Amazwi

The Fanboi Diary - ///

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:59:05 PDT

This happened yesterday. I was with my team, visiting little kids at an orphanage near Coimbatore. When we went there, we knew our job was not to feel sorry but to cheer the kids, to play with them and to let them know there are people to whom they are special. The boys teamed up for cricket, the girls ran around with the skipping ropes, slowly smiles and cheers were spreading across. I was sitting on a pile of sand, looking at the little ones, clicking pictures on my iPhone. A few kids came near me, they were excited about the little thing i was holding on my hands, one asked me if he could use it, I gave it to him. It took him only a few seconds to get acquainted with the device, he started clicking pictures and he was smiling endlessly. I could feel how excited he was when he understood it took only a swipe with his finger to maneuver between pictures. He was calling all his friends and they started playing with it. One said started verbose here "ithu romba simple da, intha button ah thodu avlothaan"(This is very simple, just touch this button) At that very moment, my iPhone stopped being a phone it became a happiness machine. It became a toy and it helped them play. For those kids, everything it did ended up being magical it was like they always knew how to use it. For the first time I practically understood the meaning of words 'being Intuitive' to use. I understood that iPhone was not just built for me, but also for these smiling 5 year old's who were just having their first romance with modern day technology.

Their smile reminded me of Steve.

Their smile remained me of why i will always remain an Apple Fanboy.

An obvious question arises: This could have happened with any other device? No?. I used to have a Motorola droid before, it took a while for the camera to react. The turnaround from entering the camera, clicking and reviewing would have taken > 20 sec for a single picture. iPhone takes < 6 sec to complete the same lifecycle. Getting the point?. No other phone would have worked that seamlessly with the kids, No other device would have given them that joy of instant gratification. iPhone just works, it works in tandem with the speed of your actions. My old phone was good too, but iPhone is just awesome. I would say just three points that makes the iPhone better.

Simple - Yes. Simple. After all the hype you hear about the product, when you actually use the device it totally underplays. It works like a charm. You almost forget the device and immerse yourself in what you are doing with it, and suddenly it strikes you how much the iPhone has simplified the otherwise intricate tasks. From sending an email, to reading a tweet, to editing a photo the iPhone i would say has refined everything and made it simpler.

Versatile - I am still exploring the innumerable apps that makes the iPhone an iPhone. There are apps for almost everything and the quality of apps is a zillion times better than what you get on Android. When i ported all my android apps to my iPhone, i found almost all apps fared better when used through an iPhone.

Perfect - You can have comments on this but the fact that apple remains a control freak makes the iPhone experience almost perfect. apple delivers what it dreams of delivering. Like a Perfumer mixing the right amount of chemicals to create the mesmerizing smell of the attar, iPhone is just the perfect mix of software and hardware excellence. I am all for keeping the platform as controlled as possible. I would not jailbreak my iPhone or complain of it's closed nature, it is Ok. Just like Picasso would not have wanted someone adding a different hue to his original art, I would not want to mess up with the piece of art iPhone is.

But yes, there are things I wish my iPhone had, like the integrated contacts feature and the widgets of android but still the iPhone feels complete in whatever form it is. End of it all iPhone is built by passionate people who believe and love what they do, and it shows. In fanboy terms, like any other apple product, the iPhone was built to change the world, and it does.

Posted from my iPhone.

Click here for The Fanboi Diary - I | The Fanboi Diary - ][

Randomness

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:09:10 PST

I have my memories around the dawn of the New Years.

On the eve of the millennium i stood in a neighbors terrace and the sky was alive with colors around us.I was a kid then, and there were the two of us. Me and a guy with whom i grew up. I was excited then to imagine a thousand years unfold before me, it was like spreading a unending red carpet and let you walk on it. I was walking all around their little terrace to see those little flames flare up into the sky and burst into colors, mostly red, green and blue. When it was 12:00 we did hear cheers in the air around the distant suburb. I wished him and we smiled at each other. Then for some more time i sat with him on the stairs and was carried away by the sky, by then that night was the longest i had spent outside my roof. Then came a lot more ceremonies for cutting down the umbilical cords, for yet another new year to fall on the ground with pink blood and flesh. Apart from a few other indifferent midnights, there was this midnight when we were on a high and dancing madly to the tunes on a dimly lit floor, the midnight where i left my friends early and came home to begin the year by blankly looking at the countless stars, the midnight at beasant nagar beach where i was having a bowl of fish looking at the sea, as the crowd erupted with joy, the midnight when we threw a bash at the mansion house, honked the car in the middle of the streets, played stupid music and greeted everyone with cheers, and the midnight of a new year where i walked with a friend of mine in search of the adobe of his lady love.

This new years eve, i fell sick. The plans for the pub or at least even a dinner with my brother looked remote. I took my pills, covered myself with two sheets of blankets and held a book on top of my chest. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. The book moved very slowly, at times it pulled my hands and took me into it and at times it let me stand at a distance and observe. Time moved, on angular movements on the clock which i hid behind the pillow. I was reading this page, where an unhappy orphan kid sits alone with pain. His care taker, a barren elderly women who has never had a kid tries to console him. The kid loses his mind and shouts ”I hate you, i wish you were dead”. The poor lady who has never had the privilege of been treated like a mother breaks down at her failure of not able to be one. she sits down, she breaks down to tears. An odd silence fills the room. The kid feels sorry for her, he goes out and kisses her. She takes him in her arms and weeps her heart out. Her tears were now partly of happiness, the strangeness between them is gone. I kept reading and i came across these lines quoted here verbatim “She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer”. I closed the book here, those line felt spiritual. Doors kept opening inside me, one after another, deeper and deeper and at last there was this goosebump felt beneath the skin. That may just be a line up of few words, but it took me far beyond from the meanings it professed. It kept pouring with new meanings, i related my universe with those lines. I travelled back in time to the place where Maugham sat in a corner room filled with solitude and wrote these lines on a brown sheet of paper while the smell of dark ink still lingered in the air. The book had given me a moment, a pure literary moment, a reason for which people still write and read. I may now even stop reading the book. It felt good, divine. When i closed the book it was a few more minutes to midnight. The new year was standing backstage waiting for its moment to open the screens and walk into the stage. I was feeling great, elated and very clear. I slid myself into the blankets, it was really cold beneath the tiled roofs of my village house. I lost track of the minute leading to midnight and was slowly fading into the night. Sleep floated across the eyes, then Arun, my brother slowly opened the doors, came near me and said in a feeble voice Happy new year da. I smiled in the darkness. Cuddled myself like a kid fighting the cold, and slept.

On a different note, my parents are building a new house. They are generous enough to let me have a room of my choice in it. I have never had a room for myself, i have always shared my rooms or lived in rooms built for other people. I had always fitted me inside stranger’s walls. It was quite an experience for me to figure out how i want my living space to look. To sketch out the boundaries of your wilderness within the walls. I took into account the time of my life i live in, the interests and passions of my life, my character, my intuition, my solitude, my laughter and my tears. I close my eyes and the walls get erected in the glowing light. I see a wide room, not a square one, a heavily sun lit rectangular room. A rectangle one with compartments in it, compartments into which i can segregate my dimensions. As i enter comes the one for the everyday ordinary me dresses, office cards and a couch, then for the me who indulges in life my PC, a bed holding my secrets and the third is the most aspirational me filled with a weird stand holding all the books i have secured till this point, poster of a most beloved movie and a philosophical tree with no leaves standing in pot. This is how it looks in the glare, with lots more to fill in. On the other wider end the room has this wide life sized balcony. A balcony which is as wide as the room, a balcony which can be sealed off by a sliding glass door, a balcony which cuts an arc with the compartments of my life, a wide balcony, like a widescreen monitor placed just opposite to my bed. A balcony which opens me to the world and lets the light of the world sneak into my living. I imagine going to sleep with the wide and clear sight of the rain slashing down from the sky, i imagine waking up to sunlight as a songbird sings sitting on a corner of the room. It sounds very romantic. I know, but that is how i vision it. But there are no Roark’s around to let the vision come true. Architecture here is about building rooms where anybody can live, its more about the techniques of it than the purpose of it. I wish this room gets built, and i live at least a little part of my life inside the walls i envision now.

One last thing. I have not written here for long. Blame me, i think i became very prejudiced on what i shall write, the problem comes when you overrate yourself. Which i did. I wish to write more, yeah the wish happened as I was walking through my alley and saw myself confined in different chambers. In one where i was keenly looking at some still art, in one where i stood holding the bars and staring at myself, in one where i heard myself chatter and laugh, in one where i was hiding myself in a corner of the dark room. maybe weeping. As i walk down my alley i see this unoccupied narrow chamber and its windows are open. There is this huge beam of light that intrudes, almost blinding me from a distance.

Now, i start walking towards the light.

The Fanboi Diary - ][

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:45:39 PST

The late seventies and the early eighties in the United states. The era of subcultures had just passed by, the hippies by then were confined to the few who roamed around college campuses, smoking weed, preaching love. The punks had their identities diversified and converged themselves into the rock music they played. America and its youth were again getting ready for the mainstream, for the materialist, consumerist culture. Seeds were being sown for the next big revolution, this revolution was similar to all other revolutions except that it did not have an end date or it never will. The revolution was called the personal computer.

Technology then, belonged to the rich. Computers were not personal, they were the symbol of the rich and the affluent. A few technology majors like IBM, which were born in the world war II era still ruled and dictated on how people perceived computers. For the new generation the computers looked outdated and they were still hanging on to the 1950’s. There was this crave for something new in computers, something fresh, something which challenged the confined design principles, something which was a symbol of rebellion, something which had a life and character of its own, and then the Macintosh was born. It challenged everything that the world believed would ever be possible to achieve on a personal computer. Unlike the IBM computers which were DOS driven, and had only command line interfaces (imagine this, to go to My computer you had to type in $cd My computer, to open a file - type your keys, to delete a file - type your keys) The computers came with huge and bounded user manuals.They were way too complex to handle and they acted merely like type writers which had a monitor attached to them.But the Macintosh was different, totally different. It had a graphical user interface for the very first time in a personal computers. Words were now replaced with pictures. It introduced to the world something called the Mouse and interacting with the machine was changed forever(imagine this, now to go to My Computer all you had to do is point to the icon with the image of a computer and click your mouse, that’s it). The first mouse click was nothing but a revolution and the Macintosh brought it to the common man. It challenged the products of the so called giants in every single department, in processing speed, in ability, in design, in price (IBM had priced its computers at 10,000$ while the Mac was under 2000$). More than anything else the Macintosh had a character of its own, in design, in looks and in the interface. It was the symbol of freshness, of change and of rebellion. For the Macintosh was not the brainchild of a suit and tie wearing engineer who had a degree of computer science at Harvard, but It was that of a college dropout, of a man who was addicted to grass and weed in his early days, of a man whose world was filled with the music of Beethoven and the literature of Russia. It was the Brainchild of Steve Jobs, a stoned hippie who arrived in Benares looking for nirvana. It was the the brainchild of the era which had passed by, it was the brainchild of the countercultures, it was the brain child of defiance. The Macintosh happened when spiritual ecstasy met technology. It was not a project done with the motive of gaining financial momentum but it was the project done with the motive of changing the world. If you observe closely Macintosh was the collective expression of the Hippies, the punk movement, the skin head subculture and the various other counter cultures which challenged the status quo. It was for this reason Apple and Macintosh was accepted(also marketed) to be different. Soon, It slowly garnered a cult following across the world. And it was for this obvious difference in character that the Macintosh till date has not become the mainstream computer of the Mass market, it was not embraced by general public because like the Hippies, like the Punks, like the Skinheads it questioned authority, it represented a change of view, it represented a fundamental difference in thought, it represented liberation. For Apple is not just a company, it is a culture. For notice closely in every apple fan, and you may end up finding a peace loving hippie or an eccentric punk or a violent skinhead.

Think Different campaign was launched in 1997 to reiterate to the world what Apple as a brand stood for, the screen opened with moving images of people in the likes of Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Alfred Hitchcock and Picasso… a intriguing voice over then recites the below lines,

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do”.

The Fanboi Diary

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:43:02 PST

December, 1983.

Backstage in a little country side auditorium at Cupertino, California. He was standing there in silence. An handsome young man in his late twenties, his eyes were closed and his blonde hair drew some rough brown arcs on his forehead which were marked with other nervous wrinkles. The stage and his audience were just a few feet away, the academy award winning single by Irene Cara was filling in the hall. But, he heard something else, he heard thunderous applause that would travel across the world, across geographies, across time. He heard his heat to beat. His hand was holding a little brown bag which housed a revolution, another little leap for mankind. He was holding his own dream, a dream that he was chasing for more than a decade then. A dream which made him step down from the Himalayas where he was searching for the absolute truth of life, smoking Ganja, growing beard, and singing praise of the Kali. A dream that brought him back to America. A dream that was his destiny. And today he lets the world get on board.The lights were then cut off. The music softened. The hall came to a standstill. He knew his time has come, he knew his name would be called anytime now, the distance between the backstage and the podium was now the distance between today and tomorrow. His name was then called. He opened his eyes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Steve Jobs.

Standing in the minimalistic podium which was marked only with the apple logo on it. He spoke. Like being mesmerized by an ancient melody, like being made to inhale a very dense perfume, they listened to him. He charmed them. He spoke about the era in which they lived, an era where possibility and access of computing was dictated by IBM. The big brother of the industry and also its monopoly, a big brother which tried to crush all the startups, a big brother which imposed itself on everything related to technology thereby denying growth, preventing innovation. A big brother which kept computers far away from the reach of common man, which blindfolded the world and made the world take the road that it paved, a dangerous road which led to a hopeless cliff. Steve then said “Apple is going to fight IBM”. Apple was then nothing compared to IBM, in manpower, in expertise, in size, in dollar muscle. Apple was just an underdog. Deep under. As people kept guessing, an advertisement was played on the screen.

George Orwell’s dystopian world of 1984 opens on the screen. The information era is controlled by a Big brother who appears on huge telescreens, dictates and keeps the citizens in constant surveillance. The citizens have become void of choice and options, that they blindly follow him. And one day, she runs into the world. Wearing a tank top and bright orange shorts, carrying a huge sledge hammer, she runs in and the army of the big brother chases her. She then dashes into the chamber, approaches the screen hosting the big brother, spins her hammer to build some momentum and finally she lets it go, it travels down and smashes the giant screen, then happens an explosion and a huge flash of light. The Big brother goes in smoke, the hollow grey eyed citizens wake up from their prisonlike slumber to the new brightness and finally a voice over rolls and it says, “On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll understand why 1984 won’t be like 1984”.

A month later the brown bag was opened and Macintosh was introduced to the world. The rest as they say - is History.

