowed these seeds of wisdom. He would tell us that there is no such thing called 'darkness'. That it is just a name which explains the 'state of no light'. Darkness cannot rob the light; but light, by its mere emergence - be it a small candle flame or the angelic glow, dispels darkness. But as I grew up, I understood that darkness, in token of symbolism, carried 'substance' in its allusions to life and the living. That substance, allow me to present to you, relishes and grows obese by the passing of time, is the ever exciting - 'hypocrisy'. And there are these misnomers and misdemeanors that serve as scary rooks of the dark to sustain the oblique occulence of the light in this death-ridden world which refuses to rise from its rot.

Misnomer. Yes, the name that simply doesn't fit - in its meanings and usages. We all know the story of the famous false etymology of 'fu*k'. You must have read all those floating sms rumors about its origin in the Christianized Anglo-Saxon England - that it is an acronym for 'Fornication Under the Consent of the King' and all the related crap. Well, I do not go by any story of the origins even if it could sound so convincingly true. The greatest lesson learnt from history, Tharoor writes, is that history can teach you wrong lessons. So no, no blind yes to history. Look at the profane usage of the word (that actually means sexual intercourse) now. If you're frustrated - fu*k, if you're happy - fu*k, if someone pisses you off - shout fu*k you!, if you want to appear cool - use fu*k a 100 times in one sentence. Fu*k blends well with any situation.

Extracting cues from what I've penned above, let me take you to a different level of fun. In corporate houses, you would hear a lot of misnomers too. Advocacy, networking, perception and quite a lot. Well, these are great words if meant and used in the right way it ought to be applied and used. Please spare the discomfort of opening one more tab and googling for its meanings. Trust me, these are beautiful terms - all of them. But sadly enough, what advocacy would actually mean is - to lube superior arses with teasing licks to make the wrongs look so very right; networking, most of the times, is done intentionally to open up leeways for special interests and to exempt a few from the egalitarian yardstick measures; and perception, every single time it is in use, refers to conjectures that are made to carry the weight of certainty primarily to maul someone.

The uber comedy of affairs rests in the example of our nation in its present state. One, take - for instance - 'the word' Prime Minister - it is a pity that it has to be listed under misnomers. Two, there is a joker in the blood-line of the intellectual Nehru - so we could no more relate to the Nehruvian era upon hearing surnames starting with a G. Three, there is a RSS-pracharak turned BJP politician who takes the name of Sardar Patel to bring down the image of Congress. What he lacks is the knowledge of national affairs and conviction to his own beliefs. Because it is the same Sardar Patel who banned the RSS after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi - and if you could get access to some historical archives, please read about the fiery speeches made by one M.S.G - against 'the Iron Man of India' who is now contrastingly being idolized by the RSS-controlled BJP.

Well, you might think that there is no one who cannot be reformed. You might even put your best of efforts to point these mistakes to the offenders - not to damn them but to bring them to correction and suggest ways to improvement! To hell with you, they will all sing in chorus. Because, even if the scales of their eyes fall and they happen to see their mistakes as mistakes, they would smile sheepishly and tell you that these are not felony enough to be proven guilty - yes, these are only misdemeanors - and that they need no change. 'Way of life, dude!', 'You should learn to blind your eyes and let things go!', 'Don't eat up your own case!', 'If you want to live, listen to what we say!' - slogans such as these would resound in your ears. In this dark world with varying standards, it appears as if you could never reform anyone and that there is no value for progressive thought. Yes, hope flickers at these trying times. But no, it would not die out. Weary not! Hold fort. There should be some light somewhere. Keep searching for it within you and without, for all it takes to dispel darkness is a little light.

Moral Rejig

Morality. The word that scares the youth, confounds the old, confuses the middle-aged and pricks the wicked. The meaning of it depletes at the passing of time. And it is unfortunate that morality is judicially considered to be adding indignity to the intellectuality and abstraction to the prevailing clarity - with regards to the framing and practise of the codes of law, hence kept away from its purview or simply struck down.

On the social front, high-minded behavior of the modern urban upper class has brutally killed morality in all its pure sense and the trend is being passed on to the middle class and the classes down under. The famous Cole Porter song 'Anything Goes' composed in 1934 has riveting lyrics that captures the entirety of the issue in beautiful words.

