collective unconscious

pretty sad abt kaavya's mess. 19 and screwed up bigtime. she didnt have to. could have just stuck to her own wordplay. immature, unintentional, whatever...plain foolish.
and what abt the publishers - have they heard of anything called editorial review which also includes checking for instances of plagiarism.

but am thinking at a real basic level isn't everything just a regurgitation of what has been said, written, thought about forever. say i read something brilliant somewhere or see a great pic and the next time i write or take a picture, i might be unconsciously evoking the other. a word, a tune, a color used artfully, just the way a poem's been crafted.

maybe not totally and not word to word as ms.viswanathan seems to have done in so many passages. what was she thinking?

i mused abt it in an earlier post.

a friend.

she has to be the oldest 'friend' I have.
and I do not have many that have stuck on through, moulting ace that I am. I use the word 'friend' loosely, as it should be.

given the odds, its remarkable that we still ping each other, across oceans and continents.

we have met once in f&b, and that was a rather gone-by-in-a-haze meetup. we think and speak in different languages tho we have adopted the other's language to communicate. same species, different races.

what started out with verbose letters (we were 'met up' to master the other's language) and pictures and postcards and girly things has filtered down to a card, postcard, pics, an odd package, a quick mail.

but everytime i think, well, haven't heard from her end for long, maybe shes finally dropped off the face of the planet, she returns.

one of the few constants in a world of variables. two decades is a long time...shes just got married and it makes me happy n sentimental in a corny way.

we may not know each other inside out or even connect in the same spots, but the fact that we have kept this silly fragile but strong as steel bond going, makes us 'friends'. touch wood and God bless her.

the reindeer totally gets it.

./

"who wants to be happy? all the happy people i know are idiots. i want to be miserable with you."

from a movie seen a decade ago, which I have no other memories of. a fuzzy idea of a man wooing a woman. these lines stayed.

the mind is rather grumpy when it comes to books, movies, songs, poems. though it has absorbed manyof these and relished them that instant, it only serves me these morsels on recall. stingy thing.

a journey, inside.

am I ...

a private person / an extrovert?

A. I would say, the former - subtly but acutely so. though, and this, my pop-astrological-gyaan tells me, my leo ascendant lends to my back-slapping, brash and make-pals-in-every-alley quality.

vain /wise?

A. I would love to say wise, but I humbly realize my ego still hasnt learnt not to swagger.

patriotic/ an evolved soul, dismissive of borders, a nomad at heart?

A. I would say the two are subsets in the same set...we are part of this huge human commune. asians, africans, hispanics, caucasians, all carbon-based organisms that copulate, defecate, ingest thru similar set of orifices.
but fact remains, that like my parentage defines me without holding my 'Me' down, my country does ditto. I can be a global citizen, travel extensively, learn languages, connect with people from anywhere at a basic level, melt into the relevant fabric and maybe not come back for aeons, but my being an Indian remains in the very carbon that makes me up.Could be social conditioning, whatever. The dressing remains buried within layers of sophistication, education and xenofriendliness.
And it will remain so. Unless some crusading we-are-one-species cult decides to pluck all the newborns from neo-natology deptts all over the globe in the next minute and nurture them in a cocoon suspended in mid-space, away from latitudes and longitudes.

a pathetic softie/a hard-as-nails bitch?

sane/ in the grey zone? again sticky territory - sanity and its inverse are social constructs. madness must be the consequence of sanity climaxing into itself.

Unanswered.

I realize, these do not in any way make a difference to the poor seals getting clobbered for their skins in canada(?) or the dam thats almost damned in gujarat.

I plead self-absorbed, as usual. The case rests.

Hmm, one thing I do know is that I cannot make myself like karan johar's yuppie-candy flicks!! - Eureka, after all then!

people continue to not surprise me. they haven't changed much, though i've ascended chronologically. now I observe clinically and detached, once I did not.

am dying for some rain...think it did, in the middle of the night. can smell the remains in the wind blowing.

A Study In Red - Grey

Red balloon in a grey sky
Floating to meet the winds

Rain, no rain
Where do the clouds melt to?
Tempt and mock my heart
Wretched cloud-sirens!

I wait to taste the rain on me.

++++
song playing in head - 'i'm a rock'

ja oder nein

so, medha patkar ends her fast. the SC delivers a safe, p.c., if temporary verdict, not ruffling feathers on either side. can't resist but wonder, what if all the injustices and crusades end, where will she and her ilk hitch their'fast'wagon too?...not to take away from her single-minded devotion to the underprivileged...but the only time we hear of her or bahuguna or any other messiah is when they fast...really need to know if they're actually do anything else besides anshan!
Maybe they are and the media isnt interested in anything apart from the current terrorist act-scam-scandal-celebrity news...its all abt TRPs at the end of the day.
clever chap, modi, used the same desi home-grown weapon and feels like a winner too. read that a displaced farmer got 24 hectares for his land from the state govt but wanted better ones and got them too...!

can't remember when I guffawed my posterior off, last. most of the stuff i read, see, listen to is just titter-worthy or at best a mellow gurgle.my stress-buster remains takeshi's castle on pogo...but it isnt the same without the jaffrey element.

archbishop of canterbury's planning events to coincide with the d.v.c movie...the world resolutely remains divided on almost all issues.

