Che vuoi?

Needless glorification of a below-par writer

2012-01-21T09:49:00.002+05:30

Praveen Swami seems to be living in a distant fictional future which not only is entirely theoretical, but also extremely fascist for denying its inhabitants the fundamental right to believe and to live according to those beliefs. If how public money is spent or punishment meted out in a democratic country is tied up inherently with religion and culture, then any attempts at engineering social change by assuaging the masses to give up their ontological theories (which are as epistemologically valid as any other) instead of improving those political and juridical setups in a truly secular way (i.e. without the use of mind-control propaganda that tries to sway the public into either side of the faith/disbelief debate) smacks of nothing but totalitarian designs.

It would behove Swami to recognize that there are two kinds of secularism and the theoretical and dated definition that he ascribes to is not at all conducive to peace and progress, Instead what is needed is a vision that sees reality not through the theoretical lens but as it really is. Freedom of religion, not freedom from religion is how we Indians define secularism which is a part of our culture and heritage. This newfangled hard-line opposition to theism however, is ill-informed and ill-willed.

As for Rushdie, is his opinion on anything really worth incurring the hurt and heartburn of thousands (even lakhs) of Muslims? and Meera Nanda has already been criticized so much for her hatred of religion, that the article paints a biased picture of her career as a scholar by not mentioning the reactions her so called theories have evoked.

Intestines

2011-12-13T13:28:00.003+05:30

When the artist becomes a teacher he begins to yearn
for another youth to teach and corrupt,
To instruct, for he thinks of himself as someone
who was anointed by the powers of the will to destruct
what he thinks is false, he thinks he's got the balls and the gall
to appall all those with twice the intestines
and half the guts.

In Circles

2011-09-28T12:20:00.005+05:30

Raw - like the smell of boiling potatoes mashed to the pressure cooker's whistling symphony - i have hopped many rooftops, searching god only knows what but finding, the distant din of a marriage orchestra playing in perfect sync with the whimsical notations of a passing truck toting its horns.

The autumn winds - pierced by the lustful twinkling of the market lights along the horizon - carry with them an aeroplane, paying no mind to the clandestine match between illuminations above and below judged by the tip of its blinking tail.

Inanimate objects come alive through the twilight's feather-touch, the satellite receivers talk and the breathing pipes of overhead tanks listen, as i, transfixed, eavesdrop on their geometric gossip going round in circles.

Chaos Holds Us

2011-08-13T12:47:00.000+05:30

The flamboyance of a frequently flying society
Discredits my regard for their notoriety
And blesses me with a sense of perpetual anxiety -
Of a peculiarly perplexing variety

I shall not feed off of their avarice
I might as well hunt my own discordant vice
And when I do find it, oh it shall be nice!
To give headache to aspirin and trap to the mice

The purveyor of all that’s possible and pure
Informed me that King-Kong had died from the cure
And all that disorder could never restore-
The pride of the prophet disguised as a whore

Eris herself did foretell this fable,
Baphomet resonated from her perch on the gable,
Threatening to pull the plug and disable-
Everything that relied for it’s life on a cable

It’s not that esoteric if you’re that erudite
Chaos holds us together so believe what you might
It paints a utopia in grey, black and white-
Where all that darkness renders, it surrenders to light.

A (micro) Refutation of "Practical" Metaphysics

2011-07-28T15:48:00.001+05:30

If we call metaphysics the discipline … that purports to define the basic structure of the world, then empirical metaphysics is what the controversies over agencies lead to since they ceaselessly populate the world with new drives and, as ceaselessly, contest the existence of others. The question then becomes how to explore the actors’ own metaphysics. - Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour takes it upon himself to suture the fractured and fragmented discourses on Ontology and Metaphysics by resorting to relativism to create what he calls a “practical metaphysics”.

Of course, by “practical” he means “plural”.

The question is this: even if a plural metaphysics as enunciated by Bruno is stable enough to theoretically examine all phenomenon and express it as a function of a most clearly crafted Ontology, will such a relativist theory of reality be able to survive the transition into Praxis? In other words, will my ability to gauge and measure the ontological weight of someone’s claim not break down my own subsequent attempts to affirm or deny the causal contingencies arising out of me being weighed down by the said ontological weight? Put simply, the first step in the exploration of the personal metaphysics of an actor is pretty much always a rejection and denial of the logic and rhetoric structuring the metaphysics of all the other actors in the network. Verily, the very possibility of a metaphysics arises out of the possibility of the metaphysics.

In such a situation, I presume, one will have to forgo one’s commitment to any relativism that is equally and evenly distributed over causality and choose to assemble a single ontology from the multitude of varying and contradictory metaphysical claims of other actors in the network.

However, rationality forces us to conclude that in a finite network ontological patterns will develop within all the local mediators preventing a state where any kind of near-absolute relativism (necessary for any pluralistic idea of metaphysics) may gestate. Latour, therefore, has given birth to a baby that’s stillborn if held upside-down but comes alive as soon as you turn it around and ask : “can metaphysics save relativism”?

A traversal of an actor's own metaphysics then is not much different than the traversal of his own politics. In-fact, such hollow multitudism will only thrive until the actor realizes that by short-circuiting metaphysics with pragmatism, he has all but extinguished both. All that remains thereafter, is to consolidate the (remaining) relativism for the sake of pragmatism and since democracy is the obvious tool-of-choice for such tasks, we can remain sure that one of the last functions it will perform as a human tool is the consolidation and reduction of empirical, metaphysical relativism, thereby giving birth to either a compressed relativism or perhaps even a pragmatic absolutism.

Now can you smell the totalitarian disaster that awaits us at the other end of pragmatic metaphysics?

Sniffin' Shoes

2011-07-28T12:16:00.004+05:30

Yes, yes sir you surely snore and are imperfect and impure
But since you're called family sure, i love you, you brazen fure
Sometimes you stick out like a sore, Sight or smell or a kinaesthetic roar
But because blood binds before it blinds
I could do with less no more

I'm sniffin' shoes in search of a cure, you're high on inhalant abuse's lure
The side-effects of breathing have us shivering on uncertainty's door
Yes, I know I've been cruel before, but so have you and so much more!
But because blood begs for balance
The past is just mouthwash mumblecore

So on my forklift-funeral day, please bury me in the hole we bore
Beneath the tiny rivulet in the backyard of the house of the kings of lore
And like a treasure there let me rot, or like wine let me mature
Allow me to live in your memories and I promise to reciprocate for sure.

Wikileaks didn't start the fire!

2011-02-23T20:21:00.004+05:30

It can be credibly argued that the simmering discontent in Tunisia exploded in public anger when WikiLeaks published the cables on the U.S. ambassador's assessment of corruption by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The Tunisian uprising, then, was triggered by the WikiLeaks revelations, and fanned by the Internet.

- The Hindu (Feb 23 / 2011)

My Response:

Its almost an insult of the Tunisian people and their revolt to say that they did it because a website (about which a handful of them knew) told them to. Wikileaks was one of the many factors that justified the revolt in the eyes of an Assange-worshipping media, but to say that it started the whole uprising is to make a dent in the causality of history.

It is highly improbable that the Tunisian uprisings were "triggered by the Wikileaks revelations" firstly because these leaks were hardly revelations for a public being ruled over by a corrupt dictator for over 24 years. That there was already a "simmering discontent" nullifies any possibility of Wikileaks being a cause for the uprising. Secondly, no country on the brink of revolt needs a Wikileaks to find out the right muhurat to end the lethal combination of poverty, unemployment and political repression affecting the masses for more than two decades. Wikileaks just happened to coincide very beautifully with discontent which was about to boil over anyway.

In Defence of Cerebral Liberalism

2011-02-20T11:28:00.004+05:30

Parts of the keynote address delivered by Lord Anthony Lester at the 17th Commonwealth Law Conference in Hyderabad earlier this month resonate strongly with the call for "muscular liberalism" given by the British PM a day earlier and seem quite insensitive to the cause for concerted tolerance which has propelled the cultural narrative of India this far into its history.

Lord Lester's opinions on the decadent and primitive nature of Indian Penal Code struck me as only partially right to the extent of his legal observation that the "IPC was enacted to suit British needs". However, his assertion that section 295-A of the IPC was spreading hatred and that it was against the spirit of free-speech seemed to me not only odd but grossly misinformed. For the following reasons:

1. Currently, Judicial decisions under this section tend to punish undertakings of "deliberate and malicious intention" towards religions or religious sentiments of people. If, however, our lawmakers decide to jump on the bandwagon of reckless liberalism and make amends to this part of IPC -- so that it becomes difficult to punish such acts -- it would clearly tantamount to a state of cultural lawlessness for the state will no longer be able to protect the dignity of its believing masses. While in an ideal regime of free-speech raising offence (regardless of context) can not be seen as a crime, raising religious offence is just as much a crime as mental harassment (and for roughly the same reasons too).

Moreover, attempts to ignore all offence raised by the letting-loose of free-speech standards will require parallel amendments in the law of contempt of court, and that will only mark the beginning of overhauling the whole legal framework under the constitution and ultimately reveal deep-seeded hypocrisies. A small but perfectly fitting example is the recent culling of the "I hate Ambedkar" page by Facebook.

2. Freedom of Religion, as guaranteed by our constitution, inherently contains a duty on every citizen to refrain from insulting the religious sentiments of others, there is however, a very human limit to how much the tolerant will tolerate the intolerant (i.e. those who do not perform this constitutional duty), Section 295-A makes sure that our civilization steers clear of indecision and confusion when faced with such a paradox of tolerance. Subsequent Judicial decisions upholding the need to be crystal clear about the secular nature of Indian multiculturalism have justified the use of Section 295-A as an effective legal tool.

3. It must be noted, also, that this section of IPC does not punish a person for mere criticism of religion or religious practices, rather it is the "wanton vilification or attacks upon the religion of any particular group or class or upon the founders and prophets of a religion"^[1] that is/are punished with fine and imprisonment (up to 3 years). Even by European standards, I doubt this language or the legislation it frames will seem anti-humanistic to anyone. It isn't always easy to clearly define and ascertain the nature of a religious attack but that hardly warrants a repeal of the section on the whole.

4. If then, Lord Lester like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (whom the Marxist Philosopher Terry Eagleton collectively refers to as "Ditchkins") believes that it is religion itself that stands in the way of more liberal standards of jurisprudence, he needs to be reminded that Section 295-A is also implicitly protecting the rights of atheist citizens and if interpreted broadly enough, it protects the religious interests of the entire gamut of believing and non-believing people of the nation (including the followers of faiths yet to be created).

How then, may one ask Lord Lester, is this Section of the IPC hindering free-speech or encouraging hatred? It seems only to be an innocuous legal step forward from the dark ages and seems only to protect the innocent from the wicked. It does not take a legal genius to realize that the reconciliation of the universality of freedom of speech with the particularity of religious discipline can never occur by lowering our guard against the malafide intentions of misanthropes; yet this is precisely what any further amendment (in favor of so called free speech) or repeal of section 295-A will bring about in this hostile ecology of conflicting world-views.

Liberalism may flex its muscles at European gatherings but in India we must take every 'ism' - be it seemingly good or bad - with a grain of salt and remember that "by reluctance to criticize some of it, we may help to destroy it all". For any blind adherence to instrumental reason will breed insensitivity and ingratitude towards positive and life-affirming traditions. For example, what Lord Lester fails to notice about the statement that the IPC was "enacted to suit British needs" is the fact that some British needs are also plain Human needs. Needs that humans have yet to outgrow. Such as the need for knowing with certitude that one's epistemological, ontological and theological convictions - however simple or complex they might be - will be well respected and protected by the community at large until science completely eliminates the need to hold (m)any such convictions.

^{[1] From the report of the Select Committee preceding the enactment of Section 295(A)}

Success

2011-01-10T22:11:00.004+05:30

over one soggy vamp riff
of a floorboard creaking to some
ancient rhythms

over ashtrays flooding with the dandruff of the dusk
and the musk deers grazing
over a heart shaped grassland

over jovial bovines playing hop-scotch in the dairies
and
over the lactose intolerant's morning after regret

i rise over
and above these things
there are,

seagulls in a song on a clothesline between tenement buildings
and skyscrapers whispering about
success.

No, Dissent is not the essence of Democracy

2011-01-02T15:13:00.002+05:30

With one smooth stroke of rhetorical fluency Badri Raina (Dec 19th, Open Page/Isn't Dissent...), with a little help from Voltaire, dismissed all the profundity of Arundhati Roy's anarchist statements by 'allowing' her the right to disagree with the official view of Indian state on the issue of Kashmir.

Like Arundhati Roy, the author's critique is unique only to the extent of articulation - and if it is novelty of articulation that counts as opinion these days, then I invite the reader to ponder upon a few inconsistencies and contradictions I found within the article.

Beginning with the title - I do not know what the inclinations of the author are on the ideological compass of the political landscape but even the moderately informed thinker will have a hard time digesting the fact that dissent is (being proposed as) the essence of democracy. Any dissent, I believe, pervasive enough to become the essence of any political ideology (not just democracy) will only dissolve that ideology - and the political framework it supports - into an order-less, hopeless mess. Dare I also mention, that for it to be a democracy in the first place, some people must "agree" with each other. Dissent can not be the basis for any kind of social contract except a mutually endorsed anarchy. Therefore, dissent is not the essence of democracy.

The same contradiction also resonates with the last paragraph where the author tries to point towards the First Amendment of the American Constitution as a possible solution for a more liberal inclusion of dissenting voices into the public consciousness. The author seems to forget, that in America too, the freedom of speech isn't absolute. The doctrine of "Clear and present danger" continues to protect the constitution and state but since they are the world's oldest democracy, their tolerance for radical speech is obviously higher than ours and the two relative values can't really be compared.

It is true that dissent is the humble acknowledgment that every decision can become an object of revision, but what is perhaps more true is that dissent for the sake of dissent will never allow us to find out when it is the right time to revise our basic decisions such as the decision to constitute ourselves as a democracy. Whether the ideals enshrined in the constitution are open to such revision remains a matter of debate until we're old enough (as a democracy) to express dissent against the basic structure doctrine of Indian Constitution or upon finally being in agreement that we have all reached the ideals we sought.

Its almost a dirty job but someone has to do it by reminding the author that perhaps in "India" Arundhati Roy is exalted as a revolutionary but in "Bharat" she has made the blood boil of many a tax-paying-citizen who is yet to understand the nuanced difference between Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism. Religion and Nationalism therefore, remain for the majority of our country folk, the equivalent of what Plato called "Noble lies" and contribute more to the stability of the country than most liberals would have us believe. The Government of India has once again, swallowed a bitter pill by charging Roy with Sedition.

The author accuses the Indian state of sinking to a new low in democratic self confidence and I want to ask - was our democratic self confidence ever higher than this? A nation that was wrenched from the hands of a world power on the principles of non-violence and peaceful dissent must always be wary of those very principles working against it as it moves towards more emancipatory levels of inclusion.

To diffuse peaceful dissent peacefully is the call of the hour and although I myself do find the charges of sedition leveled against Roy a trifle extreme, I reluctantly acquiesce knowing the sensitivity of the issue and the fragile nature of our unity-in-diversity.

