When Wodehouse scripts Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi

An episode :

Shanti Niketan:

It was one of those very many jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all. The Virani family is celebrating Baa’s birthday. Baa was either about a hundred and fifty who was rather young for her years or about a hundred and ten who had been aged by trouble.

Tulsi, looking dignifiedly like the statue of liberty, enters the resplendent hall. She is constructed on the lines of a Greek Goddess, particularly remarkable for aristocratic hauteur and forcefulness of the eye.

Abir whizzes in. He looked like an ostrich that had just swallowed a door knob. Abir, who lost his mother at a very young age, had lost all restraint, springing from girl to girl with an assiduity which seemed to suggest that he intended to go on dating them till the supply gave out.

He says “Tulsi Maathe, you ought not to have been here, for, what you are going to witness will tell on your health. You are very old!”
The fishy glitter in his eye became intensified. He laughs, evilly.

Tulsi shudders slightly and in addition to shuddering utters a sharp quack of anguish such as might have proceeded from some duck which, sauntering in a reverie beside a duck-pond, had inadvertently stubbed its toe on a broken soda-water bottle.

She just laughs a silvery laugh and disappears into the crowd leaving Abir anxious.

Karan arrives from Bangalore. Tanya, his devoted wife, whose motherly love is challenged by her husband’s step daughter Bhoomi, decides to speak with Karan about Bhoomi’s marriage with Abir.

Just when Tanya is about to talk to Karan, Tulsi introduces Karan to Mr. Mehta, their business associate and suggests that her grand daughter should marry into their family.

The obedient step son that Karan is, he agrees and makes an announcement in the party.

Abir is nonplused. When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand what anarchists feel when the bomb goes off too soon. His whole aspect was that of a man who has been unexpectedly struck by lightning.

Bhoomi trots into her room furiously, her voice trailed away in a sigh that was like the wind blowing through the cracks in a broken heart.

Abir leaves Shanti Niketan in utter disbelief. He experiences the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.

Here, back in Shanti Niketan, Bhoomi sets herself ablaze. She is rescue though. With her face drawn, the eyes haggard, the general appearance that of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle, she tells her step father that she does not want to marry this bloke. She pauses and swallows convulsively, like a Pekingese taking a pill. Then she announces that she is pregnant with Abir’s child. The drowsy stillness of the party was shattered by what sounded to Tulsi’s strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. The Mehtas leave.

Tanya calls Abir to inform him about this development. Abir laughs again, evilly. A laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge..

“BALAJI TELEFILMS BANNER”

Naah, I wasn't going to make Kyunki a musical comedy.

Midnight creek

Warning: I may sound overtly maudlin (so that’ll make the word-overtly over sentimental).

My parents read almost all my posts. Almost..
My mom thinks I’m becoming dangerously cynical. Even otherwise.

This post is going to be no different. I cannot counterfeit "exultation" when these buggers have sold off my motherland. Bunch of old oafs. I’ll call it “perfidy”.
I refuse to believe that this is the same Manmohan Singh who started economic liberalization in 1991. The original fellow is gagged and hidden in a somber eldritch cellar in 10 Janpath road. With pictures of P.V.Narasimha Rao, all over the place.

The naqli manmohan in Afro-Asian summit: While our continents include both major producers and consumers of energy, the “framework” within which we produce and consume energy is determined elsewhere. Where? Macedonia?! Duh!
Nuke deal is NOT a one-time special exception for India under global nuclear nonproliferation order. It is the most dramatic textual manifestation of the geopolitical ruse of Washington. [That outside “framework”..]

US Senate passed this deal by whopping 85-12 margin. Why not!
Their major subterfuge to “use” India as a ‘hedge’ in the U.S. plan to contain China, worked. Probably, even ‘they’ never thought it would be so easy! All they had to do was “rephrase” a few sentences in the deal. Indians are “poor” in English and somebody was saying English is the easiest of all languages.ha!
These buffoons are ecstatic about being accommodated as a junior partner in perpetuating an order based on the production of insecurity and violence across the globe.This reminds me of an old Dev Anand Song.. “Barbaadiyon pe jashn manaata chala gaya!”

One Chief Minister, with his hands ‘always’ on the oddest places of his body and a faux husky voice, gives away clothes in charity and dances to obscene songs on Joan of Arc incarnate’s 60th Birthday. Renuka Chowdhary danced too. period. [I need not use “on smutty songs” to convey vulgarity.]Yuk! That jaat!

Informatics

Countdown: 17 hours to go in the most odious semester ever. Last exam [Informatics]. And they promised me third year was going to be 'fun'.Nasty.
[Well, completing a semester is not of any outstanding significance, in itself.I was just having a deadly itch to come, scribble something on my blog.]

My malicious profs,profs?!..no no, the unqualified faculty of my college refuses to give me anything more than 1 out of 5 in my assignments.The Gold medal is mine.ha!
[Sorry fans.The world is unjust.]

Every second woman in the world is either a feminist or is working in a shady MNC/analysing the societal institution/shedding clothes on TV/Movies or is a wannabe MNC-employee/actress or a wannabe-feminist. [Yeah,the special treatment to "feminists" in the above sentence is deliberate]
I want to be a home maker.(because) I pity men.

Wealth changes people.It does.People 'around you'.period.

If radical feminism is acceptable in modern society, so is wife-beating. Ergo, neither is acceptable in civilized society.
A standout to the boy who actually quoted it.

I’ll spank my kids. I’ve resolved.

