5

It's so striking
How we don't make an effort anymore.
I don't write much in the status-line,
You don't surprise me with sweet nothings -
The performances for each other reduced to non-existence...
Yes, we are closer than ever.
But love, we got old like I once predicted!

.

If there is anything or anyone akin to a superpower than governs all creation, and us by consequence, I wonder how much rigidity It/He/She actually demands from us in order to make us eligible for conforming to our respective beliefs. A God that gets agitated by momentary non-conformity to bookish religion should get all the more agitated by our constant acts of selfishness and self-gratification. Yet some of us seem to mortally fear the former, while the latter is part and parcel of life and very easily pardonable. A clear conscience is understandably a product of our whims and choices, and not of any written mandate. Standing midway between faith and common sense necessary for existence in a pro-scientific easygoing world (much of which the selectively rigid population makes use of), I can only conclude that any true God will not hold grudges if we drifted once in a while to accommodate others' satisfaction that does no tangible physical harm. The same God seems to have no difficulty whatsoever in overlooking our internal detachments from what is considered strictly "by the book". Also, reiterating the necessity of common sense, I think the notion of what is in the book needs to constantly make way for new information and ideas. Frankly, a God that condemns occasional compromise to suit the needs of practical existence and happiness, and yet is indifferent to perversion day in and day out, is a very strange God indeed. It is not God so much, but the believer who makes It/Him/Her look that way. If there is indeed a governing power, all that it should want is organizational functioning of its creations and whatever is necessary for maintaining it. The walls of inflexibility have been erected around different ideas by people only for the sake of isolating themselves and not letting anybody else in, and putting the responsibility of such narrowness on the idea of God. Time and obscurity are, of course, on the side of such obsolete unadaptability, as we cannot conclusively go back to the source or validity of such mandates. Even if we did, the necessity of common sense kicks in, where surviving and being contented today is slightly more important than honouring outdated codes of conduct that attempt to isolate us. The hypocrisy lies in our choosing to break some of these codes to suit our 21st century needs and cling to the sorry remainder to come off as conformists. This hypocrisy is part of the common sense warranted by the modern rules of existence, no doubt, yet it can sometimes raise the rigid walls even higher and prevent the entry of happiness just for the sake of stale theory which beats the lifeblood out of practicality.

A man or woman who sticks to his or her chosen points of rigidness may be a better believer in theory, but one who lets the guard down once in a while to facilitate healthier intermingling and mutual respect is way happier during the few years he or she has, and the uber-cool God that governs the selfish world these days should have no problem in appreciating a bit of love that tampers with a few dog-eared pages. If the former kind chooses to be staunch believers still, they should act like total puritans and stick to their kind in all spheres instead of letting other people in up to a certain threshold and then rebuffing them in the name of rigid faith. The irony of it all is that the flexible 21st century dweller is granted satisfaction and contentment, which he passes around to the others, gaining their blessings as well, while the believer rots among the books that occupy his brain and nothing comes out of the situation, except some broken or offended hearts. These people are most welcome to believe that the superpower demands such suffering, and yet they continue defying other mandates. Why this rigidity ONLY when they can gratify someone else for a change? While people as similar as aliens from different planets get by happily with little acts of love and compromise, God probably flies above our heads laughing at the rigid fools not being able to see the possibility of contentment right at hand and pushing love farther and farther in Its/His/Her name. Some of us really punish ourselves and then blame it on the guiltless deity. It is simply being selfish to forcibly establish our faith and to divert attention from the more important rules we break, and refusing to reciprocate with harmless gestures of love and affection. We all know how much of love and mutual compromise we need in this violent world; rigid outdated faith will do us no good but broaden the barriers. And no God that governs the present world in Its/His/Her right mind will want to facilitate divisions at this perilous point. Or are we still following the old ideas, in which case God does not exist at all today? It is for some of us who are rigid in our trifling personal spaces that there are bigger problems of intolerance in the world. We often attach more importance to doctrine than to a peaceful existence. We may choose to guard this tendency of ours as entirely personal, yet the same ideology often inflates into acts of violence. Where is God in those cases? What God forbids love in the name of irrelevant words? And finally what man or woman refuse the forbidden pleasures that suit him or her? The answer is none. The least a responsible and educated 21st century resident can do is to separate practical existence from fruitless rigidity. The other option is of course to hold on to his or her selective puritanism and hasten the end of mankind along with the book he or she lives by and his or her idea of God.