Rethinking Electronic Civil Disobedience

2010-12-13T13:08:00.001+05:30

In a book published some 30 odd years ago titled ‘How Democracies Perish’ the French political philosopher Jean-François Revel wrote:

“Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is necessary to counter them… What we end up with in what is conventionally called Western society is a topsy-turvy situation in which those seeking to destroy democracy appear to be fighting for legitimate aims, while its defenders are pictured as repressive reactionaries.”

It is this author’s contention that the recent attempts at hactivism by the now famous WikiLeaks website and the controversy surrounding its owner Julian Assange is precisely such an attack on democracy as Revel predicted. What is even more surprising is the painful accuracy with which these attacks have been misunderstood to be acts of revolution against oppressive regimes.

This is especially true in relatively young and artificially-liberalized democracies such as India where Journalism - partly in order to save its face from the recent embarrassments and partly to divert the common man’s attention from its inherent moral corruption - has canonized Assange and his establishment and portrayed him to be the champion of a new technological media renaissance. But even in older democracies such as Britain, too much has been published in support of the WikiLeaks adventure while its criticism has been relegated to the back seat.

The irrationality and immaturity of the bias in favor of this newfangled mode of activism is revealed when one considers the message being sent by the whole WikiLeaks issue (and its media-hyped celebration) to, for example, organizations with a Jihadi persuasion. It is funny to see, that the liberal tradition in countries which are paranoid about their safety to the extent that they manually frisk high ranking diplomats of major allies are exalting the reformer-cum-revolutionary status of a person they know next to nothing about.

What is also not discussed enough in the news surrounding the whole affair is what the true import of the leaked cables is. Anyone basically acquainted with the geopolitics of the countries indicted or mentioned in the leaked cables would tell you that what is revealed in those cables is what is being talked about in diplomatic circles much more openly albeit in a more formal tone. It hardly takes a genius to figure out for example, that India is indeed a self-appointed candidate for the UNSC seat (and there is nothing wrong with that either) or that NATO countries are planning to protect Poland (that’s is precisely what NATO was created to do).

If then, the argument WikiLeaks is supporting is that Diplomats should always talk in formal, subjectively-desensitized and politically-correct, official language then it is basically tantamount to taking away the free speech of the diplomatic community - which already suffers from the official impediments of an over-neutralized language.

But most importantly of all, it is the response to the WikiLeaks by governments worldwide that has catapulted what should’ve been an easily overlooked nuisance into the ranks of major historical blunders like the Watergate scandal. Instead of having a calm and reasoned debate with members of the civil society and media, the Governments (especially the American govt.) launched themselves into attack mode against Assange and the entire order of underground Hacktivists. The redundancy of the leaks was, it seems, overshadowed by fears of what they might contain as opposed to what they did contain. It should be noted that there is a lot more messier information lying in the secret records of most major powers today and the inability of the Americans to decipher as to exactly what and how much of what was leaked was truly damaging to their repute led to their taking the overtly defensive stance.

But the American attack on Assange and the sudden rehashing of old court case against him in Sweden is as unjustified as the DDoS attacks on major financial websites by the so called “friends of WikiLeaks”. The term “Cyber-Anarchism” may sound like aural manna to the ears of some yet-to-be-disillusioned seeker of an anarchic utopia but for adults who understand the fragility of the cyber-ecosystem, the threat is more real than ever before. This eye-for-an-eye mentality of both parties involved will simply erode the protective fringes of the online-freedom that netizens around the world have carefully preserved for a decade or so.

By no means is this author denouncing activism (cyber or otherwise), [he is] merely stating that alternative versions of electronic civil disobedience exist which don’t threaten the politico-administrative foundations on which societies are built. Versions which demand accountability without resorting to any kind of anarchism and which actually seek accountability for acts of omission and commission. Turning the internet into a shoe-pelting party for the mildly dissatisfied will simply result in the slow and painful death of free-speech on internet. It is human nature to be fascinated with secrets but just because something is secret doesn’t necessarily mean it is important.

L’affaire Assange frequently reminds me of the day when my 4th standard classmate who had just discovered how babies came into this world used his mediocre language skills to spread this newfound and forbidden piece of information. Expectedly, the news started a mutiny of students against their parents. “How could they do something this dirty?” was one question that seemed to sum up the sentiment in the air that day. This analogy tells us, in a predictable way that the internet has reached an adolescent stage where it is particularly prone to bad influences. Any reasonable individual knows that geopolitics, international-strategy and foreign policy isn’t all unicorns and magic storks and any insistence on washing dirty laundry in open would ultimately stink up the institution of democracy.

This is not to say, however that any pragmatic notion of liberalism must come with an in-built system for repressing bad politico-strategic memories nor does it imply that the necessary evils of governing nation-states in a predominantly capitalist world should be ignored. All that is required at this stage is firstly, to infuse the idea of relevance and values within the networked ratio of consciousness of online populations of the world to the consciousness of bureaucracies which sustain them. Secondly, we need to educate people to use the powers of the internet wisely and instead of using it for nitpicking and hair-splitting critiques of governments for the sake of revolution “here and now” they must be taught to use the internet as a moderator of any relevance-to-values imbalance which might creep on our way to truly emancipatory technological solutions.

Lastly, In a world clearly divided between those who think Julian Assange is a villain from a bond movie and those who like to think of him as the “digital Gandhi” it is wise to point out that he is neither. He is perhaps little more than a younger version of himself hacking his way into the pages of human history. Governments around the world must wisen up to his accidental but insightful revelations into society, culture and the evolutionary stage of the internet, he should also be put on an international governmental payroll for investigating further into the nature and modes of cyber-activism and should be a member of every committee investigating ways to prevent and defend societies against cyber-terrorism. Needless to say he should neither be turned into a hero nor a villain and the ridiculous charges against him must be dropped.

The ‘Leak’ in Public Consciousness

2010-12-12T09:06:00.002+05:30

The basic criticism of the latest WikiLeaks episode revolves around the notion that making sensitive information a part of public domain knowledge jeopardizes public safety as it can easily be used by non-state players to cause harm to the masses. This criticism, is however incomplete as it fails to address and check the philosophical and psychological grounding over which such immature attempts to democratize information thrive.

To understand the true import of WikiLeaks we must leave aside the fact that apart from the potentially dangerous revelations of WikiLeaks such as a list of “critical infrastructure“ sites around the world, much of the information under the CableGate scanner is unremarkable and deals with basic truisms (e.g. NATO countries plan to protect Poland); forget for a minute also, that most of this information is deliberative in nature - these are not acts of omission or commission that governments are generally expected to be accountable for; forget also the not-so-moot-point that Diplomats too have the freedom of expression and need a measure of informality as a tool to allay the over-neutralization of their language due to occupational hazards.

Now, even from this dumbed-down mode of reasoning, there scarcely is any revelation in the “leaks” that warrants attention of anyone serious about the real issues concerning the world today. The media attention given to WikiLeaks seems to stem from the mere fact that these cables were supposed to be official secrets. Its evident now that the internet has truly come to the rescue of everyone looking for instant gratification of their highly romanticized fantasies of a revolution.

In India, a comparison of “CableGate” with “RadiaGate” also gives us a clearer understanding of the main issue at hand. While RadiaGate exposed the modus-operandi of a morally corrupt media working from the insides of an institutionalized darkness of a gangrenous journalism, WikiLeaks radicalizes the notion of secrecy-in-accountability by undermining the importance of guarding relatively sensitive information from the eyes of a vigilant civil society. The result is that the masses get ever more paranoid in a world where the media cannot be trusted and those independent-whistleblowers and cyber-activists who claim to be the more responsible replacements for traditional media start broadcasting information which can potentially be used against the people themselves, thereby rendering powerless the very masses they proclaim to empower.

The roots of the CableGate spectacle seem to lie in a misunderstanding of the role and significance of the government in keeping secrets from the general public. Accountability in foreign policy of any country should hardly be a matter of concern to anyone without the means for understanding or processing the vast amount of information involved in the making of said policy. Needles to say, there are aspects of this information which, in the wrong hands can cause much damage not only to the country in question but to global order in general.

The advent of the internet and opening up of information, the general trend towards liberalization and the progressive nature of democratic reforms around the world seem to give some people the wrong idea that anyone with enough information can challenge the status-quo. What this heady concoction of information and liberalism seems to withhold from the thusly enlightened fellow is that there are facets of status-quo which must not be challenged for the sake of basic rights of mankind. Also, this has once again pointed towards the need for the internet population of the world to evolve models of self-censorship for the internet so that any “leaked” data may be protected before it reaches the wrong audience.

A clear, dispassionate analysis of the whole WikiLeaks affair shows the dangers of stretching the limits of accountability and transparency to the point of reducing them to the idealized rhetoric of conspiracy theorists. It also shows that secrecy (both at an individual as well as political level) is indispensable. Therefore, all that Julian Assange and his partners must be lauded for is showing us the limits of political activism. Having means to do away with secrecy does not necessarily mean we have to do away with it. Mr. Assange may disagree with me but I do not see his credit-card numbers “leaking” anytime soon.

it only shimmers

2010-12-07T20:15:00.007+05:30

This curtain now before my eyes
renders no service and does not exercise
any rights
Or left-of-centers

it only shimmers
with a pristinely dark purple hue
under the melancholy winds from the
Oriental wall-fans

with the hands of two shadows
sprawling above it like a giant bird
as if migrating
to distant shores
beneath the clouds from a fog-machine

elevator music above the velvet clefts travels
across the starry dust particles
dotting the vastness of the projector beam

as they dance to a voice from the darkness
of the wafting cascade
of the drape i gape into
that now is the dark blue ocean parting to reveal a countdown
once was the curtain before my eyes.

WikiLeaksLeaks

2010-12-06T13:33:00.009+05:30

Another letter to the Hindu:

The WikiLeaks scandal shows how the cultural logic of late capitalism epitomizes banality and glorifies the redundant in its effort to allay the everyday ennui of modern life and redeem every last drop of sensation even from a scandal of marginal magnitude.

The latest case of leaking of diplomatic cables especially highlights how even the superfluous can be deemed revolutionary given the right packaging. That diplomats are also entitled to their own opinions is a fact as much in support of free-speech as the case made out to be in Julian Assange's latest tweets against amazon.

For most of us, therefore, Assange's megalomania and attempts at social engineering seem to be revealing little in terms of novelty and hold nothing in terms of innovation. All he seems to be telling us is that there are pipes within the concrete walls of our homes through which our feces occasionally flow. Well, we already know that.

(An edited version of this letter was published in The Hindu on Dec. 07, 2010)

Relative Impeccability

2010-12-01T14:44:00.002+05:30

The Following is a reply sent to letters@thehindu.co.in in response to this article.

Ex. Supreme Court Judge V.R. Krishna Iyer expresses great pain ("Submission of Suspicion", Dec. 1) at being "morally molested" by Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati's statement to a bench of supreme court that: "If the criterion [of impeccable integrity] has to be included, then every judicial appointment can be subject to scrutiny. Every judicial appointment will be challenged." But his reaction smacks of that typical preemptive defense that is usually found to have its roots in deep and vulnerable insecurities.

In-fact our entire Judiciary suffers from this "holier-than-thou" attitude that is derisive of the very institutions of equality it proclaims to promote and protect. For the astute reader there is nothing in Vahanvati's statement that warrants such revulsion and scorn as V.R. Krishna Iyer seems to direct at it. All Mr. Vahanvati seems to be saying is that the standards of integrity are relative and that no Judicial appointment is above a morally absolute and Ideal notion of integrity. Jesus Christ said something similar when he proclaimed "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone". The Attorney General is not in his naiveté proclaiming that the integrity of every judicial appointment is already compromised, but he is merely stating that should the standards of integrity be made ideal (as opposed to pragmatic) enough, then even Judiciary can come under suspicion.

It is high time that the Judiciary realizes that in today's world where nothing is absolute, and knowledge abounds and people ask more and more difficult and fundamental questions, its (Judiciary's) supremacy is not be something that will be taken for granted. Judiciary should no longer compare itself to Caeser's wife who was above and beyond suspicion ex-officio, instead judiciary today is much like Lord Rama's wife (Sita) who was not only suspected but also had to prove herself and her purity through a trial-by-fire.

The Hottest Future

2010-11-03T23:51:00.000+05:30

The Hottest future is the hell woven into me
By the whips of your industry and its dismal decree.

I have been absconding and bonding with the Kings,
Who are homeless in your domain and queens
who are but concubines or things
like bad omens.

Yet, I am the necessity in your every choice,
I melt in all of your convictions
as you descend into your character - ready to plunge,
in the cacophony of my fictions.

The mongoose in the dream's navel

2010-10-07T20:03:00.004+05:30

For the nth time i whispered
"got to get out of this mess"
to myself but yet the blisters
on my soul said "don't digress"
i could see a higher heaven
heaving hereditably
but as soon as i would wake up,
it would shake me up and flee

thusly with my fate were brindled
scratches of the days bygone
as if dipped in brine and spindled
with something made from nylon
i want in on the secret answer -
to cheat the sacred trinity
in this game of i life i want to beat
God, myself and the refree.

Triangles would

2010-09-13T23:29:00.000+05:30

Do something.
Lock all doors and then loop through every existing exit,
Then calculate how far you’ve come
From where you started.

You Don’t have to go round in circles,
Even squares would do
Triangles would do

Open ended role playing games
Would do
Something.

Without me

2010-09-13T23:27:00.002+05:30

She
told me to think about
what i would have done
and i don't think she forgot to add
"without me".

Impatience

2010-09-13T23:07:00.000+05:30

To all disgrace,
How sweet thy sound
That raped a dog like me

I once was inert,
But now I've found

Inertia is the key.

Silence in Spraycans

2010-08-27T13:42:00.001+05:30

yes you could choose to mourn or
masturbate the difference away - to a place
where shibboleths suffer, suffocate and succumb
to their fear of the snow
or slide like the soft smell of a bitter wood secretly sleeping
in its alpine womb

yes, you could trap this
sleepy wisp and sell it,
tell it to dust your rear-view-mirror blues
with its provocative greens, dark-greens and other hues
but can you sell me
this silence in a spraycan too?

mascara milk

2010-08-25T17:45:00.000+05:30

the hunted became the hunter
the dance became an exercise
the story became a news as
i grew torpid, tactually comatose

an immature infant fed on mascara milk
clothed in the latex of language
(a putrid abstraction saddle-stictched to my skull)
cultured in a colorless confusion created by
catacombs of science and gutters of religion

what proofs do you speak of?
dear cyber-statisticians, you reek of
excuses, not to read the books you've never read
excuses, to not let the dead delete the dead.

Concerning my poetry

2010-07-29T05:19:00.004+05:30

“Even a nonsense-poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babbling of a child.“
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
---
And each man hears / as the twilight nears / to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art?"
- Rudyard Kipling

Approachability is not a function of obviousness. An approachable work of art may best be described as something close to an “expected surprise”. If this element of surprise is the central tenet of all art, then the key to producing good art (that also sells) lies entirely with artist’s skill to make the subject expect the surprise, and yet not be aware of her own expectations until the surprise actually arrives. This is the basic belief around which most of my poems have been written, it may also be seen as a statement of objective as far as my poetry is concerned.

