Another Mortal Life

So a tag came our way from Vibhav's blog. An interesting one. Divesh even calls it 'a cool invitation to ranting.'

Let me put here the rules of the tag verbatim: "Write about things that piss you off, and the reason in brief. No rants, they only make you more miserable. This will let you let it out in a civilized manner. And please, not things like terrorism, politics, poverty or moral policing. Write about small, mainly personal things, things that you directly and often come across during the day."

So, here are a few things that piss me off:

1. Unwillingness to accept the grey- So yesterday I behaved like the biggest jerk you ever came across, huh? But ain't I the same person who almost single-handedly did an assignment of yours the other day? See, you can expect me to be an ass at times. I don't work in God's 'Department of Angels'. Neither do you; and I'm fine with that. The question of the good and the bad is not one of the either-or kind.

2. Inflexibility of opinion- Let's say, in the arguments between you and me, it's me who is wrong more than 90% of the time. But don't you think it's very unlikely to be a 100%? (Though not impossible. :) ) I mean, okay, you're the all-knowing dude, but at times even you can be wrong. When you refuse to acknowledge the facts that are unfavourable to your point of view, you sound as if you're only arguing for the sake of arguing.

3. "This movie is bad because it does not (or does 'just') portray reality."- Tell me why it must? (or why it must not?). You may like one genre, but that doesn't make the other genre all shit. Personally, I like movies with confused characters who don't know what ideology they stand for, who they love, what they really want from life etc. But that doesn't mean I should flaunt an opinion that love-at-first-sight movies are essentially bad. Similarly, just because you find the characters in Dev.D and Gulaal 'awefully real' people, the messed up beings you're already bored of seeing everyday, doesn't mean the movies are worthless.

4. Applying your English/Urdu sensibilities in Hindi- Do you think there is something wrong with "ek gilaas paani" and "Maaf karein"? Do you think it has to be "ek glass paani" and "Muaf karein"? If you do, I don't undertand your insistence on such purity. I don't seek excess liberty, but there are words which are already very much in use in a changed form. Let the pronunciation Nazi in you change uniform when you venture into the territories of a different language.

5. Blunt ridicule of another person's taste in music- Did I ever tell you that the "Teri Ore" was the worst piece of crap I heard in recent times? No, I didn't. So don't give me your 'ye-kya-ch****apa-sun-raha-hai' verdicts when you find some folk songs or Nusrat's songs or ghazals in my playlists. [Or I'll tell you about the second worst piece of crap I heard in recent times too.]


Mission accomplished! Now I'd like to thank all my friends.. without whom this list would've been impossible to complete. :P I'd be glad to be a key inspiration for you if you too ever choose to make such a list. Here is to the humans that we are! :)

The tag passes on to:

Bhushan
Catalyst
Geetika
Vertigohead

From projects to PhDs to jobs.. you guys would've a lot to be pissed about. Let us know. :)

Shikwah hai ik taraf to, ke koi samajhta nahi mujhe..
Aur ik taraf hai khauf ke koi samajh na jaaye.

Kashamkash-e-zindagi se yuun pyar ho chala hai..
Darta hoon uljhanein meri sulajh na jaayein.

A thought,
grew in my mind from a seed sown,
of a plant that I didn't own.

Another seed grew in your head;
- of the same plant, in a different land.

And seeds there were many.

The little thoughts- whilst we sleep-
assemble, and share, in God's sky.
-they talk of how ridiculous man is;
they cuddle, they console, they cry.

And they become one and the same.

The thought, returns before I get up,
and when I sleep, it again sneaks away.
What use there is,
of personalizing it all through the day..

The thought,
not entirely my own,
makes me possessive,
for reason unknown.

"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."- Tennyson.

I knew it!

Ved rings the bell. I open the door. Yes, he was telling me he'd visit today. My room is as messed up as ever. Anyway, do we ever mind! He picks up the tv remote and sits on the bed. I pick up the book that's there in front of the tv and put it on the table. He wants me to have a look at the Word of God. Boy, has he written it?

"No, it's not complete yet. I have a feeling it'd be a bit boring for the reader. I don't know what to do."
"And what could you possibly do to the Word of God?"

He doesn't know. He keeps shuffling through the channels. He stops at one playing emosanal attyachaar, and ups the volume. He hands me the pen-drive, "Have a look.", he says.

I start reading it. The song on the tv now changes over to 'Love mera hit hit.'
"Gulzar is the man, yar", he says, "even his crap is better than others' masterpieces."

I smile. I keep reading. God seemed to be a good God. But Ved finds all this boring.

"Suggest me how I can make it interesting."

"Hmm.. You can add some fiction in it. Just like the other stories, and the big novel, that you've been writing. But I don't think God will like it."

"Oh. That I can handle. I can just say I fictionalised it under some satanic influences like that of you!"

"So, I'm a satanic influence, huh?"

