Eddie #3 - Sweet Treats

It's Sunday morning and Xo woke up early to make breakfast-- Spicy scrambled eggs and sauteed mushrooms . Lovingly she calls up the stairs to Xo so as to wake him up.
Xo: Baby .. Breakfast's ready .. Wake up, honey
(No reply)
Xo: Sugarpop .. pumpkin pie .. Wake up
(No reply)
Xo: Come on down, sweetie pie, hot muffins .. !
(Xo comes stomping down the stairs, indignant)
Xo: You Have No Right to lure me out of my sleep promising sweet treats!
(He walks into the kitchen closely followed by Xo)
Xo: And you haven't made any!!

Random Update

Abandoned my blog again .. tut tut .. Anyways, i got my hair cut .. pretty short this time .. and i kinda like it .. thinking of coloring it a fiery red -black .. Haven't felt convicted to write anything for a long time .. i have some loud music playing on my 2.1ch .. it's about 12am here and i don't care if I'm disturbing the ppl around my room .. And a friend earlier today dedicated a song to me .. "Re Offender" by Travis .. And boy was i offended! .. Anyways fuck that
Ciao, ppl

Respect, Honor, Dignity, Death

Death is the inevitable, irrevocable end all of us are breathing towards; As endlessly numbered our days may seem to be.

I largely believe that death is hugely over-rated and life taken for granted way too much too many times. So much has the novelty quotient of death risen that people use it as blackmail. Those who habitually get their way by threatening to die, honor and value their life only as much as one playing playing Russian roulette.
Like any teenager, I've contemplated suicide in the past. Of those dire moments, i recall how and why i chose to live. More than how painful death would be for me, for my kin and beyond the question of "what lies yonder?", what bothered me most about death is how I'd cease to live, cease to breathe and cease to feel heat and cold; Death did not seem worth giving up all the above and still does not.

Touching upon the theory of "life after death", it's one vortex one should wisely avoid. For all we know, there is nothing on the other side. We never wonder what happens to a fruit fly when it dies and what happens to the now dead dog. I'd doubt it if nature would treat a human being's demise with any less indifference than it would a dog's. Hence it's only sensible to understand we unnecessarily over-rate our death. It may well be as insignificant as any creature's. The only beings one demise affects are those who were fond of the now deceased.

We didn't ask to be born; Just sit through the ride and try enjoying yourself as often as possible and as much as possible and you ll realize all your woes are worth those moments of utter glee;

Eddie #2 - Pin the Tail

(Xo and Xo are working in the lab. At least one of them is.)

Xo: (whispering into Xo's ear) What color is your bra today?
Xo: We're working.
Xo: Answer me!
Xo: Yes. No. Not Often. Yesterday. Mars. -- Want more?
Xo: What?
Xo: Answers.
Xo: (unfazed) What color bra are u wearing today?
Xo: I'm not telling you.
Xo: Is it black?
Xo: No.
Xo: Is it red? :D
Xo: Certainly, not.

(a couple minutes pass in silence as he stands behind her and plays with her hair)

Xo: What happened? Did u again forget what the other colors are called?
Xo: It's not black or red. So I'm not interested anymore.

(And Xo walks away fiddling with his pen)

Eddie, my Eddie

As they love putting it, Eddie came with just a head .. For those who are not familiar with Eddie or "they", i'm talking about the legendary death metal band Iron Maiden and their mascot Eddie .. One can know more about Eddie here


Eddie appears in the background in each and every concert of IM and on almost all their album covers. Now, as a girl i'm normally expected to be fond of soft toys, dolls and the like. I, however, thoroughly dislike them. But eddie is one character who has a special place in my heart.

This will be a new series titled Eddie and dedicated to him; an attempt at comedy, quaint as my sense of humor is.

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EDDIE by Ken

Acknowledgments
Iron Maiden --Their music is fried chicken for my soul.
All the great men I've known, esp Ka.

--

#001 - My way or the highway

[Xo and Xo have been together for 6 years out of which they've lived together for 2 years. Both are physicists, atheists, metal fans. That's all you need to know for now.]

Xo: You're going out?
Xo: Yes .. My college reunion party
Xo: Don't go
Xo: Er .. ohhhk ....
Xo: i love this new lipstick
Xo: Errr .. why .. should ...
Xo: lipstick? oh .. party? Cos i dont want you to
Xo: you're going to--
Xo: the supermarket.
Xo: I ll drive you then
Xo: You stay at home.
Xo: Why can't i go to the party???
Xo: Cos we just decided you are staying home. Pay attention, Xo. tsk tsk

[Xo puts on a pretty skirt and walks out of the bedroom. Xo flops over the bed exasperated]

One of many others

It's one of those days when u don't mind being unproductive days. Lying on my bed all day, reading a little, watching a few episodes of classic FRIENDS and listening to a few good songs.
In fact, the only activity worth mentioning is watching a herd of goat/sheep grazing and lazing about on open grassy grounds as i sat on my bed, eating cake and looking outside the window. It was amusing to see how some ate furiously, few sat down with no care in the world and the few other sheep wandered about aimlessly. They all looked so dumb.
I finished reading the book Vertigo by Ashok Banker for the third time. A really beautiful book.