This happened two years before i was born, and it took another six years for me to meet an Apple computer. It was in my school in the early nineties, in the air cooled computer laboratory, into which we were let in once a month had an Apple Lisa, the predecessor of the Mac. But even then it looked different from the rest of the machines we had at school. It had a graphical user interface, a clear monochrome display which put the other command line interfaces to shame. We were not allowed to touch the Lisa. My eyes were then caught by the rainbow colored Apple logo, and in that early age somewhere in my sub conscious mind. I fell in love with it. It took another ten years to actually work on a Mac. I was at college then and we had a Apple Lab as a part of our main building. It differed from the rest of the campus, it was all done in crystal glass and anyone who entered my college would fall in love with the sight. A glass building filled with 50 odd iMac’s and it was in the main facade of college. I fell in love all over again, we had sessions there as part of our multimedia paper. Finally i logged into a Mac. A childhood dream. But BOOM! it was the first use and i hated the experience, being a hardcore PC user till then, i was heartbroken to know that everything was different, i was shamed to not like it. Everybody was. Time passed, and slowly like learning to play a piano i was learning to work on a Macintosh, it took a while to look beyond the obvious, to understand that a Mac was not different but it is the way computers should be and behave, that the Windows i was using was nothing more than Big brother reborn. I loved everything that made the Mac, from the beautifully done interface, the perfectly spaced Helvetica type facing, the easy to use applications, the streamlined navigation, the tightly coupled hardware and software, the single body design, the simplicity of interaction that happened between the man and the machine. I fell for it, or i was destined to fall for it. I attribute the elegance of Mac for kindling the passion of designing in me. After my fourth semester, in my sem holidays i visited the Apple lab when it used to be empty. Most of the time, i just looked at the empty machine, i did my amateur design work in those Mac’s. And in those beautiful summers when i travelled back home in those sitting in the window seats of empty busses, i would imagine becoming someone different, someone who is a misfit, someone who is a rebel, an underdog who someday will challenge. Then in that age, i did not know that i was associating a brand with my own aspirations and vice-versa. Then in that age, i did not realize that i was slowly turning to become, an Apple fanboi.

and it just began there.

W.

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:36:57 PST

“Mapla can you swap with me for next weeks night shift?”. He asked me, and he looked anxious. For he knew I preferred coming in night shifts, he knew I loved the precious solitude i shared with the empty cubicles while working in the midnights, he knew I loved to disappear with a glass of tea into the roads which led me far away from work. He then opened up almost in tears. “Having a function at home next month, we are supposed to do the customary spending for my sisters kid and her in laws keep pushing us for more. Running short of money da, and appa is already broken I somehow have to make up for the rest. I need the night shift allowance. Can you swap?” He looked at me, and he looked anxious. For I knew he was the only earning member of his family, his father has had a neural failure and his sister is married as a helpless house wife. We swapped. While working in night meant peace for me, it meant hard earned money for him. Not just for him, but for a hundreds and thousands of people who are sarcastically branded as the IT crowd, who are termed to have no real purpose or maturity and who are accused to bloat the society with their easy fortunes, it means hard earned money.

My perception of the industry i work for has changed over the times, not that i am going to stand in the frontline and fight for its worth. But I am not going to accuse it randomly. For i have had first hand evidences of its potential to change lives. My once team lead shared, over a drink of whiskey in the sloppy hills of Moonar, that he almost lost his hope for life before he got this job. It was the mid 90’s he was a very average student at college who had an extra load of arrears to carry at the end of each semester, he had a delayed degree, he never got a job and roamed around with drinks and dope and after losing precious years if his early twenties he at last knew he was going no where in life. Someone made him take an software course and then he joined a startup as a programmer for a meager 3000/pm. He worked hard and then harder, he shifted companies, he travelled across continents and finally he, someone who could have ended up as a hopeless suicidal young man, or a rapist, or a suicide bomber destroying lives in the name of God, instead became a man who is deeply respected. Same applies to me, the guy who sits next to me at work. This industry has redefined the old world and parpanaric views of who can be given the opportunity, of who can be successful, it has brought wealth and dreams into very ordinary households, it has empowered a generation to be independent, it has turned many a boys into men, it has not only turned many girls to women but also made young women to stand up and live without dependence. It stands as the gateway to a more self dependent and open minded future. For me? I wonder what would i have done if i didn't have the smooth transition from college to work, for all the rebellious speeches i give, and the assumptions i proclaim- i would have suffered and be shamed. It has personally made life easy for me, just like taking the next step in the staircase, like has been easy. Money flow has never stopped, I am now able to feed myself, pay my internet bills, and buy my own perfume and razors every month, it has taken care of my everyday life while i wonder about which Ingmar Bergman movie to download next.

It has been almost two and a half years I started wearing tags and started entering into large buildings embellished with glass facades, I have met the most interesting people in these building. From the guy who could discuss Dostoevsky's literature to the guy who can detail me on how the Nasdaq operates on a daily basis. From the guy who pings me every time our mutual crush comes in a revealing top, to the guy who would call me over a midnight to ask for a shoulder in the rough times. I have earned people. I have outgrown my shell, i have amazed myself. But all these have not brought love for my job. I do not find enough comfort in my place i have chosen in it. I respect the Industry as a whole but not in parts, for i have also met with the most pretentious people on the planet within the same buildings, i have punched walls with the over flowing hate for bosses, i have witnessed the worst inter personnel politics, i witnessed slavery in its most meanest forms, i have seen someone else stealing my work in front of my eye, i have witnessed enough stabbing on the back as it bled but anyway all these are universal. But for most part i am just spiritually un-involved in the work i do, for most times i have seen myself only as a misfit. Yes, this is not what i wanted to do with my life. I always knew that. That doesn't mean i wanted to study middle English literature and arts in an old European University, or plainly become a bearded hippie look-alike filmmaker, or become a rebel preaching communist values, or someone who wanted to spend rest of his life serving the starving children in West Africa. I always wanted be into the business, of illusions and branding. A different kind of corporate. For i always knew i had more patience and love looking at typefaces and doing designing than looking at the computer generated code and developing modules of software.Anyway.

Sometime in the summer of 2007. I entered the Tidel park for the very first time, it was my first day in the company and a bunch of us were being officially inducted. After document signing and hours of lecture by the corporate heads. I knew i was caught in the wrong place, with time i turned really restless and bored. Sometime in the noon the pretty HR girls with their totally made up smiles came in and screamed “IT’S TIME FOR SOME GGGAMEES”. I was like what the fuck?. Some other rebel(?) joined me and we came out for a smoke. We crossed the road and found a tea shop on the road between Tidel and Thiruvanmiyur. The sun was right above us.The traffic was maddening. I had my tea and i didn’t feel like getting back into the building. I hated the formalities, and the fake wave of happiness and security they bestowed on us. I wanted to be free, get back to my room to my senses, forget the mess and get some real sleep. I walked to catch the train, and got my tickets. Standing on the cemented platform of the station and waiting for the train i saw Tidel park at a distance, it was glowing in deep blue.

A few minutes later I crossed the road and was walking again into the grand entrance of the big, blue building.

Cries and Whispers

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:24:01 PDT

Where does a tear emerge from? is it from tiny pores of the eye or from the thousand invisible pores of the mind? does it drop off from the shivering body like wind shattering the water on the tree or does it ascend down like rain when the grey clouds of solitude cover the soul? does it seep from the floors of the spirit drenching the mind or does it break the walls of the eye and collide into the being? Where does a tear emerge from? a tear emerges from truth. Yes truth. We cry at the moment of truth, the truth of an intolerable pain, the truth of an unbearable revelation, the truth of an irreparable loss, the truth of an irreversible moment. When left alone in the dark room with just a candle of truth we all cry without being able to handle the brightness of that tiny candle. I am an atheist, but I believe truth is god, crying is a prayer and tears are an offering. And whisper? whisper emerges from our most secret chambers, any whisper is an indulgence with a secret, a whisper is the wind which blows into the keyhole of a guarded room, a whisper hides more than what it reveals. Ingmar Bergman made a movie in 1972 called Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop- Swedish) which has become the benchmark of art that cinema is, and for years people have interpreted it with a hundred emotions. My interpretation literally translates Cries and Whispers into Truths and secrets and its infinite possibilities. A behavioural study of the human mind with respect to reality and disguise, a peep inside the well of the dark emotions, relationships, hypocrisies and insecurities. An artist’s impression of the human mind. A tale which takes you a ride into the complexities but teaches more about the path left behind. A fable amidst all its morbidity proposes selfless love as the only virtue to sustain life.

The film opens with Agnes a middle age spinster who is on the verge of death, a disease is slowly eating her insides, causing moments of tremendous pain and agony. She is cared by her two sisters Karin, Maria who have come taking a break from their daily lives to be with their sister. Then there is the fourth women who completes the circle, Anna a long time servant who takes total care of Agnes in her hour of pain. The story is the exploration of the insides of these four women who live together in a old Swedish manor house. We slowly learn about the human beings they are, for Agnes pain is an everyday suffering she requests comfort in the presence of her sisters, but her sisters Karin and Maria slowly we learn, are women with shallow and pretentious traits. They are physically and mentally distant from each other and except for their sorry faces there is nothing they feel from the heart for the sufferings of Agnes. Karin is in total disgust with others, she has lost the belief in love or touch, she loathes herself and everybody around her in secrecy. Maria too distains herself from her sister but she is very obvious and weak, not able to care for others because of her self-centeredness, she is unable to sympathise for anyone. But the drama of love and care unfolds in between them everyday with Anna being the only true soul in the house who reaches out with the warmth of love. In non linear sequences we slowly learn about these three women who are somehow are the observers of a gradual death. Maria has been infidel to the man who truly loves her and Karin has a painful history of a disturbed childhood and a fruitless married life. Anna a mother who lost her child, lives with the sisters taking care and giving out love. With the plot firmly set, Bergman slowly reveals the human mind which dwells in the constant battle of love and hate. The characters break to tears, not able to handle the pain both physically and mentally. The intrusion of the thinking is so close that we are not able to handle such realities that are usually not discussed or agreed upon. The death finally happens after enough revelations, screams, cries, whispers and pain. The house is closed down and the inmates leave back to their false lives and Anna the only true soul who expected nothing takes only the diary of Agnes which reads or paints the climax where the three sisters are seen happily on a swing on a perfect autumn day. Agnes being comforted by the presence of her loved ones, and looking at the distant green meadows, says “I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much." The screen closes as our heads drop down, down enough to look inside ourselves.

This is not a movie, this is an experience. Not entertainment but enlightenment of some kind. It should be watched with the indulgence of someone looking at a piece of art hanging on the walls of an ancient museum. Or like reading a very intense literature. Never before a movie was so intruding, never before it explored the dark state of human condition, at times becoming tough for us to endure it. Bergman chose women as his subjects as the women mind always has deeper kept secrets, there are men in the movie but not as intense as its women. The performances requires the weirdest emotions to be portrayed on screen. In a scene Karin and Maria enter into an confront, Karen reveals how she hated Maria right from her childhood, the most intense scene of the movie. The reactions that Karin gives out after revealing a truth disturbs you than words ever can describe. The movie is set in a house which is filled with blood red walls, carpets, and in a set up which actually replicates the bloody vacuum of the human mind. The vision of the movie is claustrophobic that at times you need some breath. The cinematography captures very very deep close-ups trying to capture every single emotions through the face. The film projects itself into the insides of the eye than the outsides. Later you understand that the film was not even made for you to watch, but it was the work of filmmaker whose vision in life was to capture everything that he believed to be documented. Ingmar Bergman, is a phenomenon who for decades has inspired all those filmmakers who wished to take the art to a greater level, to a more profound and honest level.

For sight the movie looks like a very bleak tale, then you think of Anna the poor servant who knows nothing but simple, straightforward, and selfless love. Not the selfless love that we show to the people around us and the people whom we already love, but the spiritually selfless love on every human. Anna would have cared for Maria and Karen too, because she is made only by love. Anna is the soul of the movie, and she silently proposes love as a remedy to all the misfortunes of the mind. Anna is an ideal image that we don't get to see around, because selfless love on every human is tougher to practice than said. There is this dream sequence where the dead Agnes wakes up and calls for her sisters to hold her hands and give her the warmth, but the sisters refuse and scream at the corpse and run away in disgust. Anna comes to Agnes. Anna makes Agnes sleep on her naked bosoms, giving the sufferer the warmth of the human flesh. The corpse of Agnes is shown lying down on Anna’s breasts in comfort and love. It is in this particular scene we understand the magnificence of the movie, for the movie reveals more than it hides, it cries more than it whispers, for the movie not only locks you down in a room filled with darkness, but also lights a candle.

Bus no.36

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:56:48 PDT

The summers of the early 90’s were hotter than what they are today. I still remember those particular days where a women would stand with her little kids under the sun, waiting for a bus which would take them to her native. The women was Mom and her two little kids were Arun and I. I remember them like looking through a framed photograph. The day, the bus stop under the splendid sun, those brown sarees that Amma wore, those bags which travelled with us, the flowered slippers and "irumbu-kai” mayaavi comics that I would have just completed during the travel. I remember them because that is the way that particular day unfolded, summer after summer, year after year.The first day after school closure, we would have travelled from our home in the sub-urbs of Madurai towards my mothers native home in a village distant from Coimbatore. In the last leg of our journey we would stand there in the bus stop, waiting for our bus. Arun and I would make a cushion with our bags, calling names, cursing and fighting. The bus was the only means that we had those days to reach our village. The bus had its own timings, so we had to wait for hours at times. My eyes would have been frozen on the road, looking at the distant vehicles to find our bus in their midst. I would be looking at the name boards from a distance and updating their numbers to Mom. A hundred busses would cross my eyes then 2, 47B, 62, 28, 31A each had their own numbers and their own routes. The bus was my only hope to take me to a place where i loved being. My little village. My escapade of school days. Hours would pass, and sometime in the evening when the sun drops down, I would see the bus at a distance. I would shout “Amma, namma bus ma”. And the moment would come to life. The wait for a bus to arrive has its own share of surprises. As we lift the bags the bus sporting the number 36 would float towards us. When we get in, I would know i am going nowhere else, but home. I would go sit near the windows with a grin which overflows my lips. I would hold those iron rods of the window and sit there like I shared something special with the bus. As if the bus bus belonged to our ancestors, as if the bus was a car that my family never had. For my mom, getting into the bus was like getting into a neighbours house in the village. For she had travelled in it from the day it started visiting her village. It was this bus she would have left her village after marriage.It was in this bus she would have brought me and Arun when we were born. She would sit there in peace as if she was speaking with an old friend. People in the bus would be those she knew from childhood, smiles would be exchanged and greeting be shared. The bus was a part of my village that travelled on roads. I would feel safe in there, and sitting in the lap of mom i could see it travel through the same village roads, the same groves, same cactus grown lands, same moon lit nights, and stopping exactly the same stops every time. We would be the last to alight. I would run down to hug Mama who would be waiting for us, and when i look back the empty bus would honk its good bye and would be slowly fading in sight.

