Sumit Pandey ka purana blog

New Blog

2010-01-02T17:49:00.004+05:30

Since I'm kind of bored of blogging and writing long posts with a lot of gyan, I'm moving on to Posterous, a microblogging platform.

New blog link: sumitp.posterous.com

F^ck.

2008-06-24T18:17:00.001+05:30

Dusty fan and a warm wind;

Artificial yet so very comforting.

Sweat dripping down my forehead;

Hazy images, unfocused brain.

Am I what they say I am?

Who is the static?

Can you hear,

The silence within the static?

Can you feel,

The pain within the silence?

Can you understand,

The numbness within the pain?

Am I who they want me to be?

Bono and his microphone,

MLK and his bullet,

Bacon and his brush,

Joe and his cubicle,

Nameless with his degree.

Who is the Riddler?

How deep does the rabbithole go?

Why this choking feeling?

Why the whys?

~~FUCK.~~

We Have Not Moved

2008-05-19T22:35:00.003+05:30

And as usual, no we are not dead either.

But, I have started a multi-authored blog with my friend and an ex-author of this blog Jayesh, The Drunk Santa Blog. It is more about socio-political and India shining vs India whining and our takes on these things.

This blog was and is essentially an expression of the chaos I encountered and the logic, grammar and organization I attempted to add to the chaos. It was and is an extremely politically disinterested blog, since I am extremely politically disinterested.

So, this blog remains as it is, and will be updated as and when I find myself playing around with randomness.

Cheers!

Loving The Alien (Sometimes)

2008-04-28T22:03:00.009+05:30

(-Francis Bacon [1909-1992])

Sometimes I think I'm scared
Sometimes I know
I feel like making love
Sometimes I don't
I feel like letting go
Maybe not
I feel like giving up
Is all we got

Sometimes is all the time
And never means maybe
Sometimes is all the time
Maybe

And I'm moving on
And I'm moving on (Sometimes I feel alone)
And I'm moving on
And I'm moving on

Sometimes I make believe
When we're alone
Machines have taken hold
Can you get me to a telephone
It's just the little things
You used to see
Am I still that man who makes you who you want to be

I never noticed
How lovely were the aliens
Lovely were the aliens
I never noticed
Lovely were the aliens
Lovely were the aliens

-Velvet Revolver

A boring day and I turn on iTunes half asleep as I have a faint tune running in my head and I want to listen to the full song. But then it choses this Velvet Revolver number for me I had on my hard disk but I had never listened to. And it was love on the first listen.

The song is both hauntingly melodious and very beautifully written.
--------------

Thinking about nothing in silence makes the the uncertainty and the inherent helplessness with which we live our lives overly apparent. The beauty of the mind lies in disguising the true facts with 'intellect' and 'issues' which demand careful thought and study. The world at large exists in chaos and the order needs to be decoded. Nations which are shining are somehow whining. But isn't it the people who make up the nation? Isn't the individual chaos responsible for generating the chaos of the world?

Decoding the me is something that comes naturally only when the immenseness of nothingness is carefully and fully felt. And the picture that comes forth is that of confusion and uncertainty coupled with a lot of helplessness. How every day is an unrealized fight for hope and reason.

It seems like times of failure are the only times when we are true to ourselves. When all the pseudo intellectual crap falls away to reveal the truest feelings. And then you decide to finally move on and fight again and dose yourself with the drug called rationality. The Neo dies down and you enter the Matrix again.

In all this rationality the smell of the wind, the taste of tears and the feeling of a breaking heart become alienated. The true self is lost in the shadow which becomes a mute puppet and an alien following us around as we judge, compartmentalize and then justify. It is neglected into becoming a schizophrenic sociopath responsible for the dark dreams that reflect an unexplored and part of our persona.

Maybe the truth of the sociopath needs to be listened to?

Maybe, just maybe, the grammar of the chaos lies in the shadow? Maybe it needs to be embraced before we are to gain even a faint sense of the 'issues at large'.

Tagged?

2008-04-26T09:15:00.004+05:30

And I have been tagged. I always thought you tagged endangered species or to be endangered species to keep track of their location and so they wouldn't be poached. Can't really say what it means in my context.

Last Movie Seen in Theatre

Race. It was a pathetic and a lame attempt by directors who were at one time truly creative. Reminded me of those loud bikes/cars riding wannabes who have nothing better to do than leer at girls.

Book Being Read

lol this is interesting. I am currently reading Death at my doorstep, Egonomics, Chariots of the Gods, Freakonomics and The secret politics of our desires.

Talk about multitasking eh? Its just that I have a very small attention span.

Favourite Board Game

Ludo. Saanp Seedhi.

Favourite Magazine

errm? Computer Gaming World at one time. (Greenspeak rocks!)

Favourite Smells

The moist ground in a light drizzle, Petrol

Favourite Sounds

The sound of an aeroplane flying above.
A guitar,flute,synthesizer played well.
Rain and thunder.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?

I need more sleep/Fuck (if someone else has woke me up)

Worst feeling in the world

Being woken up by some random person.

Favourite Fast Food Place

Don't really care about restaurants and non-ghar ka khana. It all tastes like feet. So much so I feel my taste buds have died by now.

Future Child’s Name

:) . Really, if I could, I'd really want to name her ":)". And yes I want a girl child first.

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…”

Go on a world tour. Or just a Eurotrip would do.