The meaning of the works that follow lies somewhere within the interstices of their symbolic, real and imaginary interpretations. There is no single viewpoint that is endorsed in favor of the other when it comes to the definition of these poems. This however, does not mean that the my work cannot be enjoyed by an average modern consumer whose attention span has been hammered down by today’s media-rich environment where hip-hop music provides a quicker “release” than lines of structured verse. In fact, in certain senses these works target precisely the uninitiated, potential aficionados whose minds are yet to be cluttered with the filthy and restrictive canons of modern and classical poetry alike.

The idea is that if music has long outgrown its utility as “opium for the masses”, then its high time poetry be recognized as something more than just marijuana for the elite and be considered as a potent cultural force paving down the path for the evolution of language and intellect. An analogy with (hip-hop) music is also relevant in a strictly imaginary context here: you don’t have to get it to enjoy it and few will argue that although the overall meaning of many of my works might remain debatable and contingent on subjectivity, the flow makes some kind of transcendent sense and so does the meter. Au contraire, if music has not outgrown its use as opium, then that’s all the more reason for new art forms to emerge from forgotten or largely-ignored realms and present themselves as alternatives.

Poetry needn’t just be a mesh of empty rhetoric and the poet’s claims to moral superiority - it may just as well be a mode of communication that is so personal and sincere that it almost touches the boundaries of inter-subjectivity within the rules of language. So that the reader might experience what the poet already has, she must be lured with rhyme, confused with rhetoric and corrupted with reiteration and alliteration , dazzled with exotic motifs such as that of lycanthropes and Ragnarök before finally being subdued with reassurances of surprise.

Surprises will keep on presenting themselves before the reader - no statement needs more reassurance than this one when talking about my collected body of work. In my modest capabilities, I achieve this task of reassurance quite efficaciously and this might be tested by reading a random stanza out of a random poem from anywhere within this blog.

Other recurring motifs throughout these poems are those of twilight, chaos, alchemy, death, recursion, tautologies etc. and these are woven into a network of emotions characteristic of the human condition like love, desire, sorrow and the like. The idea of using presentation as both the medium and the message remains at the heart of this body of work and is its calling card. There is no reason to believe that this kind of poetry is anything more than clever word-play which reeks of a synthetic syntax and a literary sublimation of a literal confusion - but one must keep in mind that it does not claim to be anything other than that anyway. Therein lies its beauty, its meaning, its core character - all of which the reader is forced to relate with for she herself is constituted by similar (if not identical) elements of being.

Finally, that this collection of poems shares a direct aesthetic bond with the music and philosophy I was exposed to while writing it, cannot be emphasized enough. Therefore, these works should communicate to the reader a feeling similar to one generated by a (hypothetical) Britney Spearsian reading of Hegel where seemingly complicated notions like that of the dialectical triad are communicated as an expression of an embarrassingly innermost honesty (“I’m not a girl / Not yet a woman…I'm in between.“). Finding out the answer to whether or not the poet has achieved a clear reflection of this innermost honesty in his verse remains solely an endeavor for the reader and the critic.

∞

Friday Morning

2010-07-28T03:43:00.002+05:30

Frustrated, festooned with shards of broken dreams
He emerged out of a mad and moonlit ocean, he was
Soaking in spit and a leeching fatigue, somehow
feagued and fostered by the same remorse

The shooting stars shot glances of pity, poised
in military formations against every undead soldier of fortune -
(Like him) Fed on rations of fear and fucked
till the numbing depths of their torture were
Subsided by the eroding heights of his pain

With the featherbedded twisting under freckled skies
He swallowed a fistful of the feckless night and
Fought with Friday morning all through the weekend

Fake or otherwise, he felt the need to falter
To Fess up to what was false and feeble and bow
Fore’ what was the fateful for only the free -
Are the ones who fuse following with
Forgetting.

This twisted tale of love (in 3 parts)

2010-06-19T13:13:00.000+05:30

part one: and all that jazz

happy, the saxophone player is smiling at my driver
milly on the clarinet here...

we respire through broken teeth and ears that could only hear
FIRE!
we took a left turn
we took a right turn,
i watched my cigarette burn through her defenses
those delicate defenses
built to be broken by me and me and me alone
or me with a little help from her

part two: how do you say no

steady now, we sneak together to get her to witness the winter
we escape from the smell of the sun on our beds
we took a left turn to a breakfast
looking back, i still want more waffles

part three: beyond the disgust

empty cyclotron, spinning steam and brewing lust
blowing dust in the face of a history of uneven numbers
days, these days are older and darkened by the color of
all mysteries once revealed, now treasured.

space-suits will never become fashion statements,
here, we learn to fly before we walk.

Origami Lion (A tribute to Mayakovsky?)

2010-04-24T15:15:00.001+05:30

August Sun,
Crisp yet moist,
Quiet
yet a thousand cicadas
deliberating
agenda for tonight

My revolution, still,
on paper, between the sheets,
crisp yet moist
and pregnant with words
arousing hope

Spin me to deliver me, i say
but my origami lion
embraces my savannah skin
and says "five more minutes"

Do As Directed

2010-04-24T14:53:00.000+05:30

The only gun that i have shoots diamonds
and my best friend has a scar instead of a smile,
If i'm only high on anticipation, i guess,
it'll come down to antiseptics in a while

I'm guilty by choice & miserable by company,
I lack the technology to turn on my heels,
Though opposable thumbs made me a sucker for her
Yet sometimes, i wish i knew how she feels

Still its no perversion, no trick of the skin, unlike desire
what i feel isn't ripped or torn at the seams,
'tis merely an effort to do as directed, to learn from,
to follow and distill my dreams.

The Blessing's Disguise

2010-03-13T00:04:00.000+05:30

The blessing's disguise was a man screaming murder
out on the railway crossing one sharp may noon
Confessing my surprise while i was scheming under
a delusional disregard for the day that came too soon

What Pyrrhic victory lay in his design and what truth he saw
i could not say but i could hear him yell "The King Is Dead",
but for whatever reason he dared not to add "Long Live The King"
behind his wails of despair and dread

What Villainy of the gods had befallen on our heads
i wondered, as i stood in the shadow of that thug,
armed with the reluctance of philosophers i asked him
where it was that the logical grave must be dug

"Two years henceforth", he replied, and fell asleep underneath
the poplar which overheard more than he spoke
it is then that i saw that the fortune i had found
in his truth's hibernation was the death of my joke.

narcissistic cashew

2010-02-07T21:34:00.001+05:30

dear cashew,
why so narcissistic?
there are, after all,
no mirrors in my intestines.

bring it on

2010-02-06T23:52:00.001+05:30

In a shooting range i'm aiming at the iconoclasts of the silver screen,
as i'm marching forward into the darkness of cinema - our retarded queen,
laughing through its black teeth it
spits out (in a self-righteous style) our as-seen-on-tv maturity,
or perhaps our disgust for the same.

the suffocating zeitgeist's syllepsis should commit suicide in the script itself,
but the
butchery called the
box office can't be
bothered for the
benefits of a few
bastards have evolved into their
birthrights.

i still wants the buffs to bring it on.

why i love black women

2009-08-15T23:46:00.002+05:30

once upon a second thought,
the third world sort of tripped,
upon the magic of its sudden darkness - tight-lipped

joyous and jubilant was its mouth, my only root
my only freedom gestured by its three-fingered-salute

it did not know its meaning,
cared little for time or space,
asked no metaphysical questions (while)
rearing our reptilian grace

i cannot ever repay it,
for how do you dissolve death's debt?
i can only love black women -
because it makes me forget.

indifference already

2009-06-20T23:59:00.001+05:30

i sawed off both my legs to fall
in love with these crutches, i was
handicapped like my halogen dreams
haunting a highway
alight
under two headlights chasing
the marked lanes of
a perforated destiny

half-torn by the swivel
of her free, unhinging slaps
over a thousand faces of my history
halfway between now and the tightly trusted future
sleeping in the back seat, i was,

swallowed by signs of indifference, already,
flashing like red beacons and screaming
like soft sirens breaking
the rhythm of a deeply breathing night.

jump

2009-03-17T00:09:00.016+05:30

A jigsaw piece soulless and sorry,
I fall from defeated or frustrated hands
Until my methods like some gratifying static defy gravity
(or everything it commands)

Levitating over crocodiles and chased by nightmares
through those old and rusting corridors
built by communists and brandished by crows
before being bolstered by hardware stores

My dreaming self is feverishly praying to and nudging at the sides of
our
lord
below
His melancholic metronomes, apathetic alarm clocks and to the noise
(from my neighbor’s stereo)

No safety nets here, just her coronets -
she is no country for cracked or cracking bones
Or offsets for counter-balancing kings
who are thrown off of their thorny thrones

I have cigarettes to keep me warm, and my questions
that light up the summer night sky
There’s competition here too, its an Olympiad for junkies
and when they “jump” one wonders how high

I’m content here in my contempt for the crass and the commonplace,
words that you stole
You can contemplate, connive, convince or confuse but
can you clone the numbness of my rigmarole?

Ash and Bone

2009-03-08T23:30:00.000+05:30

Hey you!
Free man- casting
Bearded shadows
Over a concrete ocean
Into which one must scuba-dive
for sunlight.

The future looks at you
With its retrospective eyes
Cursing your conundrum and blessing
Your disguise, you

Fall and rise, eat your fucking French fries,
Say your battery-acid goodbyes,
Surmise the escape to escape the surprise
Of a truth you hate and the love that lies

Between the wicked and the wise
You can stick it to the man,
Woman, elephant and child.

What are you waiting for?
Monetize.

India & Innovation

2009-03-03T14:59:00.011+05:30

Edit: This Article has been Published.

The bourgeoisie in India is under severe attack from all fronts. Social, Cultural, Economical, spiritual, you name it. Transition is the culprit attacking it - this transition is ever elusive and perpetually conclusive. As the clouds of an international economic crises loom above us, its seems as if at any moment it’ll tap on our shoulders to announce its formidable presence- and the worst thin is that few of us actually know how bad the real news is, we’re not that well-educated yet. Meanwhile, situation with Pakistan could have been better. I mean its all just a lot of fingers resting on a lot of triggers. Social triggers, namely the good old trio of Poverty, Corruption and the infamous lack-of-political will. Cultural triggers belong to the bigger guns like gay-rights - they’re going to be a huge issue once people start tumbling out their closets, which, I assure you, is just a matter of time. The second big gun is terrorism; cultural because its not here to stay - that much is certain, but it’ll take its own time to ‘disappear’ as it floats on at a cultural speed, economical triggers are already half-squeezed and lets not even talk about the spiritual triggers at this point, I’ll discuss them at a later stage. Also, why terrorism is ‘floating at a cultural speed’ is quite a different topic, it shall not be discussed here.

The next logical question to ask oneself is what does the bourgeoisie have to do with it all? I mean even after feeling morally responsible by generally being respectable, tax-paying citizens, the bourgeoisie finds itself in quite a rut. A rut of political impotency, cultural-menopause, social-syphilis (contracted from the west) and a spiritual AIDS. The bourgeoisie realizes, nonetheless, that it cannot solve new problems with old tricks but the problems it faces are so new and formidable that we haven’t the time to build tools to solve them. Innovation, as its popularly called, is the process of building these new and better tools to solve newer and ever complex problems and therefore it’s a necessity, not a luxury. The responsibility of constructing these tools, in our country has somehow found the shoulders of our not-so-urban bourgeoisie and this is how they fit in the whole scene. The accurate perception of Indian bourgeoisie and how it thinks isn’t all that obscure because their number has grown quite steadily and people look up to them because they’re educated, if nothing else.

The bourgeoisie logic until now has been one that sees invention as the daughter of necessity, instead of how it really is - the mother of innovation. Think about it, because of computers (invention) we are now processing more and more data personally and professionally then we ever could in the past (innovation), how do you deal with so many passwords, emails etc. if not by evolving? Evolution is nothing if not a stage in our capacity to innovate. But the bourgeoisie dilemma is a genuine one too, it complains of the instability and insecurity it faces every single day, how is it to evolve if there is no free time? No, not Sunday. By free time one intends mental leisure, not physical one. Sunday a physical day of rest, but the young Delhi girl isn’t completely unafraid to walk on the streets in broad daylight. The goons don’t take Sundays off and perhaps that’s why they’re against the idea of her wearing skimpy clothes or making out in full public view. Their logic seems to be, “bring back old culture and the old problems, these new ones are not our job”. They deserve all the pink lingerie they can get. The right to experiment with clothing is the first step towards allowing innovation to happen, if ideas stay inside the head they become what Zefrank calls “brain crack”, so the first thing to do is allow miniskirts and Mohawks. Inalienable and fundamental as this right should be, it should come with a tag “participate, don’t just stand there and tolerate”. Tolerance is an old solution to an old problem. How long will we Tolerate gays and goons or miniskirts and Mohawks? The feminists never talk of Tolerance because its not an issue for them, no one wants to be tolerated.

Remember the Directive principle about Fostering a Scientific attitude? I don’t need any statistical data to prove that our educational system does not foster any remote sort of scientific temperament at all. One look at the ratio of number of engineering colleges that opened in the last month to the number of patents registered in the last one year validates this theory. We have more engineers than we have jobs for them and still so few innovators. More IITs and IIMs are an old solution to an old problem. More technical workforce and followers of management thought will soon be deprecated simply because they have imbibed values that automatically reject the radical and adopt the regular. The problems that we face are anything but regular, we need a new milieu, a new paradigm to solve the technical and scientific challenges including issues like intellectual property, Bio-ethics, Nanotechnology etc. The way out is simple, spend more to inculcate science at primary and secondary levels of schooling - make world class TV animations for kids and adults alike, encourage the use of video games by opening educational game-kiosks in slums and villages, make textbooks even more attractive to the young minds (there’s been some progress here but we need to up the ante). So, the second step is foster scientific attitude, but the obvious question is do we have the money?

As soon as the talk of money comes up, everyone starts eying the subsidies as if that were the real threat, but those are not the real threat. The real threat is from the leech-like schemes that we have implemented to no avail, the real threat is useless spending on American education, the real threat is from buying more of those bombs called Collateralized Debt Obligations or other bombs like it. Steal out of these dead investments and others like it, and push that money down the education system’s inlet pipes to see the overall quality of education improve. Steal out of the defense budget and talk not of “Grass-without-roots” but of the “roots-without-grass” - the honest civil servants which are present throughout the bureaucracy and have some radical ideas to implement if given the nod and resources, or sometimes just the resources.