As for re-jigs - yes, they do occur - sometimes to mend things or generally to break things, and when they occur they are a very interesting phenomenon. Books from the authors - Henry Miller and DH Lawrence - were once banned, but eventually (after years) the ban was lifted and those tabooed books were then accommodated into the social stream of things. The name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, is now listed under profane words in the IMDB - and appears in the parental advisory column. Old meanings deplete and new meanings develop. Roles exchange. Controversies trigger. Scandals mysteriously solve by itself, saints become devils and devils venerated as gods. Time is the smirking villain of the whole endeavor. Loss of conviction, dirt in polity and the proud adulation of the Machiavelli, and no to ideology and no to principles - is the new morality. This whole package comes under the false hood called liberty. To the dismay of all our hopes, liberty eats away our liberty. 

We are like the dead fish taken away downstream. The release of our minds has been our fall headlong. No one wants to question 'this' convention. Well, I'm not praising the bohemian or counter-bohemian way of life. How does a bohemian lifestyle matter if it only promotes disharmony and adds to the moral erosion? When the social conventions deplete, a true bohemian does not add to the dying down by hiking the ultra-regression index - but tries turning the scenario upside down in favor of peace and harmony.

What is missing is the balance! We either produce rapists or fanatics, terrorists or hypocrites. The ones that do not fall under either of these binaries have no idea why they live their lives. They allow themselves to be sucked into the vicious cycle of life and then, sadly, are thrown into their graves. We have enough religions, cultures and states. What we need is a reformist ideal - and no more dividing themes and the ever-increasing demi-gods. Jesus was a social reformer. But once this love movement called Christianity took to religious dimensions, the surrounding sheen in its entirety worn out all too quickly - in the twinkle of an eye.

Moral rejigs are bound to happen and are not in our control. Yes, we need rejigs that benefit. Rejigs, that do not corrupt the sanctity of our minds. We need new designs to dissolve hypocrisy and not fuel it. However, not all the rejigs could be termed right, because populist notions could go awfully wrong. When populism drags the society towards the wrong, we need upright people to courageously confront the mistakes of the majority. It is a paramount necessity that we end our lip service and contribute to the society in real sense. The wounds our societies have borne due to the continuous jigs-and-rejigs need to be healed. We need morals and values, as much as we need love and freedom. We need to be people whose progressive belief system does not sway at seductive immoral moments. We need to be like those brave men in the battlefield who would take a stance and stick to it to death. Voice out for the weak and the poor. Shoulder them. Stand firm. Establish harmony. If it has to end in death, let it be so. Smile and die a noble death - proud in knowing that you have been a part of the love revolution, and that morality - in its profound sense of purity - has not died out.

Post-Ceremonial Belongings!

She is sitting all decked up in her marital attire - all glowing, all shining. Dreams upon dreams. Fairy tales and fabulous fantasies. Her mind is in that lovely drizzle and there is sweetness dripping out from her liquid-jaggery of thoughts. She sees images. Less-than-three symbols everywhere, love birds pecking each others' beaks all the time, there are stars, candle lights, roses and one large bed. And ah, the moon. Yes, she beholds the crescent beauty of the moon - not knowing - that at the arrival of daylight and when the greater light rises in its majestic grandeur, the glowing lesser light that rules the night would soon hide itself in shame.

One day of ebullience. Momentary fascination. Price paid for ritual significance. Lights and crackers. Yes, those glittering CEREMONIES! Some intended to display pomposity, some are obvious fund-raisers, and there are some more that bear sadistic overtones to bore people to death just for the pleasure of it. However, few done with modest uprightness - though rare - could not be ruled out.

One might raise an emotional argument saying - ceremonies have primordial leanings. When caste and religion are tied to it, they seem to look like one frivolously important package of umbilical necessity. 'How important and relevant are they?', if you happen to ask someone - please expect no reasonable reply.

My intention is not to undermine celebration on the whole or ask you to wear the puritan mantle and become monks. No, do not get me wrong. Am I targeting festivals here? A swift nope to it - if your thoughts have those trailings. Festivals and ceremonies are not the same, though they both could have those seeming effervescent moments of joy in common. Because Diwali is a festival, but wedding is a ceremony. Christmas is celebrated round the world, but christening a baby is a family affair. The whole of Tamil Nadu bubbles with Pongal, but very few parents bother to call a sage home to conduct poojas.

Its perfectly fine to jump and shout, and to resound with songs of glory. Who has lived a humane life without having any fun! So, celebrate. Make merry. Share happiness. Spread smiles. Dance. Hug people. Exchange kisses. Pose for photographs. Do all of this in full vigor. Enjoy every moment to its fullest measure.