The world was a more closed place then, we all lived like drops floating in the bottom of a glass bottle. There were imaginary walls built around places and we stayed inside the warmth of those walls. I spent my summer inside those walls that were built around my village. And the bus was like a magical dragon which took us through the city. The bus came to the village fives times a day, twice in the morning and night and once in the noon. To catch another bus the people had to walk at least for 3kms. the bus no.36 was the lifeline of the place, from taking people to work, affording distant learning to the village children, bringing raw materials to agriculture, bringing grooms to the possible brides, transporting the aged and the sick, the bus was their only way to keep up with the world. We were not so rich then, we only had our grandpa’s old cycle in our place. So we only had the bus to move around. I still remember every time i came home i would prepare a timetable of the bus timings and stick it in the back covers of my comic books. We left the village once a week. Arun and i would dress at our best and stand with Mama on those sand ridden bus stop by the village temple. Then it had a very silvery white paint with thirukkural written on all the possible curves, there were some happy looking conductors and drivers. We travelled a lot sitting by the window seats, to parks, to temples, to doctors, to hotels, to get seeds to plant, to get chocolates for our birthdays which fell in may, towards distant relatives, to those summer exhibitions, to travel in giant wheels and eat masala pappads, to movies which were a craze for all the three of us. I remember the day when we travelled back from watching Jurassic park, i was excited like hell jumping and making dinosaur movements in the pathways. Telling to people how huge those animals looked and how big and sharp each teeth was. A part of life happened in those journeys. The sense of belonging the bus gives you and takes from you cant be explained. The toughest of journeys happened every year on the last day of summer hols, when we would be reluctantly taken back to Madurai. I cried a big deal then, i would lock myself in a room for hours believing that they may let me stay. I would never want to go back then. I would go hug patti and bleed my heart out to her “naan pogala patti, ill stay here and join the village school” and all those childish cries. But after hours of threatening and pleading I would be standing at the bus stop to catch the last 36. When the bus leaves, in the distance i would see either Patti or Chiti wiping their eyes. I would with a long face, lie on the windows of the bus. The moment I had to get down fro 36 would be the toughest, like all the strings of the holidays were cut down, like i am no more inside the warmth and love, like bidding goodbye to a very dear friend. A huge pain would plunge the heart to see the bus move away from sight, for it would take one more year and one more day under the sun, to see the bus again and to step back into it.

Years of the same cycle passed, I came to the same village to continue my graduation. To a college located in the busiest roads of the city. The first day when i went to college no one came with me, but i took the bus .That day was exciting, to dream of the next phase of your life sitting in the same old bus which has seen you grow up till day. When i got down looking at the huge arch proclaiming the name of the most sought after institution, i stepped down from 36 and it felt like there were hundreds who came with me to drop me at college. Before i left for the stint at hostel, and before i got a bike to roam around, the bus took me to college. To wait for the bus with those single books in hand, to cling at the footboards challenging life and death, to seat three or four school going kids in the lap, to start behaving like a grown up, to get home with a heavy heart after getting my first arrear, to hear a romantic song on the FM playing in the bus and to think of the girls who disturbed sleep then, the windows of the bus opened up to a lot of dreams. The bus was a very part of all those transformations. Then with time i got my own bike and the dependency on the bus became minimal. We have had enough cars and bikes at home then, the bus was only a way of alternate transportation. But, whenever i found a chance to be in the bus, i could see that it gave me the same warmth like when it gave me in my childhood. Now, the bus is no more the life line of the village, but it has not lost its love to the people it still visits the place five times a day, still transporting them in its huge rusted compartment. I have not travelled a big deal across the world. I may or I may not, but a journey i would want to take all my life would be the journey again sitting near the painted steel grills of the bus and looking through the window as the age old breeze scatters around. Through the same windows of 36 i would look at the way the landscape has transformed, the way the little tress have grown in those distant grooves, the way the cactus grown lands have started hosting houses with little children, and in the soothing closeness that the ambience of the bus gives, in my aesthetic loneliness i would be lost in the thought of those thousand little journeys which i had in the bus. Journeys which began in the insides of a little bus, journeys which have ended up becoming the most cherished memories of my lifetime.

PS: Sometime last week when the night slowly opened up to another morning and as the first rays floated around the village, i left the house for work. At a distance from the village i saw the bus. After months i saw the bus again. The driver and conductor should have left for a cup of chai. The bus stood there, empty. I parked my bike nearby and stood there looking at the bus. The same old bus. The same old friend. I didn’t go up to it, but we both kept looking at each other for a long time. A very peaceful moment passed in between us. Then I left, and from a distance i could see the bus slowly fading in sight, honking its way into the village.

On a nightfall

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:41:55 PDT

And the night fell on me, like a woman trying to spread on me with her wild kisses, like being immersed into a dark ocean of stars, like the sky breaking the roof and colliding into my sleep, the night fell on me, and i was awake. I was still lying alone in the gloom, on a cot of wires. Around me the limestone walls which aged a century glowed meekly in the dark. The tiled roofs patterned a series of dark brown lines, hiding in them were a few wooden lizards which usually creak a sound which always fell into my loneliness. Today they were quiet. People were asleep so was the village around. The house was still breathing, and i could feel it on my skin. I reached my hands to a little pot of water beneath my bed. It looked chilled by the breeze that was roaming around the walls. I quenched a thirst that never was, and again I lied down in silence thinking about the dark and moist night that was filling in the room. Yes!, the night is as moist as a tear, the night is as dark as our depths. The day begins from the sky but the night begins from the land. I looked at the floor around me and wondered if the night was slowly seeping from the million invisible pores of the land. I tossed around the wired bed and a beam of brightness fell on my eyelids. It was the moon on the other end. Through a glassed tile in the midst of the sand ones, i could see the moon floating on the sky. Usual sight for me to be waken up to the sight of the moon. We kept looking at each other through the blur of the glass. We had witnessed each other enough that only a silence prevailed to fulfill the distance. The lonely moon floated on the sky as a lonely man floated on his bed. The moon is the perfect symbolism to solitude. It has been there with its precious solitude, dreaming alone in the night when the rest of the universe is still asleep.The moon is not the source of the night like what the sun is to the day. A moon is just a companion to the night, a shepherd who guides the herd of stars into the wilderness of the night. He lets them feed on the night and rests himself on the shadow of tree and dreams as he always does. The night is the habitat of the moon.But the night exists without the moon for the night is not just the absence of light but the uncontrolled glow of the dark. The night is a huge vacuum pot into which we throw our secrets. The night like a faithful guardian has safeguarded the secrets of humanity, the night still has stories about Adam's first kiss.

The night jumps like a blind cat leaping from the edges of the day. While breaking away from work in night shifts, and walking alone into the night, I have seen the night lying down as a tired cat with its blind eyes glowing in the dark. Then a cup of tea would taste more when it is flavoured with a drop of the night. I would stand there on the empty roads far away from work and wonder if night is just a huge dusky bird which keeps flying around the world and the darkness is just a shadow that the birds wing descents on the earth. The night bird with it pulls the strings of time, in its mighty wings it carries the globe around. The night is the invisible dark river which is flowing from the origins of time heading towards the end of eternity. The dark river on whose shores we sleep after we get back roaming in the yellow sands of the day. The light of the day drops from the mammaries of the night, like a cattle feeding on milk the light of the day feeds itself from the darkness of the night. Night is always for the awaken and soon the smell of the night slowly enters my nose and thereby reaching my inbound pores. I look around to see that the moon has left its place. Only darkness prevailed over the glass. In sometime the same glass above my head will host the sun and i would be waking up to the yellow rays. The days are always hosted on top of the nights. Night is not one container of darkness but is made up of million tiny parts which keep floating around us.I lie alone feeling the night. The night slowly crosses over like a music. I become the one acquainted with the night. Like a fountain the night keeps pouring around me in all directions, almost drowning me, then slowly very slowly I close my eyes.

The "Jatti" thieves

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:35:00 PDT

Based on a true story.

Yesterday our village was attacked by the Jatti(underwear) thieves. Before we get into what really happened, who are these Jatti thieves? For the past week or so the villages around Coimbatore are invaded by a bunch of ruthless thieves who are popularly known as the jatti thieves(தி ஜட்டி தீவ்ஸ்). Why are they called the jatti thieves? not cos they steal the branded jattis hanging on the cloth line but cos, when they come for their mission they come wearing only their jattis. Only Jattis? yeah only cut-jattis. They also cover themselves in some kind of greasy and slippery oil so it becomes impossible to catch them by hand.They are a group of four to six men and the number changes according to the mission. People who have seen them report that they were well built, tall, dark and looked like monsters. These ruthless killing machines choose one village for a night. They carry only a very few weapons, a little knife, a rod with sharp nails and a hammer.They enter like cats clad in their dark jattis, they hide in the darkest corners of the village, they choose the lonely house which is located outside the main village and as the the village slowly gets to sleep they emerge from the darkness and break open the doors.They enter without making a noise.They wake you up with their knives, one of them catches hold of the youngest in the house placing a knife in the junction of the head and the chest, the second one collects the mobile phones and breaks them on the floor, the third one takes refuge of the people in the house as the fourth one breaks open the vaults and clutches the jewellery from the women. Finally they lock you in a room and tie your hands and mouth. When they are done, they leave the house locking it from the out and escape into the nearby grooves.It all happens like it was already written. If you play their tune, all you loose would only be your possessions. If at all if you are going to revolt then there will be blood. They have scissored the right ear of a grandma who refused to give away her ear-ring, they have pierced the head of a few with the nail rod, and one has lost his eye as the nail rod hit his face.Casualties? reportedly two till date. Nobody knows who they are.They don't look like locals, people say they speak Hindi and sometimes broken Tamil too. The worth of the stolen has crossed a few million in rupees.Police? Yeah they come after the thieves leave and they leave before the thieves come again!.The commissioner has ordered for a shoot at sight and the police has already informed the villagers to murder the thieves if they are caught.

It was just another Saturday for me.Sitting inside my brown roofed village house, I was lost in the web on my over-heated PC. It was nearing eight in the evening.It was then when my Uncle called me sayin the thieves entered the village next to us. They were hiding inside the toilet of a house when a little girl spotted them, as the girl started shouting they fled the place. The four seasoned thieves were chased by some hundred men but soon they lost track as the thieves singled out and each escaped in a direction.My Uncle said two hundred men from nearly three villages are in search for the thieves in all the grooves around. I said let me know if they are caught and i got back to my work. Hours passed and my Uncle came home, their search had turned futile, but the whole of the village was speaking about the thieves. My uncle was sayin how cruel they were to the people and said most villagers had sweared to kill them if caught.Hours passed, i sat with my Uncle as he was watching Royal challengers trash CSK. His phone rang again a voice shouted "the thieves are hiding in the common marriage hall near the temple". We ran there just to see that the whole village had come to life in the mid-night, hundreds of men with huge and round sticks were running in all the directions. A huge crowd had gathered before the hall which was located at a safe distance from the village. We went there and the search was on, the bushes were cut down, huge lights were brought in. The person who reportedly saw the thieves said, they were standing on the walls wearing only their jattis and as he approached them, they blinded his sight and ran away. Hundreds were searching in places nearby the hall, I never knew there were so many people in my village.I was never a part of the social life of this village, and many were looking at me "who is this guy". I was wondering if i go for a leak removing my trousers and if these guys are gonna sight me with my jattis then im sure they are gonna think im one of the "jatti thief" and they will beat me to death. So i stayed with my uncle and the people i knew. The place was completely scanned and it was decided that it was a rumour that the thieves were in the village, we were starting for our houses and suddenly we heard a few women scream wild somewhere nearby. The crowd rushed there, the women were restlessly shouting that the thieves just ran crossing them. A women said a man was hiding inside the bushes and when she asked he who he was, he pushed her down and ran away. Suddenly people realised the kind of mess that they were into, the brutal thieves are now inside the village and they can do anything to the innocent lives. A wave of tension started spreading across. My Uncle asked me to rush home as the people in my house were already asleep. Yeah people i was asked to be the Man of my home then. I was kind of grinning inside me cos all these are hell new to me. Came home and switched on the lights, made sure that the bushes around were safe, like the cops in hollywood movies i crawled around and spyed in our neighborhood, i started practising some punches in the air, i asked my grandmother to put a thilak on my forehead and say "vetriyoda thirumbivaa raasa". As my grandma searched for a broom i left my house, i knew its gonna be a long night ahead and i took my iPod with me. groups of young men were roaming all over the place each armoured with heavy weapons, there were faces with anger and tension . I should have looked like an asshole to sport an iPod in that crowd, anyways stupidity happens. i joined the crowd which was searching in the directions pointed by the women, teams were built and each was assigned a task. Some young men took the task of roaming around in the bikes, and some searching individual homes. Nobody took me in their teams. They knew i was not a villager.I started roaming around alone, i called my Uncle and he said he was busy somewhere else searching for them. They said the thieves were hiding somewhere in the little village and the search was getting intense. Someone would shout "Hey i saw a thief here" and before the people reach there someone from the other end of the village would call that someone spotted the thief trying to jump a wall. People started circling in and around the village and it became a Tom and Jerry story. I came home to see that my orders were not in place and everyone including my little cousin were standing outside the house.ARGH!, then I kept roaming for sometime, I kept hearing Akon's new album, I knew i was too careless, I knew i din know the seriousness of the situation, i was wondering what if he suddenly emerges from the bushes, he had a knife and a rod but I only had an Ipod and a Motorazr.I was standing in some dark corner and there were no many people around in that street, a man i knew came in his bike. He saw me alone there, he suddenly handed over a huge wooden rod which weight a few extra pounds and said "mapla, inga yaarum illa naan nayaker thatava varasolren neenga intha theruva pathukonga"(there is no one in this street, ill ask nayaker thatha(an old man) to join you, you both take care of this street). I was like are you joking, but i gladly accepted the offer. Soon the old man too joined me, we both were standing in the corners of the street. He had a larger stick, yeah people an old man/young man combo to save the village.