Social Contract

"Social Contract" itself screams sarcasm, doesn't it? Human beings, by nature, are claimed to be social beings yet we have comfortably coined a contract that is set to regulate and supervise a face of human nature, which ideally should be spontaneous and uninhibited.

The world, in my opinion, would be far less complicated. How many times have you wished that an acquaintance just got straight to the point where he/she asks you for a favor without putting u thru mind-numbing exchanges of pleasantries? How many times i have wished that people just dropped the plastic smiles covering up their (sometimes illicit) agenda.

Many people i know follow the social contract almost unconsciously, like it were hard-wired into them. Can we think out of the box from time to time? Why do most of us so placidly dismiss simplified living that comes without the unnecessary layers to a very very teary onion?

I urge people to be more straight-forward, cut all the crap n trash talk and approach a person upfront with what you originally intend to. I believe you can come across as too strong or even impolite the first time but consequent interactions shall undo any damage done and may even bring you more respect than plastic smiles ever could.

--

I don't know if i made any sense in the above post. All the same, i'm a no-nonsense person, even if this post proves otherwise.

Ten Words

Today afternoon, i just typed out ten random words as they came to me .. no cognitive process involved .. They are as: Ink blue, bad, hickey, outlaw, barn, vintage, scaffold, godfather, independent
G came up with: coral reef, kissing, machines obse, nails, shoes, ice cream, wet grass, money, pacman, books.
Pr came up with: God, drums, adler, sexy, fuck, jeans, underwear, nook, relax, bottle, pee, hard drive ##clean towel, wilson, space, fluctuation, shock, blast, collide, explode,combine, recover, head-on, nicaragua##

I don't know why i came up with this 'game' .. kinda fun tho .. Lately i've been oddly reading up on political strategies and latest is the concept of 'false flag' .. i picked up the interest from massive attack's "False Flags" .. Beautiful track .. Lyrics are as:

In city shoes
Of clueless blues
Pays the views
And no-mans news
Blades will fade from blood to sport
The heroin's cut these fuses short
Smokers rode a colonial pig
Drink and frame this pain i think
I'm melting silver poles my dear
You bleed your wings and then disappear
The moving scenes and pilot lights
Smithereens have got 'em scaling heights
Modern times come talk me down
And battle lines are drawn across this town
Parisian boys without your names
Ghetto stones instead of chains
Talk 'em down cause it's up in flames
And nothing's changed
Parisian boys without your names
Riot like 1968 again
The days of rage yeah nothing's changed
more pretty flames
In school i would just bite my tongue
And now your words they strike me dumb
The flags are false and they contradict
They point and click which wounds to lick
On avenues this christian breeze
Turns its heart to more needles please
Our eyes roll back and we beg for more
It frays this skin and then underscore
The case for war you spin and bleed
The cells you fill screensavers feed
The girls you breed the soaps that you write
The graceless charm of your gutter snipes
The moving scenes and suburbanites
And smithereens got 'em scaling heights
Modern times come talk me down
The battle lines are drawn across this town
English boys without your names
Ghetto stones instead of chains
Hearts and minds and u.s. Planes
Nothing's changed
And english boys without your names
Riot like the 1980's again
The days of rage yeah nothing's changed
More pretty flames

--

Indians, movies, books.

Note: I mean no offense when I refer to Indians as “they” on occasions in the following post. The reason is simple: I’ve had an identity crisis for as long as I remember which has been made possible by my contrasting outlook, beliefs, interests and character.

--

Movies have always had a very special niche carved out in most Indians’ hearts. I say ‘most’ because I’ve raised eyebrows each time I admit movies are only as special as a blue sky, thus making me a slightly tasteless exception.

Research for this post goes as deep as extracts from casual conversations I’ve had with my parents and grandparents as they shared their experiences as a young and growing individual. Movies, as I see, have influenced the Indian audience for several decades now. My mother speaks of lover peers of hers, who after watching a certain Hindi movies, the titles of which I do not remember, committed suicide jumping off cliffs, into waterfalls etc, all in their undying desire to be eternally bound by love (and may I add, stupidity).

We, Indians, by nature constantly swim in and out of reveries because reality, more often than not, chooses to be less than pleasant. Recalling from my own experience, one week into college, a friend’s friend woefully disclosed her disappointment at having ended up in a dull, uneventful institute. A little inquiry by us led to her telling us, “I thought life at an engineering college would be like the one in ‘Happy Days’.” Happy Days is a telugu movie which was a huge hit with the south Indian audience. The movie captures a very pleasant picture of a bunch of freshmen who fall in and out of love among themselves, set in a pretty-looking engineering college. Anyone who’s studied in an engineering college in India how totally fantastic the movie is. On the contrary, Indian engineering institutes are delightful if you have a taste for dark humor, sarcasm, irony and randomness.