Sex and money will never get outdated.

The human species is getting closer, the globe's folding up in a bigger way than before...all thanks to blogs, photologs, podcasts etc...much like blogs, stuff onflickr and deviantartand other such virtual community spaces pretty much represents each of our individual personalities...we all want someone, in some corner of this world, to share our angst, see what we see,and most importantly, like us and be like us! Its a bit like the idea behind SETI except turned inward, STI maybe.

I must shut up. now.

coming up for air, and

Have to get this monkey off my back - this project thing thats almost done...the last bits hang on, maddeningly. Then theres another waiting in the wings to be born, reborn, rather.

duran duran's 'come undone' pops in. i remembered liking it. still do maybe, somewhere.
'who do you need, who do you love when you come undone '...
used to be quite into music - songs, lyrics...had them pat. have been rather detached from for quite some time. besides the odd stuff on mtv etc...but dont really mourn it, either. maybe someday.

my niece's 13th b'day happened...with her closest friends and us the family hanging around at a safe distance at a joint...her gang seemed so cool and clued in...thought abt when i was 13 and totally tomboyish, gangly,clumsy and whacked-out...hmm, i think i had more fun than she did...minus all the trappings of faddish clothes and accessories and teen must-do hype- she'll disagree, totally, i know! but shes not silly and superficial like most...devours books, has an overactive imagination and really funny n smart....God bless her!!

should get my ole nose back to the grindstone.

meter down...!!!

Spewing some...

Fixing leaks, html tweaks
Images appear, once the path is clear

I've got myself a deadline
By the time the light shows
Hope I don't end up flatlining

Roobaroo roshni
Echoing through the walls

I evade, I blog, I flickr
But return thou must to the editor

This is really pedestrian poetry, neighbor's moving furniture upstairs
The heat creeping up
DO I really care?

Words falling over each other, 'don't shove' says one, its a stampede, yells the other.
My head is a glorious mess of loose ends and to-dos.

Telephone rings, a friend, a quick conversation
Rush rush bye-byes

The page waits, stoically.

My tea's getting cold.

he'll agree...

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover
I'm a child, I'm a mother
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I'm your hell, I'm your dream
I'm nothing in between
You know you wouldn't want it any other way
So take me as I am
This may mean
You'll have to be a stronger man
Rest assured that
When I start to make you nervous
And I'm going to extremes
Tomorrow I will change
And today won't mean a thing
[Chorus]
Just when you think, you got me figured out
The season's already changing
I think it's cool, you do what you do
And don't try to save me
***

revisiting e.e.c

e.e. cummings

1(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness) - just love how it simulates a leaf falling lonely

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

---

because it's - things dare to do people :-)

because it's

Spring
thingS

dare to do people

(& not
the other way

round)because it

's A
pril

Lives lead their own

persons(in
stead

of everybodyelse's)but

what's wholly
marvellous my

Darling

is that you &
i are more than you

& i(be

ca
us

e It's we)

I first heard abt this wonderful quirky poet years ago, rather tritely tho, in woody allen's "hannah n her sisters"...what struck me, apart from the sheer genius of his play with words...was his total disdain of punctuation and capitalization - something I have been wont to a bit since I started writing as an adult, in my personal space. I have to go get a copy of his best, when i can.

Digressing - I really like Sona Family's Glassy....catchy and fun...the female lead looks a bit like jennifer aniston...not that it matters, honestly.

heat and puke

'April is the cruellest month'. Definitely, mr.E. The heat's killing already...can almost hear the leaves groan and shrivel. The roads look exhausted,going on forever.
Birds, squirrels etc ransacking our balcony looking for water, a drop even - the stupid things refuse to see the bowl I've kept on the ledge for them. Maybe they're drained it already - should go look.