I stood there keeping my face as stern as possible. I knew i would burst into laughter any second. The world is still believing me. I was so cool that the thatha standing near me was annoyed with my carelessness. I was like who is going to come here to this street. And my phone rang!!!. My uncle said "Vicky who is near the 3rd street", i said "myself and the old man,Y?" and my uncle said the sweetest lines ever said, lines that ill never forget all my life "i heard that the thieves are running towards the third street and they are heavily armed". The most intense moment of my life, no people i din piss out there believe me. I was motionless, i said this to the grandpa near me and he started tying his dothi up getting ready for an encounter with the beasts. What am i gonna do now!? I said to myself "No Vicky,Now you are not a software engineer who works with Steve, Matt and Davidson. You are no more the guy who visits the village for sleep and food, you are no more a guest here, you are now a part of this village, you now shoulder the responsibility to safe guard your motherland(yes! my mom was born here), you are a angry young man, you are Rambo, you are the native village warrior, you are the man that the world wants and the man that the world is searching for.Get ready for the toughest night of your life and tonight lets dine in hell". I was all charged up, i folded my shirt till my shoulders, i curved my newly grown moustach. I was like "Vaangada! vaanga! Seriyana ambalaya iruntha vaanga da"(Come thieves come to me, if you are a man and if you have your balls intact, come to me and cross me). They never came! I was waitin there for a few hours and only an old street dog was in sight. They escaped form me, the escaped from a man who was ready for a battle. I called my uncle he said "You FOOL are you still waiting there?, we enquired the people who reportedly saw the thieves and found that all was a RUMOUR, nobody actually saw the thieves, when inquired they all said that someone else had said to them and nobody saw a thief in the village, the thieves had never come to the village, YOU GO TO BED!!" No one had insulted me like this before. Go to bed? FU**! dude i was waiting for a battle. If at all they had crossed my way, if at all they had come near me... i would have looked them in their bloody eyes, i would have roared inside me once and lifted my hands, then something really terrible would have happened in that lonely dark street. The next day The Hindu would have reported "Young lad defeats thieves and saves a village" and Dhina thandhi would have reported "இளைஞர் சாகசம்!!! ஜட்டி திருடர்களுக்கு ஜட்டி கிழிந்தது".(No translation available!)

PS: Jokes apart, the village is still caught in the web of uncertainty. People are expecting that as the thieves never came to our village they may came again anytime. Dedicated police squads are asked to roam around in the villages for a few days now.

PS2: Believe me when my uncle called me to say that the thieves are nearing me, I already had my plans to tackle them. Guess what?? I would have said to him "Hey see no blood, ill give you my iPod and also teach you how to operate it, its worth 5k.You can leave without a hush. GOD PROMISE ill never tell these people the direction in which you ran". Now you all know why i took my iPod with me :)

PS3:(26/May)This post is selected by Blogadda.com as one of the best Indian(!?!) posts of this week, Click the image to view the page.

Pablo Neruda

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:16:52 PDT

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry

speak of dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

the bloods in the streets.

Come...and see the blood in the streets!

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

When a poet is born, the angels in the sky come alive from their dreams, a gush of warm water flows through the springs across the ends of the world, the tree by the river sheds a single leaf which floats in the air for an eternity, a light bulb kept in an old hut fades slowly to darkness, a few fleas keep sucking blood from the wound of the dead, hiding in a dark corner a grown man cries bleeding his heart out, a tint of wild lust is mixed with gallons of love as a woman deeply kisses the man she loves. When a poet is born the world gets ready for him, for he would soon capture in the magic of his lyrics the warmth of the water, the journey of the lonely leaf, the silence of the angels, the pain of the man caught in darkness, the passion of love, the glitter of the tear and the smell of the dark and humid drop of blood.When a poet is born he doesn't come out crying, but he comes out looking at the world with with his indifferent eyes, which will make poems out of the moments of his birth. A poet I believe is never a kid, a boy, a man but, a poet begins and ends as a poet. As if the only reason for his journey is to capture his share of the poems which keep floating like butterflies in the middle of a sunny day. A poet is born to write poems, the poems which are destined for him to write. Poems which are as unique as the waves of lines in the palm. Poetry is art of capturing the world in little canvasses. To put in words the essence of the intense moments, the art of seizing the emotions which flow through the inner walls of the being, the search for truth. Poets are not gay, they share a deeper solitude inside them which pulls them towards the words. I always wished that i may have the vision of a poet, i wished i could share the sight of a poet so i could interpret the world as he does, cos in his vision there is a search for ultimate truth, he looks at the gore of the beautiful and the beauty of what that is despicable.A poet doesn't write for his reader, he writes just to capture the magnificence of the moment, he writes a poem just like a painter immersed in painting a still life art.His poems with equal measures captures the beauty of the first drop of the rain, the last tear for the dead, the purity of the white snow which slowly melts into the mountain river, and the purity of the white liquids which are melted in the hour of making love.

Just like old friends leading you to new ones, S.Ra introduced me to Pablo Neruda, who in-turn introduced me to his poetry which more than just magic of words has become a obsession for war and peace for me. He ignites fire, he throws inside some dust, he drenches with water, he puts a knife in bleeding wounds. When he wrote he did not write to impress me or guide me, he did not write to give false hopes to people or to inspire them, he did not write to teach or to preach, he just wrote.He wrote poetry to explain himself to himself. And that brings him closer to me, i read him knowing that his poems were not written for me, when i read him I and Neruda sit opposite to each other and we discuss the poem. It has not been long since i came in terms with Neruda, say it has just been a few months. Slowly i started collecting his poems, spending my midnights to interpret its meanings. After spending time with him, now i can say he taught me nothing except to accept to life as is it, to cry when you cry. to laugh when you laugh, to let life rule over you.I wonder how gifted are the ones who read in Spanish, the language in which Neruda wrote his poems. Neruda was born in Chile, belonged to every corner street of the world. He roamed around the world in Vietnam, in Lanka, in France in Spain in Italy. The Picasso of poetry was conferred with a Nobel for literature in 1971.

Neruda love for words is evident in the way he plays with them, like the piper driving with him the rats, the words run in the back of Neruda, they drown into his pen and come out as the wet ink filling in the paper. A word reaches its pinnacle of glory when it is written by Neruda. be it the beauty of the phrase "The lemons move down from the tree's planetarium","i want to be my love, alone with a tip of your breast of snow" or the pain of love in the words "Don't leave me alone, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart". Neruda had a never ending love for words, which spoke on people, society, life, truth and beauty. But Neruda is celebrated for the poems he wrote on Love. Yes Neruda was a poet of love, most of his poems share with us heavenly peace and the numbing pain of love. For anyone who reads Neruda the beginnings would be his poems on love, his first book twenty love poems and a song of despair is a must read for people who for once knew in their life how is it to love and to be loved. When a man becomes mad about a women, all his insanities are interpreted as poems. Neruda loved women, he praised her, prayed to her and he celebrated and cursed her. Neruda was in love with love. The pure essence of love keeps flowing in all his poems. As S.Ra says young men and women in Chile and across the world still visit his memorial in groups, they stand in crowds on the shore facing his house and recite the poems of love. Neruda was a saint who preached love. In his in numerous sonnets and poems my favourites ones written about love would be Sonnet XVII which in it says "so I love you because I know no other way" and Tonight i can write the saddest lines which in it says "Love is so short, forgetting is so long".

Poetry is nothing but a vision, a state of mind that you share with the poet.My days are getting drifted in the magic of his words, I have almost done with all his poems on love and now slowly moving into his poems on life which range from communism to the struggle for social justice.Lover, political activist, the voice of the common man Neruda has had a number of faces.It is in his poems i find my reasons and my reflections. It is after reading him I found that there is no good or bad poetry any word that emerges from the depth of the soul is poetry. Now i know what to search when i read a poem, what to look at when i glance the life around me.Yes! than beauty, than gloss, than the infinite possibilities of hope, give me truth.

Bangalored again!

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:32:13 PDT

Bidding a heartless goodbye to Arun, i started running towards the apartment.I didn't want to miss out on the Coorg trip, i already started dreaming about the trip, the mountains, the mist and the coffee estates! They said they were leaving in minutes i rushed to the room. When i opened the door, I saw a few men lying scattered one looking at the ceiling, the other clad in his brief was scribbling something on the floor and the next few were glued to the evil box. As i walked in the rest joined I looked at them and we all kept starring for a few minutes,then suddenly everyone started laughing out "Dey meesa vechurukaanda".

Me:Shut up! what happened to Coorg?

rest: what Coorg? which Coorg?

Me: assholes u guys just spoilt a beautiful day with my brother, i came running!

rest: illa da we decided two hours back that its not feasible today

Me:Then why did u guys call me 20 mins back

rest: chumma ullulaaaiku.

After sharing mutual abuses for sometime, and after making a feasibility study for a few hours sometime later in the evening someone asked "how many wants to go to Coorg?" 1,2,3,4,5 the hands kept raising. So it was decided that we do a night drive to Coorg, book some resort there for a days stay and get back to Bangalore late time next day. The two red swifts were set and we started the trip, on the car we kept discussing about the Coorg that none of us has been to.I desperately wanted to be in a hill station, to become synonymous with nature. Everyone looked excited. After twisting and turning around Bangalore somehow we reached the the outskirts, and from there we took on Mysore road. The music was loud around us, and it was fun to be a part of that drive. we were midway to Coorg.We stopped at a petrol bunk after some two hours on the road.After the refreshments and before getting into the car for the long drive, someone asked "OK how many wants to get back to Bangalore", 1,2,3,4,5 the same hands rose again and in minutes time we were back on the tracks through which we just travelled. I was not shocked, no not a bit, after all i am with my guys for some 7 years now! Its just the way we are.the trip back remains historically important cos we were LOST. Nobody knew how and we kept following the first car and after some point they said that they too didn't know the route and were following us through the rear view mirror(Yeah we rock at logic!!). It was then i saw the Bangalore opposite to the one i saw in the morning, the dull, dreaded, and lifeless Bangalore. The streets without trees and roads without peace. But the ride was, we spoke everything that men of our age speak in a car journey.Yeah we discussed the socio-economic impacts of the Obama foreign policy and which actress looked better wearing a two-piece.You speak i pull you down, i speak you pull me down. We spoke, we kept on speaking, we laughed, we kept on laughing. We were happy to be lost in Bangalore. We kept looking at the Kannada film posters and someone said

him:Dey whatever i think the kannada people are the best when it comes to loving the fellow humans?

us:how do you say that?

him:What do we do to trans-genders in our states?We insult them in our movies, in our streets, in our tasteless jokes, we treat them as degraded human beings, we make fun of them everywhere we sperate them from our society.

us:Yes but what does that have to do with Kannadigas?

him:There is a lot. You know what kannadigas do? they don't insult the trans-genders in their states, they don't make fun, they don't drive them away instead "They make them hero's in their movies", look at the posters around man what do you call all these creatures as??

yeah we laughed like our ***s popping out.(He was not kidding guys, in whatever industry karnataka goes forward there is an industry where they still compete with apes, "the movie industry"). Finally all roads drove us home, it was late night when we reached home. Dinesh made some forgettable mutta dosais, we had a house-party, and finally i went to sleep after a tired day but as i had turned into an insomniac recently i was wide awake living in my own world and sometime soon the next day had visited us!

>Sitting in the back seat and travelling through the sun-filled city, I saw them. They where caught in the middle of the road, without able to cross the road. An old man and his lady, dressed in dense rural attires these are people i see everyday in my village but they were the first people i saw wearing a dothi in that wide and big city. In the few seconds in which we crossed them, i saw a bewilderment in his eyes.He was holding the women's hand and both had no place to go.That was one of the crowded places in Bangalore, where all the new age men and women of Bangalore spend time together in their weekends, the place where a few international brands were staged, the place for the rich and the niche. Looking at the man and his women out there was like reading a crude poem in the middle of the sun. The city has travelled a long distance away from the common man. How will he interpret the metropolitan which has grown before his eyes, will he be comfortable to walk in there?, will he not feel a bit alien in that "really" alien crowd? I was wondering what made him come to the city, i said to myself that he should have come there from his village to buy jewels for his daughters marriage with a little money and he ended up here or did he come to get seeds for his irrigation?. If he had regretted a bit, or if he was not able to become a part of the place around him, blame globalisation. It was the capital of the village man some time back, but now Bangalore remains the capital of the rich, the new, and the loaded.There is no place for the village man in the streets of the city which has painted itself with pretentive colours. What kind of culture is it when it alienates the fellow citizen?. When i think of Chennai it still has the rural stint heavily in it, people from the villages of Tamilnadu still visit Chennai with the feeling that "its my capital" and Chennai has never disowned them. Chennai has had the heart to accept people. Chennai too has the rich and the niche but the attitude i find with the men and women of chennai is they try to be as local as possible.They are glad to be locals and most dont behave like they just alighted form the last flight from new jersey(i speak from the examples i saw, there may/will be exceptions). In Chennai the more you are local by heart the more you become a part of the place. I personally believe that in the long run there will be only one global culture that everyone on earth will follow, but then I am against creating alienating societies within one society.That saturday in Bangalore, welcomed me to the Bangalore which i wanted to visit, the city where everyone eats with spoon and fork(one guy was eating Paper roast with a fork!), a city where women look manly and men look delicate, a city where you can't find a stationery shop for miles but malls in every corner,a city where people wake up at 11 and go to sleep by 9, a city where the starting cost of a Puma is 3.5k, a city where you can see people fuck in closed cars i almost every corner,a city for the unusual a city where you are not worth if you are not having a girl to roam around with, a city ruled by the excess of money, a city where the sales guy speak better English than the real English men, a city which has disowned its own culture, a city in search of new masks everyday, a city which has never been, a city synonymous with Peter Keating, a city which tries to compete with New York and Paris but loses in competition to *** and ***.

But still i loved the other Bangalore, where people still lived without becoming prey to the artificiality around them, i loved the city for its natural charm and warmth, i loved the city for its trees which made evenings in hot noons, I loved the locals who were gracious hosts and guided us through the strangled roads, i loved the kannada watchman t who opened the doors for our cars without a complain even when we took it out for hundred times a day, i loved everything that connected me to the city. Yeah i did love things there after all we were not screwed, we were just Bangalored!

PS: Man, where are you leaving now? I have not done with the trip yet, did i ever say what we did on saturday after we woke up? Every trip will have a day when the epitome of all the events happen. Yes the was a place that happened to be the unforgettable during our stay and it happened on a saturday night! in this place(hey idiot click here). My heart wants to speak about it but my brain says no! So lemme leave the choice to you, tell me if you still need the last sequel.

Bangalored!

