"You want to always be somewhere where your individuality (selfishness?) absolves you of a larger responsibility"

True?

On pain.

How do you take yourself to a 'bright place' in your mind when pain pierces your body?
Th

Does your threshold for pain change when you know what to expect? Is it more when you don't know what's coming?

12000km

Oh, Motorcycle Diaries, why did we wait so long?

Whiff

Do women have an obligation to smell nice?

Forever

The other day I thought saw the future.

There will be peace. A jilted peace, its premise rejected by society and shunned by prudence. It will also be a naive peace, sadly vulnerable.
There will be a certain softness. Of body and mind. Of touch and feel and smell. A softness tempered by cold, often hard reality.
There will be a sense of exploration. A stimulating newness, frenzied despite its impending age.
There will be love. A twisted love that ignores its foundations. A volatile, burning love, doomed to incandescent glory and eventual ashes.

But these were flashes, mere glimpses. They served only to tell me that I couldn't know; my vision could be prophecy or fantasy, and there is no way I can be sure. But I don't mind that. Is it indifference, or am I charged by the unpredictability? Or am I so swept up by the promise, that its mere possibility is enough? If they come to be, what of the inherent contradictions in them? Will all-consuming passions be consumed by their apparent irrationality? If they light up life itself, does it matter? Is longevity necessary to justify exhiliration?

Is forever overrated?

Flat

Do long weekends recharge or discharge?

Q&A

What is it that you want?

Shaken by the madness, stirred by the rush, bitten by the high, you look for a normalcy that just chugs you along. Yet, consumed by the memory, you crave for the crazy. You want the usual to be locked away, for at least a while.

You suspect that to deal with this you dont so much want the normal to be, but the abnormal to thrive. Every little thing that signals the usual, every little nudge that pushes you to sanity seems to you like a step toward the mundane. And you want the buzz of the different.

You look back on that trip- for that is what it was, wasn't it? You look back on it and wonder if it's worth it, worth the emptiness of the crash that inevitably follows. And your churning insides reply, "I don't care".

"Today I don't want to think about tomorrow. I want to live, feel, do... now. I don't want normalcy. Bring me that madness, and I will gladly and foolishly accept it."

Does that answer your question?

look up!

I really appreciate the effort, but there is a slight problem. You can’t quite string up a knife in the air and then say I don’t have to worry about a sword hanging over my head. No, tell me, really. Makes sense? Not? Huh?

this or that

Would you prefer some utterly rude and surly efficiency or polite and amiable service that is lacking?

a fallacious fallacy

In this piece in Outlook, Francois Gautier sets out to say that the “deviants of Mangalore and Malegaon are demonised fallaciously”.

When blast after blast wrecks Indian markets, when trains are bombed, hotels attacked by men worse than animals, intellectuals blame it on Babri Masjid (where nobody was killed) or Gujarat (triggered by the burning of 59 innocent Hindus).But when a few Hindus plan to establish a Hindu rashtra and plot a clumsy, small-scale revenge, they are equated with deadly fundamentalists.

Just because they are few(er) in number, or their track record less inglorious, does not make them any less fundamentalist. Basking in the harsh glow of the twisted interpretation of their religion, they are a source of disgust and apprehension for open-minded, pluralistic individuals. Not to mention people who believe in the basic decency of respect for the next man, and in particular, the next woman.

[…] the word 'Hindu Talibanisation' is being heard amidst the clamour following the odious pub episode in Mangalore. […] Yet, I beg to disagree: this is not about the Talibanisation of Hindu groups, it is about their demonisation.

To say that Mangalore incident stands for a Talibanistic Hindu movement might be reaching a bit far, lets assume; but do we need only to touch such extremes to be indignant? There are increasingly loud and increasingly numerous voices that consign women to second class status. Are these to be simply explained away by so-called historical ‘demonisation’ of Hinduism? You say "Pale fires don't scorch", but is the relative paleness of an approaching flame reason enough to disregard it, or to not want to douse it?

both sides, now

I find perspective equally the easiest and toughest of things human minds have to grapple with. Easy because it often doesn’t take much to pause, step into another’s shoes for a moment, and try to see what he sees. Not to explain or justify the other, or convert oneself; but to at least begin to understand. Yet it is often also difficult- as much for our inability to deal with different points of view, as our reluctance to bother with them.

While numerous world situations are- to the world in general- centred on perception and projected realities, nothing ever can give you a dose of reality like perspective. The point here is not about right and wrong, or only about Israel and Gaza, but about the context all of us live our lives in.

