The ridiculous and the sublime?

There is this phrase that goes, referring to certain situations,- the ridiculous and the sublime ; hinting at what’s mundane in any bourgeois life and what actually passes by as another moment in an ocean of momentous actions . However , it is only in retrospect, that we generally frame and glorify , mystify and demystify the moment or event. In retrospect, everything plays with a delay, of lets say for expression sake,  5 seconds. Every act plays out like a scene and those who can see well , amuse themselves of the frivolity that passes them by. Like many wise men say, one has to laugh it all away. Like Chaplin did with his stark satire, like the quadriplegic Ramon in the movie ‘The sea inside’ has learnt to cry by smiling. Even the gravest moment can, in fact, be turned upside down to seem like the most absurd and ironical comical situation. That is the wonderful machine the human mind has made itself to be. The mix and match of the ridiculous and the sublime create a delicious mocktail for us to savour.

For instance , the movie ‘Little miss sunshine’ and ‘Jerry Maguire’ are full of such satires of bourgeois life. Little miss sunshine evolves around a mediocre middle class Albuquerque based American family with an apparently assertive father who always counsels about winners and leaders. Then there comes the moment when the little one of the house is short listed for a beauty pageant , he makes the painful decision of agreeing to it against his personal disinclination. Their journey takes its bizarre turns and twists of idiosyncrasies and black humour; what with a drug abusive grandfather, a gay suicidal uncle , a teenage rebel who has stopped talking for good, and the father with an obsessive compulsive winner’s disorder along with their defunct lime coloured van which needs to be pushed around all the way.

Whether it is the girl dedicating her stripper ‘s dance number on stage to her granddad who is in the trunk of their car (dead);or whether it is the moment when the son walks out in the middle of their journey and only comes back after a little hug from his sister, the movie has brilliant moments of sublimity suspended unseemingly into the middle class routine.

Jerry Maguire with its popular hero, Tom Cruise plays on a more Hollywoodish note , with a corporate set up but nevertheless weighs down with similar ridiculities not to ignore the faithful golden fish flipper who remains faithful till the end.

While , in this case, the situations play out on a guilt-free platter for the ordinary viewer to sit back , watch and laugh, in the former case the viewer feels a tad guilty beforehe can laugh at any of the situations because he knows very well, how the situation may feel in all its actualities.

There is a scene in the recent Bollywood flick ‘Fashion’ , where a cocaine addict super-model Shonali (played by Kangana Ranaut ) is hit in the face by her abusive boyfriend. All that she retaliates with, in that moment of frustration , is that, she has a show the next day! So simplified has today’s urban working logic become that such ridiculous moments also have gained a certain credibility to an extent that the ordinary spectator can be easily gullible to them.

In a way ,  I believe , it is a good exercise, now and then , to look at the world upside down, and know what colour and what brand of ‘andar’ wear does the world wear.

 

But then of course, who would want to risk their social image? So we keep sublimating the ridiculous and ridiculing the sublime and the show goes on.

we stand strong

defiant and undeterred.

'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'

                                                                          -Bapuji

today

Let us all join minds and think collectively to fight and reinstate the sane human mind.

To nurture warmth and compassion in young minds like yours and mine who have been wrongly misled into anti – social brainwashing,who now vicariously provoke the masses now and again, to continually be in the line of fire and hate.

Hoping to see Mumbai healing soon.

I salute the commandos and security forces for letting us sleep tonight.

Impressions of an island

As part of a collaborative architectural workshop, I was part of the Triloka programme involving students from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka , Muenster University,Germany and R.V.School of Architecture, India.Thus I got an opportunity to glimpse the beautiful Sri Lankan landscape as part of 12 Indian students who went to the island for the 2007 workshop. Here are some first hand impressions of the fortnight I spent there. 

The flight Air Lanka took just over an hour to reach destination. Hence it hardly felt like an international trip. The flight was cramped with food that was not so great. Since it was our first international flight, Rachana , Harshavardhini and me , the youngest trio of the lot seemed to be the most excited about the take off! Seated in the middle aisle , I couldn’t help envying those who had got the window seat. But soon after take off, I wriggled out of my seat and politely but demandingly asked Naveen if I could sit at the window for some time. He, unwillingly, complied. The most unearthly experience of watching the Indian map  in real scale overwhelmed me. As we drifted away from the east coast, I watched the crisp lines where land ended and the ocean began, glistening in the sun and looking like a slimy reptilian wriggling underneath. The air hostesses looked reptilian too,with their green skimpily designed versions of the Sri Lankan saree.

