Time to Wake Up and Smell the Blood Smeared on the Floor

One fine day you wake up. Go to school/college/work and call up your friends in the evening to hang out at a common joint. You have a good time and you go back home. That is pretty much the regular for most of us in metropolitan cities. You don't mind the glares that passersby throw on you when you do some shenanigans in the middle of the street, you put up with the almost-life-ending pushes in railway trains & obviously go on with the pathetic administration of your city. Not exactly bravado exemplified.

For once you do lose your cool, when a power-drunk goon shows his sick intentions bit too publicly and makes a point to get a woman just because she's with a man, near a place which isn't quite the desired location for a woman to be at. You don't retort, you're good to go. But if you stand your ground, be ready to face some consequences. Death included. Keenan Santos died, with his gut in his friend's hand, and Reuben Fernandes passed away from excessive bleeding. There have been many such massacres in small towns & cut-off villages, but this is Mumbai. Has to be a reference point! Not many same-strata citizens (read middle class) bat an eyelid.

Middle class parents do not sympathize with the victims, they say, "They shouldn't have reacted. And it wasn't their business being at a place where a 'potential threat' is always present." They want their children to be 'restrained' and not reactive. After all, they ARE their sugar-coated offsprings who should never get a spine. I've heard of "eve-teasing" in Bandra, claimed to be "The Queen of the suburbs". Has the fear of the coward attacker made the supposedly vigorously changing working class a self-doubting reclusive section of the society?

A guy with a gun shoots an aspiring model in a crowded nightclub ten years back, and we get a uprising & a movie about it. And a decade hence, we get a more brutal display of the same force by the same class. Is this what we're turning into? Our mentality needs some reality check, and a very quick one.

A candle won't be enough for a strong fire, a flaming torch is what we really need.

You Shouldn't Have Done That!

Ah, this feels more like one of those "I was so right" moments. I got a mail from a columnist, who writes for a tabloid and it has been almost fourteen months since I last communicated with him over an article which I found to be intriguing. Neither did I mail him again, nor did he. So to receive a message from him was much of a surprise, as I started reading I figured out what was the motive behind it. That was a teaser of the article which was supposed to be published the next day in the papers, and that article was pretty much a euphemistic way to slamming Ra.One (a movie) he put up his words and his doubts over the probability of it attaining any creative success, except for the expected monetary profits. Is he a film critic? Did he ever send me such mails asking me to read any of his articles? Is he even concerned about that topic which he's made certain efforts to put forth?

The next day, October 23, 2011 was an unusual footballing sight where Manchester City defeated Manchester United in a highly anticipated battle of the "equals". From anyone to almost everyone I know wanted to tweet/post a status update about it, yeah, who gives a damn even if their own team has tasted some stale taffy in a fixture on the same day or day before. And there were some "Super Celebs" who weren't informed even if there was a match in the first place & they quite missed out on the right spelling & right score of the respective teams.

So this is what we strive on, "Hey, there's this war tank parading down the street, rolling out some souls while running over them. Let's get on it, this is the happening thing to do."
The urge to hop onto the bandwagon of bashing someone is quite ordinary, but to bash that person eternally is real strength.

There Couldn't Be a Title For This!

Year 2011 has fairly been an upwardly-monumental one by far. Controversially radical souls like M.F. Hussain, Osama Bin Laden, Amy Winehouse, "Machoman" Randy Savage and most recently Steve Jobs have departed for a lesser known journey. To put all of these above names in the same line might be offensive to some, but all of them were actually rebellious in some way or the other. Machoman brought about a different persona to sports entertainment (wrestling) with his great athleticism and unorthodox apparel. Osama Bin Laden left the world baffled with his demonic ways. M.F. Hussain blended commercial art with his own short stories, often arising out of his personal experiences in his life. Amy Winehouse was perhaps the last ray of hope for modern, mainstream jazz, but left us to join that damned "Forever 27" club with most of our modern day idols. And Steve Jobs, our modern day innovator-cum-leader. I admit, I haven't bought any of his company's devices yet, but I certainly agree that Apple is the reason why I have my Android phone continuously striving to outdo the other competitors, millions of companies with their iPod imitations and Microsoft never letting drop their guard.

Where do I take this pep-talk? Only to a singular agenda, of the questions that I raise lies the answer within. Whatever these souls did, they did it with conviction and belief, they made the world livid & then did what they wanted to do. A personal dilemma of correcting myself of my current decisions has only one reply, but do I step in the puddle of clear waters that appears murky to me? I am no spin-doctor doling out some cool advice to others, I was no big Steve Jobs fan, but this is what answers my questions to the hilt.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the voice of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart & intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Semester-Bucket List!

After a few months of voluntary separation from "expressing myself", I've finally managed to come back! I feel just like a poet at a dearth of words, so many things that occupy my mind but only a few that make sense. The world and its happenings have been a craving point for me earlier, but of late I find my priorities changed. No longer do I care for the inconsistent television shows' consistency, nor do I brag about the latest signing with my favorite football club. I don't play fantasy leagues anymore, nor do I dream of the future, my brain has finally attained the potency to be static. Though that static nature is yet to be put through the test of paying attention in class, I can make the brave claim of disconnecting myself partially from the universe.