Do you drive fast? Not really. Unless you're talking of NFS.

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? Does my pillow count as one?

Storms - Cool or Scary? The wind is cool. Storms are mostly overrated.

Do you eat the stems on broccoli? Yeah, I'm not really sure what broccoli means.

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice? To Dye you need your hair to Live. So, doesn't hold in my case.

All towns/cities you have lived in Bombay, Vindhyanagar (M.P.), Allahabad, Shaktinagar (U.P.), Kota, Dadri (U.P.)

Favourite sports to watch Used to be F1 at one time.

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you Pinky dude hain. All girls who have Datta as their middle name love him.

What’s under your bed?

Cobwebs, Suitcases and a pair of dusty Nikes.

Would you like to be born as yourself again? Yes. With hair this time.

Morning person or night owl?

Depends.

Over easy or sunny side up?

?

Favourite Place to Relax

Chair in front of the comp. The wing junctions adjacent to my room.

Favourite Pie

Chocolate.

lol this feels like a scrapbook entry. I'm waiting for the "What you think of me" section. Or wait. Its already come :S

Favourite Ice Cream

Vanilla with chocolate sauce.

As I don't really have people on my blogroll, and people I know who blog have already been "tagged", I really cannot tag anyone. Or wait, there's always Jaeeessss.

Censorship and Truth

2008-04-25T09:18:00.002+05:30

Censorship is defined as the removal and withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. ( Wikipedia is my best friend :P )

In a diverse country like India, censorship can be painful, I mean everything is being censored the films, the books, the internet ( well at least trying to), dramas. Government wants everything censored and the best reason they can come up with is Religious Issues, Oh! comon'! Religious issues? Political parties want Orkut banned cause of Religious Issues? Half of the truth about things like the Gujarat riots cannot be revealed because the government "has its apprehensions". Movies like Parzania were taken off the air and schools and colleges are indirectly forbidden from even privately airing these movies."What will the kids learn?"

Everybody knows what is happening around them, so banning anything wont really prevent people from getting hold of the information via other media or by using simple bypasses. You cannot really prohibit a child from eating chocolates and then claim he doesn't even know what chocolates are. But then, as long as everyone's happy and a majority of lame people, who haven't used the net for more than secret sex chats on super lame chat groups, gather to nod their heads in unison we can all ban things and feel patriotic and democratic.

But the bottom line is and will always be that truth is something that never bears consensus. So even if everyone agrees that the riots, the tribal displacement, the Patan rape or countless other things are simply too gruesome to be given any attention and the junta (people) need to be "saved" from such things, it doesn't really mean that is how it really should be.

A line from the movie Network comes to mind, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

PS. This post was initially started by my friend and an ex-co author of this blog, Jayesh.

Holocaust and Us

2008-04-16T13:38:00.005+05:30

Typically, every noun and every verb in our personal vocabularies has some reflexive effect on at least one of our senses. The mind and the senses correlate brilliantly to generate a personal sense of relation with the language that we use. This personalization, for the most part, is an extension of experience and fantasy.

The Holocaust-

A simplistic and clichéd feeling brought on as a result of the juxtaposition of the images of the dead and the starved with the stench of the burning and rotting body; usually followed by feelings of pity and compassion and some amount of loathing towards the evil Nazi and concluded by a feeling of gratefulness that the onetime aberration from the civil world, the Nazi, were contained by the powers that be. A malicious worm, squashed for good.

These images and smells are all too powerful and moving in themselves but the fact remains that the Holocaust was much more than a small set of emotional reactions coupled with some visual and olfactory stimulus. Bauman points out in his text that overwhelming proof amassed by the historians shows that ‘the Holocaust was a window, rather than a picture on the wall. Looking through that window, one can catch a rare glimpse of many things, otherwise invisible.’ The reflexive reaction that categorizes the Holocaust as an ominous deviation from the normal, civil flow of events; a barbaric act involving, primarily, the Jews and the anti-Semitic forces, needs to be questioned and re-questioned. Bauman asserts that The Holocaust was not a Jewish problem and an event in the Jewish history alone. It is a problem of the society, civilization and culture. Moreover, the all too familiar notion of absolutes, which features the Jews as absolutely good and the Nazis and their collaborators as perfectly evil, is also flawed.

‘When I visited the Museum at AUSCHWITZ, I stood in front of the display cases. What I saw there were images from contemporary art and I found that absolutely terrifying. Looking at the exhibits of suitcases, prosthetics, children’s toys . . .

I suddenly had the impression I was in a museum of contemporary art. I took the train back, telling myself that they had won!’ -Paul Virilio (Art and fear)

This processing and packaging of the Holocaust is brought on by the self-healing tendencies of the modern society. The Holocaust has been delegated a specialist shelf and department wherein the research and development that take place are impressive albeit invisible to the common eye. The Holocaust in general terms, consists of countless memorials and commemorative ceremonies. The responsibility of the in-depth analysis is left safely in the hands of the ‘experts’. The general thought process behind the understanding and analysis of the Holocaust doesn’t involve a lot of effort. Clichéd and time tested methods of analysis, like blaming the morally corrupt Nazi and attempting to understand the causes of Hitler’s obsession are employed without any thought or attempt at reason. But, these methods invariably focus on the ‘Germanness of the crime’ which results in the exoneration of everyone and everything else. By making it into a deviation in the German society, having little to do with the way modern societies function, the Enlightenment beliefs of humanity and freedom are carefully safeguarded.