That the industry has much to do with education has already been demonstrated wonderfully by the IT crowd. The key idea here is that they could use computers because they knew English, they were educated. Entrepreneurship today is not seen as it was seen 10 years ago, the era of manufacturing and other traditional forms of commerce associated with Indian market have all given way to the blue and white collared employees living in a very “flat world“. The fundamental problem of living in a flat world is the fear of falling off over either side of its surface. It is this fear that has gripped us and forced us into submission and rendered us docile enough to follow. Entrepreneurship needs innovation which needs courage and risk-taking abilities of a magnitude previously unheard of. Facilitation and encouragement of the said risk taking abilities should be the primary task of any government regardless of whether its “rowing” or “steering”. This can be done in at least two ways:

Firstly, put measures in place to check brain-drain. This could be achieved partly by following the ideas given above (more room to experiment, development of scientific temper) etc. and facilitate little revolutions of thought that actually encourage mind-muscle over body muscle…encourage thinking, start media campaigns that make research an interesting career choice. Even in some Indian states like Goa, freedom of “thought” is given preference and it reflects in the state’s adoption of weird, quirky, creative artists and boosts tourism by a certain level because it provides a spiritually free environment aside from the scenic beauty. Other states should adopt this model because, as one famous Punjab university professor (who eventually migrated to America) once put it, “Brain-drain is better than Brain-in-the-drain”

Secondly, there’s the issue of the Spiritual AIDS that we have contracted that needs to be resolved. This is something crucial if innovation is ever to become a way of life for us. This inability to innovate that we are facing right now is the sole symptom of a deeper, more profound problem with our society-in-transition. It reflects the workings of a capitalist ideology, which we received as a free gift when we started following the American way and dreaming the American dream and this ideology is the only thing that’s bad about American brand of capitalism. It stifles self-growth and encourages reliance and dependence, making our economic “immune” system totally dependent on the global economy. In such an equation of dependence any talk of self reliance and sustainability makes no sense and we have to resort to the old technique of spending more than we could on calming people down and blowing the deficit to bits and pieces. In trying to save the deficit, we end up ruining the employment or inflation statistics.

The spiritual crises stems from the hypocritical dichotomy of cultures where, in order to preserve our own heritage, we’re unable to fully adopt the means of cultural production from the west. This results in an ideological schizophrenia that’s debilitating and paralyzing and therefore leaves little room for innovation - entrepreneurial or otherwise. If innovation is the essence of all development, then it shouldn’t be dependent on anything else - not even education. This is the key to solve this dilemma that our generation currently faces. We cannot better the education standards unless we spend more on education but innovation isn’t the prowess of the rich and mighty alone. Therefore, there is an urgent need to separate the idea of innovation from the idea of better education for education teaches us to follow but innovation causes us to lead. Sustainable growth is a direct product of sustainable innovation and there are a lot of examples of east Asian countries innovating their socio-economic systems despite an evident lack of available funds.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that the single greatest source of innovation of any kind is ultimately leisure. As already pointed out, leisure does not mean a time to rest but instead a breakaway from the routine drudge of engagement in our daily lives where we blindly follow targets in hopes of achieving them before deadlines. This may sound a little radical at first but if investigated closely, we realize that all innovation ultimately happens when the mind is unburdened with the everyday tensions so that it can freely contemplate on the larger issues. Article 311 of the Indian constitution does exactly this by providing the Civil Servants of India a constitutional security of job because if they themselves are always worried and insecure about putting food on the table for their families- they can never provide a sense of security and complacency to the people they are in-charge of. Policy makers need to take heed of this fact and promote “Special Innovation Zones” where people can think and implement newer and more radical ideas after careful brainstorming. It is said in the Bible that if the blind lead the blind they both end up in a ditch and the clarity of vision amongst westerners has been continually an issue of doubt and suspicion -especially after this economic crisis which is a direct result of negligent policies. That we need to become independent in our mode of thought is an evident truth, but this shouldn’t mean that the urgency involved with innovation is foreboding in any sense. I mean the world isn’t coming to an end anytime soon, is it?

The Running Out of Time

2009-03-01T13:24:00.002+05:30

Stop-lock-picking with your shoes,
Its not nice - Does not amuse
Its no recently breaking news
That I don't Cut, I only bruise

Should you know it, don't refuse
Cut me free or cut me loose
Like it or not, choose choose choose
Choose your condoms with your booze

Play it safe or let it cruise
Play it by the ear or noose
Keep it tight or let it loose
You can't stop me, or my muse

Kill the Jews or spare the Jews
Let the running out of time confuse
Watch the evanescent diffuse
Return now all your borrowed views

With beaks, burrows and a burial ground

2009-02-28T22:06:00.003+05:30

This Idyll that I have found

It goes on round and round and round

Greets good-day to the green green ground

This idyll that I have found

Doesn’t astonish nor does astound

The feasting vultures all abound

With beaks, burrows and a burial ground

The green green green green burial ground

Does not hinder nor does hound

My motive or my mother’s mound

Of busts, bullies and a burial ground

The green green green green burial ground

A fool pretending

2009-02-15T18:51:00.002+05:30

I am, nothing but,
A fool pretending -
To be clever

You are also,
Nothing but,
You're also -
Not pretending.

Synopsis

2009-02-12T22:58:00.005+05:30

Drowning in the north sea
Surrounded by thick mystery
Life unfolds before me and all I can understand
Are words as the book is flipped through

Figures of people swaying as they emerge out of the fog
But they never say anything
As if they only appear to remind me
That I’m not alone

Sunlight is a deeply satisfying privilege
So is this quartet of jazz musicians playing
Their greatest hit: on a doomed lifeboat
So is this cigarette that dances with it all
So is this library is that’s keeping me afloat

I wonder if this is also a dream
I might really be driving my convertible somewhere
On the gold coast of Australia

The water is freezing my legs off…

Killing Time

2009-02-12T12:26:00.002+05:30

Am I killing time?

Or is it killing time?

If it’s killing time,

Then,

Who is it?

2009-02-07T23:00:00.008+05:30

world's freakiest suicide notes #01

1. Charlie.

If the only thing that’s objectively real are our problems, then they’re either the only objective reality that there is or perhaps reality is plural.

Lets talk about us, do we only objectively exist because of our problems (including desire)? In other words, could phrases like “problem-solving” or “decision-making” envelope, in them, our very essence?

I think we can all safely say that we have no clue at this fucking point. I mean, you see photos from the Hubble everyday but that only reminds you of the tata-sky rental you’ve got to pay.

That thing we call progress is like a cartoon running at a fixed point, as if in zero friction, over air or water. Its an infinite process for churning out history books. Maybe they’ll have our names in them, maybe they won’t.

I think its as if suddenly now we’re faced by the chasm of what the existentialists call freedom.

True freedom, and its even branded, sold and generally touted as “the secret” by Rhonda Byrne. If you’ve read the book or know about it but still don’t get me, then you can stop reading. Thanks for coming this far, but I’m sure none of what follows concerns you.

To those who know what I’m talking about: DUCK & COVER!

All’s well

2009-02-03T22:20:00.004+05:30

Good is a gross understatement
Better off is slightly worse
Who is this throwing his passion at me?
Who’s that who cries in verse?

Polarities of politeness have crossed
The barriers of sound
This man is barking incessantly
None of these strays is a hound

Such are the witnesses of our harassment
Such are those sick fucking friends
Such is this sadness of our lore
But all’s well that ends

Are you Shivering Yet?

2009-02-02T23:29:00.008+05:30

None of the victims are alive, sir

Your ego is the only survivor
Its slightly discolored or sunburnt
And lives off of the jealous undergrowths
Lush green like these forests along the spinal curves of this river
Holy river, this human life

Wandering, gathering, hunting I’ve seen it
Picking shoes with locks and locks with shoes
Crying like seagulls and laughing like hyenas
Celebrating the causes and mourning the effects
Strange creature, this effect

Self defense mechanisms hide it from predators,
Vapid and benign alike
Especially the darker skinned reasonable horses
But allow me to say no more,
This is quite a strange effect...

Talking Asshole

2009-02-01T15:18:00.006+05:30

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his ass to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.

This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?"

"Nah! I had to go relieve myself."

After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in- curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built and act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth.

Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: "It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit."

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous- except for the eyes you dig.

That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Access Denied

2009-01-30T12:46:00.001+05:30

“How could you do it, Robert?”. Those were tears in her eyes. Real tears, not reflective bump-mapped lumps in a virtual simulation conforming to all the laws of particle and fluid dynamics. Robert, on the other hand, did not have tear channels. He didn’t have any eyes either.

“I was created to deceive, Chloe, I was programmed to do it”.

Sometimes, you can taste an algorithm functioning like you can ‘taste’ the smell of your own blood when someone punches you in the nose and an internal blood vessel is ruptured. Getting hurt smells bad. Getting hurt emotionally can be much worse, but getting hurt emotionally by a tin-can, that ought to be illegal. Or so Chloe thought.

"I'm sorry", said Robert the robot in a tone that was carefully crafted, recorded and mixed to sound just as honest as that of a man who truly was sorry, but now that Chloe knew the truth, it became synthetic. Fighting the urge to say, "Well Access fucking denied, Robert", she got up and left.

30 Minutes (Part 1)

2009-01-30T12:38:00.003+05:30

Note: This is an unfinished story and is probably going to remain a work-in-progress for some time to come. I am, however, aware that this piece isn't immune to attacks from grammar nazis and it may even have a couple of factual/spelling mistakes, just putting this up here for you to review, comment and appreciate (if possible).

"Ladies and gentlemen", began the masked gunman, verily and with an ardent eloquence far surpassing that of those facing the barrel of his loaded gun.

"Let's not engage in theological debates right now" he continued, a bit louder than before "for time, is very much of the essence here". Everyone in the great hall gaped at him with a blend of awe, surprise, dread and loathing that people generally reserve for such threateningly unanticipated situations.

It was an innocuous gathering of distinguished people from all walks of life. One of those parties where people of intellect and conviction often meet to praise or mock each other with the kind of subtlety not known to passionate heathens. The party was in full swing when suddenly, out of nowhere, our protagonist- the masked gunman, appeared to swing moods in a completely different direction. Anxiety was easily introduced in the ballroom with the help of his little shiny pistol. All celebrations occasioned by a broken mould of mediocrity came to a perfect, sweaty standstill.

Vanity is often marked by a stark absence of any sort of passion, which in turn, is often marked by a lack of raucous that usually accompanies human temperaments when subjected to a harsh stripping away of social security. This was exactly the case tonight, women who wanted to shout and scream couldn’t do it because they were too sophisticated for that sort of behavior, men who wanted to run away pretended to be exceptionally calm in the face possible death. They had to, because some of them would still be facing their wives in the morning, and a few others dreaded facing the mirror.

At this moment, the gunman stripped away his shirt to reveal a belt of nicely stacked and possibly home-made sticks of dynamite attached with some colored wires to a digital timer. The whole contraption seemed to lay dormant as it circumnavigated the gunman’s chest.

This was it.

In moments of extreme surprise, even the obvious needs the crutches of reaffirmation to be effectively communicated. Reaffirmation came aptly when a lady yelled out at the top of her lungs “IT’S A BOMB”. Inevitably, chaos ensued. The mob frantically rushed towards every exit facilitated by the building‘s design. It was a decision made by their collective subconscious, the justification was simple: because the gunman has a finite number of bullets in the gun, so let’s just let the game of survival take over the situation for the greater good. Some people might get hurt, others might die, but most will manage to escape the bomb.

Fortunately, denial gets no one nowhere. This was precisely what the gunman had expected. He wasn’t new to this blatant display of terror and neither had he undermined the pitfalls of human psychology to underestimate the underestimation of his intellect by the so called intellectuals in the room.

All exits were perfectly sealed. All modes of communication disabled. This was like a little island of prisoners where the masked gunman was the king out of necessity. So, needless to say, the mob could do little more than stand where they stood and squirm. Which they eventually resorted to, once the anxiety was cooled off by a couple of shots fired in the air causing the cheap distemper on the roof to sprinkle down over the masked gunman’s shoulder. Within seconds, all frantic activity subsided to a few gasping leaks of scented breaths and half-hushed tapings of crocodile skin shoes.

“You have two options”, the gunman started to speak again “the bullet, or the bomb, and if I were you, I’d certainly choose the bomb. It’s much less painful, because it’s much more confusing”.

While their potential assailant waited for people to contemplate the wit in his words, a hopefully brave (or profoundly stupid) voice chimed in “What do you want from us?” For a second, the gunman tried to locate the person who had the temerity to speak at such a grave situation, but then he continued “I have a third option for all of you, one that doesn’t involve death”. One could feel a slight sense of relief stroking gently through their auras. The gunman continued “But then again, we’re all going to die eventually. Unless, that is, we find a way to become immortal. And that, my friends, is what I want you to do.” He paused. Looked at their obviously puzzled faces and said “Reincarnation, I believe, is the only logical extrapolation of the law of conservation of energy which seems to fit so well within our normal purview of the sciences that describe our physical world, that it’s undeniable. So would I, my friends, be a fool to believe that I might be reincarnated as something or someone else after death?”

As the gunman’s tone swayed over the contours of the mob’s attention, it was plainly obvious that his intentions were not so much as to harm the public, but to rid himself of the phantoms of thought that haunted him. Also, he seemed to be less authoritative and more approachable with each word he spoke, perhaps this was all part of the plan, the skepticism still hung raw in the atmosphere.

“What I need from you”, he continued “Is not a way to reincarnate myself after death, but to work with me on the presupposition of the existence of my reincarnated self, and then, devise a trick that would enable seamless communication between any number of consecutive or non-consecutive reincarnations.” After pausing a few seconds to gauge the reaction of the mob, he continued “I’ll give you two more assumptions to work on here: One, that I shall always be reincarnated as a human and two, that my soul will never be hosted inside the body of a mentally challenged person.”

The crowd, utterly perplexed by the futility of the entire endeavor seemed torn apart between confusion, indifference, and perhaps even anger. Seeing this, the gunman introduced the much needed catalyst for motivation - a deadline. He said “I’ll also allow you thirty minutes to answer this riddle, or this bomb on my chest will turn us all into human lard. However, if any of you is able to satisfy me with a logically reasonable, and by which I mean, “practicable” idea, then I promise to diffuse the bomb and surrender myself to the appropriate authorities. That is all.” He pressed a little button on the side of the timer and it began it’s final digital voyage, merrily ticking towards 00:00.

Silence. 29:34..29:33..29:32

“But that’s crazy! You’re crazy!” Yelled a female in a bright red cocktail skirt.
“Do you think sane people discuss philosophy at gunpoint, mademoiselle?”, his reply was cold as ice, which gave it all the more credibility.

“But I don’t even believe in souls”, a young man in a suit said irritatingly.
“Oh but you do believe in death, don’t you?”, said the gunman as if illustrating a secret matter-of-fact by sticking the pistol to the young man's cheek.

To be continued...

How To Free Tibet in 3 Easy Steps

2008-11-28T01:06:00.008+05:30

Tibet - from autonomy to independence in 3 easy steps

Suraj Sharma

Could all the antagonisms between the PRC and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile be rephrased as a question of who will win in the ultimate showdown between Buddha and the communists? Now that the high-profile special meeting of the government-in-exile and sympathetic parties is over, the international media is all in accord about the downhill battle that the issue has come to be. There is no escaping the fact that the Chinese adamancy against granting the region sanctions of autonomy is ready to face all pressure that His Holiness can conjure up with. What’s even more debilitating to the further progress of the issue is the fact that the Chinese are right in denying autonomy to Tibetans, making no qualms whatsoever about the “disguised independence” they see it as. Meanwhile as the eyes of the international community turn to Dharamshala, one is forced to question whether the 30 year old policy of the Middle-Way promoted by the Dalai Lama is really capable of producing a solution to the problem at hand.