The “foreign land bubble” burst at the Bandaranayake Airport. We landed into the typical warm humid suffocation that I’m welcomed with in Mumbai or my native place Gokarn on the coast. Only this air seemed to hover with lot more humidity. After the long procedures to get us legally into the new land, with our luggage and visas and immigration, we sat outside by the luggage trolleys at the entrance portico, waiting for our host who apparently had got lost! It was a whole two or more hours before the representative from University of Moratuwa arrived with the minibus and whisked us away as quickly as he had come.

All along the journey from the airport to Mt. Lavinia where we were accommodated, I glimpsed an old Goan colonial ambience out of the window with the women in lovely skirts and umbrellas.The small town architecture being very similar or rather the same as our tiled lean to roof houses.

The initial food forays in the island proved disastrous for us both pallet wise and money wise. Only later I was made to know that we chose to eat at a wrong place most probably!What struck me also was that while having lunch, three ambulances zoomed by in a row silencing every ongoing activity around.With red , blue, green coloured rikshaws, old ladies in lovely skirts and frilly native sarees, and the sea forming a constant backdrop, it only felt like an extended realization of India.

Only, here there was a statue of Lord Buddha at every road junction, a welcome relief compared to our  incongruous circle ganapatees or political emblems. We could spot orange and maroon clad Buddhist monks in the buses, at the stations and completely blending with the people around.Our cottage , Ratna Inn,  was an adorable domestic guest house with good old Uncle Perera and his cook as the caretakers.

In the evenings , our individual explorations through the streets around , took us to the usual malls , boutiques and superstores. I personally found the apparels there quite reasonable , especially the lovely simple skirts and bought myself one!These forays were tinged with several humorous incidents, including one where one of the students fell into an open sewer while walking on the dark pavement! And ended up changing into pyjamas in one of the stores! And there was another where we thought some thing was an eatable in a shop and it turned out to be only an exhibit made out of wood!The beach was a few minutes walk away .The railway track was laid right alongside . So everytime a train passed we could feel the sand beneath vibrate.

This train track laid all along the coast upto Galle in the south seemed to be, a wonderful journey with the sea. But we did not get a chance to get on the train ride. 

The symposium on Green Buildings followed by the workshop , went on for four days with student teams from the countries working on certain architectural projects conceptually keeping the overall green building concept in mind. I would not really term it as a complete success work wise, as it is with all short themed workshops, but we made really good friends with our fellow Sri Lankan students and to an extent the German students. The ice breaking moment was when during the tea-break on the first day, the host students made us all play interactive, and otherwise childish games. So after the break we could see every nationality sitting with the other as opposed to the grouping of before the break! The second thing we had to make an effort was to remember the names!They sounded so sweet yet, of course,  quite different. To mention a few of them, Lahiroo, Tharinda, Chalendra, Chamara, Chalana, Dananjaya and so on.. among the girls, Sayurika, rasika, Erendi and others…In general I surmised that the SL students were masters in hand skills, sketching and emotionally driven by the design, while the German students were more technologically driven into their design approach using more computers and poor in hand skills. We Indians , I feel are stuck somewhere in between where we are emotionally driven but at the same time, dapple little into every other field and in turn end up with a collage of ideas some deep and many not so deep. So much for the workshop.

 

The Sunday trip

On a Sunday, the Indian and SL students arranged a bus trip visit to most of Geoffrey Bawa’s designed hotels along the Galle coast.

Pitstop1:The Blue Waters .. sheets of still water at the entrance porch. Pergolas and reflections into the water. The pebble pools. Flat Clean lines. Receding elevational profile. The infinity pool. The jackfruit leaf embossed onto the concrete pavers.

Pitstop2: Bewis Bawa’s Garden House. Geoffrey Bawa’s big brother. Interweaving paths and puzzling patterns. Lots of books. White walls and black oxide flooring. Many antiques and motifs.

Pitstop3: Triton hotel, Ahungalla Heritage. The porous entrance portico that frames the infinity pool. The old time steel elevator exposed in the foyer.

Pitstop4 : to drink coconut water by the road side at Paraliya. We saw just plinth level remnants of tsunami devastated homes along the coast. Our SL friends told us that the waves of the Tsunami rose higher than the lamp posts and uprooted the railway track along the coast.