The code of the Holocaust is far too complex to be understood with such simplistic notions and to be unraveled, needs to be de-emotionalized and assimilated into the general history. The Holocaust, even though written in a specialist code, needs to be understood and accepted generally by the commons. It has essential information about the way society functions and it needs to be interpreted keeping in mind that it was the outcome of unique encounters between ordinary and common factors.

PS: The post is the "Introduction" of a course project report I wrote on Modernity and the Holocaust. It derives heavily from Zygmunt Bauman's book by the same name.

Pencils n Brushes

2008-04-10T11:12:00.005+05:30

This has been one of the most hectic semesters yet. A string of deadlines is how it has been. But still, I managed to do two things Ive been meaning to do for over a year. Design my own home page and a blog for my friend.

The theme was built over the original Copyblogger WordPress theme. It is an amazing place to start if you don't want to get into a WP theme design from scratch (which is a huge job in it self).

Funny how you manage to find the time when are super busy and you simply cant work when you have tons of free time.

Anyways, give these pages a look and leave any feedback you may have :).

Why F rocks and People Dont.

2008-02-15T02:48:00.003+05:30

There are just some days where you just want to shout F**K (Censorship sucks. Anyways this is to keep things family friendly.) really really REALLY loudly.

And then there are 2 things. Why and Why.

Part 1:

But then you can't.

Why?

What will Joe Somebody think? Surely Jane Holier Than Thou would sneer at me. Nevermind the fact that Joe and Jane have secret net identities where Joe plays Hanna and Jane plays Tom. Nevermind what lies hidden deep in their closets.

As long as its not in the open its all good.

Is it?

Anyways, what bothers me is people judging and nudging everyone around them day in and day out. Doesn't a man deserve atleast some amount of breathing space? Or is a closet and a fake net identity is all one has left in this age of taboos, networking and connectivity?

part 2:

Why, in this particular case, did you feel the urge?

This one is simple. Because things really suck for me right now. And I want to lash out. Peacefully and Alone.

Bah.

Love Actually.

2008-02-13T00:11:00.001+05:30

Love. Complex, mystical, blissful. Cliched adjectives that seek to describe this very un-cliched phenomenon. And then we safely assume "Love is beyond words"; again a cliche.

The real irony is that this easy to understand commonality and the cliches associated with it are what make it a fast sell.

Add to that the aggressive marketing being done on its behalf by the likes of Yash Raj and Sons. Nevermind the fact that they themselves find their allegiance in question in these times of fast love, fast marry and fast quits. Its almost a become a product worthy of being kept besides the FMCG stuff in supermarkets. "Jaldi Kha lo, nahi to expire/thanda ho jaega." (Eat quickly for it may expire soon/get cold.)

Such a strong marketing team coupled with our own libidos almost make it a compulsive must have.

I was, very recently, faced with answering the question, how does it feel to be in love.

Strangely and almost annoyingly, words like bliss, pure, serene and friendship kept popping up in my mind with a obstinate consistency. And then junta (people) started discussing (read speaking at once) and all I could hear was an infinitely long beep in my mind. After a while I came up with the conclusion that love may or may not be a lot of things, but the one thing that it consistently is, is it is "not boring". Also it is a "work in progress". The moment it stops being these things, the castle of hearts comes crumbling down.

(It was amazingly annoying how this question stuck with me. Just 2 adjectives. And those too bordering suspiciously close to the banal. Have the marketing geniuses got into my head too?)

So, anyway, what is love? People who are about to say "a chemical reaction in the brain" and feel really smart and cool are, well, hags. And they should run along now.

Few words, except the ones mentioned earlier, come to mind. Lust, Change, Pepsi, Farce, Freedom.

Love without lust would just be friendship now, wouldn't it? But that would make love one of the deadly sins. Bah. Another paradox for the philosophers to figure out.

Also, love has become a social farce too. Being in love is considered western here (in India) and the west deems it to be masochistic/chauvinistic. Too many restrictions and very less creativity are slowly becoming the norms for love. Hard to imagine a world where social norms dictate how and when we fall in love and how we behave when in love. Maybe we need a place called center along with the east, west, middle east etc. Bah. Again.

Itna kya sochta hain. Pyar kar na. (Why think so much. Simply fall in love.) Hence, Pepsi. (Don't get the relation? Maybe even I don't. It does make me sound pseudo complex though.)

Change and Freedom. Contradictory and Complimentary. Change or else and Freedom of change. Freedom to be who you are, express and discover your true self. Someone to trust with the freedom you generally don't give yourself while communicating with even the closest of peers. And the change that is almost a requisite if you want the freedom to endure. Again.

Bottom line? An overly simplified paradox that most of us don't really care to grasp. Pepsi peene se pehle contents poochta hain kya? (Do you ask about the contents before you gulp down a can of Pepsi?)

PS: This is written from a guy perspective. Since I am not a girl or a "Metrosexual", I cant really know what the fairer sex thinks. Comments are, as always, welcome.

This article deals with lusty love. Not the kind (hopefully) a mother and a child (and so on) have.

Why 0rganis3d Ka0s Is Not Dead.

2008-02-12T22:47:00.001+05:30

(Or why you are not as good at prediction as you thought.)

Err. Because you are reading this.

*End of post*

PS.
There has been mass speculation as to the direction in which this blog was headed. Mass meaning me and evilution. Many (a.k.a. evilution) believed it had finally rested in peace.

