Jamais vu

There was once an old woman who lived in a little cardboard box under a busy flyover in a crime ridden part of the city. She would wake each morning at a wee hour while other creatures still slept soundly around her and spend time in prayer after which she'd cook and peddle idlis by the wayside. Her clientele mainly comprised of drivers of school vans and autos. They usually flocked around her steaming pushcart before they headed to pick kids up for school. All these folks liked the woman a lot and sometimes ran errands for her or bought supplies for her for no reason other than her blatant poverty.
One day, she hitched a ride in one of the school-vans to the market. The driver said he'd even wait for her to finish her shopping so he could drop her back. The woman was very touched by this and let him in on a secret.

She said (oooooooooo000OO000000ooooooo000000000oooooo0000000000000000oooooooooo000
00000000000000ooooooooooooooooooo0000000000000OOOOOOOOOOOOO000000
oooooooooooOOOOOOooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOO000000000000000000000000)

The driver was very upset and didnt return to the steaming pushcart for weeks. Soon, it was found that the man gave all his belongings to the first ashram he found and lay in the way of an oncoming train.
The several pieces they brought of him to the hospital were all pronounced dead.

The woman burst into tears when she heard the news and regretted telling the man her secret.
Days turned to nights and the nights turned to weeks. Soon, people forgot about the dead man and his place as van-driver was taken by a jolly fellow and the folks who dined alongside him at the steaming pushcart found him to be more congenial and helpful than his predecessor.

[Note: This story is not done. Will add more to the above at each sitting. And edit. Or altogether pull down the damn thing. Ok?]

Spot of Shade

I've been walking for many days in white-hot light with an uneasy warmth in my belly. I havent been walking along a definite path because there's only flat, paved ground in every direction to the horizon. Everywhere I choose to rest is the same as the last. A perpetual deja vu and a salt-less taste in my mouth keep me company along with my own thoughts. The cloudless sky is also bereft of any avian life whatsoever. Although I have no way of estimating how far or for how long I'd been walking, it couldn't have been less than a month judging from the amount of growth on my face. I could walk or run for as long as I wanted and yet there would neither be any sweat nor would I feel tired.
I did try clawing at the ground looking for answers for the ground was the only thing I could actually touch and spit at. It didn't matter how hard I kicked or clawed, the ground would not so much as show the slightest indentation.
You finally made it home, I would hear my thoughts whisper. Something inside me was satiated, at home and at rest while the rest of my being craved something to latch my hands onto.
I could almost hear my insides curse at the light and the futility of this kind of existence when I saw a darker spot of ground not too far ahead of me. Stopped in disbelief and then hotfooted it to the spot before jumping outright into it.
My eyes took a while to get used to the lack of brightness like some well-meant power outage on the lightbulb of the earth. Then I noticed the earth on which I was standing on. Cracks with pure blackness between the gaps, loose gravel and vulgar wet tentacles flailing under my shoes. On closer inspection, the tentacles were in fact worms that had an affinity to emerging from under the sole. Oh, and I felt cold. And it felt very good.
I decided to walk further ahead and watch this curious spot of shade from the outside. Skin and bone protested when I stood in the white light again. I expected myself to burst into flames from the way it hurt. Of course, I now realize that it wasn't physical hurt at all.
Scurrying back into the cold spot of shade again. I thought of people, of buildings, of streets and food. All my life I spent wishing them away. One at a time.
Here, in this strange flat world of air and little else, I crawl back into my little spot of shade and poke at worms as I see how far removed I am of the things that made me human.

Ancient Mythical Digital Monster

Each sunset means nothing more to me than perhaps what the ticking of each second a clock is to you. I have protected the rulers of the ancients, gazed upon their lives spent toiling, danced in the sands of their wars and laughed at their wisdom. I have run with the Mares of Diomedes along the shores of Thrace in the fading sunlight.
I have lived in the company of my vast memories in the centuries that me and my brothers have slept frozen in the pillars of an old master's estate. The world is not so different from the way it was then. In the few times that I surveyed the horizons from rooftops, I see the avarice that ruled the world in days of old now being worshiped.
There could not have been a better time for The Awakening. It is just as it was promised.
My soldiers and I can now walk between the physical and digital realms when we please. The mind of man is now softer and clay-like. You will only accept that which I wish you to believe.
You are but the playthings of the ancients. They are gone and yet the children of their descendants will continue to wager their lives. All for but a glimpse of what lies in my knowledge.
I, Orobas, seek to make your acquaintance.

The Piano

Came across an old weather beaten piano at a friend's living room this evening. The varnish was peeling in several places and the white keys were more yellow than white. Few of the keys played notes as dead as door nails, others souned sinisterly de-tuned or just plain cold. The thing kept staring at me ominously the whole evening.
Stared at me while I laughed with the others. Stared while I ate. Stared when I sat in silence.