All of this being said, the undiscovered laws of science are perhaps sitting somewhere close and laughing their heads off at the futility of this post, and how they are playing God at the moment, while the imbeciles down here are raising walls and writing stories and following rules they believe in. Belief is never the problem; faith fills the void of the unknown. It is when each faith attempts to block out the others and in turn throw away entire lives and prospects into darkness that personal belief-systems take an unfortunate turn. We may all believe in what we wish to, but to reject love and happiness by not giving and, in consequence, living a little for others is but having no faith in any God whatsoever.

Thought of the Night 2

There is one thing that always makes me happy, or at least reduces my woes into miniature imperceptible versions of themselves - considering the worst and looking out the window, and then realizing how my worst is better than someone's best, and how the worst is always the most improbable. This always manufactures a screen of brightness blocking me from all negativity, that sometimes dwindles into nothingness due to sheer neglect.

I have recently discovered a second thing that can make my worries vaporize. Given the very rare opportunity to interact with someone with a heart and mind devoid of any complexity or expectation, simplicity touches you and there is nothing that ushers in serenity with such effectiveness. Instead of forcing in the positive, it creates an aura of lightheartedness that establishes its existence in a matter of seconds and stays for as long as you remember or relive the conversation. Where there is innocence in place of condescension and goodness instead of nicety, distress simply has no place to raise its ugly head. It is conquered, even if for a short while, rather than blocked. I have many nice people in my life, but good people are of another kind. I am thankful to the world for still allowing a handful of them to survive, and I consider myself to be exceptionally lucky that I know some.

Titanium (David Guetta ft Sia) - Cover by Riya D

plus one, to begin with

To be caught between two friends (of the "best" kind) of the same sex, when you are trying to be the most important person in the life of one of them is not very pleasant, and yet it is a source of supreme entertainment at the same time!

Of course for people like me, who detest change of any kind in their preferences (which exist not because they are the best of the lot, but because they are the only samples ever tried, tested and approved), inviting an overlap between the romantic and the social is the very first hurdle. I have always, and I cannot in good conscience say "thankfully", maintained a huge, gaping fissure in between love and friendship in general. Any attempt at crossing over would result in a painless virtual jump off a cliff into the depths of that fissure of ignorance about the other side. In retrospect, I would perhaps allow my friends (or very close acquaintances, if there is any such thing), to know about my romantic liaisons, if they displayed a lower amount of interest in it, and had no intention of being unpaid spokespersons for communicating sordid details for their own close acquaintances! Vicious web, this is - more vicious than the menacing food-web (or was it food chain?) diagram with the scary carnivore at the top.

There have been negative consequences of this mental block I have admittedly suffered from. Throughout my adult life (which is not very long, if you consider the legal definition of adulthood, and non-existent if you consider the real), I have watched, awestruck, the very cool, hep couples, parting ways and being on such great terms despite that. It is almost like a new 21st century concept of the magical "happily ever after" we all aspire to. Yet, that has never happened for me. I do not regret the parting ways bit at all, but beyond that, words like "no hard feelings" and "going back to being friends" forever eluded me. Initially I thought it was due to the sheer lack of charm and coolness (not in me, of course), but later I formulated this very simple explanation that had been staring me in the face all this while - the fissure of detachment that I had put so carefully in place. With no friendly crowd around, there is no glue left to bind two people together (irrespective of coolness) once their romance departs.