About two months back, when my uncle’s family visited us, I started writing a post “Obnoxious children- the disheartening degeneration”. Howsoever, I did not finish that post. They left a day before they were supposed to leave.

Now, I will..

I accompanied my parents and my Uncle’s family to an amusement park yesterday. Weirdly. Only very reluctantly, I accepted to humour my 10 year old cousin. I did not want to go for 2 reasons..
a)I don’t like, my dad pampering any other kid in this world.
b)I can’t stand my dad pampering any other kid in this world.
But this post is not about my obdurate possessiveness.

The kid expressed his itch to go to the park at 7:30 pm. The whole family heeded to the erratic whim of the child and decided to go. I reconciled, only to humour my dad.

There was a place “Downtown” in the park. It had about 15 ridiculous games for children. Ridiculous, because they had “zero” creativity quotient. Each game was 20 rupees. This kid went to each game, played, very quickly, lost every game, looked at my mom or his, took the money and gave it. At every game, the same thing happened. It started to get on my nerves.

Two things again..
a)He did not understand the value of money. All he had to do was to "look" at the elders. *shrug with dejection*
b)He did not seem to enjoy ‘one bit’ of any game. The games lacked variety and he got to play them too easily! *matter-of-factly shrug*

I looked around. What I saw petrified me. There were around 25 other kids doing exactly the same thing.
NONE of them had “that” glee in their eyes. That mirth, that “we” had in your eyes, when we played similar such games during childhood.
NONE of the parents were participating in the child’s pursuit, some were yelling into their cell phones, mothers were discussing fake gold ornaments and mothers-in-law, some others looked blankly, just blankly.

After his splurge pursuit at the games, now he wanted pink fluffy candy. His Mom bought him that ‘and’ stale popcorn. He finished both, before we came out of that subdivision. I was reminded of a poem we had in the fifth standard- “The Goops”.
I laughed.

Each ride--Rs.30. He picked 4 rides from the list. Now, the kid, freakish than ever before, insisted that “I” must get on those rides with him and my dad actually asked me to appease the “little boy”!
While we were getting on it, my cousin said “Akka, I’m going to bunk school tomorrow, watch!”
I sneered.

He was all okay till we got down. I think. [I had closed my eyes and all other outward senses till I got down the ride.]
After we descended the ride, he told his dad that he felt like puking. I could actually see him “trying”. Anyway the ride had made us queasy;nauseated, so he did not have to try hard and to add to it, he had eaten the pink fluffy thingy that made things all the more easy.

He cried cacophonously throughout the car ride. My dad told his brother to allow the kid to bunk on monday. I suspect I’d seen a smirk on his face. My Mom called up today. The kid was playing in their cellar. He had bunked school.

I wanted to eat Uncle Chips on Saturday. My mom served dry fruits with evening coffee. I fussed for chips. She said it’s too late to go out of the house. It was 5 pm. I decided to go on hunger strike. She gave me a stern look, complained to my dad and also to my brother. I ate those dry fruits at 5:30.

Parents pamper their kids irrationally to cover up their insecurities.
I’ll spank my kids. I’ve resolved.
He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes..

P.S:What I've written above is a toned down version of what actually happened.
My cousin gave an award winning performance.Lesser mortals like me are unqualified to give an account of his brilliant acting.I've seen VERY few moviews to understand the nuances of acting.

Testing times..

The mise en scene- 26 and a half hours of cramming, 9 hours 28 minutes of telexing, 200 odd pages Photostat‘ing’, 0.0394 inches nails (or less)…the macabre phantom of exams, the only time of the semester I feel, even remotely, “academic”.

I hardly attend classes. Half of my notes is crammed with facts and figures from The Economic times and The Hindu. The other half, a la chat-room archive. Doing experiments in the lab, I consider an insult to my creativity. The maximum I’d do in a lab is tailor [as in verb] the observations. I’m the topper only by serendipity. By accident!

At 2:30 am this Monday, I was poring over G.J Tortora’s Anatomy and at 3:45 am, I was learning the different steps to plot a root locus. On any other day, at ‘this’ time, I’d be reading or re-reading Forsyth or Robert Ludlum or P.G.Wodehouse.

From Angina pectoris and Myocardial Ischemia conditions, Cardiovascular Mechanics and Prosthetic heart to Master Slave JK flip flop, Asynchronous and truncated Counters to Probability, Cauchy’s integration to Virtual reality and Haptics to Computer Organisation, DBMS to Bode- magnitude and phase plots.. It is all, now, in the noggin, sectorwise, well taken, clearly sorted out. Boy, I feel SHARP!

The competition, the marks, the drive, the one night stand, the groggy head [borrowed word], the tumid eyes, amma's eternal nagging,the outlandish question papers, the mystic expertise in writing epic size answers, assuaging the invigilator for that extra 1 minute; it is all so BEAUTIFUL, still and all. I have excluded ‘knowledge accrual’ on purpose. Competition…4 semesters down, 4 more to go…the contest for survival is “still” extremely severe and mutually confrontational..Come November 21st..Its Armageddon time!!

P.S: Insomnia is a virtue.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Economic development is NOT urban sprawl and unchecked growth.

SEZ policy is not the mother of all land grab schemes..