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:40:51 PDT

(This is just another personal and ugly rant about my weekend at Bengaluru, reading is at readers risk)

I dumped my issues and bugs at office ran to the bus depot to catch my bus at 10:30. When I got into the huge white bus which was already chilling with AC, i longed for another long journey in the middle of the night, where i can sleep, think and dream. Then i saw him, the stout-bald-decent-gentleman with whom i shared my seat. He smiled at me and i smelled a rat. I settled down on my seat, covering myself with the brown blanket and watching video songs play in the LCD. No ordinary songs, i mean which other travels would have the guts to play a mid-night masala DVD right in the middle of the a bus filled with family crowd. It started with "naaattu saraku" then followed by Mumtaj and a few others, finally the hotness quotient went higher as silk Smitha came in with her iconic "nethu rathiri yamma". As the toddlers in the bus started crying some gentlemen stood up for a fight.The video was stopped, and in the silence that then filled the bus, i knew why i smelled a rat.It was not just a rat, it was a snoring rat. The stout-bald-decent-gentleman was snoring. Yeah I do hate people who snore like pigs, i do hate to be awake when someone keeps buzzing around my ears. I detest them, but on that day i wanted to stay cool. I wanted to change my attitude a bit and stop complaining a lot about people who snore. I stayed abnormally cool.Whenever his snore went high,I smiled at him.I smiled at him just like how Jesus would have smiled at the sheep, I smiled at him just like how a mother would smile at her kid. I almost became his mother. I had no complaints when he fell on my shoulders. I let him sleep over there. Whenever he snored in an alarmingly disturbing volumes i wished i could kiss on his glittering bald head and whisper in his ears "c'mon sleep like a baby". Exactly 6 hours passed. I looked around to see that the whole bus was sleeping, i went out to see that the driver too, was almost sleeping. I was the only one to pay 600bucks and end up with a red eye. When i came back, i found that i could take it no more. I knew i am no Jesus Christ, and i hated that bald asshole for making me sit awake for hours. My face then should have looked liked a pissing volcano. I threw him away with my shoulders every time he fell there, i said nasty things in his ears when he snored. I couldn take the fact that hits two mangoes with one stone 1)he sleeps, and 2)he happily disturbs my sleep. God-damn-it how i hate people who snore!. It was almost five and we had reached the outskirts of Bangalore, the guy near me woke up. He smiled at me and said "Good morning". He smiled at my dreaded face and pulp-red eyes and said "Good morning".I said "get lost you asshole, next time you get into a bus, wear a name tag crying out Warning:I do snore like a pig". You know i didnt say those, I just said "Good morning".He left the seat and i took the window by now, as the bus passed through the out-skirts of Bangalore city, a grin visited my lips. I kept looking at the waking city and in the intervals, I saw the mystery man smiling at me from the large hoardings. Everytime i saw him,he made me smile. With his sculptured physic, his mesmerising smile, his out-of the world hair-do, he was GOD! The local brand ambassador of coke, he was golden-star Ganesh, the most handsome man of karnataka, whose movies outrun even those of SRK, who is the Rajni and Kamal combine of Karnataka, who makes every kannada speaking women go sleepless, who is perfectely flawless except and he looks a bit more manly than Namitha.(Click here to have a look at the golden star). Looking at his face I knew how my trip is going to end up as!. My plans were simple, to spend a day with My brother and spend two more days with my old roomies who had come all the way from Chennai. I knew things will not be as simple. As the bus was nearing my stop, I slept. The driver then had to throw me out at the last drop point at the kalasipalayam depot. Yeah at last i slept for exactly 17 minutes and some 0-60 seconds.

The Auto halted at 17th cross street, Malleswaram. The sight which i saw then still lingers in my eye. The sky was opening up, the first rays of the morning floated above the trees. There were trees all over the road, covering both the ends. The trees blocked the light and below the tree it was still dark. Morning in the sky and still the night prevailed below the trees. Magical! was the only word. Waiting for my brother I slowly started adoring the city which i just traveled through. All the way there were tress, the roads were wide and proportional and the ambiance so peaceful. For the first time i tried shedding my inhibitions and said to myself that I liked Bangalore. I then knew why they called Bangalore a garden city, the whole city reminded me of a neighborhood garden.Arun (My bro) came then and May1:that day was his birthday. We drove back to his house.Wait a sec! it was no house, it reminded me of somethin else. A house built over acres with the porch which can hold some 10 cars. I asked if he lived there, he said the owner lives there and they live in the outhouse. The outhouse was a bit old, but on the way there was trees that were shedding white colored flowers the mist was still floating around and the air still had a tint of chill.Man i envied the place like hell. I was thinkin about the rooms that we lived in Velachery/Perungudi/Sholinganallur. Where you sweat at 5:30 in the morning and where anytime u can glance pigs bathing in the sewage. I went around the house, it was neat. Four fully grown men live there. I was reminded of my rooms in Chennai.Here each had their own bed, own PC, own internet, own dresses and even own inner-wear. ( The sight of ten foul-smelling men sharing the same room, same matress, same dresses, same *** , of whom i was an integral part did flash in my mind). My brothers room was all neat and perfect.There is a difference between men in the verge of getting married and men like us. Being there I knew i was still a boy. After a bath and a chat we left the house for some "brothers-day-out".While leaving the house, my brother introduced me to his house owner. An old man wearing his torn vests, sitting in his wooden chair and mending his pigeon nest.

Him: So where do u work?

Me: CTS.

Him: Oh! good, you last quarter earning were good! So why did u guys back out from the Satyam deal at the last minute?

Me:(What?? did we get into the satyam deal in the first point?, this old man is blabbering) No, we never were a part of the deal.

Him:Nope, your team did propose a bidding of some **, but they backed out finally.(He analysed why backing out was a good option, why he felt the deal was not worth it)

Me:Oh!

Him:So what kind of job u do?

Me:I work for a client called DB.

Him:Oh the information guys,.....( He spoke a looooot, from the history of my client to what is their current stock price, who is their CEO, and where all they have branches in India)

Me:Oh!

Him:So what is work u do for them.

Me:We as a team are responsible for managing and enhancing their severs and applications.

Him:What servers you use?

Me: Unix boxes.

Him:Yes Unix is best when it comes to bulk file transfers, Windows boxes aren't that good.

Me: (WTH???,)

Him:So you do shell scripting in unix right?

Me:(Jesus-christ! what is happening here, what is he gonna ask me do nxt? will he bring out a white paper and ask me write a shell script for him???)

My brother came to my rescue now, i escaped the old-man- who-knows-everything just to hear that he was an IIM-A grad in the sixties. My bro gave me a look which parodied all my MBA dreams. (Eluthi vechuko un diary-la 2012 la naanum oru MBA avendaa... ithu namba koladheivam ekidamma mela sathiyamda! sathiyamda!) Finally we left the place, driving around the city in my Bro's car. He had been there for years now and knows the history/bio-chemistry of every place out there. On the eve of his b'day we visited a temple, we went for a quiet breakfast in a sub-urban restaurant, we roamed around malls, i bought him a book, we spoke-we shared, after long time we both spent time as friends. If you had ever had a brother, the point in which you shed the tags as brothers and become real friends is special. We roamed around like friends, with a lot to share and nothing to hide. He took me to his office, as we entered I saw his security guard saluting.(In the place i work, my security shouts "Hey! you! display your ID card"). The more time i spent in his workplace, the more i felt ashamed about the place i work. It was huge and each had their own bay(I share my PC with 3 others), he had 39 colleagues while I just had some 5000 in my office.(For ppl working in IT: WE SUCK). Again after stealing some stuff from his desk we again left for the city. Hanging around in brigade road and the malls around, having lunch and roaming around I be live that day was one of the best days that we had together. (Arun if you are reading this, I really wished that the day went on!). But, my phone rang speaking on the line was my ex-roomie he shouted "Asshole(Ke**P*** in tamil)!!! Wru???, we are waiting for you here, exactly in 20 minutes we are starting for Coorg, cars are ready... come here sooon!!".In a rush then, Arun drove me to Koramangala. I bid him goodbye and walked towards the room from where we were supposed to leave to Coorg. Without knowing that a surprise awaited there for me!!(I know this the cheapest trick to stop for a sequel, pardon me ;)

coming soon Bangalored! -part II

Of the voices...

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:19:07 PDT

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live

~ Henry David Thoreau

A year since May 2nd 2008, a year since Amazwi.It all started with this. It happened as a matter of minutes, the decision to blog, the name, the theme and things. I had no clue that this little space on the web is going to become my address, an identity which has almost became synonymous with my existence. Amazwi is not exactly me. It is my reflection, a blurred and inverted vision of me on the water. Like many i stand on the edges of the well and I look at my own reflection on the water. I started it as just another blog but soon got it ornamented with my character, Amazwi imbibed my passions, from books, movies, to the essence of my lonely moments, what you have read here is what i think and what i believe,what you read is what i am.No wonder why Amazwi remains a loner in the blogosphere. I wanted to blog, but it was this post which pulled towards the magic of writing, which i believe is the most profoundest of activities. To write is an end by itself. When you get to the mode of writing you don't write for people, for their words, you start writing for the genuine pleasure of it. I dont blog, I write.Nothing can equal the moments when you sit alone and try capture the million abstract thoughts that flow all across your soul into a few selective words. I was good, i was bad, i was happy, i was sad, i was biased, i was absurd, i was funny, i was tiring, i inspired, i depressed, but all along i was myself. Reading back Amazwi you can decode everything that had happened in my life for the past one year, every single mood of mine.I wrote when i stood a few feet above the ground with brightness filling in my space, i wrote when i was crumpled in dark room with no air to breath, i wrote when i walked indifferently with my legs firmly grounded on sand. Writing has become a companion, a window in my room through which i see the world and the world sees me.Amazwi has taken me a step near all things i dreamt of, amazwi introduced me to a new world of people where most had a voice of their own, amazwi earned me a few people whom i treasure for life, amazwi kept a mirror very close to me and let me explore all the pores, Amazwi made me a self obsessive monger, it paved a way for me to travel all my life, it gave me a hope to look forward, it gave me a platform on which i stand and voice myself even if there is no one to hear.Amazwi has been a voice of mine, times like a roar, times like a groan, times like a cheer and times like a cry. All i did was to voice out. After a year now I am grateful to the few readers who made it a habit to visit Amazwi and those who criticize and praise from the heart. It has been quite a journey from Vignesh to "Amazwi" Vignesh. But still there is a distance between my words and my life just as there is a distance between the lyrical getaways of poetry and the binding truths of reality. I will live to cover the distance, and all the noises i make in the way can be heard here at Amazwi -the consortium of my voices.

Finally like a few of you out there, Im too really glad that Amazwi happened.

Flames, Ashes.

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:15:12 PDT

It was dark when we stepped out of the house.I was walking with the crowd just behind the white vehicle carrying her corpse, the air was being filled with a wave of whispers and cries. Her youngest son walked with a burning pot, his eyes were wide open, i heard her daughter far from behind, she kept shouting Amma and her mother never responded. The womb they both shared is going to get burned in a few minutes from now. I was searching in all the nook and corners of my mind, to find all the memories associated with her. I was hitting at days that spawned through decades, the heart grew heavy with the load. I walked silently with the crowd. We walked through the mud paths with a few torched lights guiding us, to the funeral ground far away from the village.We crossed the groove which once belonged to her family.She would have been here- in these roads as a kid, a girl, a woman, a mother and now for one last time she walked with her feet above the ground. The corpse leaves behind a wet trail on the streets just like a drop of tear does. Following a corpse was like following a huge drop of tear.She was my Grandmother's sister. I had not cried much for her demise, not when i first saw her lifeless body, not when my aunt hugged me and said "vicky, nammala anathaya vittu poiduchuda patti", not when the north Indian doctor informed me that the "body" is decaying and its not advisable to keep it for long,not when i saw my grandma fall on her dead sisters feet and cry loud making a sound that echoed their sisterhood for nearly 80 years now, but a tear kept growing inside me.

I saw my brother walking with the crowd, he had flown from a distance to get a final glimpse of her. We embraced our hands, they were wet. When we reached the place there were a few lightnings that interluded the night sky. The vehicle then stopped.She was brought down, the body was there, where was she?. They lied her next to the bed of woods.They removed her jewellery, they tied her head with the neck, they covered her face with sandal paste. People placed rice on her and gave their final respects. they took a final glimpse of her face which can only be seen in grey memories after now. Her body was then bundled in a piece of cloth covering her from top to toe, they made a little wound on her face with a knife. They lifted her body and placed it on the woods. Women started hitting in their chests, the men were idle. The final goodbye to the departed. She was covered by conjoining loafs of wood. She was buried in wood. I saw all the women of my family reduced to tears. The men who loved her were broke in their insides.When the cries got harder her son started walking around her carrying a pot which was holed thrice and broken. When he took the torch i realised that she in every literal since will be "no more".A body which lived through the years, a mouth that spoke till the last day, a frame inside which she preserved all her memories and pain will be eaten by flames. The legacy that her life was, comes to a literal end. Her son placed fire and slowly it started eloping the body. The body became just another block of wood. There were flames and there will be ashes.Slowly, people started leaving.I stood there staring at the fire, I searched for her inside the fire. Through a gap between the woods I saw her. I saw a fire slowly removing the red cloth, inside it i saw her legs slowly emerging from the burning cloth. The legs on which fell before i left for my job to Chennai, the same legs which shivered when i touched them, when i fell in her legs she had said "nee enga ponalum nalla irupa sami, unakku entha korayum varathu". The voice kept echoing all around me. tears kept flowing from the eye. She was burning inside my eye. My brother stood near me and he too was wiping his eyes. In the distance i saw her son and daughter hugging each other and both cried aloud. It was their mother, losing the mother is losing like loosing everything that connects you to life.We stayed there for sometime and when we left it started drizzling around.

I walked with my mother through the drizzle. I embraced her around her shoulder and we walked back through the deserted mud roads. Amma then said to me something which i had never forgotten. When i was a kid i had sat in the same grandmothers lap and said "patti nee saavanu ennala nenakave mudiala ana nee settha naan bayangarama aluven, naan aluguratha paathu ellarum aluvanga"(I cant imagine you could die someday, if that happens i will cry aloud from my heart and seeing me cry everybody will cry with me). No one would have noticed the tears which kept dropping from me when i walked through the darkness of the night. Her death was in a way the best thing that had happened to her. She suffered with cancer for nearly a decade, little by little she was destroyed by it. She fought it with all her might, even on the death bed she believed she would get back to normal, but she died. She died a peaceful death.வட்டமான இலை மேல் மெதுவாய் வடிந்து மறையும் நீர்த்துளி போல், பறக்கும் பறவை அறியாமல் பிரிந்து செல்லும் ஒற்றை இறகு போல்,வெம்மையான மதியத்தில் காற்றின் திசையில் தனித்து அலையும் காகிதம் போல், சலனமில்லாத நீரில் விழுந்து மறையும் ஓர் ஒற்றை பனித்துளி போல், அல்லது ஒரு புத்தகத்தை ஆழ்ந்து படிக்கும்போது அச்சாகாத ஓர் பக்கத்தை காணும் மௌனமான திடுக்கிடல் போல், இயல்பாகவே, மிக இயல்பாகவே நிகழ்ந்தது உன் மரணம் .Like a morning dew thinning out on a lotus leaf, like a feather which leaves the bird on the fly , like a paper which floats alone in the summer winds, like a drop of winter snow which drowns in motionless water, or like the shock that occurs when finding a missing page in a long book, you died.

