Shadows

birds cast their shadows,
on the sunlit slopes,
shadows forever fleeting,
are all shadows thus fleeting?
joy the shadow of sorrow,
life the shadow of death?

(written by my mother)

A Little Bit of Me

Slow like a blur
the minutes move in reverse
bold, black
a shy truth hides behind
in carefully blunted pained eyes
worn like a divine snake
sits a curious expression staring back
wrapped around its blue nape
passive in its momentary solace
offering ignorant seductive chants

the self shrinks to the gaze
perspiring, stilling senses
old, and breathing somewhere
regurgitating in bowels
profane tongues, longing gazes
towards a pale figure
moves its shadow on its face

Oh Soul, thou art a vagabond

A walk down the long, winding road
No destination in mind
My journey now consists of brief stops
I search and I search but my soul evades me

Understand life I can’t and yet I can
Understand people I can’t and yet I can
Understand me I can’t and yet I can
Understand my purpose I can’t and yet I can

This journey I must continue I know
Away from home and the people I know
Until I reach the place of nothingness
Until I can hear the wind talking to me
Until I feel the earth embracing me

Underbelly of a life we choose not to see

Book: Eunuch Park
Author: Palash Krishna Mehrotra
Publisher: Penguin

Palash Krishna Mehrotra writes about men locked in the prison of their minds. His book, Eunuch Park, opens a tall grim iron gate that leads you into a dark morbid passage and before you can light a match to know where you are, the cold sweat rising from your temple tells you there’s no turning back.

If there’s one thing to gather after you’ve read his collection of short stories, it’s the stuff foreboding nightmares are made of. It’s original and even makes Shantaram shy away from a distance.

Palash is not writing to please you with purple prose and descriptive melting imagery that most Indian writers tend to write. He writes no far-fetched fashionable tales of slum dwellers, of ordinary hope or lush romance. Instead, in terse, short, simple and articulate sentences he tells you gory stories that you will never hear sitting in a plush living room. He writes stories in a manner in which it’s meant to be told, that gets you to sit on a dry, dusty hard floor dotted with cigarette butts and empty booze bottles rolling, with the taste of blood, sweat and tears in your mouth.

In his 15 stories, Mehrotra covers an expansive ground as smoothly as one flicks ash from a cigarette. There is murder, drug addiction, sexual abuse, homosexuality, prostitution, lust, bullying, stalking, repression that takes place in big cities and small towns. Hidden in his writing is a certain void of life, an irony within an irony that unlocks the myth from fantasy and upturns the underbelly of a life we merely choose to not see.

In all his stories, one realises in bitterness, that the events, instances or churlish situations are no vivid imagination of a sick writer that derives a certain pleasure by jabbing a finger at you. Palash takes you down familiar routes whether it is New Delhi, Bombay, Dehra Dun or Allahabad with a perspective of a person that easily slips between the barriers of class into a territory where perversity exposes vulnerability and honesty trips experience. Often the stories are told in first-person or in-and-out recollections, often they are so short and heady that they end up in a certain abruptness leaving a charcoal stain on your mind as you rush to meet the new one.

In Fit of Rage, the story is about a tenant, a murderer in the past, who lives in Defence Colony of New Delhi, and is taken into confidence by the servant of the house and his smack-addled friend who plot to murder the landlady and make a runaway with the loot.

In Eunuch Park, the story is about a Delhi University hostel student who is on the lookout for a safer option to make out with his girlfriend after having run into trouble with college authorities and the girl’s stringent parents. In Okhla Basti, the story is about the experience of an uneducated 26-year-old, who in order to wash away the memory of an old lover drowns himself in country liquor and chillums of ganja smoke, in one desolate night in the basti. In The Nick of Time, the story is about a student studying in Oxford, who recounts an episode when he cross dresses and has to make a dash to the loo without being caught. In The Other Evening, it’s an episode between a man and a prostitute, an indelible moment they share and the meaningless of it.

Palash in his style of writing brings a welcoming change in Indian writers writing in English. He has the ability of instantly captivating the reader by the sheer force of simple storytelling. Even the weaker stories, the ones that sometimes bounce on a thin line of obscurity covered in grime, resonates the continuity of the voice of a writer that’s taken some sort of a solemn pledge.

If one has to quibble about Eunuch Park, perhaps it is that Palash doesn’t dwell in his stories; these candid vignettes give a cursory peek of living on the wild side leaving the reader digging his fingernails in the pages wanting to know more.