Pitstop5: the lighthouse hotel , Galle. The fortress ambience. Portuguese bunkers.Waiters in checked sarongs. The spiraling atrium after the entrance woth the fortress warrior sculptures. The landscaping on the other side facing the sea reminisces of the steps of Machu pichu.

Pitstop6: Fort Galle and the lighthouse at Galle.The Dutch Reformed Church ; the infant child ‘s tomb and that of the Bengal infantry colonel who died of cholera on the shipment from Trincomalee . Moses explains the advent the Muslim population to the area. We hear children singing in the mosque nearby. Typical Dutch whiteness everywhere.

Pitstop7: Unawatuna Beach ,the 9^th best beach in the world. The turquoise blue ocean water contently swaying with no waves. The sea is full of corals and I pick one as a souvenir. It starts raining. The rain glistening as dots on the sea surface gives the wonderful light overwhelming feeling. I stand in the rain with my pink umbrella doing little to keep me dry.

End of the day.. all wet happy and exhausted.!

Poye day is observed every full moon day when the whole island goes for a day long siesta ,people spend the day resting, gathering along and in general giving work a break. It’s a wonderful reminder for each of us to look up and watch the beauty of the night. 

The political situation and unrest could be sensed when we went to Colombo city where all along the Galle face, we could see armed gunmen and army trucks. We were warned by our SL mates to not click pictures in the city as it could be snatched away by the soldiers for security reasons. Only here and in one place in Galle , could I see a Soldier’s statue replace the Buddha at road junctions. It poignantly spoke about the change of the general feeling among the people about the ongoing war.

We further toured the island with the official worskshop participants to many iconic places including Anuradhapura in the North, Sigiriya, Dambulla, Kandalama, Kandy and so on. These were the places that truely stand to represent the history and evolution of the land, its culture and forming inspirational models for the new age thinkers and designers and space makers.. including Geoffrey Bawa who is highly revered by many  in the  land.. (while i have also come across people who describe him as selfish!).While the details into each of these could get cumbersome I would sum it up as a revealing and educative sojourn ,which only strengthened the emotional ties with our new friends. 

I believe that any journey besides externally enriching to the senses always enriches internal ties and leaves emotional figments of memories that propels one to go further from there.What I took from this small sinhala dweepa is warmth, grace and humility.The old movie songs we all sang together in the same tune but different languages, always ring in these ears .

Deewana hua baadal..  

Suprabhatam

reflections on watching an archival documentary on the legend of Carnatic music, M.S.Subbalakshmi.

A voice with the naughty twinkle in its cords. A small child throwing tantrums at every octave. That is the agility with which she sings. M.S.Subbalaxmi. with the springing curls of greying hair, she smiles with the mellowing touch of honey dripping gently. A nascent newborn gleams beneath the face constantly . the lips cant wait to enthrall listeners with its deep nurtured musical treasure.The nose studs gleam in the sunshine of her voice like divine materialisations of her mind. There is a stubbornness in her notes, a commanding velocity that interweave you and me into into its adventures; up high scaling the moon, rising over the valleys of slumbering lives, delving into the depths of curiosity, we sail ,fly, run, skip , hop and jump with her , bedazzled by the onslaught of yet another surprise package of musical jigsaws. Black kohl eyes widen to inhale the minutest gift life has to offer.With a sincerity that frames every picture of her, M.S lives on, stubborn in her renditions.

She is the first , the youngest child in house who wakes up before anyone else and declares

"Suprabhatam', its time to rise"

Paper boats

Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.

In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of the
village where I live.

I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and know
who I am.

I load my little boats with shiuli flowers from our
garden, and hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried
safely to land in the night.

I launch my paper boats and look up into the sky and see the
little clouds setting their white bulging sails.

I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends them down the
air to race with my boats!

When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my
paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars.

The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is their
baskets full of dreams.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

Home they brought her warrior dead:  She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:  All her maidens, watching, said,  ‘She must weep or she will die.’  Then they praised him, soft and low,  Called him worthy to be loved,  Truest friend and noblest foe;  Yet she neither spoke nor moved.  Stole a maiden from her place,  Lightly to the warrior stepped,  Took the face-cloth from the face;  Yet she neither moved nor wept.  Rose a nurse of ninety years,  Set his child upon her knee—  Like summer tempest came her tears—  ‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’  Alfred Lord Tennyson

Peace to pieces

 

The ironies of a day devoted to nonviolence on the birthday of dear Bapu, Gandhi Jayanthi . They cut down the beautiful tall coconut tree grove in our college campus to ‘clear’ the site for another telecommunications department. The justification .. a renowned architect will be designing it! So tell me, who has all the more responsibility to say ‘no, wait don’t raze them down, we’ll take care of them.?’. The architect again.