SEZs are NOT tax havens or euphemisms for land grabs. SEZs are plucky attempts to create world class exporting zones.
The Left whines as ever. The NGO’s and activists are a pain in the butt. The lawmakers, sensitive to constituents, are forever averse to economic developers. BJP is incoherent. To hell with the Joan of Arc incarnate! Even PC fears the central government could stand to lose Rs.70, 000 crores of tax revenue because of the special concessions given to firms that will operate in the SEZs… Kamal Nath is for once, sounding “unintoxicated”!
Ideally, India should have such a good infrastructure that the whole country is an SEZ. But till that utopia arrives, we need to create enclaves with world class infrastructure.

After the initial tax holiday, far from losing revenue for the exchequer, SEZs will produce a net tax gain of around Rs.40, 000 crores. Shenzhen, China’s premier SEZ, alone exports more and attracts more FDI, than the whole of India.
In our country, tax breaks are given to all infrastructure- roads, power, dams, telecom, large real estate projects; tax breaks for developing SEZs are not exactly “revolutionary”.
Up to 75% of the SEZ area can be devoted to “green belts”, residences, schools, banks, hospitals and golf courses and goddamit these are essential to woo foreign investors.
Consider one green belt under a peasant and another under a corporate house. Which would produce higher yield? Think..

Globalisation is not a monster..


If Western economists are talking anti globalisation language, fancy it as back door protectionism to safeguard their ailing industries. If somebody told you globalisation makes the rich; richer and poor; poorer, add them to your “Such-an-oaf” list. These buggers are going to sell the country.
Lower investments in agriculture, interest rate differentials between loans for agriculture and consumer goods, land acquisition by the govt. for pvt. parties, the security vs. development trade-off in “difficult areas, foreign policies: NONE of these choices is related to globalization.
Pockets of poverty in rich countries or of the prosperous in the poor nations have more to do with choices in domestic policy than with globalization.

A strong thrust to globalization can be combined with a robust social welfare orientation.

I wish my Grampa reads this post!

For greenhorns SEZs=Special Economic Zones..

P.S: Birdbrained mortals with any intentions of commenting about mini and small SEZs; can go eat a weiner!

ragamaalika

I'm sitting in Cafe Coffee Day, sipping Tropical iceberg. Chitti babu's Ranjanamala -Ragamaalika, swishes out of nowhere, cutting across the monotonous fizzing of the place. People crane their necks to ‘communicate’ their wonder. I smirk, looking into the mirror. I'm the proud owner of that ringtone.

I must admit, I'm not a fervid connoisseur of ‘instrumental’ music. I've always believed that we, vocalists, are superior to instrumentalists [we have greater freedom of movement with the swaras] and that people who aint got good ‘swarasthanam’, learn instruments.

We have the choicest collection of Carnatic music at home.

GNB, Santhanam, Chembai, Semmangudi, M.S, D.K.J, K.V.NarayanaSwamy, T.N.Seshagopalan,
M.D.R, T.V.Suryanarayana, Malladi-brothers, Yesudas, Hyderabad-brothers, Jayashree, Sudha Raghunathan, Unnikrishnan.. I’ve heard them all. Again and again.

And when I had to choose a ringtone, I picked Ranjanamala??!! I picked Chitti Babu.

When ‘riyaz’ becomes ‘ibaadat’..

Chitti babu’s veena is as Elysian as Santhanam’s vocal rendition. The virtuosity, fluency and excellence of his ‘play’ is mesmerizing. He coaxes out of the veena, ‘the esoteric secrets of sound that it treasures in the depths of its soul'. Every note..is rich with intricate and subtle turns, graces and embodiments. His raga alapana, neraval, kalpana swara in ‘Nata’ is electrifying. If GNB is the king of Riti Gowla, Nata is Chitti Babu’s homeground.

Take That.


An aunt of mine, a women’s lib, after screaming herself hoarse about the equality of men and women, swoons over a chivalrous man. Evasive…. middle aged women are!
I think women should sit at home, cook for their hubbies and sing them songs. I like macho men who protect and provide for their women folk.
“Small people” are making global headlines. APJ is “conferred” with the power to grant clemency to Afzal Guroo. The unusual interest shown by the NGO’s and the human right activists in the case of an accused convicted of such heinous offense is outrĂ©.
Gibbet the bugger!

I have become jaded to the endless stream of whining anonymous posters on my blog; who “also” think like many others think that I am a megalomaniac. Scram! Why do you have to even visit?
I ‘write’ to gratify my ego.
You cannot surf channels without a glimpse of his mug: the faux-stud look, the stubble, the baseball cap and the cockiness. If ubiquity is the measure of success, then this man has reached the top. He has got that “viral” appeal which I fail to understand…
Himesh Reshammiya.

I read Rajaji's Mahabharata again. An 'unputdownable' book. Read it in one night..to counter a silly statement of somebody. Nonetheless..
I feel blessed!

I'm the best and smartest car driver in this world.
Yes.

I read The Da-Vinci Code for the ‘n’th time and I still don’t know, why on earth, people liked that book!
Whatever!
We never celebrated Valentine’s Day growing up. I ‘don’t’..even now.But that doesn’t mean my Februaries are fallow.
We’ve always had the Union Budget..











The Indian Thali

Amitabh Bachchan, lay gravely ill, after an accident on the set of his film "Coolie." The nation came to a standstill; public prayers were offered at every intersection for the actor's survival; anxious crowds thronged the hospital; the prime minister came to sit at the patient's bedside. One fan walked backward for 300 miles, his bizarre penance an offering to the gods for his hero's survival. Two disconsolate youth committed suicide, hoping the heavens would agree to trade their lives for Bachchan's. Big B survived.