But the beauty and the USP of this blog lies in the fact that every time you assume it died, it springs back to life.

And scares/entertains the shit out of you.

Shake

2007-11-15T16:01:00.000+05:30

The Shake is here, you shake the cool mobile phone and it changes the track? cool? yes, atleast better then the 'thump', though I still don't get the commercials these people make, I mean alright,so you get an actor who has done some good movies, and tell him to 'shake it'? and out of nowhere, he gets a not-so-attractive girl to dance with him, while they keep changing their clothes (which by the way also happens, when one shakes the phone) I mean, yes thats unique but its stupid, what sense does it make? Anyone can shake it and get a good attractive girl,you know, as long as the thing you shake is Big :|
I can't find the commercial on youtube sadly, Anyway I'll end this ridiculous and perverted rant by saying I *sony logo here* Shaking.

Arrrgh

2007-11-03T23:18:00.000+05:30

Hey all! Long time no see. I see a little change in the writing style around here. Looks like evilution is a part of the Ubuntu movement now. Good for him. (Ubuntu is really cool btw.)

Okay. Quick revision. Who am I? Regular readers of the blog might remember me as an author of a very politically incorrect "About Me". You hated it. I hated it. Never thought I'd write a "blog" again. But then I realized something really awesome.

This can serve as a platform where I can express my opinions (read rant) about things that I usually wouldn't be able to do in real life; without getting into a pseudo intellectual conversation with one/more people.

So the topic for today:
How badly does your girlfriend's teenage brother hitting puberty suck?
Answer:
OMG (Oh My God) A LOT (not an abbreviation. Those are actual words there. Caps on the net implies you are shouting it seems. And I SO WANT TO SHOUT.)

"Why?" the brothers might ask.

First of all you are teenagers just hitting puberty. Ergo, you neither sound mature nor sweet but rather very close to a frog.

Second, you simply ask too many questions. By virtue of not being the hot girl that I'm dating, or any other hot girl in general, that does not make you remotely appealing to me.

Third, you always need to do "work on the internet" when your sister is using the computer to converse with yours truly. Wanting it "for just 5 minutes", every 10 minutes can be my fourth reason.

Fourth, you simply never leave. Now what is that all about? Some compulsive need to protect your sister? You should always keep in mind that you are a skinny freckle faced scumbag who sounds like a frog. You are the one who needs protecting. Not her.

Fifth, for some reason you feel your sister has no IQ at all and you, on the other hand, are related to some kind of genius rocket scientist. Ergo, you feel the need to butt in whenever you want, start croaking about what you feel without knowing what your sister was talking about in the first place and subsequently start fighting for the same. My God, punk. you are like 3 women in PMS. (No offense to the 3 women. You rock!)

I could go on and on but I guess I've proved things beyond reasonable doubt now :).

Seriously, brothers facing puberty, Grow Up. People need privacy, let them have it.

ps. err. "Blogger saves all your drafts automatically now" a balloon said. Yay for Blogger :|.

IRC lol

2007-11-02T23:41:00.000+05:30

Just came across some of these:

>Was it Jimi Hendrix who said "if I make a mistake, I just keep repeating it, then it's not a mistake any more"?
>> Might well have been Bill Gates.

another one:

> what doesn't kills you only makes you stronger.
>> You have obviously never had a limb ripped off by a bloodthirsty shark.

^_^

The world that is Ubuntu

2007-11-02T17:35:00.000+05:30

^_^. Hows it done and all coming in a few days. First I have to install the damn vmware thing :|.

Dreams, Reconfigured.

2007-10-31T04:50:00.000+05:30

“Sir, why does man need society? How did the whole concept come into being?”

“Man is a social animal”.

Ever since man was a hunter, men hunted in groups to make up for the lack of size and strength. Each man covered for the others weaknesses. Such was the power of groups that probably we hunted even the Mammoth to extinction.

And thus the foundation of society as we know it was laid.

Then man burnt down forests and settled down. Crops were sown and civilizations spawned. The concept of society grew and consequently its meaning also varied. But at heart it was still a group of men making up for the lack of particular skills in each other. Things were all good.

“Sir whats a Social Stereotype then?”

With man, growth is not linear and limited. Like population and civilization, popular concepts grow exponentially. Until they grow out of control. Like religion. The concept of the all powerful church which lead to the dark ages. And the common factor fueling this growth is always society. Without social support nothing survives.

Any force or organism has the habit of following the path of least resistance. The same holds for man. Most men blindly follow the path of consensus; ‘The democratic way’. Society, or a group of men, decide what is to be considered right. More often than not, it is the path of least resistance.

And so we have a well defined set of rights and wrongs. We might feel otherwise, but we are forced to follow this set. Configured to behave in a set manner. Learn to eat with a fork and spoon even though it hardly matters as long as you have clean hands. Some give in very early on in life and some later, but sooner or later we all do it; for fear of being labled ‘Antisocial’ and ‘Mannerless’. We all have a single color paint coating over our real selves. What differs is the amount of paint we have on.

Society even defines cultural expectations about what a mother is supposed to be. “On the whole in our culture, housewife-mothers are taken as better examples of mothers than nonhousewife-mothers.”