I’ve never watched a movie starring Rajnikanth but in India, he is as well known as the Taj Mahal or tandoori chicken. Indian actors, once catapulted into lasting limelight enjoy a never-failing safety net in the form of a direct entry to politics. Actors who haven’t any more knack or knowledge on this topic than an unnamed professional, go on to get elected to the office of the state and later, to the parliament.

A casual questioning shows that the ratio of the number of people who prefer movies to books is heavily lopsided towards the former category. Let me present my completely amateur, unproven theory as to why. Watching movies is just easier than reading a book. There are only so many Nancy Drew and Sidney Sheldon novels that u can finish reading in under three hours. But the ‘time’ factor isn’t really a factor observing how Indians lead a relatively leisurely life; a claim supported by the undying love and loyalty they harbor for cricket, an annoyingly long sport, being made shorter as years roll on, in an effort to make it pass for a global sport.

So moving on, books require considerably more gray matter to effectively process the substance they hold. But movies or for that matter any motion picture or visual aid is impressed upon one’s mind requiring relatively less effort from the individual as compared to the written word. Books require their readers to read the text, process and grasp the meaning, imagine the setting by mapping the words and their implication to visual cues stored in their brains, until, at last, the reader is able to convert the words into a motion picture inside their respective heads, which most people will agree, by experience, is more ‘real’ than watching a series of fast-moving picture frames.

All this led me to think how different or not different would the common Indian be if he/she read more books, even if it’s only a decent fraction of the number of movies he/she watches. Honestly, no one in my immediate family reads books on a regular basis. This piece of fact in addition to showing my family doesn’t have bookworms hidden away, also shows that qualifying an Indian by education or a decent profession can in no way raise the chances of him/her being a fan of the written word.

When we know, as a general fact, that education for sure develops a country, there’s also the fact that education can only go so far as teaching a person to identify and learn to use his talents and abilities. Who/ what, then, is to take care of the constant necessity to sustain the creative skills and to exercise the imagination centre of the Indian mind? It’s general knowledge that every organ, including the brain, atrophies if left unused for long periods of time. I do not imply that any Indian who doesn’t exercise his brain enough will terminate into an incapacitated vegetable but isn’t a part of us lost -- a talent/ skill with a potential to bring what man desires most: wealth, power, fame, happiness? (I used to draw appreciably well years ago before I stopped drawing. Now, my best ‘face’ on paper doesn’t even faintly resemble that of a human being.

It is a growing concern for me personally as I observe how uninspiring bulks of today’s Indian movies are. A couple decades ago, making a movie was an achievement in itself. Good movies stood as an epitome to human perseverance, resilience, dedication, toil and calculated risk. Whereas now, movies get made with a flimsy screenplay, good-looking faces christened ‘actors’, corporate firms funding the artless project just because the CEO/ proprietor wants to satisfy his whims. The tragedy doesn’t end here; Indians uphold very such movies and ditch the less ostentatious yet artful ones. In a stark and cruel contrast, writers still have only their pens to win them a publisher and hoping to find the right editor in whose heart their writing will strike a chord.

I accept trash movies get made all over the world but only in India do they have a sickly sweet stranglehold over the audience and only here do they afflict a delirium so convincing, it is so often misinterpreted as delight.

--

A long post indeed.

I am Grateful

A Not so beautiful Tuesday morning. I get ready for college. Start for the bus stand. Sit in the bus. The bus starts. Time to buy a ticket. I start tearing my bag apart. Why ? Because i cannot find my frickin purse !

People always keep asking me why i don't maintain a purse and go around stashing money in four to five arbit places within my bag. I thought over this and got myself a tidy little black purse from home. I remember how meticulously i put in loose change into it today morning. And damn ! How i cursed myself for even paying heed to those idiots who gave me the "maintain a purse" advice. And then i remembered -- this is the fuckin reason why i never maintain a purse unless i'm on a formal outing. Because, of all the things that i usually take to places, i know i ll end up forgetting this one thing !!

I was still tearing my notebooks apart when the couple sitting next to me noticed i was going crazy. When they heard i had forgotten my purse, they offered to pay for my ticket. 7 rupees. Gawd and i was able to fish out 2 bucks from my now disheveled bag. I decided it would be too cheap to give the 2 rupees to them. So i clutched it tight in my fist till it became almost as hot and flushed as my face !

Sincerely, I thank you, Mr & Mrs. XyZ. (i was too embarassed to ask your names)

But the cynical, ungrateful, bitchy me couldnt help thinking -- If i was not dressed as i was, or if i was not carrying doesn't-come-cheap electronic gizmo or if i was not wearing those diamond rings on my fingers, i wonder if they'd deem my unfortunate mishap genuine and help.
Damn my impudence