When Tulsi returned to Shanti Niketan after two decades and touched its walls, half of the nation wept. So did I.

Inhabited by nearly 940 million individuals of every ethnic extraction, we speak 17 major languages and 22,000 district "dialects". We blog in English.

51% of the country is illiterate. Mother India has educated the world's second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers.

I stay in a place where Islamic prayer blends with the chant of the mantras at the Hindu temple and the voices of the Sikh faithful at the Gurudwara reciting verses from their sacred book. Anu Mallik cribs tunes from these prayers.

Peasant organizations and suspicious officials attempt to close down Kentucky Fried Chicken as a ‘threat’ to the nation. We invent more sophisticated software for US computer manufacturers than any other country in the world.

We elevate non violence to an effective moral principal. Our freedom was born in blood and our independence still soaks in it.

Nothing can be taken for granted here. Not even its name, not even its national song.

Everybody is a part of the minority. I am a Brahmin, 90% of my fellow Indians are not.

The country's national motto, emblazoned on its governmental crest, is "Satyameva Jayate": Truth Always Triumphs. We look at it, say “Abba Chaaaaaa” and laugh. Just.

We are comfortable with multiple identities and multiple loyalties. period.

We have; maximum films by an actor in an year [Mithun Da, you have done us proud-39 films *dazed*] , largest sky-bag, longest nails etc as entries in the Guinness book.

We cook Potato in 500 different ways natively. We eat Teriyaki burger with stuffed potato for Rs.82/-

I love Riti Gowla. Only ripe people come to our concerts.
I love the Arabic part of Kaho na Kaho. When the Pakistani “Jal” performed here, there was a hullabaloo…

“If on Earth there be paradise or bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this..."

P.S: Amma is calling me for reciting Vishnu Sahasranaamam. I'll have to shush Bade Ghulam Ali and go..

Litmus test.

Mishti is walking in the regal corridors of the XXX University College of Engineering. She is weeping like a baby. Luckily, there wasn’t anybody around. She sits in a secluded place. She could listen to the thunderous applause coming from the resplendently decorated HUGE assembly hall. She hides her face in her hands and sobs; and sobs loudly. She knows nobody can hear her. The events that had happened in the last fortnight flicker in her mind.

The sleepless nights she spent writing articles, editing [read re-writing] articles, thinking of new ideas for the newsletter, ‘Litmus’, her brainchild. She stifled yawns, rubbed her eyes, washed her face with cold water to stay awake. There were times when she felt like she’d faint with the next click of the clock, there were times when she felt a void in her mind; she STILL worked, worked for her brainchild. She was obsessed with the fortnightly newsletter. She reveled in the making of ‘Litmus’. People sent her, their articles. They were bogus. ‘She’ rewrote them all and still put ‘their’ names, all she thought was: the first issue is about ‘setting standards’ and ‘publicity’. She bunked classes, she read widely, she missed her music practice; she missed a day’s ET read, all for the sake of ‘Litmus’. People called her for articles, ideas, and everything; every minute. They asked her for correction in sentences, fonts for headings, what article goes on what page, the size of the articles, the format of the articles, colour of the newsletter, headings and subheadings, pictures for articles. She did it all. She did it happily. Because the fool loved her brainchild. She wrote the introduction, droodles, account of the celebrity interview, a column on Stocks and Economics, a poem, myriad articles, the editorial, book review, picture puzzles and all that bull. She ran from department to department, Internet lab to Principal’s office, forwarding articles, taking interviews, public opinions, permissions… She must’ve opened MS word a million times this fortnight.

The day before its release, she is walking home from the college, a group of people taking care of the printing, call and ask her to come up with an article, to fit in a column’s space. She runs home, switches her computer on, writes some bumper stickers that come to her mind, and mails them…..

The day of release: She is all excited; hoyden. The copies of 'Litmus' arrive. She asks a final year guy, she wants to see it. He tells her it’s a surprise. She gets to see it only after the Principal unveils the first copy. She waits…waits with anticipated confidence. Another final year guy makes a speech telling students about the making of 'Litmus'. There is not a whisper of her name. She’s shell shocked. The principal opens the first copy. She is not called on stage. She is appalled. She quivers. She makes for the antechamber. Those guys are barking something between themselves. She asks them a copy. They say she will get one when everybody else does. Derision! The guys go on to the stage when the editorial team is called, leaving her struck dumb. There is a copy of 'Litmus' on the table. She picks it up…She sees… ‘7’of her articles do not have her name. The editorial does not have her name. Offstage, onstage or in the paper, there aint a sputter of her name. She shudders. She cannot hold the copy; she leaves the assembly hall in dejection...


She blogs in melancholy...



Shifting paradigms of middle class relationships

Trring Trring.. : &*(%$##@&%$#...
…. my dad announces that my uncle and his family are coming for dinner.

“DAMN”, I exclaim.
[My father grits his teeth in seething ire, but thankfully, he refrains from saying anything].

Shifting paradigms of middle class relationships” prods my brother, profoundly.


I was on national TV and I’ve told only three people in the whole nation about it. Green eyed scowls and “oof, Miss. Flaunt” reactions is all I’d get if I told the other 1,027,015,247 people.

There were times, when my dad took pride in inviting relatives to our concerts, now our concerts are low-key, hush-hush affairs.

There were times when I used to look forward to visits to grandma’s place, now it is just a consuetude.