கோபல்ல கிராமம்

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:16:26 PDT

பேய்க்காற்று வீசிக்கொண்டிருந்த ஒரு மாலை நேரம். தெற்கிலிருந்து வீசும் காற்று ஒரு ஊமையனின் விசும்பல் போல் என் கிராமத்து வீதிகளை மெல்ல சூழ்கிறது. தென்னை மரத்தின் இலைகள் எதிர்காற்றில் நடந்துவரும் பெண்ணின் கூந்தல் போல் காற்றின் திசையில் நீள்கிறது. கிராமத்தின் தெருக்களில் மண்டிக்கிடக்கும் மஞ்சள் புழுதியின் துகள்களில் கொஞ்சம் என் வீட்டு முற்றத்தில் வந்து நிறைகிறது. மின்சாரமில்லாமல் இருளை எதிர்நோக்கிக் கொண்டிருக்கும் என் வீட்டின், நீண்ட திண்ணையில் அமர்ந்தபடி வானம் பார்த்துக்கொண்டிருக்கிறேன் நான். என் கைகளில் ஒரு சிறிய புத்தகம், அதில் இன்னும் மிச்சமிருக்கிறது சில ஒற்றை பக்கங்கள். ஒரு பயணத்தின் பொது, அரசுப் பேருந்தின் ஜன்னலருகில் அமர்ந்தபடி படிக்கத்துவங்கிய ஒரு புத்தகம், கீ.ரா எழுதிய கோபல்ல கிராமம்.புத்தகத்தில் ஒரு சிறிய கிராமம் அதன் வீதிகளில் உலவும் யதார்த்த மனிதர்கள் அவர்கள் வாழ்வோடு நிகழும் சம்பவங்கள், அச்ச்ம்பவங்களின் மூலம் கூறப்படும் ஓர் மறையும் வாழ்கை முறையின் மேன்மை. கற்பனை கோபல்ல்மும் என் கண்முன் காற்றுடன் குலவும் என் கிராமமும் இணையும் ஒரு புள்ளியில் நின்றுகொண்டு ஏதேதோ சிந்தனை ஓட்டத்தில் திளைக்கிறது என் மனம்.கூரை ஓடுகளின் மத்தியில் ஒளிந்துகொண்டிருக்கும் புழுதி, காற்றின் ஊடுருவலில் வெளிப்பட்டு தோள்களிலும் திறந்து கிடக்கும் புத்தகத்திலும் சரம் சரமாக கரும் பூக்கள் போல நிறைகிறது. மேலே வானில் காற்றடிக்கும் திசையில் சில பழுப்பு நிற மேகங்கள், எந்நேரமும் மழை வரும். மழைக்கும் கிராமத்திற்கும் உள்ள உறவு மிக பழமையானது, மழைக்கு முந்தய காற்று ஓர் தூதுவனை போல் மழை வரும் செய்தி கூறி கிராமத்தை அதன் அயர்ச்சியில் இருந்து எழுப்பும், பின் காற்றோடு சிற்றின்பம் கொள்ளும் கிராமம் எழுப்பும் சில தனித்துவமான ஒலிகளை. வானில் இருந்து இறங்கி வீதியில் உலவும் காற்றின் தொடர்பில் மரங்கள் எழுப்பும் ஒலி, வீட்டின் கூரைகளில் தட தடக்கும் காற்றின் இரைச்சல், இரைச்சலுக்கு பயந்து அலறும் தூரத்து வீட்டு ஆநிரைகள், தாழிகள் அவிழ்ந்து காற்றோடு போராடும் மர ஜன்னல்கள், வீடு திரும்பாத சிறுவனின் நிலை அறியாமல் காற்றை சபிக்கும் எதிர் வீட்டு பாட்டியின் பெருமூச்சு என்று சிறுதும் பெரிதுமாய் கூடும் ஓசைகள். காற்றின் ரீங்காரம் சூழ என் கவனம் மீண்டும் புத்தகத்தில் நிறைகிறது. கோபல்ல கிராமம், பல நாட்களுக்கு பின் நான் படித்த ஓர் தனித்துவமான எழுத்து. எழுத்து எனும் பெருவட்டத்தின் எல்லைகளை மீறத் துடிக்கும் ஓர் எழுத்து. இதனை தூரதேசத்தில் இருந்து இங்கே நம் மண்ணில் வந்தமரும் ஓர் சமூகத்தின் கதை எனலாம், அல்லது கரிசல் மண்ணின் ஒரு காலத்தில் வாழ்ந்த சில மனிதர்களின் வாழ்கை குறிப்பு எனலாம், அல்லது கிராமத்து வாழ்கையின் நுணுக்கமான செயல் முறைகளை விழகும் ஓர் அயுவு கட்டுரை எனலாம், அல்லது நம்மை விட்டு நீங்கி கொண்டிருக்கும் ஓர் கடந்தகாலத்தை போதித்து வெய்த பெட்டகம் எனலாம். ஏனோ இது ஒரு புத்தகமாக படவில்லை எனக்கு, கரிசல் காட்டில் அமர்ந்து மண்ணை கைகளில் அள்ளிக்கொண்டிருக்கும் ஓர் பழைய கிழவன், காற்று வாக்கில் கூறிசெல்லும் கதைகளே இவை என்று படுகிறது. ஓர் மரத்தடியில் சாய்ந்தபடி நமக்கு அவன் தன் சமூகத்தின் வரலாறு கூறுகிறான், நேர்கோட்டில் அல்ல, மையமாக அல்ல, அவன் தன் மனம் போன போக்கில் கதை சொல்கிறான், எங்கோ தொடங்கி எங்கோ முடிக்கிறான், சிறுவனை போல அமர்ந்து அவன் சொல்லும் கதைகளை கற்பனை செய்கிறேன் நான். கீ.ரா எனும் அந்த மனிதன் கூறும் கதை கால மாற்றத்தின் மேல் எழுதப்பட்டுள்ளது, நிலை கொள்ளாத மழை நேர காற்று போல அது தன் திசையில் அலைகிறது, உன் கை பிடித்து உன் வேர்களுக்கு அருகில் உன்னை இட்டு செல்கிறது. கோபல்லத்தில் கதை என்று ஒன்று தனியே இல்லை, சம்பவங்களின் கூட்டு நிகழ்வாய் நீள்கிறது எழுத்து. பகட்டுத்தனம் இல்லமைல் பேச்சுமொழியில் சொல்லப்படும் கதைகள். மேலோட்டமான வாசிப்பிற்கு இது ஓர் அர்த்தமின்மையை கூட கற்பிக்கலாம், கோட்டோவியத்தில் கோடுகளை காணும் கண்களுக்கும் கலையை காணும் கண்களுக்கும் உள்ள மாற்றுமை போல அர்த்தமும் அதன் இன்மையும் நம் ரசனையின் பொருட்டே அமைகின்றது, ஆம் மனதின் ஆழமே படைப்பின் ஆழம். A good literature acts only as a catalyst. Koballa gramam – a very little was said in the book, but it opened up a lot more doors inside me. From the day i started with the book till this second when im writing about it, Iv e been lost in the thoughts. About all that was said and more about all that was not said. The mind and the book are little stones, and in their friction shapes up a flame, the flame lights you through the darkness. நான் கிராமத்தில் வசிக்கும் ஓர் நகரத்தான், கிராமவாழ்வின் முழுமையை அறியாதவன். நகரவாழ்வின் பொய்களை கண்டவன் கிராமவாழ்வின் உண்மையை எட்டவே முடியாத தூரத்தில் நின்று ரசிப்பவன். The peace which i feel now, sitting alone and looking at the village which is getting ready to get drenched itself can never be felt tomorrow or the day after, when i will be sitting in front of lifeless computers in the huge white tombs where i work. கிராமத்தில் வாழ்வு உண்மைக்கு மிக நெருக்கத்தில் இருக்கிறது, கோபல்லமும் அதையே நமக்கு உணர்த்துகிறது. எளிமையான அனால் உண்மையான மக்கள், இயற்கையோடும் மக்களோடும் ஒட்டி வாழும் வாழ்வு, விசித்திரமான அனால் வஞ்சனை இல்லா மனிதர்கள், இவற்றை எல்லாம் மீறும் கீ.ராவின் கையாடல் என்று இந்த கோடை நேர மழை போல மனதிற்கு மிக நெருக்கமான வசிக்கிறது புத்தகம்.

மூடிவைத்த புத்தகங்களுள் அடங்கியிருப்பது அச்சுக் கோர்த்த எழுத்துகள் மட்டும் அல்ல, ஒவ்வொரு புத்தகத்தின் உள்ளும் ஒளிந்து கிடக்கிறது ஓர் வாழ்கை, காலத்தின் ஒரு சிறு துண்டு, சில மனிதர்கள், காடு, மழை, கிராமம், நகரம் என்று ஏதேனும் ஓர் நிலப்பகுதி. ஒரு பூக்கூடையை உலுக்கினால் கொட்டும் பூக்கள் போல இந்த புத்தகத்தை உலுக்கினால் அதனில் இருந்து விழும் ஓர் கிராமம், சில வீடுகள், முதியதும் இளையதுமான சில மனிதர்கள், ஓர் ஏர் கலவை, ஒரு பிடி கரிசல் நிலம் மற்றும் சில கண்ணீர் துளிகள். கோபல்லத்தில் வரும் மனிதர்களுள் அக்கய்யா எனக்கு மிகவும் நெருக்கமாக இருக்கிறார் என்றாலும், ஏனோ கழுவு மரம் ஏற்றி கொல்லப்பட்டும் திருடனின் பிம்பம் கண்ணில் பதிந்தே போயுள்ளது. புத்தக மனிதரோடு வாசகன் கொள்ளும் உருவ மிக நெருக்கமானது, அது மனிதரோடு அவன் கொள்ளும் உறவுகளை போல எதிர்பார்ப்பின் மேல் கட்டமைக்க படுவதில்லை. நிஜ வாழ்வில் அறிந்ததை விட நான் புத்தகம் மூலம் அறிந்த மனிதர்களே அதிகம். சிறு வயதில் கண்களை மூடி தனிமையில் அமரும் நொடியில் கண்ணில் விரியும் காட்ச்யில் பார்த்ததுண்டு ஒற்றை குதிரையில் அமர்ந்தபடி காவிரி கரையை கடந்து செல்லும் கல்கியின் வந்தியதேவனை, ஒரு விபச்சாரியின் வீட்டில் உறவுகொண்டிருகும் எஸ்.ராவின் சம்பத்தை, பொட்டல் நிலத்தை உளுதபடி வெற்று வானம் பார்க்கும் வைரமுத்துவின் பேயத்தேவரை, முகமூடிகள் கலைந்த நோடியில் மூலையில் அமர்ந்து தன் சுயம் தேடும் ஆதவனின் ராமசேஷனை, ஸ்ரீரங்கத்து வீதிகளில் அமர்ந்து நண்பரோடு பேச்சில் மூழ்கிய சுஜாதாவின் ரங்கராஜனை, மதுக்கோப்பையை முடித்துவிட்டு விட்டது வானம் பார்க்கும் ஜெயகாந்தனின் கங்காவை. இன்னும் மொழிகள் தாண்டி, நிறங்களை தாண்டி ஏதேதோ காலங்களில் ஏதேதோ இடங்களில் வசிக்கின்றனர் நான் அறிந்த மனிதர்கள், அவர்கள் அருகாமைக்கு செல்ல தேவைப்படுவது ஒரு விழி மூடல் மட்டும். ஏனோ இவர்கள் புத்தகத்தின் சதுர எல்லைகளை தாண்டி உயிருடன் எங்கோ எல்லைகளற்ற வெளியில் உலவுவதாகவே படுகிறது எனக்கு. இந்த மனிதர்கள் எனக்கு கற்று தந்தது/தருவதே என் வாழ்கை. நான் அறிந்த மனிதர்கள் பட்டியலில் இணைகிறார் கீ.ராவின் கோவிந்தப்ப நாயக்கர், தன் நிலை மறந்த அவரின் கற்பனைகள் என் நிலைக்கு ஒத்ததாகவே உள்ளது.

மேலே உள்ள எதோ ஒரு வரியை எழுதியபோது பெய்யதுவங்கிவிட்டது என் கிராமதிலோர் கோடை மழை.இங்கே நிருத்திக்கொள்லாம். அசைவின்றி இருக்கும் என்னைச்சுற்றிலும் நிகழ்கிறது மழையின் தாண்டவம். கிராமத்து மழை, நகர்த்து மழை போன்று அங்கங்கே பெய்வதில்லை அது மொத்தமாக எங்கேயும் பெய்கிறது. கூரையின் பழமையான இடுக்குகளின் வழி கீழிறங்கும் மழை நீர்.சாரை சாரையாக துளிகள், அவற்றை கைப்பிடித்து கூட்டிச் செல்லும் காற்று. ஈரக்கூந்தல் போல மலையில் படியும் தென்னை மர இலைகள். கண்களை மூடும் பனிமூட்ட இடை...வெளி. மழைத்துளிகள் பட்டு மெல்ல கரு நீலமாகும் வெள்ளை சுண்ணாம்புச் சுவர்கள். மழையினூடே சிலுப்பிக்கொண்டு ஓடும் தெரு நாய்.எங்கும் மெல்ல பரவி வரும் மழை வாசம், பாட்டி தரப்போகும் மழை தேநீர், மழையில் முடிவதற்குள் படித்துமுடிக்க ஒரு புத்தகம், மழையில் நனைந்தபடி சென்று ஓர் வெந்நீர் குளியல். எல்லாம் முடிந்தபின் இரவோடு பகல் கலக்கும் பொழுதில் மழை வடிந்த சாலைகளில் காலார நடக்கவேண்டும், ஈரமான தெருக்களில் ஆங்காங்கே தேங்கிஇருக்கும் குட்டை நீரில் யாரும் பார்க்காத நேரத்தில் கால் நனைக்க வேண்டும், கண்களை மூடி எனக்குள் நானே ஒரு முறை சிரிக்க வேண்டும். பின் வீடு திரும்பி, மூடிக்கிடக்கும் புத்தகத்தை கையிலேந்தி எங்கோ எங்கோ தொலைந்துபோக வேண்டும், and let it rain till then.

The computer is personal again!