They were age old coconut palms.. I am sure, much before the campus came into being. And I couldn’t believe my eyes , as I saw the tall ones fall to the ground, stripped of their grace by a neat chop and slice of the running blade. It was the first time I saw a tree being chopped . And believe me it felt nothing short of witnessing a mass execution in the public. There were the librarians who had left their desks to come out in the open to see them. The old staff members winced and shrugged the shame away, while the new staff members reveled in this new human quest.

It reminds me of a poem we studied in school that had sent shivers down my spine with its heavy satire..

 

How to kill a tree

by Gieve Patel

 

 

It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leprous hide
Sprouting leaves.

So hack and chop
But this alone won't do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.

No,
The root is to be pulled out-
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out-snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.

Then the matter 
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,

And then it is done.

 

Today a thousands sms’s will fly here and there , emulating ahimsa and the likes. For that moment when the person forwards the message, he may feel a hint of being part of larger peaceful collective .Then again, he is back to his daily cribs and his daily worries. It is ultimately a lone journey .Each man to his own. It is ultimately a lonely world. A loner has no right to take another’s right to his own piece of earth , sky, sun and water.

firefly

A lighter gone dry

The flint is fatigued

Click click..

The flame cant be seen

He tries to catch

A drop of the flame

Cupped tight in his palms

The flame flutters

It doesn't singe

If let free..

It would rather sing

In fear of douzing it

The boy wont let go

But little does he know

The fire cant fly 

Anymore....

fly by

Think spaces

Our current design project deals with a very busy highly commercial and at the same time a very personal space , the Jayanagar 4th block shopping complex site. Each student in the studio has come up with various propositions as to what the space lacks or needs and what needs to be done for that(considering that the existing built does not exist).
I am proposing the idea of a 'think space' as an intellectually stimulating culural magnet for south bangalore.A place which makes use of the intellectual and mental resources of the multitude of people already coming to the area (who otherwise just shop, eat some 'chaat' and go back as passively as they came!).
Now comes the task of identifying various the behavioural patterns ..
When does a person use his mind or 'think' in the active mode?..
A student travelling in a bus to college everyday invariably goes into daydream reveries gazing out of the window.. A husband waiting outside the operation theatre has his thoughts doing tripple shifts! The retired men and women sitting on park benches may be calculating how many hours of their life they can remember anymore..the passive thinking and the active thinking.
A pause in a hectic routine, like a scene in slow motion, where you can fill in 'more' time into time.

I am still groping from one string to another . Trying to grasp what a think space could need or would give. I would appreciate your comments . It may help me out...

aap ki farmaaish

Yeh hai aakaashvani vanijya prasaar kendra.. aur aap sun rahe hain..
Aaj ki farmaish..
Is Karyakram mein aap sab ka swagaath hai..

Pesh hai yeh geet ..
Jiski.. farmaish ki hai..

Jabalpur se banti , pintu, choti, chintu aur pinki
Sialkot se talwar singh, avtar singh aur dimpy
Dhobi talao se shepudkar aur unke bete prasad aur prafull
Ramgarh se gabbar singh , samba aur kaalia
Jhansi se lakshmibai
Mumbai se kallu mama, bhiku mhaatre aur bhau
Ranjhore se jai singh rathore aur savitri singh rathore
Bhatinda se geet aur meet
Jhumri talaiyya se shuklaben, kantaben, arun bhai aur chimpu
Aur Kusaha se kosi rani aur unki maathaji.

Leejiye pesh hai..
Aap ki farmaaish........................................................................

A tear drop on the edge

Of her eye as she wakes up.

A salty scream

Straight out of her dream.

