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.