Rant after a bad day on the road

No really, I am up to my nose with these pestering gits who pass off as drivers in this city. Every day they pile on the roads like abysmal shadows of death in their cars of every shape, size and color and infest the roads and the peace of my mind. They do not have any sense of discipline or decorum.


On top of that the traffic police in their ridiculous white hats are THE most clueless people that ever walked the planet. They casually wave their arms on both directions of the road for cars to come forward, and, horror of horrors, they do! And when, as general logic and a bit of common sense would suggest, when cars from both ends of the road come forward there inevitably follows a snarl which takes a long long time to unwind. What I do not understand is what these guys are thinking giving rise to this insensible clutter each morning, only to be jumping around a crossing with inimitable enthusiasm beating their baton on bonnets and flailing their arms. Is this some kind of morning sport that they particularly enjoy?

And do not even get me started on those darn bikes. With young ones in tow, the youngsters wearing helmets which are decidedly their father’s (who is not wearing one and letting the breeze do the magic on the hair), or the mother’s who is not on the bike. I wonder what the effectiveness of the helmet is after all, I feel it is in averting the fine which the police might levy for each head on the bike without a helmet. So these bikes pour into cracks like water. They do. They reach the stop sign near the signal as if pied piper was luring them, it’s bizarre.

Pedestrians: They seem to be a resilient specie, jumping fearlessly in front of Volvo buses. Why don’t we send a few of these daredevils to the army?

Soul/Shell

Just another morning

Drowning in tea
Sleep’s languor
Perched on my eyelids
Zombie walking
In the dark room
Fluid motions
A kaleidoscope

Pinks and blues
May play in the sky
This house is empty
A person stays here
Walks. Breathes. Eats.
The clock also ticks

Butterfly’s cocoon
Chicken’s eggshell
This house
My oyster shell

Another time

This fool of a head
It thinks too much of everything
It dreams of things that’ll never be

It was not fairy dust
It was the neon lights all over the town
They were not stars
Only prying eyes curiously peering down

Spread eagled on a busy road
Dreams busted
As were the bones

Every one saw the tears
Hands came ahead to wipe
No one saw how my
Broken heart did cry

Smog eating at the lungs
Whips cutting rivers on the skin
Sun was ash that day

Clouds were cigarette induced
They made patterns on the arm

Dogs are not pets in this world
They are there to chase

Godless
Loveless
Lightless

Heartbroken
This fool of a head
Still dreams
Dreams of another day

Of yellow sun
And mellow rains

In your face..

Mortality is a concept you think of more by the passing year.


Just as those greys start appearing out of nowhere you think what is the point of this relentless running. Where is this voyage supposed to take us? Is it supposed to take us anywhere at all? Or is it just the journey. I am not hunting metaphors, but meaning. I am searching, I have stumbled on a few pebbles till now, I am waiting to hit the rock. But do I have to go around the world or do I have to look at all the chambers of my soul? I know not.

The journey is worthwhile, I will give it that much: unpredictable, often mercurial, it is everything you want and not want all rolled into one.

And we are the zombies walking from one weekend to the next, the worst in us shines forth. Fairytales are a distant dream and the truth with it’s icy hands hold our slender necks stronger and stronger still, till none of the mess people generally resort to in a bid to forget pain or stall cheer, can hold to ransom the fated day when we are wiped off the face of the earth like muddy water from the floor.

Is that our destination the? A brooding and long wait for that day? It is a dismal journey then I must say.

If on the way we are not alone, if on the way someone holds your hand, lovingly and longingly, that itself is the journey’s greatest truth. Not riding the ladder and being alone on top, not being on a pedestal and condescending on the mediocre lot, but being among the many, mingling and spreading happiness is the key to combat this mortality. Not being overtly famous or rich but touching lives so that even if you are not there, you are remembered, and your memory brings a smile.

In your face, Death.

Ash

The color of the day was ash. Vision was blurred by the continuous downpour lashing against the window. I was alone.

It was a perfect day to watch a series of movies with no breaks so much so that by the time you reached the third movie your head would buzz. It was the perfect day to lie in bed and stare at the rains. It was the perfect day to curl up on the bean bag with your favorite book.

But the heart longed for company.

Why is it that the heart invariably longs for that which is unavailable? Why is that that the heart does not understand borders and timelines?

I could also get up and open that new recipe book. Whip up an exotic dish may be. Perhaps surprise myself in the process. Or I could walk out to the terrace and get my soul drenched.

Instead I chose to lie on my bed, with my head hanging, my eyes wandering as far as it could beyond the glass. Watching the incessant whiplash of the merciless rain. Stabbing relentlessly till my eyes gave up and blinked.

The color of the day was ash. My head was a blur.