What he does best is kill the concept of literary elitism, he shreds the aloofness and allows you to witness a spectacle perched in an amoral vantage point

The Unfinished Chapter

Chapter 99

One chapter ends and another begins
Life she was told is about chapters
But is it?

What about the unfinished chapters in between?
Chapters stay unfinished…till she’s ready to close them
Some memories make her smile
Others are like the treacherous sword on the gallows

A constant fight between happiness and sorrow
Hope and defeat
Is she really turning these pages?
Time is surreal

She looks at the eyes in the mirror
She knows the feeling only too well
She doesn’t need a bookmark for this
She goes back anyway

Is it her or is it life?
If it’s her, she has a solution
If it’s life, she still has a solution

No more going back chapters
No more bookmarks
This is one chapter that is compelled on staying unfinished
This is one dance she’s dancing alone

She laughs at the irony of it all
Her mind takes her back…but only just
Her aching heart and tired soul consume her
They bring that unfinished chapter to her fore again

Time, time they say has the answer
This is one time she quit on time
Will her chapter remain unfinished?
Or is the unfinished chapter really a finished one?

A Colossal Push

This might seem longer
but carry it with you
like a feathered sprinkle
touching your invisible wings
don let it break
this charm of a dream
it takes you where the world is
where everything works the way it is
make it grow
like a temptation in the dark worlds
but don't let the force tag you with it
else the fate of Icarus will be yours
keep the faith glowing

- Neha Arora

The Bed of Agony

Witness to the love
Long lived or long forgotten,
It stands blind and mute,
Not tall, yet firm.

The warmth of the bed
Is like love itself.
Tender and fragile,
Almost like a lover’s sigh.

Soft is the surface,
The scent is sweet.
Don’t forget the hardness
That lies low and beneath.

The bed often growls
In a joyful pain.
Over it’s subtle top
The lovers reign.

Its sheets are often wet
With desire and glutton.
As the moonlight falls,
The bed shines with passion.

No rose adorns it,
Yet it feels the bliss.
The stains fade in a day,
The memory lasts a lifetime.

An Ode To Sloth

An Ode to Sloth

You who are a jewel among a crown
of seven jewels that adorn the crown of Sin….
You who are the epitome of inertia
and stand for boredom in merry din…

I wonder what a state your absence
must have devised for us,
without you who’d have pulled us
out of life’s mechanical fuss.

Like Robots we’d have persisted day and night,
Thanks for saving us from slogger’s blight.

I succumb to you, with joy, when I need to shirk,
Away from random bizarreness of my endless work
I have nurtured you in secret
with your seven Virtuous foes,
favoring whom I have been hit in life
by some deadliest of blows.

You also at times become my medium
of delving in a trance,
For making me oblivious to the woes
you are my sole chance.

The Amalgamation of Philosophies Needs Time and Energy to Create Synergy

Having been a student of management, and spent 5 years working, I think I am in a position to say a few things about the subject.

In terms of the response elicited by the customer in reaction to the company’s services or product, there has been an evolution in what companies aim for as follows:-

rendering of services/products > customer satisfaction > customer delight (thats where it stands right now)

In keeping with the globalization of markets, and intense competition, recessionary pressures, and the commitment by organizations to use their managerial prowess for the good of the community and society, the logical next level to vie for is customer orgasm. As responsible producers, settle for nothing less than AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh………hhhh, from the customer.

Similarly, customer service have also climbed through different levels as follows:-

no service> customer service> customer care

for the reasons cited about, we need to be constantly pushing the limits in this area as well because we, yeah you got it, cherish our customers. So obviously, we need to start providing customer love. I can envision a conversation which goes like:-

Sir, mai Airtel se call kar rahi hun. kya mai aapka thoda wakt le sakti hun?

ji zaroor

Sir, apna naam batayenge?

Pankaj

Pankaj ji, i love you

Pankaj ji, aapka pichle mahine ka bill pending hai. kab tak pay kar sakte hain?

aap ghar executive bhej sakti hun bill collect karne ke liye?

aapke liye to mai kuch bhi kar sakti hun

To sign off, an invaluable lesson I’ve learnt over the past few years. Management is not about solving problems. Its about rephrasing problems so that they’re not problems anymore.

More when i can think of more.

Basterds, Nonetheless!

There are two ways of telling someone that s/he is dumb. Either you say “You are plain dumb” or “You have been deprived of common sense”. The latter is only a subtle yet a stylistic manner of telling the friend in question that he is a fool.

