We Shall Overcome

Have the robots won? Have the worst fears of crazed, paranoid Sci-Fi writers come true? Are we shielded from the good ole' organic truth? Or has the unreal simply been enlarged and "enhanced" so that it is a giant in comparison. No? Then why is the natural stuff hidden somewhere in a little corner among the neon signs. Hah! It's almost ironically poetic - like some archaic pot of gold in an ancient fable that you have to go through at least a couple of hundred pages before you discover lying, waiting for you to sample and brand as the elixir of life, thus doing nothing, but playing into the mechanical hands of those very robots, that has turned your existence into a quest.

Or are there short, pudgy, red, sweaty fingers that are pulling lesser fingers to pull cables on those mechanical arms - kind of like the Godfather poster, but not as subtle and not as well back lit? You can't cut them off since that would only force them to multiple. Asexual reproduction I am sure. Machines, or even fingers that control them are not capable of love you offer yourself as consolation. But maybe, they have bought out the subtly as well. Artists need to drink too.

Don't give me any of that world hunger crap! If you think these fingers care about that sort of thing deep down inside, depression will drown me. You are a brother - albeit a sleeping one, blissfully unaware of mechanical arms, wallowing in your Utopian dream sets. Heck these arms have a hand in our dreams too nowadays. Even Bobby D would agree that is meddling of the worst kind. And like most sleeping young things, you are beautiful and we are ugly, but beauty is the last thing on our priority list at the moment.

We will not bow down without a fight. We will fight from our dark corners, wide awake that we are, and be the change we want to see in the world. We will wake you up with our darkness so that you may help us prepare a tomorrow as pure as the new, young sleeping things that will arrive unannounced. Maybe I will not live to see it happen, but as Pete Seeger said, "We shall overcome some day".

Guilty Prey

A Helping Hand

The theme was exchange and it had to be silent and B&W. Shot this in an hour and a half.

Hitting the Nail on the Head

Why do nails grow as fast as they do? I mean how much can one's teeth take, right? And those of you prim and (sic) propah ones don't give me that crap about it being bad manners and all. I think it is a sign of a thinking being. If I had my way, I would recast The Thinker to portray him biting his nails. It's almost as if Rodin (according to Wiki) wanted to do it that way (notice how his fingers curl towards his mouth), but then the purists threatened to start burning his effigies and declare his wife a witch or something and for the sake of martial bliss, The Thinker is what it is today.

If only the same applied to hair! Yeah, yeah, I know, those of you who have hair growing out of the middle of your foreheads and shampoo everyday and shake your mane in slow motion like some newbie, eager-to-impress shampoo model, every time you go into an inhabited room, tell me how expensive barber shops have become these days, but I would rather be poor and good-lucking than well, whatever the opposite of that is.

Don't base your image of me from the now infamous cult Mimicry video. That seems (sic) light years away at this point in time. I had an extreme haircut soon after and have had plenty of shaves since then. As a result of the uniformity of the extreme haircut in all directions, hair is now growing out of the sides like spaghetti out of the dish of some overestimating Italian housewife when she calls guests over. A hat (cap for all you British English freaks) makes me think I possess the curls of a Greek God (not the European ones, but American fraternity brothers), and then I need to start biting my nails again, to appear more intellectual (scratch the more).

A simple question for all my nail "biting" (notwithstanding the content of this blog on most occasions) readers out there? Is it just me, or do all/some of you love to nibble on the area where the skin transforms into nail. I assume it's a lot like visiting Kanyakumari (which by the way is a super sexy name; I always envision a lady with a dark Mermaid-type body, with luscious lips and a South Indian accent when I hear the name) - the southern most point of India - you just wished you could go further (no vulgar pun intended, only the clean type in this case).