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:29:50 PDT

Winter of 1998. I was a school boy then, a little boy with a small face, smaller frame and a wide and innocent smile.That year the rains had come in a bit early, and my house was flooded with relatives. I fell ill just like i did in any rainy season. I still remember the day, it was a sunday and the visitors were packing home. I was ridden on my bed with no excitement to play or to bid them goodbye. It was then when dad came to me and said "It's coming home today". I forgot that i was ill, i forgot i was only wearing my brief, i jumped from bed stood near the gate for hours, waiting for the new visitor to our house. The visitor which had kept me excited for a few months then. I stood in the place for hours, refused food from mom and ignored the tease of my brother, and sometime in the evening there came an auto carrying the visitor. My visitor came in boxes, in huge and heavy cardboard boxes. I wanted to shout. "We have got a new computer". I wanted to shout hard, to make sure that everybody in my neighborhood heard the news mainly i wanted Iyer aunty to hear it cos she already had a PC and whenever i went to her house she stopped me from touching it saying i was small to handle it. Now i wanted to shout at her face "Aunty, now i have my own computerrrr". I walked in the room where they were assembling it, i stood behind the door fearing to go near it. It was white all over, it had a few boxes here and there and a bunch of interlinked wires and cables. After the technicians had left and after the house went to sleep, sometime in the midnight i woke up in the darkness, sat in the huge chair and pressed on some buttons. The computer, my new childhood friend came to life. The screen glowed and Windows welcomed me to a new world of possibilities. At that midnight started a very personal relationship between me and my computers.

1998 was a time when personal computers first started invading into our homes, the time when Intel sold its Pentium II processors and the name Bill gates and windows was slowly becoming household. In the summer of my 7th grade i saw a PC at a relatives home.For someone who only knew pc's had a dark screen with white fonts, and ran MS-Dos, looking at a modern PC was quite a shock. I remember shivering to touch the mouse, i almost fainted looking at the million colours on screen. I almost died when i was said that this thing could play games, songs and even tamil movies. My dad being a man ahead of his times wanted to have one for us. But remember it was nearly a decade back, so we pre ordered and waited for months to get it imported from singapore. We paid 65000 to get our first PC. It was configured with a 32Mb RAM, a 4GB HDD, a pentium II processor and a floppy drive :) (CD drive came later and it cost us a hole) and it ran on Windows 95. For me and my brother the computer became our world. I became a star in the neighbourhood i skipped my street cricket. After school i was immersed in the white box, changing wallpapers, opening ms paint and try painting, changing the screensaver to float with the name Vignesh, writing files to the floppy disk and fighting with arun(bro) over who plays the car race next. The PC literally became our world. At school in a batch of 140 only 2 had PC's the third one was me. We became the elite of the lot cos we knew how to handle the mighty:). When our school got new and modern PC we were in the team who taught our peers to click and drag the mouse pointer. I felt so proud when the girls said "hey how do you do this so easily" .Man i was in ninth heaven.

The games were moved indoor, life revolved around the room. Arun brought in games, of huge and mighty cars and trucks. We secretly raced on them after people went to sleep. We borrowed movies and the PC became our little theater. That summer all my friends denounced the streets and after mom left for work. We had friends flock in and tournaments held in the touch of mouse. The prince of persia, Soccer 96, Brian lara cricket, tomb raider, carmageddon.Arun and I became the heros of the "area". It was tough to imagine the house without the PC. Back then i din know what was meant by an OS, a processor, a kernel, motherboard, handlers, threads processes nothing. All i knew was with the touch of a button a whole new world opens before the eye. I was just a kid who was ignorant of the fact that computers and life were complex by very nature. Years passed and the PC worked, played and it grew with me. Arun left for college and now i became the new master. We had got Internet by then. i went online. created mail-ids, visited porn sites, got hooked to chat. Life became dependent on the machine when i left for college for the first time i knew its not just the company of humans that you miss, at times a box of mere circuits and boards becomes more human than humans themselves.

And then after a hiatus of a few years i got my Lakshmi. Yup my cute little, Lakshmi. Summer of 2006 was when lakshmi entered into my life, this time i hand picked her and decorated with all that i liked. This time there was no arun to quarell and Lakshmi was all mine. I dont exactly remember when i named her lakshmi, but till date i could say lakshmi is one of the best friends i ve ever got. Its always "Lakshmi, boot up", "lakshmii hate you when u get hanged" "hey lakshmi wats the next movie?" "Laskmi im bored what shall we do today?". I speak with my PC and it responds, yup its the one with whom i spend the most of my life with it almost became a companion. It knows me more than any human does, it has inside it all my passions, from the movies i like to the designs i have done, from the mails i ve typed to all the posts that i wrote, from a few memories to savor to a few photographs to cherish . Lakshmi or my own PC has been there with me for years now and if it were a human it could almost recite my everyday life. For me a computer is just like the rest of us, it comes home with the excitement of a new born, it comes to life with the flow of electrons over its nerves, it accompanies you in all the good and the bad times, it shares your memories and it knows what exactly you do when you are alone, it sings for you, it plays for you, it teaches you everything under the sky, its there for when you need it, it grows old with time, it tries hard to cope up with the times and someday it gets obsolete. Then you go for another one.

Oh lakshmi you heard it?, oh its not you. Don cry now, you are still young, hip and very very sexy.I swear ill not ditch you, I swear at no cause, believe me.

I "Pee" L

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:03:14 PDT

Scene1: A bachelors room in Velachery Chennai Date: 28.th April 2008. A dozen men sit beside the television. Its Chennai super kings vs. Bangalore royal challengers. We sit with our fingers crossed, We want Chennai to win over Bangalore, not just because of cricket but for a thousand other reasons. Chennai wins by13 runs. We win and the room erupts to joy, not just there we hear the shouts of victory all our the streets, all over the city and all over the state.We head back to dinner and a friend of mine calls me from Banglore. He says "Mams, we were in the stadium today, u guys should have been here, nothing has made me so happy, we won over these ass holes. We sat in a stand which had more banglore fans, n we shouted to our peak voice, when we won i raised my middle finger and showed to all those who were dressed in red, i showed my middle finger to all of Bangalore, i don't even care if we loose the series, we won over these people at their home that's enough, its Chennai, its US".There were hi-fives all over and some beers then everybody went to sleep with the sense of victory from vengence.

Cut to scene 2: A crowded pub in Scotland Date:11.th jan 2009. A friend of mine visits the pub for a drink and the inmates eyes are fixed on the huge televison display boards. its Man U vs. Chelsea. Football fans dressed in red and blue sit in opposite corners of the pub, the silence after the screms look even more disturbing. ManU wins over chelsea by three is to nill. The men and women dresed in red erupt with joy and from somewhere comes a broken bottle flying in the air and piercing the head of a ManU fan. Blood dribs all over the floor and the angry blue mob gets to an ugly fight. the disturbed alchoholics fight like animals and many are left with the hands broken or the heads split open. My friends runs to escape for his life and all over the streets he sees the same sight, young men carryig their respective club flags flock the road they break the windows and urinate infront of their "enemy" fans house. Some face fatal injuries and the scream and slogans are heard all over the streets and the nation. The club culture which has almost divided England into hundreds of tiny nations. England is not the same before and after the invention EPL.

India is just years behind to what we read above.My question is to a nation which loves to divide itself based on religion, castes, sub-castes,inner-sub-castes, culture, language, dialect, locality, skin tone, aryan, dravidian, and a thousand more criterias, do we really need something called the IPL?. We call ourselves a nation built on unity but we cling to our diversities not moving an inch from them. We are happy do divide into sub-groups to the most minute level.Tats not a problem cos that is the way we are, but IPL? First the teams competing in it are not the identity of a city as they promote it, a cricket team owned by a few greedy businessmen can never be the face of a city, but they market it and will make us believe that Chennai is what the Superkings and Mumbai is what the Mumbai Indians are. Secondly as an event its intentions are nothing but to keep the cash machines ringing, not to promote the real spirit of the city or its culture but to earn out of peoples love for their town, so they build something called team loyalty in the minds of people to make them spend. IPL is just another face of consumerism where the consumer spends even without knowing that he intends to. IPL and its concept of city based teams owned by men for their own private cause should not lead to become the face of the city. How can a team containing random people (who don know how to go to tambaram from guindy) become the identity of a city like Chennai which was grown by the blood and sweat of local men and women? I have no problems boasting over the supremacy of Chennai over Bangalore, but do i need a cricket team to prove that?. Looking back at the history of clubs all over the world, the path that lies before us is already defined. Moving forward the clubs will be fiercely marketed, mainly in the minds of the teens as in the long run they are going to spend on the brand name(super kings juniors, king club are just a few tricks) , then as it happens in English and Spanish clubs and all over the world the rift b/w a few teams will be blown out of proportions, the historic misunderstanding b/w cities like Chennai and Bangalore will be made use of and the these matches will be indirectly marketed as a fight between two cultures., the loyalty you show to the team becomes the loyalty you show to your culture and your loyalty translates as money to busty men like Mallya and blondes like Shilpa. After the match we fans will be fighting for the team raising curses, throwing bottles at each other while Preity, Mallaya and Shilpa will be drinking from the same bottle at the post match parties. Evil isn't it? The truth is more than cricket, more than entertainment, more than city loyalty IPL is pucca business which tries to capitalise on the new wave of spending amongst the urban Indians.IPL is bound to become the face of Indian sporting, no one can stop it, but what do we get in return except to fall prey to an artificially created loyalty. All thse are bound to happen in the near future cos IPL is business and business can go to any level to earn. After decades when we look back we can find that there is one more split added to our already existing bundles of divisions, an artificial split imposed on our people in the name of cities and cricket. They split us to sell their beers, cements, newspapers. They split us to earn money and all these happen invisibly, they say its sport but its business in its most collective and meanest form. Feeding on peoples love for their city. And also when compared to the social structure of England, we as a society are still immature, we are imbalanced and we are filled with regionally biased emotions. When something like IPL comes our way its obvious that an average Indian is going to take it to the heart, and he being a fanatic by birth will get confused with the identity of the team with that of the city.Unlike in the English clubs, clubs here are built based states, which are in turn divided based on Linguistics, so mostly a tamil ends up being a Superkings fan, a Andhrawala as a chargers fan, a kannadiga as a Challengers fan, a bengali as a Riders fan. Where does it take us? NO-WHERE. It only adds oil to the fire. Everybody in India is someway attached to the region they live, i see nothing odd in a Tamilian identifying him self as tamil or a kannadiga as himself. But when that comes to a game which united this nation for years, when the fan finds the game as a way of venting out his regional emotions? what happens then? the split becomes wider. I had no issues when IPL season 1 happened, i was as much into it just like any other cricket fan of this nation. I observed everything from how they branded the teams to how the event was marketed and had comments on everything. I went to chepauk dressed in yellow, dancing and waving inside the crowd, shouting insane over the teams victory. I enjoyed every minute of the entertainment. But now i feel IPL is not just going to be entertainment, its a business and there is no business without blood and greed. Beware of IPL, i really mean it. Lets just love the game, lets not attach our emotions to it. Lets not be fooled by it. Seriously, Or lets just bunk the games and let our granny's watch their soaps.

The Bitch.

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:41:29 PDT

My first short story.Theme inspired by a work of S.ra.

the BITCH

The Bridge

She stood there. The evening was fading in front of her eye, in the distance she saw the sun getting drowned into the sea, she was wondering if the retiring sun floated as liquid on top of the ocean.She was looking at the end of horizon and there was a vast line made up of bright orange filling up the distance between the sky and the sea. Behind her little shoulders grew a few arcs of concrete, semi circular patterns painted in white, she was standing on an old bridge connecting the city divided by the dirty river, standing on the platform of the bridge somewhere near the exact center, her legs were close to the edge of the tiled platform, and her hands firmly holding the steel railings. Although she couldn’t see, she could hear the maddening traffic flowing across the road. Behind her there was clatter and noise, but she was lost in the sight of the sea and the river that she almost forgot the real world behind. The place looked different than usual. Everything had a tint of orange on it, a few fishing boats were entering the distant sea for the night haul, a few kids were washing their buttocks on the rising waves, and below the place she stood flowed the dirty river of the city which transported the wastes of city into the sea. She felt even the dark river carrying the physical sins glowed beautifully under the gaze of the orange sky. She wished she could walk away from her body and look at herself from a distance, she wondered how would she look then? An angel who celebrated holi with the sky? Like an orange monster in the cartoons? The thought made her smile, a gentle smile. When the smile ended her face became tighter than ever, her empty eyes bore no meanings, with a stern visage she dismissed the thought of a happy woman playing holi or a monster in orange which looked funny. Inside her heart she knew that she was neither one of them. She was just a lonely woman standing on the deserted platforms of an old bridge, looking at the beauty which doesn’t exist in reality. In sometime the sky will fade to emptiness, in sometime the yellow will be replaced by the black, and she will be walking back into the real world into the pathways of the most exciting and toughest night of her life. She knew she is just a bomb flying on the wings of the warplane, the peace is temporary; in sometime there will be a blast.

The time was nearing six. In some time the city will get back to its shelter. She needed more time before leaving the place she still stood there, the lines on her face and the grey hairs which visibly floated on her head revealed her age, she was middle aged, some would bet she was 45 and some 35, but nobody could guess her exact age. The clouds looking at her knew that she looked beautiful or she would have looked better in her young age, she was leaner than the average middle aged Indian woman and somehow she didn’t exactly fit into the template of aunty for the kids next door. Her eyes were still caught up into the horizon. A sweaty wind blew from the west carrying the smell of the defecated wastes. She wished she could feel a cold breeze all through her body, she wished she could stand nude in front of the breeze, she really wished she could, but she was bolstered by the old brown saree which was wound around her, she hated the saree since she remembered but still she wore it. She looked around, the platforms still looked empty an old beggar with smothered limbs was crawling from the north of the bridge, she looked at him, she kept looking at him and like an illusion she felt that it was her body that was crawling towards her. When he shouted “amma” and lifted his handicapped limb, she knew it wasn’t her. She kept staring at him in silence and he bent down avoiding her gaze, then she opened her hand bag which she had been using for nearly a decade, which should have been a property of the begging man below her feet. Today the bag was worth being called one, inside the third compartment there lied a bundle of rupees totalling to 8000, it was the day of her salary. She took a hundred rupee note from the bundle and gave it to him, he looked back at her, the man knew this was not an act of generosity, she didn't look like the woman who would waste rupees on an old beggar, not like the aristocratic woman who glanced him from the closed windows of luxury cars, she looked very much like a woman of the downtown, living in crowded homes, mending old sarees, living to save for the future, she looked like a middle-class woman. He would have agreed if she had given him 50 paisa, even a 2 rupees from her would have been a surprise. He took the note and saved it in his pockets, he crawled towards the other end of the bridge, he looked back at her after he crossed a safe distance, she was staring back at him. He avoided her and crawled faster but he knew that something was really very unusual with the women he just met.