In his latest Nazi slugfest, Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has used the latter version to mock the entire exercise infamously known as Nazism.  Told in four chapters, the film deals primarily with three aspects of the Nazi occupation in France---the oppressive Nazis, the defiant Basterds and the victims of Nazism. Each aspect has been embodied through characters, who in their own way, are as blood-thirsty as the leader of the Nazi pack, Adolf Hitler. Colonel Hans Landa of the SS is cruel yet dynamic, an oppressor who has a way with words. In the opening scene of the film, he kills a Jew family taking refuge in a French dairy farmer’s house. The daughter, Shosanna Dreyfus, manages to escape. Four years later, Shosanna herself assumes a new identity as Emmanuelle, heading a small but a well-known theatre in Paris. The petite and beautiful Shosanna becomes an object of fancy for Fredrick Zoller, a young war hero who is all set to star in a film that glorifies his role in killing hundreds of Jews. In the meantime, the Basterds, under the leadership of Aldo Raine continue to cause mayhem, killing SS soldiers and scalping their heads with the Swastik (as against the inverted Swastik, a symbol of Nazism). In his endeavours, Raine is helped by a famed German actress Bridget von Hammersmark.

As Zoller and his filmmaker/ Nazi propanganda minister Joseph Goebbels agree to hold the premiere at Shosanna’s theatre, the Basterds and Shosanna herself come up with their respective plans to blow the auditorium where the ‘Fuhrer’ is also expected to come. The second half of the film puts the four chapters into a perspective with a sole mission---to kill the Nazi leaders who are to attend the premiere.

The plot aside, what holds the film together is the sheer flamboyance exhibited by different characters. Alda’s portraiture, be it in terms of the appearance or the gestures, is not entirely different from Hitler himself. His brand of anti-Nazism is as lethal as Nazism itself, except that he happens to be a reactionary. Add to this the thirst for revenge in Shosanna. So who exactly are these inglourious basterds? The Nazis, the Basterds, who, though operate in small numbers, have waged an equally bloody war against the Nazis, or the revenge-seeking Jews like Shosanna?  The answer lies in the title itself and the fact that no character is spared a redemption, not even Hitler himself who instead of committing suicide (which he is believed to have done in reality), is shown dying in the locked auditorium screening Zoller’s film. This very aspect of the film is an evidence of the mockery that Tarantino very consciously plays on each of his protagonists. There are more, but I don’t intend to spoil the film for you by revealing the end.

Any discussion on a Tarantino film is incomplete without an insight into the violence that is an integral part of his art, if his films were allowed to be called so. The violence in Inglourious Basterds works at several levels. Beginning with the title itself. Obviously one couldn’t have named it ‘French Connection 3’. At another level, the nature of the social and the political context the protagonists live in are equally violent. Take this remark from Landa as an example. “What a tremendously hostile world that a rat must endure. Yet not only does he survive, he thrives. Because our little foe has an instinct for survival and preservation second to none. And that is what a Jew shares with a rat.” It is another matter that towards the end the survival instincts in Landa take precedence over the ‘Hail Hitler’ syndrome. Finally, the physical violence. Portrayed in its rawest form, violence is a almost like a universe that the protagonists inhabit. For Tarantino, brutality is brutality. There’s no escape from it. And the finest aspect of his brand of violence is that he doesn’t even want to keep his viewers under an illusion that what they are seeing is a drama which is going to offer the rights and wrongs to them.

The lead actors Brad Pitt (Aldo Raine) and Diane Kruger (Bridget von Hammersmark) put up a decent act, but an ‘act’ nonetheless. The Greek God of Hollywood (read Brad Pitt) has a meaty role in the film, but it is only in few scenes that Aldo Raine takes precedence over the star. Ditto for Kruger. In contrast Christopher Waltz (who plays Hans Landa) and Melanie Laurent (who plays Shosanna) come close to living their respective roles. The other actors do not disappoint either.

Don't wait, just bask in the glory of the Inglourious Basterds.