Untitled

There comes a time in your life when you need to simply sit back and take a break. Generally we are always running. Recently I came across the most beautiful metaphor which a friend used to describe our lives in general to gym; he said an average day in the life of any human being is nothing short of a breathtaking session on a treadmill. We run a lot, but we cover no distance at all. At least when we hit the gym we have the kick of losing weight!
We are stuck in the same morbid schedule day in day out. Are we really going anywhere with this? Promise, I have a point. So when I was part off this limbo, I used to think What is the point of all this, why could I not have a life where I could pace out things according to my liking etc etc. Then, an inevitable moment of epiphany followed, and I took a break. Now here's the thing about taking breaks, they just sound great, but the really are the most boring thing ever. Not even a week in to the "break" I was rearing to get back into that big ugly world off work. I need that adrenaline of getting up late in the morning, almost making it in time, gulping down breakfast, scampering to the desk. Lazing around the couch all day with a television and a book and every other mode of classic entertainment at disposal just does not turn me on!
I am sitting on the most comfortable couch. I do not even as much as have to raise my finger for a job to get done. There is a brilliant view from the balcony with majestic Eucalyptus trees waving in the breeze. Huge tracts of land lay bare till infinity. And if this was a two day break from work I would have loved all off these things. I would have absolutely loved them and would not want to part from them ever. But the fact is that I am not satisfied when I have an enormous amount of time to spend here, not knowing when it will end.
Does this say something about me or something about the human condition in general, where people are just not satisfied. It is not as if they are not happy; that they are, but satisfied? No, never.
So here I am in that phase of my life when I have some time on my hand and I could do all those things that I have always wanted to do, like write or paint or read War and Peace, but no, I do not do them. I do not live in this moment but wonder of what is to happen in the next. Perhaps not a very prudent approach, but what the hell, that's how life goes on.

Black Swan

Safely, one of the most disturbing and depressing movies I have watched in a long time. There are times when you simply cannot sit back and appreciate a work of art neutrally. You are taken up in one swift whirlwind motion and thrown into the midst of a complex plot, which is obviously removed from your life, your surroundings, your society, the work you do or even the person that you are; yet you feel that a particular character - in this case, the protagonist - is so much similar to you.

However, that said and done, Black Swan is an exquisite work of art. It is not a sparkling diamond perhaps, that is to say that it is not the undying classic you would watch again and again, but it is definitely a striking crystal.
Watching this movie was a very different kind of experience. There are times you watch a movie expecting it to be something and it turns out to something very different, which actually surprises and pleases you –this was one of those times. I watched the movie prior to the Academy awards so I was unaware of the critical acclaim that it would eventually enjoy. To be very honest, I did not have very high expectations of Natalie Portman; but, my, was I proved wrong and how! As the crests and troughs of the movie unfolded, I was totally taken into this vortex of emotional turmoil that Nina, the protagonist, was going through.

Portman’s portrayal of the obsessive ballet dancer was absolutely amazing. Nina is the epitome of the child who is bent under the parent’s expectations. Only here she not only handles the stress of the expectations of her mother, who is a not-so-successful ballet enthusiast herself, but also her own expectations to be the best. The mechanical dancing girl by her bedside is a true replica of Nina as she is constantly wound up by her mother and driven to perform better and better still. In one emotional crest she reaches out and smashes the dancing girl to pieces in a foolhardy attempt to retrieve her life.

She fights for her place in the troupe with the seductress peer played impressively by Mila Kunis, she fights for her place at home with her mother. At the troupe she struggles playing the dual roles of the white swan and the black swan. Nina is the proverbial white swan, the fragile virgin beauty –she plays the white swan perfectly. However, when it comes to the black swan she falters. She does not know how to seduce men, she cannot be the siren who the Prince would “like to fuck”. In her real life, things are a bit different. She has no privacy in her own home. Though she wants million eyes to look at her in adoration when she is on stage, she shies away from the eyes of her mother at home. She is no virgin, but she has to play the good girl at home. The white swan-black swan duality of the Tchaikovsky piece transcends Nina’s ballet practice and flows into her life so much so that the boundaries of reality and stage begin to blur.

She is fiercely competitive. Though Nina reminds me of the child-woman in Doll’s House at times when she is innocently asking for a chance to play the princess in the performance, we know she is no child. She knows fully well that she is filling in the positions of the erstwhile lead of the troupe. Winona Ryder puts in a sharp cameo as the fading star who is being spurned by the company for a fresher and younger face.

On the night before the grand performance Nina breaks free from her mother’s shackles on a hallucinatory sojourn with her peer and competitor in the dark underbelly of the city’s nightlife. The morning after she finds her world slipping away from her hands, her companion of the night before is almost ready to usurp her place. We see the real Nina only in the final stage performance. As the uninhibited black swan, she has come into her own. She does not falter to grab and kiss the man who has humiliated her for weeks as being frigid and leave him breathless. She does not falter to look her mother straight in the eye. She does not even falter to stab the person who stands in her way, which eventually turns out to be herself.

Nina’s fight with her inner demons does not leave her victorious, or does it?

I was depressed after watching the movie. I had expected it to be the underdog-winning-the-day sort of a movie, where the shy girl who cannot play the seducing black swan finally is able to portray the part brilliantly because of her coming into her own in her personal life. However, it turned out to be something else. Yes, she does finally find her independence, but it is brutally short-lived, quite literally. She is finally suffocated by her Argus-mother who looks on at her final moments being seated among the audience.