The question is are dreams, feelings and truth subject to consensus? Except in courts, again a social setup, truth is beyond consensus. Why these petty rules to define what a man wants to do in life? Why is the wisdom of others failiures shoved upon someone who has no feelings whatsoever about that path? Why do we want our kids to become what we couldn’t or now a days, what every other person is trying to be? Why are we taught to seek the approval of society for every dream we dream? Wasn’t society supposed to help an individual overcome his shortcomings and come up at whatever he dreamt of? Why have we become victims of the stereotype-revolution dogma? Why do we need a revolution everytime we need a change?

What happens when the paint starts to wear off and leaves behind a man in possession of the shadows of the dreams and hopes he once had?

“A tired man they see, no longer cares.”

Note: This post first appeared on the blog: Blissfully Paranoid. I am the author of the same and since I don't have enough time to update both blogs, I have decided to stick to this one and transfer my posts here. Cheers!

We Are Sorry. lol

2007-10-30T17:28:00.000+05:30

" Expect an update (maybe) sometime at night/tomorrow."

"The blog now will be updated every other day, or even everyday, depends."

The bloddy authors dont deliver here :@. What promises and no posts :S

Okay okay. So on behalf of the "team 0rganis3d Ka0s (LOL)", I apologise. [ As if you actually read all this. :| ]

A lot has been going on and except my labs, I really havn't gotten around to writing/reading stuff.
But to keep anyone who cares updated, all the points I mentioned in the last entry, excepting the vmware one, have been successfully completed. There were a few issues along the way. But those are past now. Ill post some screenshots soon :).

I plan to setup the vmware thing in some days. Tomorrows a holiday, so I guess tomorrow would be the lucky day.

Logged into Windows after many days. Looks and functionality wise it has begun to suck even more. But I have really begun to appreciate the Plug and Play support and the sucky default drivers that Microsoft ships with XP. Plug something in and itll work. Agreed giving less than 10% of its fullest capacity, but still. atleast all hell doesnt break loose.

Still I still feel, Ubuntu Rocks!

ps.: The sweet picture above is Jay on his last birthday :)

Bah. Still Alive :\

2007-10-25T15:23:00.000+05:30

Life Sux :( .

Just when I thought the blog had finally rested in peace; with the grave picture and all; the pesky nuisance Jay rediscovers the writer within himself again :(.

"blog now will be updated every other day" it seems T_T .

And no I am not in the adsense sellout group. This is just an agenda to have me removed from the admins post :@. ( actually my account got deleted :S )

The only high point of my life right now is Ubuntu (I am using 7.04 Feisty Fawn. The latest one is 7.10. Its good. But i don't want to download another DVD just as yet.). To quote a certain someone "It Just Works."
Even if it doesn't, you can just get connected to the internet and download a few somethings to make it work. No "Genuine Advantages" attached.

I am still a linux noob as of now. But I hope to document my adventures on a fairly regular basis here. Right now my priority list features:
1. Get mp3 and movies to play
2. Get fancy effects to showoff
3. Change the default look of the Gnome based desktop.
4. Get a gtalk Alternative to work.
5. Maybe get Windows running parallely using VMware or something.

Some of these I've done. Some I expect I'll to do when I get back from the Lab. (Interestingly, "The Authorities" have decided to turn on the A/Cs a wee bit higher now that the weathers starting to become a bit cold :\) Expect an update (maybe) sometime at night/tomorrow.

Cheers and Stay Alive!

My Lesson

2007-10-14T13:18:00.000+05:30

So i am watching Scrubs in the middle of the night, on my iPod, the next thing i know, there is a rubber kinda thing stuck in my left ear, blocking the whole damn thing, the cool 'in-bass' earphones which i bought for 150, does this to me, was it a sign from Apple saying buy original products only?
or was it 'karma', i so do not believe in Karma, but what the heck, anything can happen, so finally my mom plucked the thing out, with that plucker thing,. sad, funny? NO.
I learnt my lesson, which was never watch Scrubs at 4 a.m :| and also that i need a new pair of earphones, anything but in-bass people!

Bump Bang~

2007-07-06T22:08:00.000+05:30

And we are back not with a bang, I have no clue why "we" haven't updated the blog, but the reason doesn't matter anyway, so yes, things haven't changed the admin is still the admin, I am still a pain in the ass, and the other "writer's" occasionally write something.
The only problem remains that will we have the traffic like we used to, i sure hope so, because the admin loves making money, through ad sense =p
The blog now will be updated every other day, or even everyday, depends.
It's still a random blog, about anything and everything.

Hack To Pieces And Tear Asunder The Bodies Of Mine Enemies

2007-07-02T22:11:00.000+05:30

My axe is wielded high over you
Poised to rip your intestines apart;
For I am the beautiful arrogant Cybele
Orgasmically pleased to savour your heart.
My crimson knife sculpts your chest,
Exposing a fear-pale airless lung.
I demand proof of your devotion:
Emasculate yourself and your young.
Offer your magnificent corpse in my service
- Grandiose funeral prostitution behold -
Your luscious skin perforated in place,
Ornamented with barbed wire of gold;
Sacrifice your ruby teardrops;
In royal thorns, enrobe yourself;
For you are my demonic priest
Sworn to suffer, pledged to myself...

The Scarlet Sail

2007-06-28T15:23:00.000+05:30

See the scarlet sail on the horizon,
The blood-red waves surround it,
Dancing before the crimson fireball
At the world’s last known limit.