There were times when we cousins cried while departing; now, we at the most, shake hands and grin.

There were times when it was "I love...", now its "I don't hate.."

There were times when “relationships” mattered, now it’s the “whats in it for me” that does.

Since changes are usually made within the subconscious, change doesn't usually occur without results. Results don't usually change without belief and you start to believe when you ‘see’ results…This is what I saw…appalling but true!


My games at twilight!

Saturday Evening, 6:32pm. I'll write about things, because I feel like doing it!

1)





*hahahah*


2) Says Jonathan Fryer, BBC broadcaster,"Then of course the Cold War came to an end and suddenly the Non-Aligned Movement thought, well, what really are we for? And they've spent the last few years trying to find things to do."
....Aaaaaaand..we did Sir!!! To revive the movement to counter U.S. influence in the world, to denounce U.S. actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba, to deal with the scourge of terrorism, to make globalisation more inclusive; making intra-South trade a viable trade strategy, to address widespread hunger, poverty and disease, energy security and most importantly we have accumulated resources and experiences and capacity to shape our own destiny more decisively than in the past! You probably forgot we are more financially stronger now and also terms of GDP, saving, investment, trade,financial assests etc, Ol' boy!ha!*pique*

3)Perverted Secularism: Incentives for inter caste marriages??!!! Ba***!

4) I'm humming the krithi "Aanandaamrutavarshini" and it rains!!!!

Omkara

  • I watched a movie after 3 and half years.
  • Like a gorgeous, ‘one-of-a-kind’ gown by a master couturier, it is incomparable to anything produced by the generic factories that crank out the industry's standard wares.
  • Saif's level of performance makes the general acting standards of Hindi cinema redundant. It takes the film to poetic height.
  • Shakespeare would have smiled.

yeh lamha fihlaal jee lene de

"..." this sorta nothingness after pressing the “C” button on my cell to end a call, seemed like “BOOOOOM” to me. I stand in front of the ECE department dazed..with the “yeh sapna hai ya sach?” look. A startled senior walks by and inquires about the look on my face. [People are only used to my so-called vainglorious look]. I feel like telling her to pound sand up her ears. But with the most uber cool – sang-froid tone I could manage, I tell her the head of the department has refused an auditorium for a college event. She looks at me like I’ve told her the most amusing lie, smiles wryly and pushes off.

I decide its time for a lil’ ‘I-to-I’ talk. I make for the rest room. Much to my chagrin, I run into some juniors, overly awed by me, who tell me I’m this prodigious lass and blah blah...I generally enjoy panegyric, praise, encomium… in all its forms, but then I was pointedly apprehensive at this juncture, I grin my approval with what more seemed, a painful effort to be minimally courteous. [Unfortunately I could see myself in the mirror]. Knew “Chehre ka rang ud jaana” as a muhavra [idiom], I studied in the 7th class, I was only cowed to see “how the rang actually flies off”. I frivolously wash my face to do away with the odd colours on it, till the giggly girls finally leave. I rub my face to my hanky savagely, and then the I-to-I talk… “What’s happening to me?” Scram….! A line from a self-poetry…and before I try to shove it off my mind, the next uninvited lines spout... “That strange temper, that queer feeling of new, earlier unknown senses and emotions…Mutter in my mind...” leaving me feel even more miserable. I cuss myself for ever writing poetry and decide against introspection. I leave the comfort room with an even odder look.

My worried friends look at me like they would’ve pulverized me for my disappearing act. I confide in my friends and they tell me, I’m sweating like a pig, undone; I slump into the watchman’s chair.

“Relax!”, “Oh, come on- don’t be a sheep”, “What the hell?”, “You are over reacting”, “Ah! Big-deal!” and other such hazaaaaaaar make-you-feel-better-things seemed to have a radically antithetic effect on me.

My friends tell me, “Sing a song, sweetheart, that’ll help release, the heebie-jeebies”…and I break into “Lage tumse man ki lagan”.

They give me this bizarre stare, and hoot, “Don’t push yourself to do something if you are NOT capable of doing it!
“Oh! Thank you, now my competence is at stake!”, I retort with a scowl.
“Then, do the godamn thing and be done with it!”, bellows my friend.
“Very well!”, I contend with this basti-mein-sawaal type voice…

..and then I clear my throat a hundred times, work on my accent a zillion times, and senselessly also on my countenances.Then we decide, I’ll rehearse. To my utter disbelief, I’m at loss of words, a rarity that….an absolute rarity. What loss of words, I sound like an expatriate whose sucks in English from A to Z. My friends let out a vindictive cackle. [Quid pro quo Ms.Purist, they must’ve thought!].

The myriad of rehearsals seemed never-ending. Piqued with the rigmarole, I cull writing it down on a piece of paper. Now, [a now that came after what seemed like aeons], I resolve to finally do it.

“Chutzpah!”, I tell myself…I take out the paper, [it looked like litter now], see the phone number and after intermittently dialing; and dialing a “series” of wrong numbers..

..what I see on my cell screen is “dialing…9*********”,
“Tring…Tring!”,

..and then a rich baritone voice answers,“ Hello?…

Yeh public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai??????

An 8 yr old girl, wields the microphone with anticipated confidence, and sings “salona sa sajan hai aur main hoon…”. A mellifluous flawless rendition. The studio audience and the judges, moved by the out of the world performance, give her a standing ovation. Magical, unreal! The little girl is chucked out brutally the next week. The harsh reality!

Public voting system, the masses, the masses!!!