Somebody sat at the thing and played an old tune traditionally played at farewells, in the very modest experience of yours truly.
Each note mocked. Laughed. Nauseated. Pointed fingers and stuck its tongue out at me.

Unable to bear this nightmarish theater, I swallowed a lemon sized lump in my throat and rode off into dark roads towards home. The speed, cold wind and bleary eyed vision made it all so surreal.

Rode through a dream and woke up into another one.

Urbanely Mundane

Had a good time this weekend. Had a similar occasion the weekend before that. And the one before that. So this is all very agreeable and I should have not too much cause to complain. But I have a sneaking suspicion that these good times are being sold to me.

You buy time to sit at some trash-chic coffee table at cafes. You pay to be spotted smashed at some funny name club. Heck, you even pay to get your hair fondled and snipped by some north-eastern babe who will go to great lengths to assure you that those blond hair extensions are just what you need to complement your overgrown nose-hair.
Folks go through all of the above for a lot of reasons. Some do it to for the chicks, some do it to simply to raise eyebrows and some because they have the money and dont know what else to do with it.

So they put you beside a pool you cant swim in with a cold bitter drink in your hand with a couple of hundred people dressed up exactly like you and hope you bump and grind and drink the night away till around eleven thirty pm when they shoo you out the back door into the longing arms of the law that will milk you of whatever little dough you have left from your good time because they just caught you with a little stinkbreath.
Nice place to reminisce of that last Cosmopolitan you downed is when you're talking to an unfamiliar toilet bowl.

No, this weekend was a special one (Rbass' surprise party at Konda's digs with all of that jet setting crowd in one place was deadly and so was Shivajinagar-ing with 10,000 other people for lassi and midnight phal).
Ah, but aren't they all?

Gadgeted Officer

I'm having trouble waking up again. It's especially hard when you also have trouble sleeping in the first place. There's all sorts of folks in my life at the moment who seem to have no other purpose other than disorienting the hell out of me. Several well wishing viscid criminals entice me from all around me by offering a bit of some good thing, wagering on whether I will act like the proverbial donkey at some point.
But I guess I should be glad that there's at least some activity in my otherwise placid life.

There's this documentary I found interesting that's coming out sometime this month. Jack White, The Edge and the legendary Zoso sit around, jam a bit, swap tunes and talk a bit.
A faceless wise voice on YouTube suggested that it be called "Jimmy gives guitar lessons to a couple of chumps".

Am I twitaddict?
I'm not too sure.
But I just linked the above 'documentary' to a shortened URL from bit.ly
Just to see if that works.

Baby snakes

Hello. Been in absentia for a nice long time.
Lots happened.
I'm trying to make this sound like an entry in a moldy orange diary, but we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Anyways, someone I absolutely loathe from the seat of my pants is back in close proximity.
I thought I was finally getting mellow and keeping my intolerance in check and along comes this most vexing character.
I felt pins jabbing at my skull real horrorshow, O my brothers.

I don't understand why I hate the way I do.
I don't like how I cling on to antipathy like I know nothing else.
Help!

Thanks for listening.
May you be covered in moondust.

Only when the last tree is cut

Today I woke up at 5 30 in the morning. Today is a Sunday. An aunt needed to be picked up from the railway station.
Anyway, so I got there on time (well, a tad early actually) and saw people in a long winding queue maybe about 200 meters at the least. These folks were of the push and shove to get something done variety and I found it impossible to find a way around them to get to the platform. When I tried cutting through the line, everybody seemed to hug each other to form some sort of a human wall. I tried to explain that I just needed to get to the other side and they simply ignored me the way I ignore child-contortionists at traffic lights.

Last night, a friend and I were at Fanoos.
He saw an old beggar woman sitting on the pavement and felt something profound.
He told another beggar woman that the old woman was like his mother and that he felt really bad seeing her that way. He asked her to look after her for him.
I thought he empathized for a moment.

Happiness Bang Bang Shoot Shoot

There's this close knit community of bloggers who live among us. They reside in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and so on and so forth. But suddenly they decide to ditch the username and actually meet in the flesh. And its quite scary because distances suddenly dont matter and they all land up under the same roof in an acceptable watering hole and partake of the harvest in true communal fashion, so to speak.
Indiblogger's top reps, users and fans were present at Stones, Indiranagar, to get into Iron Maiden mode for tomorrow. Free beer was freely flowing, ensuring that the good times kept rolling.
Now, if you're a blogger and you think that you dont live in the dark ages, you're probably signed up with Indiblogger.

Other than that, I'm listening to the Beatles (The White Album) and feeding the fish on time.
Happy Valkilmers... and look alive.

