mascara milk

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

“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

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)

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?)

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

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

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

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

bring it on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Synopsis

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

Am I killing time?

Or is it killing time?

If it’s killing time,

Then,

Who is it?

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!

C.

All’s well

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?

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

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

“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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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The games people play

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

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.

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