The masses that made a mediocre Abhijeet sawant, the Indian Idol, not to forget his successor, Mr. Abysmal…oops Sandeep, the masses that made Ravinder Ravi, a pathetic singer, the strongest contender for the title.

The masses that made a repugnant Qazi and a non descript partner Rooprekha- the fame jodi.

The masses that have made George Bush, the most powerful man on earth.[rofl]

The masses that returns Laalo yadav to power in bihar, every general election.[ don’t argue! Raabri is a sitz-redacteur !]

The masses that die in stampedes, trying to get a glimpse of the Joan of arc incarnate Mrs. Gandhi or a demigod Chiranjeevi.

The masses that make Reshammiya’s indistinguishable songs, chartbusters. Congratulations Mr. Reshammiya, the masses still think zara jhoom jhoom , aare aare, aashiq banaya, aapka suroor, aapki kashish, aahista aahista are all individual “separate” songs!

The masses that give a fallacious testimony about a murder in broad daylight, just because the convict is a fat cat.

The masses that remain callous to a pontiff’s irrational barbaric arrest at midnight.

The masses that bring to power a party that promises a colour televison, booze and others reasons too ghory to mention.

The masses who applaud a Barkha dutt who palliates a naxal, interviews a bloody gay, drooling, reduces the Shankaraarcharya to mortality, irrationally puffs up the Khushboo controversy…

The masses whose logic is “we are numerous, hence we are godamn right!”

The masses that made the little girl cry!!!!




It feels good to be nice...

I thoroughly enjoyed Brazil’s emphatic win over Ghana. I cheered [almost loudly at midnight] at Rolando’s hoodwinking the Ghana goalkeeper Kingson to score Brazil its first goal. The explosive speed, the exquisite touch are worth marveling, but later when I lay on my sofa in darkness I couldn’t help wondering how true Darwin’s theory of Survival of Fittest is! Totally ingenious! Sure, whatever is inferior in the struggle for existence is doomed to become extinct. Whenever I sit for a semester exam, as soon as I look into the question paper, my competitors face flashes in my mind. It is this flash that instills in me the fist clenched resolve, that drive. I must admit the contest for survival is extremely severe and mutually confrontational in this case. ha ha![i'd love to see the physiognomy of sandhya when she reads this!]
Competition….!!!!

Humans and animals are genetically driven to compete for survival, thus making all social interaction “inherently” selfish, strictly in accordance to the theory of natural selection.
So, are altruism and morality artificial outgrowths of modern culture?

This leaves me inferring that even seemingly unselfish acts of altruism merely represent a species' strategy to survive and promote their interests. This presents an amusing paradigm for understanding sociality. Predominantly, theories in ethology concerning cooperative and altruistic behavior claim that social animals, including human and nonhuman primates, are cooperative and altruistic only if they have something to gain from their actions. It’s a part of our brain Chemistry. So far so good..."I’m loving it!"

But survival of the fittest is just a “part” of the story… How does one explain firefighters running into a burning building to save strangers at the possible expense of their own lives? There's no biological imperative for that. Instead of being genetically predisposed to competition and aggression, we have a biological foundation for unselfish social interaction. Now the more I think of this, the more boring it becomes. Perhaps, evolution is more about collaboration or symbiosis between organisms and species than it ever was about competition. Multicellularity, the eye, the brain, language, photosynthesis, the Archaeoptrix… I better stop listing…A study says humans derive pleasure from positive social interaction. And far from being inherently violent, humans demonstrate a natural abhorrence of violence and conflict. We have to train soldiers to kill. It's not instinctive. We are horrified by terrorism, that explains it all. Duh!

Probably “ It feels good to be nice”….shrugs a boooooored me!

how do they do that...

Some people jump out of bed,Happily starting their day
At first light of dawn.How do they do that?

Some people can step into a room full of strangers,
and step out of it with a new friend,How do they do that?

Some people after a disappointment,are able to detach,
Let it go and move on.How do they do that?

I have a friend whose cell phone rang, once too often.
She threw it in the sea,Paid her last bill,
And never renewed.How did she do that?

Some people can hear disagreements or stupid retorts
and stay calm and happy,instead of getting angry.
How do they do that?

I know someone-Who said,"I didn't do any work yesterday."I should do some tomorrow."He didn't measure up to his own expectations,but he still felt good
about himself.How did he do that?

Some people have jobs that they just cannot stand.Every day they go back and put out good work.How do they do that?

Some people have careers that are not obsessions.They work and they stop.I work till I drop.
How do they do that?

Early Risers
Socializers
Sensible Detachers
The "Don't look back"-ers

The Centered
The Self Assured
The Steadfast
And the Satisfied

How do they do that?

Mysteries all
To me.

it is there, it is just there...

It is there, it is just there,
Something I should know.
Something I ought to’ve known.
That strange temper, that queer feeling of new,
earlier unknown senses and emotions
Mutter in my mind all day.
Oh, something there is,
Its just out there.
Fathomed only in shards,
It speaks of a deep mystery,
Longing to be solved.
Like a blind woman learning to see,
In front of me are thoughts at random
That sure would mean something profound
When decoded.
I may find it today or tomorrow or
Even while writing this poem down.
It is all there, just there,
The symptoms, the hints, the premonitions
But how do I know what is right and what is not.
Across the yawning gulf of mystery,
I feel a new bridge under construction.
A ray of hope.
When will it be finished?
When do I cross it?
Then I will apparently see things
Free from impediments,
Evident to the mind, unmistakably;
Which were mere speculations before.

ahem,ahem..I'm a poet.