No more taste in them

Wake up now.

the blue chappals

A peacock feather was stuck in the right strap of a pair of blue chappals of the girl.
The blue chappals lay outside the wedding hall. It was her brother’s wedding day. A large air conditioned hall booked by the bride’s father stood poised on the main street on a dusty sultry May afternoon , like a class bully striving for his teacher’s attention.
There was nothing much left to do for the girl but to sit in the front row , on one of those milky cream coloured plastic chairs, and wait for the entire ordeal to get over with. Her brother; she had long lost to anger and bitterness. To be present today ,was a mere necessity , an obligation. It was her blue chappals that she was more worried about. They lay outside, orphaned and helpless amidst huge monstrous suede dons and taunting shiny silvery step sisters with endless straps starting and ending at unassuming points. Hers was the only one of the ‘blue’ kind. A simple flat sole that still held the weighted impressions of her soul and two straps that challenged anybody to wear it with the same delicacy like she did.
It was her first independently decided choice, after hours of deep discussion with her friend , scanning up and down a local shopping complex. The blue chappals she adored so much that she wouldn’t wear it fearing it would wear out too soon.
It will wear out one day, silly girl, but try telling that to her.
Their maid had dressed up specially for her chotu baba’s wedding . The maid’s daughter had come too, with her new born boy, who seemed to seal her fate to a resigned life of servitude with a smile. Although the same age as the bridegroom’s sister( who was , as you can guess, nicknamed, choti baby) this young mother had wrinkles on her palms and feet. Each wrinkle yearning to be filled up ,like hunger graphs of the third word etched onto her skin.She hated everything about the ‘choti baby’ that her mother adored her for. But she always smiled it away. That was then ; before her boy was born. Her boy now seemed to take all of her smiles for himself. His radiance irked her, his tantrums angered her, his baby tricks irritated her. To look at him , forced her to look at herself and she dint like one bit of what she saw.
The ceremonial chores having been done, she had to take leave of the wedding crowd. She had to be home before her husband. She smiled and congratulated the ‘choti baby’ for the ‘chotu baba’ and quickly sneaked a scan from top to toe. Silly girl. One day she will have a little one like mine. Will she still be smiling then? Though she knew the answer she consoled herself with a wretched forced ignorance.
Outside the wedding hall , her torn brown sandals lay two pairs away from the blue chappals. Clean and plain, they smiled at her . She smiled back.
She looked around to see if any body was watching.
Shifting two paces to her side.. she slipped in her feet , as gently as Cinderella into her glass slippers, right foot first , then the left.
Bending down , she removed the peacock feather stuck into the right strap and deftly stuck it onto her brown sandal.
It was just a temporary borrowing . She would return it some day.
But today the blue chappals were hers.
They had made her smile.
The owner would understand.
She was sure of it.

Footprints on my shirt

Footprints on my shirt
Shoe size number 2
It s clean
You haven’t walked yet
You haven’t talked yet
What is this strange song
You sing to no one and to all

You are small.
With tiny feet
But my shoes will fit you
All you have to do
Is
Don’t grow up.

The convenience of the unclear

I have short sight. Hence there was a point while growing up when I thought , what I saw was how everything actually existed. Hazy, blurred, distant and harmless. Too bad that reality strikes, you are given spectacles, and forced to see harsh lines, clear boundaries and piercing views.
Being an architecture student, when a design is in its process I realize that it is the most beautiful and the most potent ,when the lines are still not clear and when one is at a point where we play hide and seek with glimpses of ‘what will be’ in the ‘what is’ .This then generally drags forward into the realization of the design where the ‘what will be’ starts fading out before the ‘what is’. That I feel is the dead end!
Van Gogh s skies are an infinity of a collective haze. A homogenous haze constituting a myriad of tiny clear and real brush strokes. It seems as though the strokes exude a force that gel into the canvas , wholly yet fragmented. This smudging of life , this unclearness of the seen can take one on fantastic tangents.
An alaap can very beautifully mould the words or the bol around it and within it so that what we hear is not words in notes. We hear unchained melody . I have a personal favourite tape of Veena Sahasrabudhe s Bhopal todi raag sung in concert in London. It melts so beautifully with the morning , waking you up gently from the confusion of your dreamy slumber as it progresses from a warm vagueness into the freshness of the day..
A cynic may call it the convenience of the unclear. I have no argument against it. But then I revel in this convenience; To take off the glasses and see the world as a blur of visions , as a painting, fueled by a palette of sounds!

sleep

The bus moans and reluctantly halts. Warm with the breath of its seething crowd , I board.
It is my routine on a normal college going day.

Inside the bus , the man woman barrier has some how meandered . Through the sticky fabrics , I ooze through . My temporary destination – that seat right behind the driver and that relief of a rod to rest my head on so I can see the full road ahead.

Too bad that seat is occupied . A boy and a lady. But I still have my road ahead : much preferred to oily hair braids or high decibel gossip.