At most times, I am blamed and subsequently reprimanded (yeah yeah even now, just the people have changed from one generation of family elders to the next and now to Ms. R) for something as blase (I don't' know how to get the accented 'e' on Macs and I am too lazy to look around) and general as "biting your fingers" when in fact, I am striving for a bit more in Kanyakumari (again, only the clean type of pun intended) or just stoking my "exploristic" ego by caressing my naturally manicured nails with the edge of my teeth. Think about it. It is like taking your greater sensitive index finger and actually going over the borders of the Deccan Plateau on a 3-D terrain map of India. Actually, when people say they need some alone time, or for the pinker ones "me time", I suspect they just want to, yes, touch themselves, but only on the ridge of their teeth.

I will leave you with a question that I am sure will shape your nails and file them too. If Columbus or Magellan had ever been stopped in their tracks such, do you think GPS companies would be naming their products after these guys today?

Too Saggy

They say sequels suck and there are popular exceptions of course like Godfather (though personally I liked Part 3 more than Part 2 overall) and more recently, the new Batman movies (isn't it lame that most of my comparisons are cinema related? Oh well, that's what you get for hanging out in this blog for too long!). Unfortunately, Upamanyu Chatterjee's "The Mammaries of the Welfare State" is not in that clique.

The title in itself sums up its digression from the first novel. It is too wordy when compared to "English August" and has vast passages on the Welfare State that made me drowsy, which may have been Chatterjee's intention to begin with, but such portions of the book are not interesting reads. My unabated obsession with the first book stems from the fact that it was a lot more personal, with the spotlight almost always on Agastya, or his friends, whereas here that is hardly the case. The book starts out wonderfully however, dedicating a chapter to our incorrigible protagonist and the blooming of an interesting love affair, but soon delves headfirst into the matters of the state.

The entire book is a lesson in satire writing and has its brilliant moments, mostly connected with Agastya or his new horrific boss, and the very relatable nickname gifting to his boss and his Home "ministry", or his attitude towards a venerable senior's marriage proposal of his daughter. Some of his equally incorrigible friends like Dhrubo and the hardly utopian Madna are back but are lost in the crowd of a bevy of new set of loony characters. I missed Sathe from the first book.

An August (or Chatterjee, so to speak) fanatic like me shouldn't miss out on this one. It's just that it may take you much longer to finish this than "English August" and you may find yourself wandering away to other levels as you read this, much like Agastya daydreaming through some dormant gorment meeting. I will obviously read the third book of the trilogy - "Weight Loss" to find out what happens to my dear August as he gets even older, but it will have to wait for a while.

PS: I haven't seen Dev Benegal's movie "English August" with a cleanshaven Rahul Bose made circa '93-'94, but if I had to make it today, I would cast Kunal Kapoor.

Hollywood

I am here and LA reminds me a lot of Bombay - the evil skyscrapers still leaving a piece of the sky to reach out to, the horrendous traffic, the proximity to the ocean and yet miles away from it, hell even the weather and of course the film industry with its beautiful people, and not that beautiful on the inside crap that beauty contest winners subscribe to, but pure physical charm that you can get a front seat view of at any Starbucks or participating locations: "Hello. Give me all your money for a 'tall' analgesic (no pun intended) and a chocolate dipped atom and feast your eyes on your beautiful fellow suckers."

Almost all Indian restaurants in the area are owned by Bangladeshis. They lure you in with names like Madhuban Tandav or something very creative like Bollywood Cafe 1 and Bollywood Cafe 2. You go in expecting some obscene non-eastern Indian accent and then they buflax you with their eastern charm. The food's a wee bit pricey, but simple, non-rich and yet tasty. The W would have freaked out here, in a good way.

I am shooting my "mis-en-scene" this weekend. I was thinking of being the high fart intellectual and leaving it at that and letting you guys figure it out using Wiki, and then I felt sorry and I like to reward loyalty (some of you have been reading this junk for a while), but then a college buddy just messaged me from seven seas away and since he knows me longer, he takes priority. Plus, Agastya's waiting too - the last eigthy or so pages - like a high speed burn on the last leg of a five hour drive. So I am not even proof reading this post.