And now, after two solid paragraphs of essential digression, revisiting the introductory thought seems pertinent. To remedy the rudimentary flaw I just discussed, I made the fissure a little less wide, so that a long jump would suffice, if one really wanted to cross over, and along came the best friend. I am not entirely sure about who jumped where, or whether the three of us sometimes end up in the depths while trying to reach one another, but either way, it has been rather, er, entertaining, as I said. When you are the newest addition to the group, you begin by denying that there is, indeed, a group. Do not get me wrong, the romantic pair is always untouched, unscathed and private, but hovering around the thin line of privacy there is the friend with whom you initially have this mental, and possibly very one-sided, sense of competition as far as control goes. Put the situation in a kettle, light a fire under it, and watch it boil into bubbles of disaster. You think the man in question is your very own object (thankfully traditional and acceptable norms of relationships still gives the lady love, no matter how new she is, an upper-hand as far as ownership is concerned), but then you realize the man's thin line and your thin line are yards apart, and you have been viewing them as one. The friend, being familiar with his line of course, hovers around that while you pace your own flawed boundaries with half a smirk and half a grimace. Why is the smirk there, you may ask. Well for me it signifies resignation, to some extent, but most importantly, it is me saying "I know you know that I know what you did, and what sort of an equation can come out of that". So when your man, the attractive irresistible soul you think you are close to knowing inside out, has a fight (the cold, hence the worst, kind), with his best friend (or whatever the hell they call the relationship. I never really had a best friend of either sex, what do I know?), and you humour yourself thinking you are a part of it, beware my friend! You ARE a part of it, only in your head.

Sometimes friends of the same sex create their own fissure, and one fine morning you realize you are the one who tried to jump and fell down. He certainly will drag you out once their exchange is done, and you shall see and hear the whole thing too, eventually. But to be part of it? Well you can never be, in essence! But be thankful you get to see a very unfamiliar kind of love lingering in the air as you watch their antics...and there lies your entertainment in the midst of occasional vexation.

4

Do you really exist when you do not appear for hours?
Should I consider myself alone, in times of sorrow
And single in times of hope?
Not that the latter (hope, I mean) strikes me often.

In every moment of solitude,
Which follows a less worrisome one,
Ego flies a little farther
And gives way to incomprehensible encumbrance.

As imagination sees you work hard and make merry,
And return exhausted with not much time to spare,
My mind silently shouts out a piteous entreaty
To be delivered from this restlessness, unless you feel it too.

You Raise Me Up - Cover by Riya D

3-Iron - 3 people? golf? irony? Nay, nothing's in the name!

I am in pain - sheer mental pain - the kind of pain that makes your heart feel nothing but your mind explode. So what do I do to fix that? I go ahead and watch 3-Iron. Oh yes! Apparently surrealism alleviates my pain, or so I think. It aggravates and alleviates pain at the same time perhaps. So anyway, after a good afternoon's sleep I watched it in a calm temperament, took a shower to calm myself further, and then decided to write - as if my thoughts and feelings after watching/hearing something that affects me are important enough to record, but there we are - we are all self-important little beings.

The story is rather simple if you think about it. He hits her, she gets bruised, she meets drifter, they drift together, things go wrong, things are put right, and you are left to imagine if they stay right. I always feel for the "him" in question. I know some equivalent people who do not hit or abuse, and yet fall short in some way or the other, but that is just one of the sad realities of life. We contemplate, we cry, we move on. So what is so special about yet another affair-based film that is not even in a language that I know! Oh WAIT! It IS in a language that I know - it is in Silence, mostly. Makes you realize, once again (assuming silent films have not totally been forgotten yet), how emotions do not need voices, and how a film can do without words that are spoken, as long as the pictures speak to you. When  I think about her, I sense a lot of helplessness. I do not see myself in her, though at times I feel I am expected to. She gets hurt and takes the best escape route - she gets love and affection in the process, and also experiences some much-needed thrill that comes with the risky choice (not that I think she ever had a choice. When you move from good to better, you are making a choice. When you move from non-existence to thrill, it is plain survival).