Onboard, amidst the slender rigging,
The tall, billowy sails up high,
There, on the time-worn planks,
The Forsaken Crew walk by.

The men belong to a bygone era –
Last of an ancient dying race,
Their kind vanished centuries since –
They alone transcend time and space.

The wind whips their long locks,
Their faces are as cold as the sea,
Their sabers are as scarlet as their sails,
And their eyes hold unsolved mystery.

They roam the ocean’s expanse alone,
Bowing to none but the zephyr’s will.
The ghostly galleon will never be seen;
For those who do, it spells great peril.

The scarlet sails still embrace the gale,
Still attract the bull like flags of red,
The carved figurehead still stands tall,
Pointing to newer adventures ahead.

Now you may think you know everything
In this age of internet and KFCs:
But someday yet you will realize
The scarlet sail still stirs the seas…

Cassie's Monday

2007-06-22T14:58:00.000+05:30

More than four hours of sleep is a luxury only afforded to the very organised. Sunday night is the only time for doing homework. Rubbing one’s eyes as you lethargically walk up to a form room at 8.44am is normal. Such were the truths of Cassie’s morning routine. Despite many pledges to reform, Cassie had always been unable to break out of the emotionally stirring excitement of nearly missing a deadline; be it a hand in date, a coach in the morning, the doors slamming shut of the Ceptik dining hall, or that ominous meeting with the Head of the Sixth Form.

‘Norf Wes’ Lundun’ is a particularly bleak and wet part of the world for no reason other than to ruin the morning of a student. Having partied the weekend away and worked from 11pm to 3am on Sunday night, Cassie woke up bright and early. 6.45am is not a pleasant time of day for anyone but night workers finally getting to put their heads on pillows. Towelling herself off after a ludicrously hot, steamy, and sleep inducing shower, she walked across the slippery tiles to the sink. The razor was getting old. The cut was ever so slightly less effective than it had been the day before, and Cassie had to sweep twice before she was satisfied with her now silky smooth legs. Whoever had the brilliant idea of putting a clock in the bathroom did not realise that like every other surface, the clock’s face fogged up as soon as the shower door opened and the mist belched out into the freezing echoing chamber. She smiled in satisfaction, sliding her tongue across her gleaming teeth and savouring the minty freshness that would last until the crunch of the mandatory bar of sickly sweet calories or bag of fried fat.

Still walking lazily around in the darkness, the humidity of the room was too intense. Beads of sweat were beginning to appear on her forehead and having just showered, Cassie was having none of that. With an awkward movement around the sink, requiring a slightly dangerous balance on the cold wet floor, she turned the levers ninety degrees and pushed hard on the glass pane. The blast of freezing air whirled into the small dark enclosure. Reacting instinctively, Cassie sprung back slamming the window closed. Slowly but surely, the hair on the back of her neck stood erect and goosebumps protruded from her delicate arms.

Leaving the bathroom half asleep, Cassie returned to her room, disrobed and got dressed – all actions that had devolved into a programmed set of muscular movements rather than any conscious decision-making. 7.10am, she had to slip into something appropriate for the stern Head’s approval between now and 7.15. Grabbing the nearest faded and worn out but brand new t-shirt, well scrubbed jeans and an exquisite sweater from her wardrobe, she quickly got dressed whilst making a mental note of which books and files needed to be stuffed into her bag.

Five precious minutes before leaving the comfort of a warm, cosy, and snug kitchen, she picked up an assortment of whole grain, whole wheat, and whole everything delicacies from the vast array in the snacks cabinet. A thermos containing today’s exotic tea and just the right amount of milk and sugar was waiting on the dining table. The person responsible for this convenience had disappeared into another room to prepare a legal brief twenty minutes ago and would not emerge from behind her notebook computer for another hour, not even to say goodbye to her daughter. Cassie swept out of the house with all the force and grace of a silent whirlwind.

The gravel’s delicious crunch was more satisfying than any other pleasures she would allow herself to enjoy as judged by her in her infinitely jaded teenage wisdom. Soon she would be on the coach, iPod firmly planted in her perfectly formed ears to protect her from the rash, brash, and pathetically energetic younger children chatting excitedly in the front of the coach.

Her thoughts raced from the essay to be handed in, the explosions rocking her grandparents’ hometown, the aural lesson after lunch, her philandering boyfriend, and the teachers she would have to encounter that day. The meaninglessly cool music provided a gentle backdrop to her intense thoughts. Drifting onwards at fifty miles per hour alongside a blur of dull grey roads, faded gunmetal grey barriers, dirty brown and green pastures, bare trees, and a perfectly complexioned melancholy sky, the velvety smooth ride lulled her into a much-needed slumber. The smoky jazz of Norah’s latest album did much to soothe Cassie’s aching mind. Having drifted off to sleep, she was lucky to miss out on the grinding traffic jams of Toheritje Lane, Apex Corna, and the A42, but not lucky enough to avoid the effects… grunting, grumbling, and spraying greasy fumes across peaceful Hertfordshire, the lumbering coach breathlessly panted up the gradient to the modernist hut at the top of the incline. 9.00am was not a good time to arrive at school, regardless of how good your reason was. Sublimating irritation, Cassie walked down the long drive past the Preparatory School, full of snotty squealing children and overwhelmed idealistic teachers, towards the more mature and gentle Main School. Illegally and surreptitiously dashing across the court, she snuck into the brand new science block, past the eagle eyed prefects and the roaming teachers. Slipping her coat into an inadequate locker with a dented door, she composed herself before venturing out into the corridor and sliding down a banister towards a one-way door, en route to her first lesson.