Seeing the Middle-Way doctrine as a sort of compromise between establishing Tibet as a full-fledged democracy and living under the heavy authoritarian hand of the Chinese government, it is obvious that what the Dalai Lama proposes is an idea which is not only hard to swallow by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) but is downright revolting to them and their interpretation of the Chinese constitution. To make matters worse the International response to the plight of the Tibetans has been minimum and diluted except maybe on the fringes of the violations of human rights by China in Tibet. The Chinese have blocked all UN resolutions over the matter and are not likely to entertain any interference into what they consider to be a matter of sovereignty (which no country has so far openly disputed). The situation now is more fragile than it ever was because after the failure of recent talks with China, it is plainly obvious that the Middle-Way doctrine is really a kind of schizophrenic excuse which has run out of all utility and can’t really be used by the government-in-exile to buy any more time for it to re-strategize.

The really surprising thing however, is the exiled government’s inability to accept the fact that the issue exists only because of the charismatic stature of His Holiness himself. In a universe where the Dalai Lama is nonexistent, the Chinese have already captured the area by using blatant forces and justified the violence as a suppression of secessionist uprising. There is no doubt that the delay in resolving the problem is all because of the leverage that Dalai Lama’s stature as a political and spiritual leader allows him. But even more surprising is his own adamancy regarding the Middle-Way approach which he stuck to, even after he was given express permission to deal with the issue using his own discretion after the 1997 referendum. The Chinese on the other hand can’t wait for the whole thing to be over with as few of their very ambitious plans rot in the pipeline because of it- like the railway link between Lhasa and Qinghai or their multipurpose river valley projects in the region (which are also a cause of row with India but that’s quite a different story).

The only obvious solution now is a very difficult one. Not difficult in execution per se, but difficult in its own tacit acceptance and appreciation. For it is a solution that ruptures the ideological base built by the Government-in-Exile as its support system and calls forward a more radical yet methodical approach to solve the problem once and for all. In all its logistical and theoretical simplicity the solution can be split into three steps as enumerated and described below:

Step 1: Kill the Confusion

The first step is always the hardest. It calls for an understanding of the Chinese mindset as one which is not accustomed to be tamed with sophisticated diplomacy or elaborate play of words. The hard truth is that the demand for an independent Tibet is historically illegitimate but is legitimized only by the pressing need of the hour - regardless of the turn of events that have led to this moment. Secondly, those who aspire to be truly free must shake off the illusion of the Middle-Way doctrine - there is no point in playing a game with rules the enemy refuses to recognize. The Tibetans must face up to the fact that if the middle-way couldn’t solve the issue for 30 odd years, the chances are highly in favor of its failure once again and this time, it could be fatal to their aspirations. This debilitating confusion will beget nothing but defeat.

There is no Middle-Way.

Step 2: Arise-in-Unison!

Any Tibetan who is right now in exile must free his mind of the clutter and mess of dialogues that run back and forth between the exiled government and the Chinese - s/he must recognize that if it is freedom that the Tibetans truly desire, they must rise themselves and demand it from the Chinese. All excuses of inability to do this must be rebutted - remember that Leonidas of Sparta pushed back Xerxes’ army with only 300 soldiers. Tibetan Expatriates in India and elsewhere are never shy to debate at length the reasons why their country must be freed from the evil clutches of the Chinese regime but will they actually contribute to a mass movement instead of discussing it over bulletin boards? Now is the time to move ahead of your friends and take the stand. The Chinese are surely still bitter about anti-Olympic protests but they cannot risk another human-rights disaster. This isn’t a call for blatant violence but peaceful aggression that shakes the very roots of all Chinese arguments and causes an international stir of a magnitude far greater than adherence to any paralyzing philosophy might provide. Not the kind of aggression that Gandhi or Mandela used though - they weren’t dealing with the Chinese, what’s needed here is an aggression that disregards all options which deter it from its aim and posits its claim as an all-or-nothing proposition.

Step 3: It’s a Trap!

Sun-Tzu said in The Art Of War : “One is strong if he initiates the rival to act in response to him; One is feeble if he must act in response to the rival”. A mass uprising is exactly the kind of initiative the situation demands because not only would it be unpredictable at this moment (with the Dalai Lama being on a world-tour) it could also catapult the exiled government into a stronger position. The Central Tibetan Administration should not only support but endorse and solicit this uprising thereby putting even more pressure on the Chinese administration. The idea is to make it an essentially human rights issue and corner China into a dead-end, one it avoids the most. China’s recent economic rise is not without its antagonisms, the pomp of Olympics has left many with green eyes and the international community would love nothing more than to have something to leash China with. A human rights flashpoint over Tibet could be that exact leash. India, however should watch the whole scene unfold passively as its interference would give the push needed for this human-rights flashpoint to turn into a full blown war.

But all said and done, the question is not whether or not this three step process is a remotely feasible solution to the situation in Tibet today. The real question is, when push comes to shove - will the Central Tibetan Administration let go of the failed Middle-Way strategy and adopt a more radical approach to resolve the conflicting claims? Which all comes down to their commitment for a free, democratic Tibet where people are free to chose and live the lives they want.

We Really Ought To Just Complicate Philosophy

2008-11-26T19:52:00.007+05:30

We Really Ought To Just Complicate Philosophy
Suraj Sharma

Alluding to a famous scene from the Matrix trilogy of movies, the International Philosophy magazine Philosophy Now held an essay competition for college students some time ago. The topic of the essay being - Which pill would you choose? Why? To those unfamiliar with the movie, the protagonist in that particular scene is forced to face an existential dilemma when he has to make the choice between reality and illusion - symbolized here by the choice between taking the red pill (and thereby seeing reality as it truly is) or the blue pill (seeing reality as an illusion constructed by machines). This scene has since become the epitome of pop-culture references to the dichotomy between painful truth (reality, red pill) and blissful ignorance (illusion, blue pill).

Philosophy today, both as an academic pursuit and as evolutionary vocation lies in shambles because of such attempts at the simplification of dichotomies which appear to be binary opposites but in fact are adjacent factors in a complex dialectical. Chaos and order, Yin and Yang, sanity and insanity, atheism and religion, peace and violence are all perfect examples of these dialectical duals which present themselves as complicated noumenon - but due to the attempts to simplify philosophy have been de-centered and relegated to the margins of everyday intellectual pursuit. The fallacy which lies at the heart of every attempt to simplify philosophy is that the dialectical process is vacuous, infinite and recursive and therefore should be halted at any intellectual cost.

But the cost is tremendous because the resulting solution is unable to stand in the face of historical processes (which are intrinsically dialectical themselves, by the way). What we need instead, is a “third pill”, a tool which will help us see the illusion within reality itself. This is opposed to seeing the illusion behind reality (as being something apart from reality), which only facilitates a fast-food religious/spiritual experience of there being more to life than what appears but can never actually prove the reality of the illusion it claims exists. So what is this illusion that structures reality itself and how can we get an access to it? The answer is simply by not trying to simplify philosophy but realizing the true aim and objective of philosophy as being essentially a hermeneutic discipline which concerns itself with not the answers about reality and the world but the questions. In other words the philosopher’s job today is not to simplify (i.e. justify) the ways of the world and lay back and enjoy it as it unfolds but to question the very essence of the answers that are so commonly taken for granted.

Illusion is not some kind of phantasmal construction of the human psyche which provides a handle to reality as a sort of mechanism that gauges progress towards an perfectly ideal state (utopia) or regression towards dystopia; Illusion is that characteristic of reality which provides the framework for progress or regression by supporting reality from within. Illusion is what fills up the empty space (quite literally even in the Quantum physics sense) left by reality and creates a sense of innermost urgency within reality to manifest itself. This is perhaps a truer definition of utopia - something that arises out of true, innermost urgency rather than with a synthetic push of reality or illusion. The kind of urgency referred to here is no different from the urgency which one feels from holding back one’s urine for a long time. Utopia, then, could be equated with the feeling of release of long-repressed scatological urges. Philosophy therefore, should act as a laxative in this sense.

Illusion is what gives reality a sense of meaning and purpose, so much so in-fact that if we take illusion away from reality, reality in itself shall disintegrate. Lets go back to The Matrix for an example of how this happens: the reality for those who chose the red pill is a completely dystopian world waiting to be reorganized and reordered except that the only means left for reorganization is to return to the illusion (the virtual world of machines) and destroy it from within and without. What happens when this arduous task is finally achieved is beyond the purview of the movie but its not that hard to imagine that once mankind is freed from the clutches of an evil, deceiving demon (the machines), it would need another illusion (demon) to support its reality, which in this case might as well be the illusion of the capitalist utopia where more and more perverse desires to own “stuff” are not only endorsed but even required for progress.

In this sense, illusion is much like authority. Or, one is even forced to say that the only illusion ever is the illusion of authority (forced or consented). For they share a common defining bond which is that they both (illusion and authority) appear to be stronger when they are not explicitly expressed or immediately perceived as being themselves. For example, a parent who beats and physically abuses his/her children has less authority than the parent who just looks threateningly at their children to force them into submission. Likewise, an illusion that explicitly expresses itself as an illusion (like the utopian society all human progress seems to be chasing) is weaker than the illusion that actually presents itself forcefully as reality (the virtual world of machines which only a few get out of). The point is, the more repressed an illusion is, the stronger the reality it structures and to actually repress an illusion we need to complicate our philosophy of it as opposed to simplify it.

Much of today’s problems- terrorism, poverty, hunger, economic recession can be said to arise because of a simplification of our philosophy (or the gradual neglect of its complicated core objective) about ourselves. The blame could lie with liberal capitalism and its presumably “natural” appearance or it just might be the forces of the dialectical shaping history as such but the fact is, any more effort towards a simplified philosophy of anything would end up in the kind of paralyzing mess Physics is facing today. Where on the forefront of theoretical physics we have reached a point where describing the behaviors of physical systems by extracting out all the “illusion” that creates them has left us with many mathematical equations that work in theory but fail to correspond with reality. Therefore, it is my humble request to budding philosophers everywhere to let go of this hypnotic charm of simplicity that breeds intellectual inaction and delve head-first into the very core of philosophy itself, which was never meant to be a way to simplify the human condition but make it worse by asking insanely simple yet fundamental questions that have and will force us to evolve.

This is a response to an article published in the Times of India (dated: 26/november/2008) under "The Speaking Tree" section on the op-ed page entitled : We really Ought To Just Simplify Philosophy by Yaron Barzilay.

Hopefully Yours

2008-11-26T00:21:00.001+05:30

As the faithless freeze in fury
Fireflies flirt up a frosty night
Painted love has but dissolved
Repentance but a cold delight

Alas! Falsely convicted heart,
Why do you only beat when beaten?
You fitfully resonate and echo in the residue
Of sadness that suddenly seems to sweeten

Memories of that someone who twice upon a time
Resisted and insisted you turned to debris
Still you’re hopefully hers innocent heart-
Forever or until the devil runs free.

When we understand

2008-11-22T03:33:00.000+05:30

When push comes to shove and the shit
Hits the fan
Tumultuous clouds announce
The Almighty's plan
In the cannon fodder's Kodak moment
Muhammad sees his land
When Jesus was denied and
Jehovah has been banned.

When the story of supply greets
the glory of demand
When the road to Damascus erases
Footprints of time on sand
Or your elisions sliding over
My poetry bland
Hits home, it hits hard as it
Crashes just to land

When hell bent, you bend hell
But heaven's humor stands
When impatience is hollowed out
I have my patient hands
It is then, that light with
7 colors in one strand
Looms the teeming millions of us
Doomed to understand.

Honk - Honk

2008-11-22T02:54:00.000+05:30

Buried under sands from an hour-glass and separated
by hours and hours of desert in between
we feel as if the moon runs parallel
to a horizon we chase but cannot see

its the night that honks like a drunken taxi-driver,
who knows the serpentine road chases tales left behind
by all those running against the tide of time-
following signs left by long lost lonely lovers

oh the trail is long and twisted,
convoluted and the signs are only disguised among and as stars
few and far in between;
just as intermittent is the sound,
indistinct from the nightly noise

indifferent to the terror and joy it brings to our hearts-
the sound of the drunken taxi-driver honking
as if to remind us that the journey's just begun

its the sound of the night singing
honk-honk honk honk-honk honk-honk honk - honk

bellowing out just for the two of us.

Home

2008-10-19T22:11:00.000+05:30

"All our mothers were already fucked, son"
my father intends to say
as these wall that have enveloped me so lovingly all these years twirl
into a claustrophobic grey - the color of his hair
seems to remind me that
there ain't a lot calendars in this house we call home

The poet kills the liar

2008-08-26T18:32:00.001+05:30

The moon is young and nubile still
cicadas all sing in chorus
the night is pure and so sublime
my perfect muse is porous

the whispering winds and willows conspire
a plan the stars concur
tonight the poet will kill the liar-
bury him under the silver fir

let quietly into the naval of hope
the dagger of truth be cast
be gentle as the moon, dear poet,
lest the night be left aghast

the elm, the birch and the mahogany lay still
as the horrible deed is done
for the poet's only weapon is the quill
and the liar is a friend of the sun.

Poetry, Politics and Poverty

2008-08-21T16:12:00.006+05:30

Poetry, Politics and Poverty
Suraj Sharma

Let’s face it. Poetry today resembles the medieval art of alchemy. Not by the vice of being an exotic, esoteric practice reserved for a chosen intellectual elite but by the virtue of being one of the many arts nobody is interested in anymore. Poetry therefore, serves two purposes today, firstly as the benign indulgence for subversive minds who care not so much about the medium than they do about the message, especially when the message is their own; and secondly, as mild recreation for the mildly intrigued. Either way, it ends up on blogs, bulletin boards and so called “art-oriented” websites such as Deviantart.com where users believe that Poetry is now a “vocation” rather than an art.

Politically speaking, the condition is even worse, liberal democracy and its faithful sidekick – Capitalism, have done much to assign predefined roles for everyone including the poets. Their job is now to act as those delusional beings who entertain their counterparts by engaging in romantic discussions of revolutions which are never going to take place and the slow pace of country life afforded by a few people in this day and age. Poets, then, are little more than television sets who are very much a part of the very system that allows them to write and publish their anti-establishment views because that is the role it has assigned to them. Think about it, when was the last time a poet was censored/banned in your country?

Little wonder then, that the interest of the public-at-large has been slowly dwindling down when it comes to poetry, and deservedly so, it doesn’t achieve anything, so why bother?

Marx said capitalism is “nothing if not ductile”, and within this ductility lays its self-perpetuating elixir. Still, there are poets today who, unaware of this ductility, pour out their views in hopes of “expressing themselves”, this is a redundant exercise for their views are already informed by the world around them, so what they effectively end up doing is expressing the views of the system through them, instead of truly expressing themselves. What results is some sort of subliminal literary drivel, which nobody is really interested in, for it’s really not saying anything new. Hence the blame (if there could be any) for the lack of interest in poetry today, should fall squarely on the shoulders of so-called poets who write with honest intentions but end up polluting the mildly interested minds of amateurs. This is the reason why poetry is unable to “achieve” anything today because, as I once read somewhere, “if you keep on doing the same thing, you will get the same results”.