The drifter...how I love him. I am not even sure if he is human. He sets things right, fixes homes, and stays as long as he is needed. He works as an invisible God of some kind, and she makes him lose his invisibility. She compels him to come out into the open, and she ruins his world for sometime. He gets discovered time and again, with the final blow delivered by her choice to enter the apartment of a dead man. At this point I had begun to wonder whether I was moving from surreal to crime, as far as genres go. The arrival of policemen, pressing of charges, serving of jail-time - everything brings it down/back/up to normalcy as far as real life goes. Not surprisingly, the amount of dialogue increases considerably. But things get better...and the invisibility returns. He comes back to her, almost like a part of her imagination, as no one else can see him. Though I know that pain and suffering are intrinsic requirements in a film as this, I cannot but have a juvenile mental tantrum. Why oh why did she not begin by telling her husband she loved him, and let her invisible guardian angel stay with her in the unexplored realms of the world? Why bring in all the pain - physical and otherwise? I suppose one needs thrill before settling for calm.

It is difficult to conclude this post without mentioning two very touching , even exciting, sequences - I do not think I will re-watch the whole film, but these two I may watch again. The first one is where the jail-cell becomes his little block of invisibility and illusion - be it scientific (where one can stay away from another's range of vision, at least in theory) or otherwise. The second one is the final scene, where she is alone with him, and joins him...for real or in the mind...and in apparent weightlessness.

Finally (I begin the final paragraph with this emphatic word, because years of essay-writing practice prevented me from knowing better), I do recommend this film. Watch it for the sheer brilliance of silence and art, if not for the dream-versus-reality theme that one often seeks, if only to derive pleasure out of pain.

Tumi Robe Nirobe - Riya D

Constantly (Cliff Richard) - Cover by Riya D

Que Sera Sera - Cover by Riya D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZIYgWpeJUY

Que Sera Sera - Cover by Riya D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZIYgWpeJUY
My cover of Que Sera Sera, originally by Doris Day.

a soliloquy needs a title?

Totally got screwed over once
thought it a deserved repurcussion
and set my heart to one yet again
Why is it so fucking difficult to stay
wasnt I above petty things?
I was above other people too
I didn't wanna go with you
I dont wanna see your lot
I haven't got my own lot either
you're just somebody that came with good times
each good thing slowly falling from the table
Fuck! I promised never to move, never to hurt
But now it is all bloody inert
every time I smile I lie
the catalyst only makes me worry
leave me alone
yet not alone enough that i panic
it is one confusing abyss
I wish time stood still
For once I wish everything stayed the same
I wish I did not need you
If only this delirium stayed with me forever
With me suspended in the present
Eternity, come and shoot me into a high place
come and make me stand up on my own
come and make me stop caring!
free me from pain worry guilt hope
give me painless love, if ever
Let me stop clinging to false emotions
I am young yet old
and God knows if I die tomorrow
I die only with me.

For all the children who have been wronged

Child abuse is among the few things I really would want to speak up against. So here goes an attempt to write something for all the wronged kids:

He was five.
What heinous crime could it have been
That you took all your upper body strength
And let it land on his face?
Maybe he had lost a pencil;
Or did he break a vase?
Oh he once wasted some toothpaste.
The glittery mess on the floor fascinated his five year old mind!
Each and every time
Your large man hands would leave his white cheeks red...
It must have burned too.

(He loved posing for the camera
He would look right at the lens as you clicked away on happy moments
His little eyes twinkled at you
Oh he had an innocent face!)

Once, you left a souvenir -
The impression of your manly palms on his five year old fair cheeks!
His kindergarten teacher asked him if it were the nurse.
He never had a nurse,
His tiny self felt embarrassed.
Alas! The victim's embarrassment had already planted its seed in him!
He said he did not remember;
He escaped from her protective clutches.
He could have said "Help me!"

(He loved posing for the camera
He turned six, then seven and got hundreds of photos taken
He looked at the lens from under his glasses
He was an adorable little nerd now
Oh he had an innocent face!)

He does not remember the reasons why
There was so much tough love
There were gifts too, many of them -
A toy for a palm-mark, or something like that.
He does not remember clearly; he was only five!
Did the tough love make his eyes go blurry so soon?
No, it was probably genes...
He almost convinced himself about that, using his adult intellect.
But he still wonders, what heinous crime could it have been?
He was five!