Path of Philosophers

They came and sat next to me. Both dressed up in the latest vogue as dictated by Paris or Milan. She had her Maccha ice cream in hand and he, his mobile phone. A gentle breeze shook the freshly blossomed Sakura blooms and a few, ripped off their stalks, flew at us. He started capturing a video of this and then, immediately shifted his focus onto her. She gave a charming but slightly affected laugh and he took a bite off her ice cream. And the work of the Sakura was done. I was blinded by the sun, and they, by love.

Haiku

Ferocious rays
impel like million sharp
shards of glass.

Shards reaching
deep effusing just sweat
and not red blood.

The sky blue bright
pacifies senses like
a gentle breeze.

A gentle breeze
that takes along all my
wordly worries.

These two were written on two summer fridays when in my final year at IIT and facing an ever so boring lecture. I was, as already mentioned, bored and I had had a shot of haiku to my head from my last visit to Landmark. I tried..

Overflowing Thanni Laari

It has been ages since I put anything on this blog of mine that I think is the heights of stupid writing. Nevertheless, owing to consistent efforts by and pestering discussions with friends, I guess I shall continue to expose the world to some more mediocre writing, to which I owe gratitude to this completely unimaginative brain of mine. Thank you, Mr. Brain!

I came up with something through the course of the previous week, which I think fulfills the above criterion for getting itself published in my blog. Its short, but so are a lot of other things. Here goes:

My lauu feels like an overflowing Corporation thaNNi laari that seems to be leaking out of all corners except into kalar kalar thaNNi buckets.

To those who fail to understand, fret not. For it is nothing brilliant. It was just a reference of my love being quite similar to the water supply trucks (thaNNi laari) that run around in India spilling out more water onto the road, than into the multicoloured buckets that the people run around with to get their ration of water.

Picture courtesy: mckaysavage (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/)

A childhood lost

She looks at me,
Her offer, in her hands.
Dry and thirsty
They aged with responsibility.

Dry hair, mismanaged,
An old dress showing tears
Passed on within a family
Till it no longer was good enough.

She wears it though,
Good or no good:
For she has no choice,
from where she stands.

Her eyes blank. dried
Void of joy, depressing..
Her nose stud,
Ther only thing on her having a glow.

Butterflies, flowers and bangles
all in her tray.
Things she would crave for
But maybe will never have.

Her eyes plead for a purchase
Something to quench her aged hunger
Though not completely,
Though maybe just barely.

As I buy bangles for my sister,
Her suggestions pouring out,
Both equally old I suppose,
just different destinies.

She thanks me, and leaves
Feeling happy.. Maybe for herself..
Leaving me depressed and thinking...
A childhood lost.. All in her tray..
Of butterflies, flowers and Bangles...

[Hello all! Long time since I wrote anything... This was thought up when I was going home a couple of weeks ago when I did meet this little girl selling her wares on the train.. It was quite touching to see the contrasting destinies. Let me know what you think! ]

Life goes on..

Life goes on as it were. 2 weeks in Berlin and I’m all settled here for the next 2.5 months. A weekend it is and I’ve not gone any further than the computer center and today I decided to get out of bed and just take a little walk around.

So there is this little wooded area near my apartments which tempted my mind. So I put on a jacket (as it is quite cloudy today) to go for a walk there as I’d heard t is really peaceful there. So, I left home and went on. Only on entering the place did I realise that it was a beautified cemetary! Countless rows of beautifully and sensitively laid gravestones all over the place. Such a beautiful place, only to bring peace to those who have finished what they were supposed to accomplish in this world, as ancient Indian philosophy says.

So, I walked around and looked at the various tombstones with the engraved dates and beautiful flowers adorning them. I walked in between all kinds of tombs of all kinds of people : Italian soldiers, professors, stage actors, children, simple civilians, all of them.

Then in one corner, I just sat awhile and this thought occurred to me: Is burying a way of saying to Mother Nature: OK! So his work in our world as a man is done! You can now take back your creation and give it a different form so as to serve the world in a different way. All the grass there was almost an answer to the same! It was like Mother nature saying: You have done enough for the world. Take some time off and exist in peace for awhile. Then, I remembered the poem “A walk by moonlight”which I had read in class XII and thought was meaningless. To quote:

Oh! In such moments can I crush
The grass beneath my feet?
Ah no; the grass then has a voice,
It’s heart—I hear it beat.

It was surprising to see how something, then so senseless, seemed so meaningful all of a sudden! Coming back to the main focus, life, it’s wonderful how the same thing has such different forms and such variety in the same too! “C’est beaux, la vie!” as the French say it. To conclude, what better than to quote Walt Whitman from his anthology “Leaves of Grass”:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

“The essence of life, I think, lies in its continuity”
-Anonymous

[P.S. :- It has been a long time since I wrote anything with such intensity. Do let me know if I can still write properly!!! Cheers!! ]

The Darjeeling Limited

I was watching this movie called “The Darjeeling Limited” two days before my mid-semester exam. It was not something I had expected myself to do but while searching on the LAN for nice movies, which I usually do regularly to maintain a good stock of movies on the comp, the very name was just too attractive to have left it just like that. So, as is my usual routine, Wiki is opened and searched in. Keywords noticed included India, brothers, trains and cultural potpourri. Considering I am crazy about the usual third person’s view on India, about Indian Railways, and cultural mismatches, it was just something I couldn’t resist and so, there it sat in my comp within the next 5 minutes.