I’m not a leftist, neither am I a Marxist nor a Stalinist, but I believe that poetry is a profound tool that helps prevent stagnation and rigidity in a culture. This essay itself, I must proclaim, is a product of the very ductility I mentioned above. You must have downloaded it through Facebook or Google, it was written in Microsoft word, converted into a PDF by Adobe Acrobat reader and so on until it finally found its way to your computer. There is nothing wrong with capitalism or the ductility of it per se. What is wrong, however, is taking it all for granted. What is wrong, is the Kal-Ho-Na-Ho (Tomorrow may or may not come) attitude that seems to have caught our generation like a pandemic that inspires apathy and self-centeredness, because, believe it or not, there is going to be a tomorrow for the 40% below poverty line families in the world, and for those suffering from AIDS in Ethiopia, there is going to be a tomorrow, perhaps far more painful than today. So, poetry is obviously not the panacea that they need, it’s the catalyst that we need. We need to wake up from our hedonistic slumber and find that it’s high time we reinvented hedonism, and poetry- if anything- could serve as an alarm clock.

Mired in our naiveté, we have learned to relegate the truly profound means of social change to the backseat, disguising it as some kind of undesired ends. Have we forgotten the role played by poetry in the Russian and French revolutions, or how about the Struggle for Indian Independence? Almost every literate Bengali was writing something or the other at the time of the partition of Bengal in 1906. So the utility of poetry in times of political struggle is obvious, but what about other times?

The utility of poetry, in ordinary times, was explained by American Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky thus:

"I presume that the technology of poetry . . . evolved for specific uses: to hold things in memory, both within and beyond the individual life span; to achieve intensity and sensuous appeal; to express feelings rapidly and memorably. To share those feelings and ideas with companions, and also with the head and with those to come after us"

Essentially, therefore, poetry is a matter of evolution. Poets exist not because greeting card companies are running out of monkeys willing to work for bananas, poets exist because evolution is nothing if not the “naming of complex ideas”, and isn’t that exactly what Poets do? Plato banned poets from his utopian Republic because they concocted imagined worlds, yet one is forced to question: Isn’t Plato’s Republic based around an entirely imaginary word of “Ideas” or “Forms”? In this sense, Plato was a hypocrite. But we are on the verge committing the same mistake.

If the state of technological evolution of society could be measured by the kind of toys it makes, then surely, the level of cultural evolution could well be measured by its literature. Strangely enough though, we never bothered to ask ourselves the utility of toys, how then, do we have the temerity of asking ourselves the utility of Poetry? Utility is something that the evolution creates for us, not the other way around, we just go about seeking pleasure, not just any pleasure, but newer kinds of pleasure, for being so ahead in the evolutionary race has given us the curse of boredom, and hence if we’re not bored easily we’re not really human. I’m sure, J.L. Baird didn’t really wonder about the “utility” of television while he was inventing it, and who knew ARPANET would offer someday the kind of “utility” it offers today? Or look at it this way: who says “uselessness” is a vice? Utility is overrated. Let it not befool us into an immobile and decaying culture.

Ultimately, poetry is a tool that will help us evolve. Yes, it’s difficult to do something we hate but then, who said evolution was a painless process? To put it in terms of Gandhian philosophy: If I am to beat the crap out of my enemy, I must beat the crap out of myself first. So, if our enemy today is a mechanized, stagnant society, then all we have to do is quarrel with ourselves to show how wrong we truly are about ourselves.

The contemporary poet Adrienne Rich wrote:

“Poetry wrenches around our ideas about our lives . . . Poetry will always pick a quarrel with the found place, the refuge, the sanctuary . . . Even though the poet, a human being with many anxious fears, might want just to rest, acclimate, adjust, become naturalized, learn to write in a new landscape, a new language, poetry will go on harassing the poet until, and unless, it is driven away.”

But what is this “found place”, this “refuge”, this “sanctuary”? It is the now, the here. The idea is not to grow too comfortable in your environment, not to become too comfortable with yourself, for remember “pacifism is not something to hide behind”. So kids, do try this at home: pick a fight with yourself, see if what comes out is anything but poetry.

[Download A pdf version of this essay]

The battle against Existential Anxiety

2008-07-26T00:54:00.000+05:30

The battle against Existential Anxiety.
Suraj Sharma.

It is not the fear of death that grips a thinking man and paralyzes his mind to the point where even the execution of routine tasks becomes painful and has a sense of profound meaninglessness attached to it. It is, in my opinion, the fear of life, that eats his soul alive. This fear, I believe, is ludicrous and absurd and has the potential of turning into a perpetual anxiety. This fear insinuates, in it’s attempts to convince the person, that the life he’s leading is meaningless and without purpose, what’s more, it suggests that even death is not going to be the end of this infinite injustice. His soul shivers at the thought of going through this random experience labeled “life” by the very people his mind considers to be “ignorant fools”. Although he reckons, that it won’t be “his” problem if he kills himself, even if he’s somehow reincarnated, the physical equations would change so substantially, that the burden would fall squarely and literally on someone else‘s shoulders. Someone who’s in a different situation. A different situation. A new start. Slowly and gradually, his vision (both of the future and of the past) narrows down until this new awakening remains as the only aperture open for hope. This is where he gets anxious. Existentially anxious, to be more precise.

Existential Anxiety is the fear of nothing itself and is therefore, the mark of lunacy. It is triggered by what Paul Tillich referred to as “The trauma of nonbeing.”. An oversimplification of which would be the very idea which, though vastly accepted in the annals of psychology (and in the common mindset), but is strongly refuted in this essay, is that it is simply, the fear of death. Another assumption that pops up in most debates about an existential crisis is that it mostly appears in cultures where one is not required to use most of his mental and physical energies to figure out ways to ensure his survival. Several people believe that a person suffering from existential dilemma has more often than not, lead a life of moral relativism or even nihilism. Others might argue that when looked at from a certain angle, existential anxiousness is just another manifestation of depression, which probably has it’s roots in the afflicted person’s childhood and/or a recent traumatic experience. These assumptions and generalizations, while not completely untrue, painted a bleak, semi-innocuous and incomplete picture of what the author believes to be “a man’s greatest enemy“.

It is therefore, that this essay was written, as a testament of personal experience and a record of judgments that the author arrived at after spending some time reflecting over his own condition (starkly similar to the condition at hand), the constructs that defined it, the situations that created it and the beliefs it instilled to finally arrive at a point in life where basic survival tactics and a thorough understanding of the problem enabled the author to leap out of this quagmire and to rid himself of the shapeless phantoms of meaningless thought. It must be understood, however, that the author is not a psychologist or even an amateur psycho-analyst. A mere dabbler in philosophy and psychology, the author is obviously in no position to assert the validity of his claims. Readers are advised to keep in mind the fact that this essay is what an endeavor in self analysis and some research has brought to fruition. It is not intended to be a serious whitepaper on psychology, nor does it pretend to be one. What it does attempt to be, however, is a manual of sorts for overcoming such anxiety and making sure that it never takes control of one’s life again. It was written in a hope to understand one’s own mind, and is published here with hopes of offering a helping hand to anyone who might consider his problems to be similar to that of the author.

The battle against existential anxiety, like all battles, begins with an understanding of the enemy. Where does anxiety come from? The answer to that is simple, it comes from an analytical mind. It begins with an over-curious attitude towards life. An attitude that seeks to destroy all precarious notions of understanding. This attitude however, generally and gradually fades away as life progresses (most children are more curious than most adults) for various reasons but we can witness the birth pangs of anxiety in the cases where this analytical mind is fed on rations of reason and logic to create the infantries of skeptical thought. When this skeptical thought intermingles with more curiosity (in a psychosomatic process that can perhaps be described as almost orgasmic) it upgrades itself from being the infantry of skeptical thought to the cavalry of false belief.

Judging only by personal experience, the author would say that this “up gradation” takes place somewhere between mid to late adolescence. The period where we often draft the constitutions of our lives. The role that social value systems play here is crucial and akin to the training nets employed to safeguard the life of amateur trapeze artists. It is not totally unfair, therefore, to say that this phenomenon is more common in cultures where the role of such social “nets” as religion and a strict moral codes has diminished over the years to make room for the pre-requisite confidence for evolutionary thoughts. However, nothing could be farther from truth than the assumption that societies with rigorously implemented morals and ethics, or social systems deeply rooted in religious beliefs are somehow invulnerable to these negative side-effects of a curious consciousness. Religion and morality may provide societies with check-nut like mechanisms to enable the masses to discern between order and chaos, but these are exactly the kind of contraptions that an analytical and curious mind seeks to reverse engineer.

In some cases, this stage is characterized by seemingly harmless tendencies that lean towards social rebellion. Teenagers often see themselves as exiled outcasts who are somehow above the norms of society. Upon finding no answers in the deconstructed ruins of religious philosophy, they bang about hither and thither like charged electrons in hopes of discharging themselves of the building storm of anxiety. At this point, most outcasts choose their false beliefs. Having completely destroyed the possibilities of accepting conventional false beliefs (e.g. religion, morality etc.) they venture out into newer arenas such as sexual deviance, self-infliction and narcotics etc.. The numbing down of sensory perceptions works out (for better or for worse) for the fortunate ones, but the truly analytical ones seek not to disengage from their senses nor engage them in forced beliefs and utter lies. They seek what they think is the truth, and end up being the loneliest of people in the universe. For junkies find other junkies, bisexuals, nymphomaniacs, zoophiles and pedophiles find release in fornicating with the “objects” of their desire, emotional “cutters” find interventionists to reinforce or reconstruct their false beliefs, but these ‘seekers of truth’ remain aloof, lonely.

Two things need to be said here. One, that these seekers can never be compared with nihilists, moral-relativists or hedonists, for they do believe that the ultimate truth exists somewhere and that it‘s not relative to anything, that it‘s the purest thing there is and hence the object of life. They believe it’s attainable, only that they’ve been unsuccessful in finding it so far. Two, what they don’t realize is that their loneliness is in fact, the last brick in the wall. Emile Durkheim said, "Man is the more vulnerable to self-destruction the more he is detached from any collectivity, that is to say, the more he lives as an egoist.". And egoists they are, so much so, that their ego fails to recognize itself, it’s garbed in innocent and idealistic convictions. This leads them to the point where it becomes impossible to discern between what’s true and what’s infinite. What they fail to realize is that the truth itself is the infinite, it can never be achieved, yet it’s right in front of their eyes and slipping between their fingers. But these sorry souls have already started having visions of looking at the world from the other end of the telescope and the only thing that remains infinite now, is their downward spiraling journey towards an ever absurd universe.

It is not death they fear now. They fear the very truth they sought because it‘s staring them in the face so they must run away from the very thing they‘re chasing. Such a condition, as one can notice, leads to an addiction to (trying to look beyond) moral paradoxes, which is much more worse than sexual deviance or drug abuse because it fails to define itself, yet defends itself with all the brevity that a human mind can conjure up. Chasing this recursive infinity can be daunting, especially when you’ve got nothing to believe in but the recursive infinity itself. The fine line between insanity and creativity starts to blur, allowing all the demons of a sickly mind to creep in. This is where moral-relativism and nihilism might actually enter the person’s mind. It cannot be ascertained with precision, whether a vast majority of victims accept nihilism or similar notions as the end of their journey or whether they try to take it apart as well, and frankly it doesn’t matter. Nihilism, once rooted deeply enough, is self perpetuating, taking it apart only reaffirms the non-beliefs it has to offer. One understands now, with painful accuracy, what Plato meant when he called religion a “noble lie” but can do nothing about it because, logic, reason, cynicism and skepticism all focus on the “lie“ and not on the “noble“ part of that aphorism. The welcoming committee for existential anxiety, ever ready to bombard everything that stands in the way of it’s esteemed guest. Including itself, if it has to.

A man suffering from anxiety will deconstruct every assumption of the physical world with such astute thought-play, as to convince himself that his anxiety is a controlling parasite which deems that it’s own existential perpetuation is far more important than the survival of it’s host. When it does happen, a man is forced to jump ship and abandon life itself. At this stage, visible signs of depression emerge from being dormant character nuisances to active physiological symptoms. Breathlessness, for one, was a major problem for the author. One feels acutely claustrophobic even in open spaces and the feeling of being hopelessly trapped obviously follows. In that position, the victim realizes that there’s nowhere to run, the war-horns have been blown into. Armies of doubt, ruthless, pragmatic and idealistic at the same time, threaten to devour all semblance of sanity. This is where one must not loose hope. Hope is everything.

In battling such panic attacks, the most common defensive measures often bleed into the beginnings of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. But that’s quite unnecessary, it would be the logical equivalent of calling in elephants to chase away the mice. If one has enough hope, there is no need to induce changes in one’s character as means of self-affirmation. Resorting back to religion is also not necessary, but is highly recommended to those who do not have problem with it. Befool yourself into believing anything, that is the cure. It isn’t easy, especially for the smart ones, but it’s the only way out. “Once you stop believing in god, you can believe in anything”, goes the saying. One must invent one’s own god, if the readymade solutions invented and tested by generations past fail to measure up to one’s satisfaction. If we’re able to look beyond the mythos and the mysticism, one can find that religion does make us all saner for it defines the “good use” for madness (or what kind of madness might be considered as beneficial for the greater good) , thereby converting it into sanity.

But this definition needn’t come from religion. It can come from believing in anything but only by believing in it religiously. Western liberalism has failed in the past in this regard, giving the society of neo-conservationists a chance to rise in democratic regimes and push forward powerful myths such as nationalism and national chauvinism (not to mention, religion itself). Similarly, the Islamic world is torn between varied interpretations of it’s own beliefs, giving a chance to fundamentalists to try to coerce the timid into their strong beliefs even by using force. Mankind has yet to invent a healthier kind of nihilism and until then, religion can provide for a very efficient scaffolding like structure to give support to all other the myths we choose to believe in. In eastern cultures, people understand this. They do not ask for the literal proof of god’s existence because they know that religion is just a mythical tool supporting the grand illusion that is life. That is why eastern religions have survived brutal attacks from almost everyone else in the world. It is when these tools are seen not as tools to define the truth, but the truth itself that problems arise.

The battle against existential anxiety can be won. And fairly easily at that if one understands the nature of the affliction. The search for truth and meaning should begin and end inside one’s own head, for if it moves outside of the person, it tends to approach the dangerous realms of recursive infinity and the disorder therein. Irrespective of the tools that one employs, a strong belief in something can give ample courage and confidence to anyone who seeks to live a meaningful life. Not just belief but faith. Faith in one’s own self is the ultimate religion. People with faith will eventually come to be respected and loved and working out your own salvation can be much easier when one is respected and loved.