On my blog web page
At first I said,
I don't know what a poet really is,
but I don't think I'm a poet.
.

Eight months later I said,
I'm coming to reluctant acceptance
that I may, indeed be a poet.


Today,

As I sit in mah den...
Watching random little ideas
About damned near anything
Form themselves into tight little
collections of words,

I have to admit:
No question about it.
I'm a poet.

A new start.

i used to write in some obscure blog site...i really started getting bored...bored of blogging even...someone suggested that i write in blogspot n my blog'l get noticed better...so i published all my posts here..thot i'll publish all the comments too but then..am as lazy as ludlum's dog...

www...

The death of a bright son of bjp and chief strategist, pramod mahajan, the trusted servant uma bharathi settin up a differnt party, the ideological differences between advani n rss pramukhs,the aging of vajpayee, the tallest leader, bjp has gone haywire, shattered.The obvious task for the BJP is to reinvent itself, and redefine the contours of its ideology, to address the concerns of this new India.The BJP has found no issues to agitate, on which to rebuild itself. The 'foreign origins' (of Sonia Gandhi), the Savarkar quote, the Hubli Tiranga Yatra, have all failed. The party is floundering. What's on the cards now is more contention, suspicion and strife within the Parivar, more sniping at each other, and yet more disunity. That does not spell a half-way bright future for the downwardly mobile BJP. Its decline could prove irreversible.

-->old supporters are mad at the party for having diluted its pro-hindutve image. Badly dented and very nearly destroyed is the cultivated new image of the bjp.
-->on the contrary, the youth are being taught that secularism[read suckin up to the minorities] is supreme, so bjp campaigned with emphasis on other developmental activities rather than hindutva....

-->is it proper for the party to revert back to its old principles[read image]?
-->is it "doomsday" for the second largest party in this democratic country?
-->are there tall leaders to head the gen-next bjp wagon[the BJP's succession problem has proved intractable] ?
is this decline irreversible?
www?[wot went wrong] for the bjp?

is dominiue francon larger than life?

boy o boy...been long since i posted here...ppl have carped n cussed me 4 stayin away..sorry ppl...but here i am....this post is for you,Gauthami!


We were discussing "is dominique larger than life?"...

Dominique’s beauty and strength of spirit make her a perverse, unusual woman and the perfect complement to Howard Roark. she is convinced of the world’s rottenness and believes that greatness has no chance of survival. She surrounds herself with the things she despises to avoid watching the world destroy the things she loves. Dominique does not initially believe that roark can survive in a selfless and irrational society. The thought that a man like Roark needs society in order to build pains Dominique, and she tries to destroy him before the rest of the world can. Yet Dominique wants to fail in her bid to destroy Roark, because if she fails it means absolute good and genius can survive even in an evil world.

Dispassionate, cynical, and cold, Dominique nurses a masochistic streak..there isn't a larger than life thing bout her. i personally abhore altruistic streaks n second handers n nurse a masochistic streak at times...she is perfect priestess...if roarks real...dominique is!

review!!review!!

This year, I’ve been reading some of the best books I’ve ever come in contact with. The Fountainhead is Ayn Rand’s philosophical work illustrating her vision of the ideal man and his struggle with the forces of modern evil. This one of the most interesting, solid, intelligent works of fiction I’ve ever read. All of the characters, even the dumb ones, have individual mazes of thought. This book is crammed with brilliant speeches, bombastic lies, and fractured ideologies....
the book is about an architect named Howard Roark who gets kicked out of school for refusing to do any design work that insults his creative genius.Roark pays his dues, gets laughed at a lot, seldom gets any credit for anything, but lives with the knowledge that his precious integrity is intact, its bout keating who uses Roark’s ideas to gain success in the world of architecture, its bout Ellsworth Toohey, a famous social worker and columnist who preaches altruism merely to keep people subservient to his wishes,its bout dominque,a perfect priestess, a perfect match to howard, its bout gail wynand...ma favorite character in d book...
what i like most bout the book is the pardafaash it does bout altruistic damn oafs on earth.[ellsworth tooheys]...our world is crammed with ppl like him. bloody double standard klutzs.collective thinking sucks. it kills the creator in ppl and lowers the bar of humans level....
....a magical book..i used 2 stay awake it till 4 in d morning readin d book...a real classic!

reticence=!pride [lets pretend I care..]

Why do people misinterpret...coyness for pride?...i'm all the time told i am standoffish...but cunt it be ma reticence???..or do i need to seriously take classes on social etiquette?
agreed i ain't the most gregarious dame in the world...but y label it as pride....???

Reticence in itself is a subject of varied interpretations..which are governed factors in perspective...

Anger...Peace...Pride...Modesty...Thoughtfulness...
helplessness...the list goes on...

Ppl who speak,to any extent of their denial,mean what they say, at some level...
that makes it very easy for an interpretation....

silence has many interpretations...
when they are so many choices..humans by their nature to err,easily make the wrong one...
Well what ppl percieve of you is totally indepndent of how much you try to change their perception...

There is no point in pushing yourself into something where the entire consequence of what is to happen is totally governed by the perception of another mind...