The movie on the whole was smooth, with not too much of a story, with a whole lot of India and N number of twists. Revolving around the set of 3 “estranged” brothers, who are in India headed by the eldest under the pretext of “spiritual liberation” to search for their mother, it follows an extremely simple path. There are a considerable number of inconsistencies in the movie. The trains shown in the movie are so old, they must have been in existence more than 10 yrs ago even though the film was shot last year. The fact to wonder about is, WHERE did they get the trains!?!? The Indians shown in the movie are all with thick moustaches or beards or both, which as we all know, is not quite the case. The stewardess on their train is dressed like an officer out of the Shammi Kapoor times, which though appealing (;)) is not quite contemporary. The story moves on to them being kicked out of the train by a TTE (extraordinary no?) and then coming across Indian family customs, and even a funeral! As they indulge deeper and deeper into the culture of our country, they get more and more Indian themselves, this transition being shown beautifully. In the end, after all the search for their mother and after all confusions are sorted out, they realise they have all changed. And changed for the better. Issues start sorting out (sensibly, of course, this being a Hollywood venture) and things are brighter again.

The whole movie being based in Rajasthan and its scenic villages with bustling Indian culture and our dense population, it is accompanied by music from all over. The kinks being the most used western music source, the Indian music was extracted from Satyajit Ray’s movies. Beautifully merged, they form a perfect soundtrack for the setting the background of the movie.

Most appealing, apart from the soundtrack and, of course, the picturisation of India was the way the personal stories of the brothers was woven into the Indian background, without any kind of degrading remarks, which usually accompany films of this nature. Also, the movie is very abstract in its presentation, which is good because, the whole beauty of the movie is in its abstractness.

Overall, a must watch for anyone who doesn’t like to think too much in a film (like me!) or anyone who likes to see our country through someone else’s eyes!! Do check it out!

Leatherpants! From Cows to Crocodiles...

Starring:- Holy Cow as Moo, Lacoste as Tears
Production:- Skins Private Limited
Running time:- As long as the crocodiles and cows can run.
Genre:- Action/Gore/Fashion/Romance
Certification:- Above 18 (for developed fashion sense and weird sexual fetish potrayals)

Reviews:- The film was a super hit owing to the components appealing to a wide variety of audience. The romantic touch appealing to couples, the variety of leather suits appealing to the rich, spoilt kids (thanks to fashion!), the love scenes appealing to the perverts and the whole pointless and unbelievable story appealing to the majority of the viewers, the Indians! Overall, a MUST watch since everyone belongs to one or the other of the above categories!!

Plot Summary:-

Starting with the beautiful forested locales of Africa with two crocodiles lazying on the riverside, taking time off the laziness, it moves onto a croc couple making out right there, when suddenly out of nowhere comes a bullet whizzing through the air and plunges into the flesh of the man! As he tries to recover, she quickly moves into the river, to her kids and once the Man removes her dead fornicator (for crocs don’t believe in marriages), she explains to her kids that their father is being taken by the fashion industry as Man needed more like him! The kids, still terrified, learn to live without him. When one day, the youngest of them, Tears, is captured by Man and taken to a zoo and one day, when a man passes him, he smells the same faint odour that he his father used to emit after having just gulped down a dozen snails and a hippopotamus. It is then that he realises the horrifying things his father must have passed through. And as he woefully shouts, the camera zooms out.

The wail continues and the camera is seen to zoom out of the mouth of Moo, who has just had her huge serving of cabbage. Her burping done, she looks at herself and admires her beauty. She loves herself but of late her partner Bovi (apparently cows believe in homosexuality) was nowhere to be seen. She craves for the smell of her skin. Flashback of scenes of the two making out flashes on the screen. Then, it is one day when the farmer tries to eroticise his wife with a pair of leather pants in the barn, that she smells the same odour as Bovi. And realisation dawns again. She is heartbroken but wants revenge! So, she moos and runs!! Runs like never before!! And while hiding beside a drain she sees a lonely looking crocodile and while he wept his crocodile tears, she wailed out and as they exchange stories, fall in love. And as is expected of any Hollywood movie, the next scene shows them getting it on. After all is done, while they laze in the filth, they decide that they shall revenge together.

Red bandanas tied to their heads (which GOD knows where they got!) and with milk oozing out of her udders and saliva out of his jaws, they leave to take over the leather industry and successfully (film script writer being Indian), are able to get the factory under their control. After that, fate strikes and in an attempt to swing from one end of the other, Tears falls into a vessel containing boiling tan and dies. Moo, as she sees this, moos out and herself jumps into it too!

Slow sorrowful music plays in the background as the camera zooms out of the factory to get a bird’s eye view of the whole set.

The last scene zooms into a punk wearing a leather outfit, the jacket mysteriously sticking to the pants (especially in the crotch region) and leaves the viewer’s mind to just about get confused.