The next thought then is, where does context stop and fundamental truth begin? Is there any such thing as a fundamental truth, a universal ethic, a pervasive perspective that is not mired in situation? Are all actions morally relative or is there an absolute understanding that should hold all of us to itself, that we should hold ourselves to?

There are no clear answers…but look, in saying that, I might be beginning to answer some of my questions already.

Dec7

Is this normalcy these few days normal, I wonder? Is it odd that this is almost just another weekend for me? I remember him, fondly. But I don't quite pause my life to feel sad, or find melancholy, or contemplate his going. I let love, friends, reading, drinking, food, carry my life on like it does most of the time. This doesn't belittle them...but him?

Am I so callous as to carry on, merely doffing my hat to this day? Or is it as I often think- normalcy is my best tribute, cheer the most apt, living life well the most real? Is that the truth, is that what I really feel? Or is it- cynically- just convenient to believe that?

And then there is the flip side to the day. Celebration, wishes, happiness. I feel that very clearly, my wishes the occasion happy and true.

But here, in the lines I have written, I see me pausing. The melancholy and the missing, gently taps at my heart. I shed tears sometimes. Today, though they are nearby, I don't want them. In particular, I feel like I don't want them to be the symbol of today. There is no way I will feel I am marking his going 'aptly', so maybe keeping the tears away is just as well.

But then, they have a mind of their own.

what vision?

What am I supposed to think, how am I supposed to react? I can’t begin to know that. Anger that you came and did this in my country, to innocent people? Empathy for the people who are gong through something I cant even start to imagine? Determination to not feel despair?

How not to? Here is something that I simply cannot comprehend. There is nothing in this that I can claim to understand enough to give it a sense of reality in my mind. I have used terms like brainwashed and zealous and fanatical. Here are events that embrace all those, but something else. What, I cannot know. It seems beyond me at the moment to get a grasp of the kind of minds and motivations that so coldly and brazenly take hundreds of innocent lives. It is beyond me to understand what those motivations could be. Not in micro terms, not in the relevance of context and perspective and injustices that you might grow up with. But in a larger picture, the bigger context, what could they hope to achieve? What is it that could be the goal in the far distance, that can be achieved only (and so surely) through such mindless violence, such stark disregard for human life. Indeed, for humanity.

I want to know that goal, but I can’t possibly imagine one that would bestow the remotest sense on these acts.

loss

Yeah, sure, it was my fault, my carelessness ; but why did it have to be thus, when it could so easily have been salvaged, so easily not been this gaping hole of loss inside me...?

Lonesome town

I would never have thought I was a loner.
Do I now?

....am I now?

at a loss

How much can you defend a city you love for obvious reasons (to yourself), when deep in your heart you know that it shames you much more often than (ever) warming your soul.

I understand there are many reasons (education-lack of it-, poverty, over population) why a lot of the things that happen in India happen. But sometimes I wonder if it is something more inherent, and we (I) am just loathe to think/accept it- that some many of my ‘countrymen’ might actually be, inexplicably, diametrically opposite to my perception of life and humanity.

Am I deluded, in my own world? Or are they?

(link in the title, courtesy blogger acting up)

idea

1
Is it to be blue or red? Must it come crashing down in a frenzied burst of colour and sound, with the beauty of fury? There! There it comes! Bursting through the clouds, its violence splattered with joy. There, now you can picture the eyes, ablaze with passion, announcing its arrival in screeching glory. There, you can see it leaving you breathless and puzzled, exhilarated and enlightened, gasping in its aftermath.


2
Is it black or white? Must it quietly slip in, in a gentle poke of near-silence, the appeal of subtlety? There! There, is it there? Fading in through the extreme white, in shades of itself, its softness still outlined with power. Yes, there, you can see it now- smiling with quiet confidence, eyes smouldering in ice, saying nothing, knowing it doesn’t need to. There, it is leaving you now, in ponderous raptures, your deep breathing struggling for normalcy, riveted and stupefied, sighing in its wake.

Hang,over

SmartPartying
A-ha. Promising.
Very promising.

via delhi belly

...and I echo the thought- do you know anyone who gets to be experimented on with copious amounts of alcohol?
You do?
Well do you have a name? number? references? can I forward my cv somewhere? I am willing to do what it takes to forward this crucial area of biological science, I am.

back

Should I buy her carnations, blooms, or her flowers (our flowers)?

What a stupid question.

Sliced/ loaf?

Why are great new things the best thing since sliced bread?
Now what are things better than sliced bread...

1. parathas
2. an Ipod
3. blogs.
4. beer
5. cheese&olive / sundried tomatoes loaf bread at Wenger's Bakery in New Delhi (which has recently been discontinued, I believe)

But I guess sliced bread is till it for people.