Kids With Guns

Facebook is a nice place for folks to seethe, I always thought. To feel without explicitly making it known, to let one's reddest red sentiment quietly bubble along and watch others feel an uncomfortable all-pervading heat gradually envelope them.
Well, that's my ideal anger condition. You may take strong exception to it. I won't hold it against you.

In recent days, I have observed several weakly-informed individuals publishing severe statements without thinking twice about it and that too with such force of authority. Well, most of them are starkly honest musings on the state of affairs in Bangalore and the new vigilante marriage bureau roaming the streets and I appreciate that. But we as students/youth living in Bangalore are used to drowning our potent intellect with pitchers of weak beer or killing our drive to do anything actively with a moldy spliff or two.
It's nice to see folks waking up and expressing the anger we should have felt a long time ago while people were digging holes around us while we were locked up getting loaded.
But it would be better to see some sort of strategy being drawn out rather than comments under status messages on Facebook getting drawn out into long esoteric debates.

Suddenly it's all so cool to talk politics. Y'know, when the shallowest blonde you ever knew starts speaking of Mister Muthalik. Or when P Biddy speaks out against the moral police and other such fermented cliches. I lose interest in things I feel strongly about when certain (large) sections of society take notice of it. Eg: Slumdog Millionaire, V day marriages and so on;
Ok, so what I want to say is that while it is nice to see the generally unconcerned youth of this day and age take notice of things and express their displeasure, I'd appreciate it if we sounded more coherent.

... I tried to make sense.

Yenu man?

I'm ill again. This gent at the doctor's was peering at a board on the door. So I asked if the doctor was in. In Kannada. He took one long look at me and explained in great length and seriously fractured English that the doctoru was always in the offissu by that time and that he took his tennis playingu seriouslyu and a para or so more of stuff beyond my powers of comprehension.
Ok.
Now why wouldn't he just admit to all that in the tongue that the query was posed in?

But you've gotta have the Kannada signboards.
They wanna make it mandatory for kids in school to be taught in Kannada.
They are a classical language after all.

Yen Yeddy?

Choler

I'm feeling anger again. Searing red rage.
There are too many reasons to be generally pissed off. I keep it all inside somewhere where there's no light. And it keeps growing. I know because the anger creeps out of my mouth and hands and there's little I can do about it.
I try to kill excess energy at the gym, make a conscious effort to listen to untroubled music, keep myself buried under a thousand things and eat my vegetables. But it won't go away.
Sometimes there's nothing better I'd like to do than to sling a nice heavy expensive object at the wall.

I have no idea why people show so much restraint in being the least bit lenient.
When my time comes, I will be vicious and try to enjoy it.

When acting as a particle

Watched Opeth play Chennai last weekend. Was definitely my best metal experience so far. Many Bangalore lads and ladies seemed to have made themselves right at home there for the weekend. Spoke to this guy with a big cruise bike who explained he'd found his way to Chen but was still unsure about the venue's location.
Took a walk to the beach before gig and had a ball. The ocean was quite friendly. Wished we lived close to the beach. Sadly mused about the lack of anything worthwhile to do in the evenings back home.
Anyways, Opeth came. Opened with Heir Apparent, finished with The Drapery Falls.
Mikael Åkerfeldt sweats death and is a riot!
They would finish one seriously heavy song and then he'd let slip some killer jazz wankery absentmindedly while talking to the crowd.
I think it's time DT made a quiet exit and lived peaceably.

The Oscars died about a week after the previous post.
Got Piranhas now, four of them.
I thought they lacked character (compared to Oscars), but they move and eat real quick.
And they eat. With one insatiable apetite.
I think I'm overfeeding. I always stop because of the danger that they might burst if they ate any more.

About to embark on a Philip K Dick trip.
Reading Ubik at the moment. Is very very interesting.

Cichlid Designs

Fancied having an aquarium for a while now. The last one I kept was about five years ago. One can of sardines it was, with at least a dozen little buggers in less than ten liters of water. That setup lasted for a bit. There were frequent deaths, of course. Would keep replacing deceased members with cheaper and less hardy varieties.
Lost interest in the whole thing after a time. I remember going on a two month vacation to Trivandrum and returning to find a bone dry tank with familiar shapes fossilized into a layer of dry muck.

Several others have perished under my care ever since, both living and otherwise.

Acquired a modest sized aquarium and bought a pair of Astronotus ocellatus this morning. I'm told that Oscars can withstand some abuse, and they're also supposed to be smarter than the average goldfish.
They don't go nuts about the food pellets I gave them, and that worries me.
Maybe its the new environment or something.
Other than that, Taira and Taishi are quite a sober pair.

Will put a picture or two up soon.