I have considered working for a job that would pay me for ranting out at the social world, a job that I've been doing without any temptation till now. I've contemplated doing a lot of things & then put the idea on the backburner for a holiday or a sabbatical, and these are numerous things which hold a great amount of significance to me when I'm occupied with something & suddenly escape the realms of my imagination when I manage to be at a loose end. I assume I am not the only one with this problem. I don't do the things which I used to long for during the semesters, the books I wanted to read, the movies I wanted to see.

The will to do certain activities & then whimpering out or just not taking that "leap of faith" is what bogs my mind down, I don't know about the rest of humanity. I am surely a victim of my own lethargy. I'd list all those things on a list & call it a semester-bucket-list.
Here I come, Semester bucket list!

The World is a Fizz Soda!

"The World is a Fizz Soda", what the hell am I talking about! I'll tell you, imagine a glass of soda kept untouched for a long time, after that long interval you'll notice that the fizz is gone, the Carbon Dioxide content has significantly reduced and it tastes nothing more than sweetened water. The same theory applies to the world & its happenings. Everything that's raising the eyebrows now, will soon be pushed into oblivion. 

Twitter has a word for all things that are "hot" at the moment, they call it "Trending Topics", and most of the times these "Trending Topics" are related to worldly events, such as the Egypt liberation, the Libyan uprising, the Japanese calamities. Never mind the most preposterous of  events garnering the highlights, like the rumor, "Is Lady Gaga dead?" or "Justin Bieber spotted kissing a tramp". To get a bit more closer, recently, a city newspaper carried out a campaign against the illegal political hoardings in Mumbai, the topic was the talk of the town(read as Internet). We saw a lot of hoardings being booted out, and the same amount of vigour in the citizens. Now, it's been over a month since that campaign started and never got a logical end. The newspaper doesn't bother anymore, and neither do the people.

In case if you don't know how fizz looks like! 

The same argument applies to our lives, we start with a gazillion tasks, and we leave the majority of those halfway, or even forget their inception, hence the indifference & apathy towards the ever-prevalent corruption and other such issues grows on to being greater by the day. The only possible solution to this can be a soda, that never loses its fizz!

World Cup (mis)Happenings

It's been a few days since I last got myself up to write something, and it's been the same number of days since the "World Cup mania" got air pumped into our lives. Years back one day cricket used to be the apple of everyone's eye, but that apple has been sorely replaced by a much shorter form, called T-20. And much recently a newly launched cricket channel has been implying not-too-hard-to-decipher comparisons between cricket & sex. Pairs of badly matched actors put up a very devious expression on their faces and utter some ambiguous lines like, "She just can't get enough of it" and I'll leave out the rest for you to Youtube. But if they compare sex with cricket, then Test Matches are a honeymoon, T-20s are like quickies and One Days are just somewhere in the middle, just like regular sex.
          So that's where the fascination wears out I guess. But even now, I do witness people crowding television sets placed in a very convenient electronics store. Given the magnitude of an event of such great scale, only one question arises, has it lived up to the expectations? Whether technically, visually, or administratively. The answer to this question can be a very straight NO! The World Cup isn't exactly "the World Cup", it's got almost the same number of major cricket playing nations which has been there for more than 20 years. A few strong competitions & a lot of ill-matched affairs. Technology has also been a major problem, the most edgiest & the latest innovation, i.e. Hotspot hasn't found it's way to this tournament, resulting in a lot of wrong decisions via Umpire Decision Referral System(UDRS). The parent bodies, namely ICC & BCCI(this is the original parent in reality) have failed to provide enough tickets to the masses & even created many hysterical situations for the other administrative devices.

                        

           In spite of all this, I'll wait with bated breath to watch matches like the one which we all witnessed between India & England. Cheers to new milestones which could be created or destroyed, and hope that the "sex" gets better with time!
  

Finally, I have arrived!

After a few months of "Notes" on Facebook, and years of imaginary conversations with myself on the topic of writing something that makes sense, I present myself to a Blog. Yes, it is a blog, and now I won't "tag" people onto my writings, for now I want to lead a peaceful Facebook-free life. Ah, who am I fooling, I'd rather suffice with some light dosage of the ever growing enterprise.

As an occasion or rather an induced phenomena passed by this Monday, called as Saint Valentine's Day, I certainly didn't notice the same gusto which used to surround this much loved-hated day. The moral brigades were conspicuous by the absence of their sheer vandalism.And there weren't many cops at special 'bandobast'. So are we finally turning ourselves away from the fading ineffective Western moonlight?

The answer to that question would be fairly a tricky one. The era of the 'in favor' Valentine's & the 'post PDA' generation have their differences. The earlier breed wanted a way through to overtly display their "love". They looked for various ways to make breakaways into PDA, and this was outrightly condemned by the harbingers of social stagnation. And now, PDA is evident everywhere, from the most shadiest of corners to the most hippest of outings. No one needs a "special day" anymore!

Sympathies for card vendors, but a lot of cheers(and jeers) for the zero rated lodge owners! Happy God-knows-what-day-it-is-today!