Two stops further a seat beckons. The lady has boarded off. The boy has not. Puzzled I sit beside the boy who looks out of the window.

Now my eyes see. See a dark boy of six or seven or eight in orange shirt and orange shorts. A set of black stripes and peeling fabric. He is so small and so morphed that he cannot reach the back rest of the seat. It seems like a disproportionate task to balance as his head droops against the glass and legs dangle from the seat. His eyes are fighting a struggle – a losing battle with his eyelids. When at last the battle is lost he turns around and startles me. With his back resting against the window sill and legs tucked up he glances once at me and unphased droops back into a drugged reverie. My sluggish smile meets his closed eyes.

In his sleep he nudges me with his hand : just once seems enough as I shift at his command. As his legs stretch themselves – I see a gaping septic wound on his knee. His limbs are rusty with dust and gashed. Hands clutch nothing but a tiny bundled yellow plastic bag with some clothes in .


“So much sleep that it seems drug induced ?”
“Mustn’t have slept last night.”
“Who has bought his ticket? Why does not the conductor ask ?”
“ Hmmm ….”
“ And that awful gaping wound ”

------ no answer strikes me.
I question and I answer and I stop at a dead end.

His utterly helpless head bobs to and fro : mouth agape as his dreams feed him. The wound shows no sign of healing or medication. Festering and septic it eludes me.

“Has he been beaten ? Could it be just a normal bruise he got while playing ?”
“ A runaway child working in the outskirts? “
“ A child going to his mother, labouring at some quarry ?”

The lady in front gives me that incredulous flat smile that I can never return. The middle aged woman beside her is hardly aware of her fellow travelers and is buried in her newspaper. I wish I could be her but the sight beside me is too much to take.
One tiny weakling drowning in sleep travels all alone to a destination unknown as women all around -college going, office going, home bound and unbound , merely stand and suffer the intensity of the boy’s sound sleep.
There are some fifty odd mothers born for him on that 9 am bus on that Thursday . I feel the responsibility too. As each bus-stop renews its set of ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ , I wonder if I will get down at his destination or mine.

Concrete cries..

The first step into the newly paved street assures of a firmness of the masses. There exists a fine line between the event of being and the event of the transcending. We live like we are meant to. Do we question what causes our being here at this place ad time to be of so much importance. Is it so important at all that the definition of existence should be pivoted around me or you or for that matter any body at all.
Where were we when time paused once to take note of its trail of aspiring catchers, expiring aspires and exasperated non catchers. Time catchers in a constant race to overtake. To win to lose to want to win but always in the league of those considered.
Considered to be present absent or expected for some special time and appointment.
What if you dissolve yourself into the crowd and become everyone yet not one. With heartbeats of the whole breed instructing the remixed music of the mind.
Hands , fingers and feet clicking to an unsung rhythm of the concrete jungle like the graphic equalizer of an ever changing countdown. Counting down to the first one from the last millionth. The first one to go to school, the first one to ride a bullet, the first one t scream at the minaret , the first one to drop out of std 5, the first one to stand in line for water , the first one to walk out of her marriage ,the first one to beat and cry .. cry .. cry is what the grey walls do, cry is what the dolls within do .The grey mist reddens sore eyes of the spurned lover and the sea thirsts for the salt of warm tears. Drops of vanity flood the deep rooted hate-city lying underneath the teeming bustle of the happy-city.

Opinionated

There is the Act of growing up that we all are aspiring to learn. To get interested in ways of life and to get disinterested in many others. We develop likings . acceptable. But we develop even more ‘dislikes’. Do we know enough, to know that some things , rather, many things should not be liked by us? I do not know any thing at all. Hence I cannot decide why I cant like something. When did our minds start conniving on planned territorial maps? Today there is the young college goer who reads the “money matters” page in the newspaper and discards the rest as if undeserving of print status.
How one transforms from an innocent face to a triple chinned mannequin has a direct link with the time graph of mental regress.
I am assuming we shall have to therefore , maintain , the valves of our mind, to keep them free and functioning . they get clogged somewhere down the lane . I guess we ll need to oil them back to working state. To be rude is a basic case of a one way valve in the mind which sadly cannot budge from its habit. Just oil it and you may possibly realize the flip side has you stamped bang on it! Valvular freedom -the circulation of the mind. Seems to be a nice concept . Help me out . Have you seen the mind?