Even if you do make an impression...it would jus be transient...it will just ripple off...

jus like diamond cuts a diamond...only antidote for silence is.... silence

well thats wot i've told myself....

outsourcing

my friends latest post on her blog:" who gains most by outsourcing" What a ridiculous post....get ur basics right....you klutz...

the overseas staff that handles the company's internal functions on pay gains the most and so does the company that outsources(better financial management with higher money save, improved quality, and...most importantly buying goods or services instead of producing them in-house frees the company resources for other activities.) the native staff of the country suffers but as has been rightly said above.. the effect is negligible in countries like the U.S....
outsourcing is the wave of the future. It implies a degree of managerial control and risk on the part of the provider. only it can be better managed!!!

cultural amnesia

My grandfather is not very happy with people of our generation. he says in today's global scenario[ahem ahem...], we are all losing our real identity. metropolis culture has reduced us to mere career obsessive- money making androids....losing identity..that sounds scary....i had coined a term called cultural amnesia...he kinda liked it.[everybody likes talkin to me anyway]*wink*i'll continue wid the topic..

Our cuture has too strong a heritage and history for it loose its identity..forget this generation...am talking abt another 5-6 generations to come..The cultural amnesia might not be all that negative in its aftermath..maybe its jus an indicator of an evolution.If this is a mutation then we should take pride in being the mutant generation...cos we are the significant contributors in the maintanence of such a culture..."Nothing is permanent but change"..

the meek shall inherit the earth

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
"Inherit the earth”—what an exciting prospect! But can we be sure that this is not just another crafty scheme designed to deprive people of something? Yes, we can.
The crucial question, then, is, How will that promise come true? Everywhere we look today, it seems that the aggressive and the high-minded are gaining the upper hand and are taking what they want. Where do the meek come into the picture? In addition, the earth is plagued by serious problems and its resources are being exploited by the greedy and the shortsighted. Will there even be an earth worth inheriting?..a small post this...but had to keep you engaged...

EAMCET blues

I’ve always been sanguine about myself, been this cocky lil’ girl, going around with a smug look on my face[I'm told so, all the time], from my childhood. Narcissism…nah!!!! But yeah...from the day I was born I must’ve strongly believed that self-deprecation was a damn sin (and my lanta I did live up to that or what?)With God’s grace, my parents have never worried about my grades…nor did I…'Results day' was always ‘celebration day’.

My first shocker:

My brother aced his CBSE tenth wid 95.4%. and it is to be assumed (naturally) that my only goal in life then was to drub his score… nothing else mattered to me those two years(annayya is 2 yrs senior to me). I did the best of my ability in the exams and my teachers were quite certain I’d make mincemeat of his score…but then...call it ill luck, poor correction, wrong choice of Second language or destiny..Whatever!, I put up a pathetic 87 odd%...nothing close to what I’d call SUCCESS in my book….my people explained tome about reaping the fruits of past karma...it really didn't make a difference. This sure was a defeat but it couldn’t break me down..or more fitting wud be -couldn't break my ‘EGO’(ah I said it) down…like my brother says I was still drunk in(/with) ego.

My second blow:

Now I had resolved if 10th was not my best year, I’d do the trick in EAMCET(engineering entrance)..between…. my brother scored 949/100 in his intermediate board(11th n 12th) and I skunked him..(ha ha) but only by a whisker..scoring 951/1000[ the changed pattern has minimal choice so 951 is commendable]. But I had competed for EAMCET…

…after slogging for two years, this time, with what I’d call an obstinate resolve and fist clenched determination, with brio and drive and a very very very very illustrious record in the infinite internal assessment exams I had given in those 2 years…I sat for the exam…if it was to be a normal day, I’d be tensed to death..but surprisingly,(I’d rather use shockingly here), I was as cool as a cucumber..very very not like me..i knew this was odd but what the heck, my records were very assuring…n my immense faith in The Almighty kept telling me- this war I wasn’t going to close…

The three hours of the exam: I started with chemistry.(I always did math first…),did well ... then….theres a sudden blankout..i can’t solve this problem on probability, an area I was considered to be a champ, there I start loosing my grip, forgetting all formulae in integration(I vividly remember, I cunt even remember integral of tan X), I screw up few questions in math…math turns out to b a damp squib(my strongest area in inter) n I head for physics. I hadn’t 4 some reason ever liked the chapter ‘Sound’ in physics, didn’t study it 4 d exam n yup ..the first 4 questions from ‘Sound’...

Though I had not given my best performance, I thought I’d get a rank almost like my brother’s(my brother’s EAMCET experience was even worse: EAMCET- his only failure, if losing to me in intermediate(he sez he’s glad I beat him) isn’t one). Come May 12th EAMCET results are announced and destiny wasn't fair at all. My worst nightmare was getting a rank of 667, I had screamed waking up my parents, brother and my cousins that night! This was ‘THE BIGGEST FAILURE OF MY LIFE’. My ego took a severe beating; I wasn’t going to say a word for the next few days. I learnt the biggest n most valuable lesson of my life. My failure in my dream exam taught me more than what I’d learnt in 16 yrs of my life…..I was from then going to be ‘MYSELF MINUS EGO’.

I’m happy, I’ve had no more such jolts after my EAMCET, (touch wood), been doing pretty well in engineering. Talking of ego….I’m no bloody selfless altruist now, but yes I’m no smug looking ego-maniac anymore (I was never that..anyway!)

raison d'etre

Hows the world like...'down' there? quips my brother.
This blog is a reply to the 5 feet 10 inches brother of mine.



 
Creative Commons License
Blog by Srilakshmi Chodavarapu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at srilu121@gmail.com.