But where do we belong after the ceremony gets over and people pack for home? I have seen only happy weddings. But I cannot say with conviction that all the couples I have known are happily married. I have seen babies christened bearing names of great saints, but there is no assurance that they would grow up to become saintly in nature. I have seen poojas conducted at various houses but I also remember instances when the whole family split asunder in fights over property and other menial things - right after a pooja.

Time validates everything. We would need to wait to understand how our beings are placed (or misplaced) after the ceremonies. Do we instill the same spirit of happiness in our lives for real or do we act in front of the cameras - thinking a few photographs and some video clippings would make things appear real?

I would prefer register marriage (and take her home the way she is - with no adornment or other materials attached) to a grand wedding (having also shamelessly obtained dowry - by demanding or expecting). I would like a father holding his baby in his very own hands in prayer and naming the child in the Lord rather than making a big scene out of it in the church. I would like sons and daughters to come together, share a meal, sit and laugh - than to have a pooja and then build prejudices that create fissures. In the end what matters is how we have lived our lives, and not how others thought we lived our lives.

The Hilarious Dispensation of Truth!

  

The divine ordering of worldly affairs. But where is the divine, I wonder! Well, that is where the blatant comic of the affair lies. To everyone - what he/she thinks is the divine. Ask any parent about how they got their daughter married to that guy, they would say - 'Oh it was from the Lord!'. But we know the domestic realities of the households - the Lord, here, usually works through hordes of brokers, matrimonial websites, dowry and caste/denomination based arrangements. Have they no shame at all, I ask, to use the name of the Lord in vain?

There was a female donkey that sniffed at the desert air wanting to mate with just anyone. For her, ah if only she could speak, she would say - the male organ with all the vigor in the world piercing through her vaginal tract is the divine. Orgasm, surely, is divine for some people - and the learnings from some of the aboriginal civilizations nod to this assertion - with naughty moans.

Almost the entire world behaves like those in the freemasonry cult. They believe in apotheosis. Oh no, that is truth diminished. They already are gods covertly, according to the evil works of their minds. Everyone is an Aghori of sorts. Just like those naked flippant mongrels who would not hesitate to have a taste of the corpse burning on the cremation stage, the sexily clothed English-speaking mongrels belonging to the modern urban class do not hesitate at all to have a taste in that glib smirk that smells like illuminating spice but arrives at the inflicting of the poor and the weak - with their blood and sweat spurting in all possible directions.

Do you know where the problem lies? Not one wants to show any remorse to their ill attitude. They are all happy. Happy to lick those at the superior league from boot up - to get what they want. Happy to falsify facts. Happy to taint the good to feed their egos that are ever swelling and gluttonous like their bellies. This has created a very ugly jigsaw - which nothing that is divine could solve. It has all the more terribly complicated things. 

Try doing something good, and they would say - mind your own business. Try to un-complicate things and make them understand the truth of the matter, ah - don't you try teach me lessons, they snort like pigs that are real happy about taking that divine dip in that drainage filled with slug and blackened human feces. The snag of truth, that gives leeway to these born of many men, is that it can have versions - the world in its entirety believes in this. To me, the 'real' truth is one. And that could only be arrived in all its plausibility when all the versions are put together and congruency determined.

But unfortunate, as it would always be, no one would like that moderation. They take unnecessary offense if the right questions were asked that would unsettle their assertions - because everyone wants to believe what they believe is the only truth. Issue not only lies when they try to impose this onto others, but also on the very practice of their divinity. Whatever the divinities they claim - be it in all their incapacities - had efforts been put to transform them from mere lip service into real action, the world must have reaped atleast some love. We could have seen atleast a few genuine smiles.

What people say and believe contradicts with what they do and make people do. An Aghori who claims himself to be god would get a hard-on that goes sky high if the one who sits at his foot in humble servitude happens to be a woman. The female donkey that experiences its divinity in having orgasms would enjoy the same theo-blisters if penetrated by multiple donkeys and the puss of the seeming forever-joys cups out. The divinity in the thoughts of the parents would fade out when they come to know of the impotency in the groom that married their daughter and she resorts to external means to keep her sexually satisfied.

If God is one, truth is one too. And that could be understood in its full form of impregnating content only if a chord of convergence is struck in the divergence that mangles it. And the truth that is real - hurts - as much as it has the power to bring justice and make people happy. The way of the truth could be narrow - but it would always lead you to the right destination and bring you eternal joy.