The distant rumble of middle schoolers’ conversations assured her that she was in the clear; now empowered with plausible deniability she could stride confidently into the building. Designed by a man with only right angled plastic instruments and a belief that the fewer the windows the fewer the number of people staring out daydreaming, the hopelessly overwhelmed sixties architectural mishap stood at the far end of the school, surrounded by unflattering grey tarmac, with promisingly lush vegetation just beyond the line of gleaming Audis, BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and Land Rovers parked in the teachers’ covered, red carpeted, and valet serviced parking area.

Cassie walked into her tiny classroom. Immediately curling up her nose, she exclaimed;

‘Oh God no! The stench of third formers!’

A murmuring acknowledgement followed her as the other students dragging their feet into the room settled down in absurdly cramped seats with folding desks. Idle banter about the preceding weekend followed for five or ten minutes as the class waited for their teacher. A diminutive figure glided into the room, a wave of unadulterated freshness following her into the room. The boys, previously focused intensely on PSPs, texting, and frantically scribbling down answers to maths questions, sat up showing renewed attention to events around them. At barely thirty, Mrs Jennings was a brilliant thinker who had excelled at Oxford just a few years ago. Her ideological desire to educate the future generations led her to Bunbury Aldersey. While her academic credentials were impeccable, her popularity with the sixth form male population had very little to do with that.

‘Morning boys and girls. As usual we continue studying the worthlessly dull text prescribed by PDS’ Cassie looked up in astonishment, and then realised Mrs Jennings had said nothing of the sort. As the various coffee drinkers poured the miserably bitter Nescafe filth into paper thin plastic cups, Cassie, Mrs Jennings and the other refined people waited patiently for their chance at the hot water and the much more dignified English Breakfast blend resting inconspicuously next to the large gold and red ‘Nescafe Cheap Blend Xtra’ bottles.

The lesson progressed in a manner typical of an affluent middle class school, polite niceties were generously laden onto every sentence and each point was succinct and comprehensive. By the time the class had ended, Mrs Jennings was pleasantly reassured of her set’s abilities. As the bell rang, Cassie and some of the other girls packed up their belongings and headed out while a line of boys waited to speak to Mrs Jennings.

‘Cassie!’ The voice was familiar. It belonged to a man who had not received a single essay from her all year. Mr. Livingstone was a man who would be described with absolute certainty by everyone in the lower schools as the most frightening man in the world. When a student progressed through the school into the rarefied air of the sixth form, they would get to know the reality of his personality. He was one of the kindest people in the world, something that had surprised Cassie immensely, having spent many hours experiencing the Mr. Hyde side of Mr. Livingstone on many occasions while in the middle school.

‘Cassie dear, you owe me thousands of pages worth of work, but I’m sure you’re progressing through that mountain of work with the same zeal with which you choose your outfit every morning’

‘Mr. Livingsone, I threw on this stuff without really thinking about what I was putting on. 7am is not good to me anymore’

‘I don’t think 7am is good to anyone Cassie.’

‘No sir, it isn’t. I assure you I will hand in the reams of work before the end of my time at school.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ he chuckled.

They parted ways, bemused and cheered up. Mr. Livingstone knew that Cassie was handing in new work and was conscientious enough to be worried about the backlog. He knew she would be fine, despite her difficulties this year.

Cassie’s face fell after she walked through the excessively lacquered rotting double doors, down the crumbling stairs, and along the blue-stained-grey carpet, which was peeling away at the edges. She was grateful for kindness like the discourse with Mr. Livingstone, but understood the reason for the preferential treatment. From time to time Cassie’s mind returned to 11.30am, Saturday 30th September 2006. A police barricade shut off Kingsway in North Finchley, at the base of a new building. Cassie’s father was waiting in a traffic jam caused by the inconvenience when a garbage truck commandeered by stoned delinquent joyriders ploughed a hole through the Maserati. The navy blue Quattroporte did not growl up the driveway that night, instead replaced by the high-pitched whine of silver Vauxhall Astra police vehicles.

Cassie frowned, bit her lip, and resisted the urge to let a tear roll down her cheeks before looking at her watch. The absurdity of fashionable watches was that one could not really tell the time from them. Giving up, she looked at a wall clock and moved on down the crowded corridor towards the counsellor’s office in Hanbidge House. These sessions had become increasingly repetitive, worryingly introspective, and often by the time some breakthrough would be on the verge of appearing, time would run out. In a tired effort to rid herself of frustration, Cassie decided she would eliminate this worry from her life. It took up a free period, and as one of the models for the forthcoming fashion show, she wanted to spend her time preparing for that event.

Forty minutes later, Cassie emerged, as she always would; troubled, perplexed, and confused. This session focused entirely on her inability to release anger. Exactly what that had to do with her father’s death did not reveal to her, and she shrugged off the session as another tremendous waste of time. English people were supposed to be phlegmatic! Her inability to release anger apparently stemmed from her belief that it was undignified to do so. Cassie disagreed; she though it just added to the potential for wrinkles, led to shouting which is not sexy at all, and looking ungainly. While walking along the main court, she came across Ms. Ashton, an energetic and pleasant graphics teacher who enjoyed encountering various people and finding out just how they were feeling. Ms. Ashton’s kind curiousity turned her into a source of information for various teachers, a role she vehemently refused to play.