He doesn't answer. He is hooked to that girl on tv with a pigeon on her head. I ask him if he would like a beer.

"No! You alcoholic. You infidel."

"But I don't have....."
".....I won't have that either; I'm on a break."

"yeah. yeah."

I get a bottle for myself from the fridge. He takes the chair by the computer and starts googling about Sonam Kapoor. Particularly, about her dentist.
"Such white teeth, man!", he exclaims.

"Indeed. The heroin could never be whiter than her teeth."

"That's blasphemy!"

"What?"

"You shouldn't say such a thing to a smackhead. To them, there can be nothing whiter than heroin. It's a matter of faith to them."

"What!!! I never heard that!"

"You skipped pages, my friend."

"Ufff."

Now I pick up the remote. On some channel Cidade de Deus is on. It immediately catches Ved's attention, and he shouts.. "I have an idea!"

"??"

"I'd add in this book that every good man should visit Rio at least once in his life."

I don't say anything. He starts editing the file. I switch to some other channel. It's another movie. Kangana Ranaut is puffing on a cigarrette, sitting by the roadside. She looks stunning. But God, why do people smoke? I switch the tv off.

"I too have an idea for you.. You may add it's the duty of every smackhead to turn all smokers and drinkers into smackheads!"

"But that would be quite a big edit to God's words, no?"- now it is Ved's turn to be righteous!

"Yes, you can't add this to the official version. But you can advertise this part through an allegedly pirated and manipulated version. People will find it interesting, I think."

"Hmm, yes. And, indeed, you are a big satanic influence!"

***
(Might be continued.)
***
(Fiction)

They say you don't stop at hash. You've a feeling you did something mortals generally don't do, but you also have a feeling that the gap between you and them is still too small. You want to be the Big Boy. You want to smack it. Then they say you can't stop the smack.

Marx said religion was Opium. Ved disagrees. He says opium is religion.

It all started that fated day two years back when he says he saw God. He always wants to relive that moment. In moments when he attains his ecstasy, God visits him again, hands over more tapes. He documents those tapes in written form. He says he documents it for the good of future generations. God, he says, is so different from everything he ever heard from people, from everything he ever read on internet, and people need to be told about Him.

Nobody is allowed in his room. His friends can only see him in his drawing room. The reason he offers is that his aunt, Satya, doesn't like his friends visiting him.

Of all the tapes he claims to have received so far, the one he received first is special to him. The tape he says has many sections, biggest of which is God's conversation with Winston Churchill when he was in British army, and was posted in Bombay. The crux of what God seems to have told Churchill is "Playing Polo wouldn't make you go down in history as a great statesman, how so many tournaments may you win!"

We all know how dramatically God changed course of Churchill's life. He, to our Ved, is the greatest hero of the modern world. He says he has plans to get this conversation published separately too, as "The Word of God."

***
(To be continued.)
***
(Fiction)

Pulp Fiction doesn't make it..

The Good, the bad, and the ugly doesn't make it either.

Gentlemen, we're talking about this list.

I don't get them. Consequently, I don't get them.

:P

It is the beginning of March, again. It is the time when life starts moving just too quickly, the time when the old sunken leaves know that they and the tree are not going to die together. It is that time of the year when my friend Ved likes to live a few moments of sanity. It is here, again.

Ved is a writer. He mostly writes fiction. But like any other such writer, his characters too are based on the real people he meets on the street, in the train, etc. He writes short stories for a newspaper, to make a living; but in his mind is the idea of writing a great novel, an epic saga. He says he would make me a central character of the novel. And the character of the vamp, he once said, would be inspired by Ananya, our old friend. All this, in his moments of insanity which, I have to tell you, constitute the major part of his life.

He started writing the novel 2 years ago, in summer of 2007, or so he says. He doesn't tell me how much he has written till date. Nor does he tell me if I've made an appearance in it. But he has introduced Ananya in it, and in a positive role.

I've to tell you that, with the pitiable writing skills as his, only insanity could have made him think of writing a novel. And a little excess of hash on a hot June night did the trick for our first timer. God, he told me the next day, talked to him personally, and even handed over a tape of His conversation with a human. God explained that the population explosion on earth was driving him mad and he didn't have time to talk at length with everybody.

When I asked him where the tape was, he said I was a non-believer and won't believe the tape was God's even if he showed it to me.

***
(To be continued.)
***
P.S.: Fiction

I don't know how much I'd have to read before even starting to read it but I'll do it and yes I'll do it very soon yes so that nobody tells me I didn't read anything if I didn't read it and yes even if somebody tells me I can yes tell the person it's not like that because yes I've read it and yes I started reading it after completing yes all the prereqs of reading it which yes are no less yes in pages than the book itself yes but infact much much yes more than it and they yes didn't make me give up the idea yes but infact they yes strengthened my resolve yes I will yes read it yes soon yes.