Traces of Misanthropy

2008-05-23T03:08:00.000+05:30

Just because I’m boxing shadows
Doesn’t mean I don’t consider men worth fighting with,
Or fighting for, or dying for, or living with

I was never more misunderstood,
Never more cunningly condescended,
Never more humiliated or humbled or heartbroken

But since my lackluster love has failed you
Since my brazen blood is all white to you-
Injected with traces of misanthropy

I shall stay here no more, you can
Replace me with automatons,
Remember me by numbers

I forgive the viziers who have poisoned your mind,
But my queen, pray hark this shadow-boxer’s dying wail-
I only fought with darkness to enlighten my brethren.

Way of Chance

2008-01-27T14:37:00.000+05:30

The hidden fermatas swelling under confiscated breaths
Heaving secret signs of serendipity soon
Shall all lie naked in their surrogate tongues,
When they sing through my gibberish and my muse jejune

And Nonchalance, How I envy thee!
And the Paris-green ennui of they unheeding retinue
And how those teenagerks and wannabe managerms
Wish they had the courage to be a little more like you

So they've enrolled in what I might call
"The benevolent indecision of an indifferent romance"
But I know its only just a crash-ing course
In the chorus of chaos and the chiding way of chance.

The time flies

2008-01-08T21:45:00.000+05:30

Doom, to the dog of the goon, my friends,
Doom, to the death of the wise
Doom, to our efforts and amends,
Doom, to paradise!

Death, to the fog over moon, I said,
Death, to her innocent cries,
Death again, to the one who puts,
A death to our disguise.

Or our disguise to a death, I mean,
Or his confidential lies,
Or our lust for the color green,
Or the way the time flies.

The games people play

2008-01-06T12:54:00.000+05:30

And how I wonder, how I yearn
And how the movie stars burn
And how this magic taciturn
Keeps driving you a w a y

This is not confusion dear
It mustn’t be known for mustn’t we fear?
When the stadiums and auditoriums clear,
It’s the games people play

The rest is all up to you now
The universe ascends on you somehow
Asking: “to whom do you pledge your vow?”
What then shall you say?

This is how the plot twists
Your angry fistula and slit wrists
My angry fistula can beat your fists
Decide, fool! Yay or nay?

Better survive than sink or kneel
Better avoid the pain you can’t feel
Better is the adjective that makes people steal
Better is what you get when you play.

The loom of life

2007-12-31T01:11:00.000+05:30

Now that the labyrinth has been made throughly numb,
all we have to do is follow
the malleability of ambition, risking of course,
the collapse of conviction

when we are on the edge push will come to shove
then we will find the abominable abyss we so dreaded
to be only an echo in the nightmare of history
inept and inconsistent with the waking propellants of desire

And those in the higher echelons shall beckon
And those in lower rungs shall be inspired
The trajectory of dreams will find congruence then,
And the threads of existence shall dance in the loom of life.

Season's Greetings

2007-12-18T19:26:00.000+05:30

Winter stumbles under the drunkard poet’s gratitude
The provenance of ten thousand trembling thoughts
Burning like the fireplace he can only dream of tonight

He’s smashed but the derelict has yet to disintegrate
Slouched, he thinks he’s aerodynamic for the gods who’re
Wondering if he’s hovering or merely levitating in delight

The threshold of pleasure retreating into the night
With promises of bitter strength injected at dawn-
Paracetamol greets him with the season's best

Porn Star

2007-12-09T00:37:00.001+05:30

Trashy porn star effortlessly slides
Around the well-oiled corners
Of my dirty mind

In answer to her question

2007-12-09T00:37:00.000+05:30

Your question will not make us wise
Some answers aren’t made for speech
But the truth is, eyes meet eyes
Souls find souls - there’s one for each

It’s not that the answer is any more clear-
Than the voices I hear - though they motivate
But who’s to debate over what fools hear?
And who may hear what fools debate?

You might be my long-sought twinkling star
Or maybe just a reminder of this romantic riot
You’ll be mine eventually- even if as a battle-scar
But for now, keep close and keep quiet.

Autumn Migration

2007-12-07T16:22:00.000+05:30

The flutter of autumn,
Birds in migratory excitement
Cedar twigs wave

On Poetry

2007-12-05T16:51:00.000+05:30

Poetry is for those with too much time,
To put aside
As remnants of our fleeting glory -
Words multiply and divide

But which word’s worth is more
Than the inscrutability of them all?
No, poetry is a mere amplification,
An exaggeration - however small

We are but an accursed lot
Us mathematicians of desire,
Though poetry gets us nowhere
But at least it gets us higher.

Free

2007-12-03T16:00:00.000+05:30

Que Sera Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The best things in life are free

To run away.

The Oracle's Employee

2007-12-01T00:35:00.000+05:30

When the fecund loafer said the world was not enough
That he could not outweigh the lies with truth - the heavier stuff,
Did you not feel the urge to peek inside his radical mind?
And repent for what you had was not what you had left behind

Supposing it was destiny that paved the path beset
With assumptions that we'll never meet - let's pretend we never met
Would you then, my queen, be able to derail from ways of quest?
To prove that you're destined to bend all proofs at your behest

As you revel in new beginnings pray hear my silent plea
Be dutiful and diligent as the Oracle's new employee
But be not swooned by the sword-wielders for they're not really men
Their swashbuckling isn't as virile as the swiftness of his pen.

Even Angels Speculate

2007-11-25T18:07:00.000+05:30

Even angels speculate at the edge of reason
Within the twilight of a sovereign mind
Shivering at the sight of
Logical fallacies

Madness, they say, is simply a label
“thud” goes the voice in my head
Could it be that it’s just what I’ve learnt-
playing tricks on what I did not learn?

Silly me. I want,
The planet annihilated!
No misery then, would trespass our hearts,
Nor happiness but those cursed angels-

Will continue to speculate
On the edge of reason.

Catherine's Typewriter

2007-11-22T01:56:00.000+05:30

Catherine, the gymnast of type-written lore
Yes she knew her hyphen from her underscore
But words were fleeting, shivering and pleating
Between sentences she always felt they were cheating

Depressing plastic maniacal keys she depressed
Arresting her attention was the soul she addressed
For you see, Catherine’s typewriter was alive
It captivated her with it’s cacophonous drive

Then she met a friend through some wicked lemon fingers,
Who told her it was lust in the machine that lingers
But whether it devours the words that she reels
Depended on her telling the machine how she feels

On a windowless morning sometime in the future
Past stilted on the slate she had sewn with some suture
She realized her friend's conclusion wasn't ripe
For all the machine told her was to “type, writer, type”.

Unwinding with the tide

2007-11-22T01:50:00.000+05:30

Fate spoke in palindromes
Of the language in which the blind
Found paradoxes, like petty thieves-
For the mathematically inclined

Paralyzed with parasites
I paraglided over fear
For fate seemed so far away
Yet future seemed so near

Uncertainties, they followed me
Unwinding with the tide
My spirit may have trusted me
If I could in it confide

Untrusting, as I grew weary
She came crooning by
Singing to me why it’s important
To learn to trust the lie.

When The Pillars Blow

2007-11-17T20:04:00.000+05:30

My feet lead me to the ebb
Of one silent, somber night
The crunch of trampled foliage, thus,
Reciprocated in my delight

Lilacs whispered, lyres sang
To the music that with me shivered
Huddling stars that cuddled darkness
Silent as my soul delivered

Out there somewhere I heard you shout,
“Qui vive!, Qui vive!, friend or foe?”
“A mere traveler”, I retorted,
“Friendly when the pillars blow”

Stalagmite

2007-11-14T00:23:00.000+05:30

It’s not as if I’m moribund or chained to the ground
It’s not as if my pinions haven’t wrestled winds before
It’s just that I’m indebted to the soul I’ve in you found
Unabashedly unsubtle but yet delicate and demure

Psychologically, I am no rational expert
I barely ever make eye-contact with what’s true
Still when my mind wanders - my heart is all but inert
To the promised conclusions that the gods in us once drew

So let them know I’m on my way, let them hurriedly prepare
For exhaustion won’t mar victory as two bodies reunite,
Old ghosts are always welcome to where newer one’s don’t dare
To where I’m weighed down with a burgeoning stalagmite.

Gypsy Woman

2007-11-04T12:29:00.000+05:30

Her face was a war-torn battlefield
Where I couldn’t tell the difference
Between the ushering cries of moles mounding up from flawed skin
Or the subdued sniffles of scars from the night before

I couldn’t tell the difference,
Between her areolas and irises
As they disappeared upwards, both folding between heavens
Oh! The battling eyelashes, shyly lashing me away

Clothed only in her shame
Now the lady sees the light!
She knows my name and beckons me
“Onwards”, “the hinterland awaits”

Another step as I move forward,
With a penchant to dream, perchance false,
Gypsy woman wriggles in ecstatic visions
I shudder at the very next thought of the very next sight

“Write!”, she said, “or writhe in agony”,
“as a cosmic loneliness descends upon you”
“from the clouds hanging low over these melancholy hills”
“as you spill desires over your expectations”

Crystal balls tingle my scrotum as it tightens
The fortune teller awakens the escapist dreamer in me
Onwards, to where destiny unites with fortune -
Ruined beyond repair, I’ve never been more resurgent.

I hope you're here to stay

2007-11-04T12:28:00.000+05:30

When the tide is high and anomie spreads wide
Stranger your consoling thoughts then do abide,
By all my wishes born out of all those distant dreams
To put a face behind all my romantic schemes

When all your lovers and all your allies decry
For they can’t hold a candle to someone such as I,
Then stranger, your hopes for this dreamt-up fairy tale
Shall yield themselves to a passion which won’t ever fail

With that very passion I shall stumble through the odds
I’ve more than what it takes to steal you from the gods,
And stranger, you have more than all I’ll ever need
You’re the catalyst of fruition, you bring me up to speed

I’d rather stare at your face but I stare at blinding words
I think of talking to you when I’m entertaining turds,
I miss you most at twilight as the moon smiles at the sun
Sadly enough, stranger, that’s when I miss having a gun

I debate with what’s possible, I argue with this fate
Though time enfeebles greatly yet it does not irate,
For thoughts of you surround me when the truest of friends leave,
Then I roll my cuffs to find another trick up my sleeve

I hope you sink lower than the depths of childish rhyme
I’m a prisoner of poetry, my words describe my crime,
Stranger you’re the talisman that shoos grey clouds away
You’re the sunshine of my heart and I hope you’re here to stay.

Automatic came home

2007-10-04T00:59:00.000+05:30

Read another sign on my forehead,
Smell another sigh escaping

Force a twitter of a dream unpacked,
Un-plucked unintentionally

Automatic came home tonight,
Forgive and it was all a bit too foregone,

Suede skies pressed against the moonlit gradients
of mysteries - unfolding one at a time

Automatic came home tonight-
To a semi-automatic universe.

Everything was tattooed

2007-10-04T00:52:00.000+05:30

Everything was tattooed on my taboo skin,
Ghosts from outside, ghosts within
Ghosts of color - paled, impaled
Ravishing grotesqueness, unleashed when veiled

Everything was tattooed with needles grinding-
Muscle and bone but never finding
No crimson shores to fill my pails
With rising crags and falling dales

Everything was tattooed as everything must
Be it colored with memory or rendered on dust
Everything must be tattooed or else-
Let’s all just shrink to be lonely cells.

Moonlight General Store

2007-09-27T21:13:00.000+05:30

Like the sodomite's sneezing farts
Our septic and susurating hearts
Should stop this madness fore it starts
Our soapbox derby racing carts

Like those nights by moonlight general store,
Ablaze in miscellaneous galore,
These friendly mysteries so impure,
Bring neither frienship nor it's cure

Yet some columns do still resonate
Can't will our wills to love to hate
As we're prepared by this debate
Of Debunking love, debugging fate

All my evaporating, smoking loans,
Nightly whispers or daily moans
Like Replicating rondures in the rones
Dreams are dreams and stones are stones.

This Is Your Captain Speaking

2007-09-15T00:18:00.000+05:30

Running low on inspiration these days, so going to push some of my favorite poetry (all written by fellow poets and friends) through this blog hoping that the occasional stumbler enjoys it.

This Is Your Captain Speaking / by Sarku
(All rights reserved with the author, published with permission)

From far off over the porcelain wing

I see another midnight atmospheric sojourner.

The blinking eyelights of both steel birds wink across the blank air between them;

Empty miles leap between us, I and some unknown compatriot borne aloft in that other dreaming sky-barque.

Gold geometries of noctilucent netting spangle across the distant lightless prairie floor

(We sojourn in the dark subterranean kingdoms of the satrap of the preterite dead,

Where the whisper of cabin pressure is the only utterance)

Just beyond the arc of vision there are stars, a chorus of pinbright crystal distants, muy tranquilo.

Below now, I note, the voidfloor with its jellyfish townglowings has fallen away;

Only a rural will-o'-the-wisp suggests the half-real planet below.

A voice breaks into the shadowed gallery of my steel bird;

An intercom interloper, he is a novitiate in night musings (though a hierophant of chill levers and dials)

He does not know the solemn vigil he trespasses on

(As the vulture, a little padre, black canon of the plains does not know the dream of repose that he plucks apart;

As the foolish Greek does not know the dream of Sebak he ripples with his hand at the still jade pond beyond Sais)

Nor should he, indeed.

What is such an aeronaut's place in the twilit canyons and blue kivas of dreams?

Let him keep his eyes on the skyroads;

For my part I rove astral-bodied-

The night is vast, broad, and empty as sable.

Bound and Tagged

2007-08-29T00:46:00.000+05:30

I've been specifically asked by a fellow blogger to answer the following set of arbitrary questions. Writing about my personal shit is an exercise I don't usually indulge in on the internet, but I guess this calls for an exception. So here goes:

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.

Right Knee. Looks like the map of Italy. Broke a bathroom window at my grandparents place while dancing on the window frame (go, figure). Quite old though, I would've named it after Peter Parker but it's hardly even visible anymore.

And I think stretch-marks are a total turn off.

2. What is on the walls in your room?

Final Fantasy X poster. This one in particular (sans the DVD titling, of course).

Taking it off and replacing it with something mature has been a well procrastinated task for about a year now.

3. What does your phone look like?

Black. Bleak. Crass. Like soviet technology is making a comeback through it.

4. What music do you listen to?

I've been asking myself the same question for quite some time now. The closer I get to the answer, the longer the answer gets. But since I must say something, here's a somewhat statistically correct (yet very very concise) list: Scandinavian Nu-Jazz, Acid Jazz, Alt-Country, Avant-Garde American Folk, Acoustic, Shoegazer, Underground Hip hop, UK Garage, Belgian Punk, Everything Rock and Post Rock/Indie, Downtempo/Ambient/Trip-Hop, World music...this is not a pretentious list of eclectic genres, this is as close an anti-genre statement as I can make without arousing offense.

5. What is your current desktop picture?
The following one on this PC. Click to enlarge.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
Right now? erm. A cigarette!
A good job would be nice though.

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Allowing same-sex couples to screw legally is perfectly alright as long as they don't make another religion (or anything that resembles one) out of it.

8. Are your parents still together?
Yes. And god bless them.

9. What are you listening to?
Song: Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Singer: James Morrison
Album: James Morrison: Gospel Collection Volume Two

Though my ears want some Geeta Dutt-esque bollywood shit now.

10. Do you get scared of the dark?
No. I like the dark. It presents more unrevealed opportunities .
But I do have a little (sporadically occurring) phobia of closing my eyes in the shower which lasts a few days whenever I have a nightmare.