‘What Cassie told me is between her and I!’

‘Anne, Cassie is in my class, and I am desperately concerned about her.’

‘I am aware of that but I believe if she feels someone has betrayed her trust, in her vulnerable state, she will sink into depression’

Battling off various inquisitive members of staff, Ms. Ashton was a confidante for many of the students at Bunbury Aldersey. They felt she was trustworthy and that she understood the confidential nature of the secrets she was entrusted with. Cassie was unique in that she was very open, a quality that many teachers had foolishly misdiagnosed as evidence of her ability to trust people. Cassie’s openness was a result of the utter scope of the shock she was going through, and her bewilderment as to what to do with the gravity of what had happened to her. She did not know what else to do with herself, she feared that if she shut herself off, she would become an emotionless workhorse only able to cope with emotions by letting them ricochet off her defences.

The French aural lesson went very well. Cassie loved French, she enjoyed the flirtatious anecdotes spoken by Claude in his delicious accent. Claude, the bearded French assistant was a stunning example of what happens when the French try harder to produce pretty men. His gruff manly exterior belied a soft interior. Claude cried during sad scenes in films, his mood was very temperamental, he would spend lessons in ecstatic bliss when the class answered questions correctly, would be horrified if someone swore, and would be depressed if someone made a foolish mistake. Claude was a highly-strung, passionate man who had been hurt badly by the news of Cassie’s father’s death.

‘Mais she is such a good person!’ Claude protested to the Head of French

‘I know Claude, such a thing should never happen to anyone but it is all the more tragic that it happened to such a sweet and bright young lady’

‘Ce n’est pas vrais!’

‘Je sais Claude. Je sais.’

Cassie’s day was coming to an end. It had been truly exhausting. The English lesson had been typically engrossing and the French lesson engaging, but the counselling session had upset her and her delicate composure. She had woken up fine in the morning, lethargic, but capable of producing a smile when a friendly teacher passed her on a path or in a corridor. Angry with herself, angry with God and furious at the unnecessary nature of her loss, Cassie choked down a scream, instead deciding to go up to the Library and curl up in a reading corner. Now sobbing uncontrollably into the monochrome pages of Shalimar the Clown, Cassie was inconsolable. The librarians made an effort to speak to her, but she remained silent. Exasperated but sympathetic, they left her alone. She did not look up or turn the page, but after fifteen minutes the tears dried up.

The sky had darkened significantly. Cassie had descended to the Foyer and walked through the front doors. Looking out across the campus she saw the bright lights of square maths windows, and the silhouette of the music school. From the middle of the seldom-visited music school, a light was on and a solitary piano added the perfect accompaniment to the ambience of Cassie’s evening. 5.20pm was drawing closer, and the second round of coaches would be leaving soon. Reluctantly she got up and began to walk again, stumbling a little at first, but knowing with certainty that in time, she would regain her balance, but also knowing she would have to do it on her own.

Written For A school's magazine, won the best piece of literature of the year.. Was actually written as a draft on Friday 22nd December 06' when i was at the London Airport. Peace \m/

T-Search, X-Factor, K-Factor.. Aaaarrrgghh T_T

2007-06-21T15:34:00.000+05:30

TV channels had a better idea of exploiting the sms revolution n the controversy magnetism. T- Search; the hot shot channels call it TALENT SEARCH. (But when one watches the whole setup you get the point T symbolizes the directly proportional relation between TAMASHA ->TEARS->TRP.)

Watching a few episodes, its easy to figure out, you’ll find everything in show except the real stuff of which the show boasts abou, you find verbal duel between the esteemed judges, with the tone of gods (“main ye dekhuga ki tere ghar mey roti aaye" courtesy - himesh reshammiya, the noisy or may be nosy god, to one of the contestants). You’ll go into the contestants house learning how much the family , neighboring family, colony street dogs, drain pipe’s bacteria, love them .the real challenge they face seems to be the number of different looks that can be given to the contestants.

What feels real bad is the way these contestants, the common aspirants looking for a platform, are told how much they suck in the most dramatically humiliating way the judges can think of , on national TV. I wonder, what would be the scenario if these judge’s (with bizarre titles and slogans “panch parmeshwar” being one of the many) own struggling time, with their share of humiliation, was broadcasted, bet TRP would be high enough to give K factor lady sleepless nights) .You can actually find the k factor background music n special effects in here!

Idea of providing an accessible stage to common people was great, if only the focus was on purpose and the judges more dignified. As far as the TRP rating is concerned, a real talent hunt would have attracted masses. But these daily soap inspired talent search shows are not doing what they claim in theory. It’s easily evident that the real purpose has been lost somewhere amidst all the searching being done on TV. Switch it off…. please.

I.Hate.Myself.

2007-06-21T13:12:00.000+05:30

I can't remember the last time I felt so unwanted and worthless.
Possibly I deserve to be cast away.
Possibly it's time someone made me feel this way.
They say, pride comes before a fall.
I've told myself ten thousand times that I will never trust again.
Yet I do so, ten thousand times over, through the pain.
Why should I?
Remind me not to. It is safer.
It is a well-known fact that anesthesia is a drug which causes no pleasurable sensations.
But anesthetized people cannot feel pain.
That is all that matters.

Tha above poem is written by me, thus proving creativity ain't dead, peace \m/