Read a classic piece of psychophantic drivel in the city section of the TOI today by some film critic fellow - subhash k jha. To paraphrase him, lata mangeshkar is a goddess, a living monument who has every right to hold a city's govt to ransom and stop any kind of development. That people who have dared to resent her opinion (?, i thot more like an ultimatum) have blasphemed and should know better. Hell, I think he hates the fact that she has to pay taxes!...if she does. That she is not a mere human like the rest of us, blah blah. I mean she was good, the nightingale etc, but the way he went on about her self-effacement and humility. Give me a $%^$^% break. Everyone knows how shrewdly she worked on her monopoly in her heyday...sweetly yanking back amazing singers like geeta dutt and her own much-more- versatile- and -still- rocking sis into the shadows...and to be frank, she really needs to retire into the dark green woods, her voice isnt as easy on the ears as it used to be.
This kind of unabashed idolatry, coming from a supposedly educated refined cineaste, I almost puked into my cup of chai.

But at the end of the day, to repeat a wise one I heard ages ago, 'opinions are like ***holes, everyone has one'.

Did it.

An itch that had to be scratched. Finally got off my posterior to work on my lil fun-nothing project. Something I'd been meaning to work on for quite some time. Nothing grand or artsy, quite junk-art-kitsch-ish...Happy its been done...just took me 20 mins to get it off my head...looks rather funny-cute in an infantile sort of way.

Cut out Ganesha from all the old wedding invites and other assorted stuff I could find lying around and put them all together..its interesting how varied the depictions of the god are, while the basic lines stay the same. Some of them are just plain beautiful. Ekdanta, Vigneshwara, Ganapati....invoked at all auspicious beginnings, remembered when all the odds are neatly stacked against, or when the boss refuses to die...

Hmm..somebody I knew in the middle ages collected Ganesha in all forms - stone, wood, clay, glass etc. I remember getting him a red stone (or was it wood) image from my trip to somewhere. He was a good friend then, lost for centuries now. Oh, well.

Dawdled back 'to the lighthouse', read a few pages. Till the next urge. Whats wrong with me...I used to pretty much devour books till some months ago. Hope it didnt go with the moulted bits.

Also, I have this colossal, rather badly put-together thing to edit which has a decent deadline... but I just keep skirting around the mammoth...have done a bit, need to really get down and dirty soon. And to think its purely for the volunteering cause. Really, self-loathing is not the word...."Whatsa matter with you"

the dark side

A book I never would have thought I'd own is paulo coelho's eleven minutes...but I do.I bought it ages ago...out of curiousity, its title, its blurb reeling me in. I know the more revered of his books is the alchemist, but I haven't felt like reading it, ever. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

Back to 11 minutes...a book I read, not indifferently. A story of the choices a woman makes and lives by, unapologetically. The love that crosses her path. And the dark side - painted in a fascinating way, luring enough for the reader (read, me) to empathize with her dangerous leanings. The grey zone , where good and bad, moral and immoral fade and blend.
The ending's tame and bright. A frank, brutal look at the age-old human obsession with sex and the eleven minutes it technically takes up.Wonder why I remembered the book all of a sudden. Oh I know...

Oz comes to our shores. I remember watching it quite so often in the US. Another dark, unpretty gritty look at the darker side of the human psyche.

We've clobbered the angrez again...3-0...happy!!!

Radhe radhe!

Met a funny chap today - the young punditji of the Shiv puja we attended at our neighbor's. All of 19, or so he says, rather garrulous and wit-a-second. Full of wisecracks and a salty wisdom. Nothing holier-than-thou abt this priest. He was quite unapologetic abt how he teased his faithful or how he diverted water for his temple from the official water source.
For some reason, he thought me the ripest to regale with his anecdotes, while offering quick-fix solutions for the little queries the others threw at him abt when they could move into their own place etc..
How he can gauge a person by their feet, how he made an acquaintance own up to pinching his stuff by making him bleed from the mouth on eating a handful of rice as proof of his misdemeanor, and how he stopped the blood with another handful.
How he helped one of his faithful in taming his shrewish wife who now follows him around like a lamb. We had a great laff at that!
He called his bike his 'Radhe' and cribbed how he had to part from her at the gates of our aptt complex, unwillingly. We thought he'd never stop, but well, definitely a relief from some of the usual staid preachy priests that drone forth on such occasions...God bless him and his enthu. :-)

AVP

I lurve well-made critter, disaster (Americans saving humanity), horror, aliens-invading-the-US flicks...I just love shrieking and jumping and getting all pumped up, nothing remotely cerebral abt the experience. Maybe my way of getting in touch with the 5 year old me deep down.
Saw one after ages in its totality, last night on cable tv...had bookmarked the time, all agog. AVP is good. Tho I think the producers caved in and decided to make the A-loyalists happy by inserting that unexpected stowaway on the P ship. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'...kitschy but oh so cool :-) Missed the popcorn tho.
I totally love the original Predator flick...all those testosterone-bloated guys, beefcakes led by Arnie fighting the unknown smarter element...'Any time'...all those one-liners.
Even spoofy ones like 8-legged freaks, or the gory ones like jeepers-creepers has me happy happy...whats life without a lil imbecile fun, hunh?!