Digital Disgorge

Ok! I have to write this... Even it means missing out on watching Bambi tonight. Have we suddenly started living through our cameras? One look at Facebook or archaic Orkut, and the answer is loud and clear. About 70-100 pictures for a birthday or night out and 200 for a vacation is standard.
Back in the day when our parents were growing up, it was the age of the still camera that graduated from black & white to sepia to eastman colour to colour. They still treasure their albums (Heck, I still treasure my albums!), some of which are neatly placed in scrapbook format. Most of them, if not all were special. The camera was meant to be lovingly taken out of the cupboard, loaded carefully with a film reel, and the shutterbugs were only supposed to flash at significant moments. The film was expensive and not to be wasted on random things/ people/ places/ moments.
Digital cameras and the odd 2 megapixel cameras in our cellphones have done away with the tedious process of buying film and getting it developed. Things are easy as pie now, more so if you don’t want prints of all your pictures. Surely saves space, time and money. Upload them online and it’s safe forever, even if your hard disk crashes. But there’s a flipside. Aren’t we all becoming slaves to our digicams? Don't get me wrong. I'm all for embracing new technology (even the Mac at work is growing on me) and conveniently sharing pictures with sundry friends and cousins et al, but the obsession with posing for FB profile pictures every now and then is a bit much to chew on. We are failing to live in the moment in order to capture it. We are so overwhelmed by “clicking lots of pictures” and “uploading them on FB” and “tagging them” that sometimes we end up forgetting why we are clicking them in the first place.
It has happened with me many times. When I look at pictures after an occasion or those resulting from an impromptu photo session, I think to myself, “When did this happen?” or “Why don’t I remember this?” Take it all in guys, you’ll remember it better without your cams (click some for bees saal baad's sake though)! Maybe it’s just a memory problem, I am 25 after all!
But I do believe it’s time we start experiencing more and clicking less.

We are too much with the world

I've been following the XYZ's Got Talent (India, America, Britain) shows on youtube the past few months. I've seen many stories of obscure people - a farmer (Kevin Skinner), a cancer survivor (Barbara Padilla), a village mom (Susan Boyle) a group of laborers (Prince dance group in India), making it big instantly, almost in fairy tale, fantasy fashion. There is something about people climbing from obscurity to great heights that captures everyone imagination, and that is the stuff these shows feed off.

And these people indeed seem to be living a dream. When they tell their story over and over (i had never stepped out of my town before this/i battled cancer for eight years/i couldnt attend last years audition because my brother died), one can see the stars in their eyes blazing, the distant look. Although the channel may add violin music for effect, and stage manage the settings, one can see the truth, the earnestness behind their constant refrain "this is the best moment of my life".

As the judges of the show, pile on the praises, educate us about our own greatness, we drink, savor, wash ourselves in every word. Maybe all of us want to be washed in the gaze of the world, to be aknowledged by the world for our worth, our talent, to be given sympathy for our sufferings, our tragedies. To absorb the applause, and see tears for us in everyones eyes. This really is what in our heart of hearts, where we always wanted to be, what we always considered finally being what we were constantly becoming. The culmination point of our life. It was great to fall in love, the first intimate touch, to have children, to spend joyful moments with friends, revel in everyday acheivements, but, this really is the "best moment of my life".

And then comes the grand finale, the big moment, when your greatness shall be finally sealed, your place forever guaranteed amongst the stars, the final brush stroke in the grand script of your life.

And the winner is - someone else!

Your dreams are shattered with the force of a hammer driven through a glass pane. Or like a lovesick girl who thought she had finally found true love walking into the room to find her lover in another's arms.

The smile is still there on your face, the smile you had imagined for yourself for the victory, but the eyes are bewildered. The applause is still there, the drumroll, the confetti. But it is not yours. The limelight has moved away, and you are left in the darkness of the stage to assess your state.

You suddenly feel like an absurdity.

Where did the grand script, with you in all your great suffering and struggle, the grand hero, go wrong, and you suddenly become an absurdity?

It never was your script. It was their script. A circus sequence, where you had a part.

To be fair, someone wins. But even he (or she) is living their script.

Finding the meaning of life on the stage has its perils.

MINE AND YOURS, LOVINGLY ...

It rains again, do you hear?

Do you feel the drops break on your pale face?

Do you still take joy? Do you smile?

Do you remember?

I taste the rain again

To wonder if it tastes too different from mine.

It's just as bland though, and tasteless

Like my twinge that is no fun anymore.

Hopelessly hopeful makes me fetch my cup for more,

Two spoonfuls of sugar and I promise I'll smile like a kid.

I think of you too, you know that!

I'm not selfish you know.

My love's almost a favour

To you and to me.

I'm not selfish you know.

Do you still smile? Do you still think of me?

Do you still long for us to be under the same rain?

I do.

I do because the rain is your heart,

Which when I kiss shatters into a hundred pieces.

The rain is you.

It rains again, do you hear?

It rains again, I love you.

---
All things bright and Biprorshee