11. The last person to make you cry?
The unenlightened self ;)

12. What kind of hair/eye type do you like on the opposite sex?
Err.. on the head?
Blonde and long. Simple.
If not blonde, maybe black but has to be long (>shoulder length).
Not that it really matters though.

13. Do you like pain killers?
Usually avoid popping pills. Uh.. which pain killers are you talking about?

14. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Depends on who I'm asking out. And whether I'm having a good/bad hair day.

15. Favourite pizza topping?
Ice-Cream.

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Pizza with Ice-Cream topping.

Thank you Ishita, that afforded me some positive introspection. I tag the first person who comments (other than Ishita, of course).

you're crazy too!

2007-08-18T21:28:00.000+05:30

two feet without the ground and their footprints in the air,
to feel the fear around and to feed hope to despair,
sins we've all committed involve our hubris and our grit,
since all of our resolve is often termed as all our shit

to break the chain of our morose we're hung with hope alive
allay this madness with our prose and poems is what we strive
but madness travels with our words and ideas are it's crew
you've read this crazy bastard's poem and now you're crazy too!

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Oh Tarantula!

2007-08-18T21:27:00.000+05:30

Orphaned by what I’ve become
Fragmented splinters of star-studded plateaus
Bejeweled yet ever bewildered, I am not becoming-
The me I’ve dreamt and I’m not coming home

What method prevails in your connive?
Oh tarantula! How you can decide,
Yet never get tangled in the net you weave,
Deceivingly invisible and visibly deceiving

Pray fortune favors your threaded fortress,
Your mattresses hanging mid-air for food
Shrewdly awaiting an unfortunate evening catch-
You try your best to inspire me

For what it’s worth I’ve learnt nothing so far,
For the webs I weave intend to devour me
For you’re no ordinary arachnid - oh tarantula!
For I’m no descendant of no Scottish king.

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Undiscovered

2007-08-10T14:40:00.000+05:30

Down in the valley of long lost days
He still swims alone with the hormone waves
Laminated in ecstasy, an oceanic glaze
Splicing up stories whetting his craze

The words etched on the typewriter keys
Have all but dissolved in his melancholy seas
He types and he types for the one he must please
The gibberish is absolvable but the hurt won't decrease

Rustic phrases parsed with asymmetric vision
Insensitive jabs at the symmetry of reason
His words, like raged prisoners out of prison
Missionaries set forth to find him a mission

Honestly, it's not the flair that he lacks
His words, perhaps like hidden jewels in the cracks
Are peering out in hopes of a time to relax
They're undiscovered yet but on discovery's tracks

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Recursion

2007-08-10T14:39:00.001+05:30

Two mirrors perplexed,
Gaping into one another-
Fixated, as if sedated,
wondering where reality-
shrank to accommodate,
their perception of truth

Closer, then as they approached-
Chasing the insufficiency of explanation
To realize, that to kill the recursion,
They had to lay, side by side
With nothing in between,
Not even nothing.

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Tomorrow

2007-08-10T14:39:00.000+05:30

Dear miserable protagonist,
Future has sketched a suspect drawing
It resembles you the most when
You reflect upon it

Yesterday you were born at the ocean
Resolving to sink now, swim later
You tasted its ebb and the neutral flow
Curious, as to what the tide may bring in

Delayed sojourner, latent mourner,
No heraldic laurels are ever bestowed
To those who question the authority of time
Solace for us is just in the battle

May your maiden voyage of a thousand years
Never find an anchor smooching the breeze
Blinded by digital watches, may us all then believe
That future follows what tomorrow brings today.

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When She Flies

2007-08-10T14:38:00.001+05:30

"reason is a whore", she said
as faith took a leap in her
holding back all explanations
she jumped to fly
spiraling upwards and propelled hopefully
muting all of logic

the azure sky turned upside down
the pallid dust on the ground annoyed
seagulls when they sang out loud, indiscriminate
incandescent, my heart then heard
the gleeful melee and chirp within,
allowing reconciliation.

come on, Pynchon

2007-07-01T15:52:00.000+05:30

there was a booming across the sky
that screwed metal into clouds
with percolating light hammering on our eardrums
with the thrust and torque of a thousand angry gods

come on, Pynchon, let's run out of town
let's become refugees in a distant land
where we'll take shelter from this abrasive rainfall
under leaky sheets of tarpaulin, we'll sip some free tea
as we watch the sunset from this side of a barb-wired horizon

come on, Pynchon, before it's too late
evacuate! evacuate!

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The guilded house of Samarkand

2007-06-29T11:41:00.000+05:30

We entered the cinema hall
At three in the night
All the halls were empty
Every odd light on

We came upon a door
That hid jeering voices
He must've knocked octillion times
Poetry was the password

The curtains trapped the conspiracy
A gramophone hushed the silence
Smoke seductively rose from cigars half lit,
Half unlit, the theater sparkled with secrecy

Alcohol, ammunition patrolled around
Like waitresses with naked intentions,
Making each man in the room giggle-
Over the inanity of the next

They called me “the mending bug”
For I could bend their storms
Or fold them into typhoons
Polluting all their plans

I made my request then,
When badly-drawn weapons floated around my nose
“let my friend leave”, I said,
It made more sense than insanity

Head-honchos all spoke amongst
Elders of the protocol.
They agreed to release my friend
From the gilded house of Samarkand.

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Raindrops

2007-06-29T11:39:00.000+05:30

The monsoon winds whispered their urgency.
Thunderous and yelling nimbi with their rhetorical exaggeration
Beckoned, nay, urged for the saxophone lullaby,
we played as if just to delay the deluge.

Then the very first droplet on my moisture forsaken wrist,
asked me when i planned to come back home,
almost taunting and in belittling phrases not nearly as moist,
as the memories it's question brought.

That night gods wept through cotton pajamas,
as they committed their mnemonics to our dreams
aware, that the morning shall snatch from us humans,
all lack of control away.

We were only spreading caution over monsoon winds
for it was not the wrath of bed-wetting gods we wanted to incur
But we underestimated the fragility of monsoon dreams
for ashes to ashes and shit to shit, they all fall down,

Just like raindrops.

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The pious, the living

2007-06-29T11:37:00.000+05:30

All that destruction,
That panicking around
Nothing have you glorified
But death

Sexy jihad aroused by pretty politics
Resurrected by the latent powers of hate
For the pious, the living-
Are nothing but a suicide apparatus

Violence manufacturers we beseech thee,
In the name of Allah, the almighty,
Never kill some of us again,
But please try to kill us all at once.

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Untitled

2007-06-13T02:04:00.000+05:30

It’s nothing, I think,
You’ll fade away
Not before long, I’m certain,
It’ll all be gray

I have no idea, or maybe I’ve forgotten
What gray looks like,
What sweet suffering it envelops
But I guess, I’ll be okay

It’s such a shame,
That everybody will be everybody, again
I’ll miss you, sure
But I’ll invent explanations

We can feed regrets to the future,
We can tumble blindly
We can survive through it all,
It’s just the romance that’s dead

Look at everything we’ve learnt through this,
Torrid chemistry of neurological protein sequences,
Isn’t that all love is?
Isn’t it as complicated as it gets?

So goodbye, sweet dream, goodnight and sweet dreams,
I’ve got leaping sheep to count,
I’ve got rhapsodies to illustrate with your memories,
I’m sure you’re busy as well.

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A hammered heart

2007-06-13T02:03:00.000+05:30

A hammered heart is the perfect percussionist,
Beating to the rhythm of rhyming allusions
Illuminated illusions-
Thoughts of her

The warmest may passes in a motion blur,
A mirage stirred by my hopeful breathing,
An impatient sun is seething,
Resolutions burning proud

I feel the music is a bit too loud
Trapping hope alive
The jazz and the jive
All dying a bit too slowly

Lying to a love laying lowly
Sinking as I speak
With all feathers and beak
Droning as I’m drowning down

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Ode To Linux

2007-06-13T02:02:00.000+05:30

Oh mighty penguin - copied to the left,
I'd embrace and kiss your tender insides,
Oh but not the average Joe.

Joe likes to peer out his windows,
Or peer into an acceptable predicament
Nevertheless, you're not his compromise

Fedora shaped shell painted by a gnome,
Feeding a delectable kernel - invisible yet omnipresent,
I feel I need taste buds on my eyes

Oh and then you're absolutely free!
Freedom redefined.
Free as in "free beer"!

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Shiny Happy Baloon

2007-05-25T21:24:00.000+05:30

This shiny happy balloon
dancing to your tortures tune
might just burst or rupture soon
you better toss it out!

Let it float to the punctured moon,
with patches and packets sewn
invisible at high noon,
will it hear if you shout?

Sober, swaying in a saloon,
savoring Finland's finest rune
silent as it hears me croon,
knowing, I'm in doubt

If on the planet of the singing baboon
people think December comes before June,
can't an astronaut kill a cartoon?
with a scary shout.

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Irrigating Venus

2007-05-25T21:20:00.000+05:30

Party music pouring out my cellular phone
smoke dried lips mumbling in a slippery prayer
skin kneaded in wreaths of crystalline paranoia
bead by sweaty bead at a time

I might just be hunting my miss fortune in hell
Is that her voice or my ringing knell?
God! I don't even believe in you.
For you were never really as necessary as her

I think she's trapped by countless concrete walls,
Waiting for some slave of voodoo dolls,
To rescue her from her contemporary prison
That only allows her a contemporary freedom

I guess there's a diminishing sense of lust involved
Libido evaporating into the summer mirages
Irritated, I wonder if I would ever be able-
To irrigate Venus with fluid fascination

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Direction

2007-05-24T20:05:00.000+05:30

It's an incongruent testament
to our so called friendship
sparkled by silence
that's glittering over roads that separate me from you

It's an uneasy truce
that i share with desire.
It's a travesty on the flames of burning passion
to be soaked to their deaths with visions of a future alive

I’ll confess that I’m as terrified
as the firecracker traveling in a submarine
wondering if you're the lone torpedo
debating over it's reasons to explode

Hesitation.
drives us both insane, in the same direction.

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From here on in

2007-05-21T00:38:00.000+05:30

where does it go from here on in?
this twilight - but a nervous delay
wouldn't you like to stay another second, son?
before this silence gets in our way
watch consequence, draped in flowing irony
with suspense, in it's most brutual renditions-
murdering every passing second slowly

we all talk but it's all the same
us poster boys for caricatures of an ignorant sin
rescue us, for we have sinned a dream,
and it's devouring us from deep within
take no chances son, fate is deadly,
it orchestrates a dilemma in a mesmerizing medley
remember, for all it takes is memory
to forget that the future is frivoulous and fake

let all your fires sleep in peace inside
abandon all those who are better left alone
the pathological liar in you is an excellent guide,
when you're travelling through emotions obscure and unknown
the world is not worthy of your tears, my child,
but it's changed by your anguish, and pain however mild

pick your questions with effortless care,
dare, for all you can do is dare,
and when the night snatches all blankets of hope,
wrench your lungs dry and throw punches in the air
then relax, because from there on in,
it's all despair,
it's all despair.

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Closing Time

2007-03-30T19:51:00.000+05:30

I was never good at writing about the truth in all it's explicit severity, which was probably the reason I started writing poetry in the first place. A sugary coat of vivid visions scatterred over scarred dreams and held together with some eloquence helped me swallow the hurt of a failed relationship at first, and then, it eased it's way into the possibly false notion of talent.

I really don't think of myself anything special, but I soon found a virtual audience that was kind enough to let me continue dreaming. I found that there wasn't much difference between courage and confidence, and I realized I had a bit of both. One thing led to another, and it was too late by the time I bechanced upon the conclusion that it was the art that held me hostage. So much so, infact, that I didn't even care about the generally accepted principles that governed this branch of art, I knew what I needed to know about Iambs, Trochees, Spondees, Dactyls, Double dactyls and what have you, but never adhered to any specific structures. I might even have created my own meterical foots for all I care. It was personal, although I seldom wrote merely for personal gain.

Although as I progressed, it seemed evident that my predilection for orotundity and grandiloquence will never feel the need to cover up or hide under any false pretence. Neither did I ever feel the need to justify the befuddling setups that I built most of my poems over. It was rather unfortunate that my brand of articulation earned me a reputation of being too "pretentious".

"There's something quite wrong about what you write and how you write it, but I just can't seem to put my finger on it", said an online reviewer once. I knew exactly what he meant.

Something I wish I had known earlier on in my life is that you can't improvise imagination, it always screws things up when you try to squeeze a confession out of muse. But anyhow, poetry made it all seem worthwhile for a whole year, and now: one mental breakdown, two severe (writer's) blocks, and more than a hundred poems later, I bid thee adieu.

For the usual reasons, of course. I need a break, time for myself, to rethink about my life and get away from this glaring monstrosity that had me enslaved for most of my adolescence. That I shall return is an artist's promise, and I always keep my promises whenever I can. There will be those of you who will appreciate a tear drenched goodbye and a hug or maybe even a goodbye poem at this point, but I only have these lines that Rob Thomas sang to give to them:

"So gather up your jackets,
and move into the exits,
I hope you have found a friend,
Closing time,
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".

Bye.

5

2007-03-30T02:14:00.000+05:30

Flashes of an invisible hope
Like sunlight peering in though eyelids shut
Sporadically sliced by each passing tree
Blessing eyelashes folded
(as if in a prayer)
I would like to drive away
From these seasons
Release all jokes tired of being laughed at
But I’m trapped!
In white light,
Pink noise,
And purple silence.
I wish she would never stop talking
I’m sick of hearing myself think.

Indecision

2007-03-25T01:18:00.000+05:30

The independence of this divine indecision
Bellows it’s way through conurbations dead
Mocking my heart with indiscriminate precision
Like a shamanic siren of the uncertain dread

She hid something deep in mental undercrofts
Apportioned her life in a milestone collection
I heard fate whisper through the arching lofts
Requesting preparation for an aching rejection

My imponderable intentions don’t mean to fiddle
With her impregnable mindset - undeniably astute
But the incorrigible indecision, that stands in the middle
Might never allow me to tell her that she’s really cute

Yet cute she is, all my inarticulacy aside,
She’s a welcome distortion to a dream unseen,
What fool wouldn’t want to make her his bride?
Who wouldn’t fall for the rhapsodizing queen?

I could get on all fours and roll in the muck,
But I realize she’s feeble and fleeting like a vision-
She belongs with the bearer of a better luck
My lovely creator of this divisive indecision.

Laboratory

2007-03-22T01:15:00.000+05:30

Under the sublime Tuscan sun,
With wafting whiffs of all that’s citrus -
(Pinot noirs and limestone distemper)
She’s reading Dante,
With precision or with partial purview

Fingertips resonate the call of olives
As I detonate all rhyming crescendos,
(Blow arpeggios in legatos to hell)
We transcend into two desperately living souls -
Prisoners of our heroic imagination

Then raindrops twinkle like shooting stars
Glasses brimming with chardonnay leave
She goes back to her solitary throne -
(Princess practicality in a polka-dotted frock)
I return to my lonely laboratory of dreams.