She glanced through her old brown shoulder bag, it had four compartments in it and the cloth covering the third and the fourth was torn since long time and logically now it had only three. She remembered it had been a long since she browsed through her bag, she had never given it enough attention she felt, it was just a handbag and it served the purpose of a handbag. Old, torn, faded brown bag, still hanging around because it can still be used till it was disposed, she felt that her bag is a symbolism of her own life, what she was to her family the bag was to her, she smiled again, it was just a simple smile void of joy. She placed the bag on the railing, she opened the first zip and waved her hands inside the darkness of the bag, there were a few visiting cards lying down in a corner she lifted them up, she thought all the people whom she knew, she glanced thro them, one was that of a dental doctor she visited, next was that of a mortgage shop where she pledged her jewellery before a few years, jewels that were smouldered from her moms old jewels for her marriage, she could never get back them from mortgage, then there were a few more one of that of a plumbing shop, then a photo studio, then an optician. She was wondering how she had so many cards she didn’t remember how she got them, the number of people she knew was way less than the number of cards in her hands, as she glanced she found a card and her eyes were reluctant to move away, it was a pale yellowish white card and the name read Dinakaran, Accountant, Bank of India. She wondered how all visiting cards looked so innocent, they never reveal anything about the person, like an ancient messenger they conveyed the news to their masters and stood quiet, these cards never revealed the beyond the name, not the person, his hypocrisy, his cruelty, his face beyond his masks. She held the card in the empty space between the fingers of both her hands; the card again read the name aloud. Dinakaran. Her Husband. Her sole proprietor. The man to whom she was married for nearly two decades now, the man who was the father of her two children, a man who was looking at her at wrong places when she was asked to speak to him in a separate room, a man for whom a wife is just a wife who served the purpose of being a wife, a man who monstrously made love to her when she lied idle looking at the lizard which crossed the ceiling, a man for whom the wife is a package or a handbag which had compartments, one holding a mother, one holding a servant, and one holding a prostitute, a man for whom love is just the kiss given before orgasm, a man who till date knew nothing about her, her likes her dislikes, nothing, a man just like any other man who served the purpose of being a man. She packed the cards and placed them aside, there was nothing much in the first compartment except a few bundles of kum-kum offered to her by her colleagues as a gesture of good will, she thought of God, a god whom she kept praying all her life for hope, a god who denounced her. Then a few bills and slips, a few pieces of paper, and the torn cover of a Tamil magazine, she took them and placed with the cards, in the second compartment there were a few coins of singular denominations and an unused sanitary napkin, covering the most of the second compartment was her tiffin box. She thought that all her life was only a search for the food inside the steel box, she took it out the curd rice which she cooked at the last minute before leaving to office was still there now it had become very crusty and thick, she took a little and tasted her food, it tasted good it has not acquired the brackish taste of late curd, but she was in no mood to eat, she placed the tiffin box near the cards and the waste papers and started searching the last compartment, it was almost empty, well almost. There was a mobile phone, a really old one which her husband gave it to her after the keys were damaged. She took it out and placed it on the other side, the side opposite to where she placed the visiting cards and the tiffin box, then on the corner of the bag lay the bundle of notes which made the bag worth, which made her worth, a bundle with 80 new and old hundred rupee notes, no she said to herself, there were only 79 of them. She lifted it and placed it below her mobile. She emptied the bag on the floor, a few hair pins, a few safety pins, smaller bits of paper, and her passport size photo fell on the ground, it was a photo she had taken during her college days she liked her in the photo, that was the only thing she liked having with her, her old photo- the only proof that she had once been happy and independent was captured in the smile that lied frozen inside the greyscale photograph, she took a long breath and placed her most favourite photo near her sanitary pad, she bent down and collected the junk that fell from her bag. Now slowly she placed them back into the bag, arranging them in neat order, the cards, the coins, the tiffin box, the tiny pieces of paper, and everything that she discovered a few minutes before. She placed everything except the mobile and the money into the bag again. The bag which contained her contacts, her god and her struggle for daily life. She zipped the bag, dusted it taking away the stones which were struck on the bottom. She looked at her bag with love, it has been a part of her for nearly a decade but she had ever acknowledged its presence. She took her bag near her mouth and gave it a kiss on the brown outer surface, she kissed it hard with her eyes closed and without moving her lips, her saliva was wet on the bag. After a few seconds, she lifted her hands towards the direction of the dark river and she threw the bag. She threw it with no force, it was a simple act just like the peaceful death in the hour of sleep. The bag ran down clearing the air in the way and it finally made a sound, a sound that one hears when a bag falls on the river, it hit the surface of the dark liquids and drowned into it, when she looked there was no trace of a fallen bag, there were only a few hungry ripples running towards the shore. She then turned her head towards the emptiness of the sky, the orange had faded into a pale yellow, the evening has moved near the edges of the night, now the platform looked more crowded than before, stout people who took their evening walks, young lovers who were lost in the sight of the sky, school kids back from play, men and women wearing tags in green, blue and red getting back from office. Nobody acknowledged her presence; it was as if she had been statue in a standing position. She then heard her mobile ring, its screen was glowing in yellow lights, Dinakaran calling it alerted, she took it in her hands, she knew he would call her, he wanted the money today, he wanted her salary, he wanted it badly to pay a loan that he took for an unsuccessful business. She had refused she wanted to give the money to her sisters little kid who was diagnosed with cancer, he had never let her help her family, this time she wanted to give it to the kid, he refused. When she protested she was beaten, first without then with the company of alcohol, she was kicked on the stomach inside which she once carried his children, and her mother was called a bitch, she was abused she was molested and tortured, she was let to cry all night on a dark corner of her house, in the morning she was threatened to bring the money before night else she was requested not to enter the house. Her twenty three year old son and nineteen year old daughter just looked on and after a while they went to their rooms, locking it from the inside. She loved them, but for them too she was a mother who served the purpose of a mother, who cooked, who washed, who gave medicine, who would only know to love in any case. They always looked down upon her, the son drank inside his room and never gave her respect except on his birthdays, her daughter grew into a modern woman who hated to introduce her mother to friends because her mother looked rural, she doesn’t speak English. But even then she loved her kids, because that is what is expected from the mothers of this nation, to give out love in any case and in every case. Crying alone in a dark room with no one to console or to lift her up, she cried like every woman. In the morning she revealed nothing, she reached office and worked as she worked on any calendar day, and she left office early and reached this place of the town where the city met the river and the sea. She has decided that this day is going to be unusual, not like any other day she faced before and not like any other day that she will face anytime later, the day is going to be her answer for humiliation she suffered for decades since her birth, in whole and in parts, this day is going to be her answer. The phone rang for the third time, its lights glowed emitting stronger shades of yellow just like the desperation of her husband. She knew what she is going to do next, and the thought made her smile, a simple smile for the simplest of reasons. Then she threw her mobile, this time with more force, it cut an arc in the air and covered even farther distances, when the phone had hit the surface of the liquid, the screen was still glowing in yellow calling out the name Dinakaran, then it swiftly disappeared into the ditch waters. The night had arrived. She looked around to see that there were no more colors, there was only darkness. Like a huge wave from the sea the night has completely covered the city, the sea was not visible, and the solar lamps on the bridge were emitting the artificial yellows and oranges on the road. She remembered she has stood there for hours without making a movement, as if she was a very part of the bridge just like the concrete pillars, the angular arcs and the steel railings. She glanced at the city, the buildings were lit in the distance, the traffic was heavy on the bridge, and the platform was flowing with people. She took the money and closed it inside her left palm, she had nothing else to carry, she took a deep breath and started walking on the platforms, her steps were crossing the angle made by the bridge on the sky, she was walking towards the lights that glowed in the distance, she was walking towards the city.

The Mall

The little yellow vehicle with the black top stood near her feet, the auto-wala was amused looking at a woman holding a bundle of rupees in her hand. She told him the name of a famous mall in the heart of the city, when he quoted the amount she agreed without a bargain.
She sat inside the auto right behind the driver, auto drivers never spoke with woman who travelled alone but they adjusted their mirrors towards the woman. She ignored the fact that he was looking at her through his rear-view. She looked the insides of the auto, it has been long since she travelled in an auto, even if she could afford she preferred crowded busses instead so that could save her some money. She had travelled in cars even fewer times, once was after marriage when she was brought to the city and once was when her manager took them to colleague’s funeral. She had almost forgotten how cars looked from the inside. Right from being a child she dreamt of travelling in cars, wearing cotton saris, living in huge three storied buildings, of a man who would come in a white horse and save her from the clutches of life and she dreamt of living a happy life somewhere in a city where it rained in the afternoon, but born in a village where the men ploughed all day, and the women cooked and gave birth to children all around the year, and brought up by a dad who hated his girl children, marrying a man who lied down naked after the hour of sex and asked her to fetch some water for him, none her dreams came true. But she decided that tonight she should travel in a car, a huge white car, a car with AC and glittering doors, she should travel like a princess, she added it to the long list of to-do’s for the day. The auto halted, she climbed down and gave a pair of rupee notes and walked away without asking for the change. She stood in front of the magnificent structure, the shopping mall read “open” from the day she came to the city she wanted to enter the place, once she asked her husband to take her there, he refused saying that was a place for people with lots of money, now she had lots of money in her hand, she was rich in cash than most people who were inside it, she climbed the marbled steps and entered into a world which she had never seen before. All she could see was crowd of people, men and woman mostly wheatish and white mostly young and carefree who walked hand in hand. This part of the earth looked distant for a woman who had never been out of her home and office and a remote village. Lights, plenty of them were glowing making the place resemble heaven or hell she was not very sure. With her eyes popping out in amusement she glanced through the hallways. Shops of every kind, shops which sold everything produced on earth. She had never been exposed to all this before. She looked at the huge clock which hung on the wall, well it was the time of the day when she would be at home, cutting vegetables for the dinner, or sweeping the floor the second time for the day, opening the door for her husband who came in to curse the food that she made for lunch, her sun who entered with the smell of cigarette and shouted at her for not ironing the next days clothes, her daughter who faked accents on the phone and addressed her in singular pro-nouns. But today she was here in a new world, or maybe a new planet which was nearly a thousand light miles away from her house. The clock kept ticking; she knew she had only less time to make true all her wishes. She washed away her thoughts of regrets, she walked along the paths of the mall, and when she found the signboard of beauty parlor for women, she walked inside opening the decorated glass doors.

Sitting on a revolving chair, with lather all over her face and shoulders she stared into the emptiness of the mirror, and soon her eyes were closed with a slice of some watery fruit. She had asked the woman in the parlor to give here a facial and a modern haircut, she requested her to make it quick. With her closed eyes she kept staring at the mirror and a movie ran on it with the memories of her adulthood, when she was praised around the village for her beauty, she loved her face every time she looked in the mirror, a lot of men in school and college liked her. She stood first in all exams she took, she liked chemistry but her uncle who worked in EB as a clerk advised her parents to put her in Maths, she found no complaints, she then liked maths too. After college she found a job as an steno, dad agreed because he wanted money to plant paddy every quarter, she went to job to an nearby district, she drafted the salary directly to home having some 50 rupees for her having that to buy tickets back home and to drink coffee once a month in a hotel opposite to her office. In office she never spoke with men, she felt that was a sin, she worked, she over worked and returned to her hostel to sleep. She seldom dreamt in her adulthood, she knew that her dad dreamt for her too, she slept and in the hour of sleep her thoughts were empty as the free space in a newly built house. And when she crossed twenty, people came to see her for choosing her the bride, she stood with empty eyes before everyone, most times she was confused with whom in the crowd she is going to live the rest of her life?, men looked at her from top to bottom some rejected that she was too lean, and some that she was too pale, and some because she is working with men, she never rejected anyone. One man liked her, and she was married. The movie stopped to a black screen. She was informed that the job was done. When her face was cleansed and her long hair trimmed she sensed a new brightness to it, she has suddenly back in her twenties, she after years looked beautiful again. That made her smile, a smile with a stroke of happiness in it. She took a stick of lipstick and painted her lips in red, bright alarming and inviting red. She paid the woman with one fourth of the money she had and left the place with a new sense of excitement, which she had never felt before.

Standing amidst rows of fresh and new dresses, she found that there were no sarees in the shop. She was glad about that. She stood near the circular pole which carried t-shirts, she had no choices in her mind, and she picked a plain one filled with a color which was somewhere in-between red and orange, bright like the tired sun. She asked for a jean, when inquired what was the hip size of her daughter she informed her own hip size was 32. She randomly chose one from the bundle which lay open before her; all she wanted was a pant to wear. She picked up her new t-shirt and jean and ran inside a trail room as the sales women giggled silently at her. Standing inside the wall of mirrors she removed her saree, she tore it away from her body with the hate for it that had grown over the years, she removed the holy piece of wire that hung across her neck she put them on the floor, her saree and the rope. She stood nude in front of the glossy mirrored walls. Her image reflected on all the four mirrors, and it multiplied itself into a hundred and a thousand. Her image was filling in the room. She looked at her nude frame, never in her life she had looked at her own body without clothes, they only had a broken face view mirror in her village house and after marriage she never looked into the mirror. She looked at her bosoms, her wrinkled stomach, her dark legs, her bare back, at the burn that her husband once made with the iron box on her left thigh. She stood there staring at her own reflection caught on the mirror, she stood there in silence and the power was off. Darkness filled in the walls, she could not see herself in the mirror anymore. She stood nude in the middle of the dark room and it reminded of the darkness that she would have sensed in her mothers womb. This too was a womb of a different kind, she dressed herself in the darkness, and she opened the door her eyes met with a bright light just as the light she would have sensed seconds after her birth. The girls who stood across the shop turned their sight to the woman dressed in a yellow top. As she walked the on looking eyes conveyed that she was alarmingly beautiful, the girls were amazed to see a middle aged woman who lost half her age as she shut herself in the trail room. Some eyes conveyed envy and some conveyed displeasure. But she walked, she walked like a woman who had no care for what the world thinks of her, she dint know if she looked good or bad, she wanted to be dressed and she is. She felt that after years of living she had escaped from the tent of her saree, a tent which held her captive all her life. Now she was a free woman, with more and more men turning their heads towards her side she left the shop and walked with an all new posture, she walked with long steps, she walked shedding behind her the fear, the coyness, that a woman is expected to carry with her all her life, she walked with the head held high, she walked like a woman.

Her lips spotted an unending smile, she was happy for herself. For the first time she climbed floors on an escalator, she was nervous and she looked around as if the entire world was looking back at her, she wanted to shout and make the ignorant people know that “this was her first time on an escalator”. She bought a mug of coffee and sipping it she roamed all around the mall, she went up to every floor, she entered every single shop, she smiled at everyone who looked at her. At times she walked with small steps, at time with large steps and whenever she felt the excitement filling in her she ran in the middle of people like a kid running to catch a butterfly. She looked at all the handsome men; she pinched the cheeks of every little child who stumbled on her. She bought a pair of studded earrings, She bought a new pair of shoes, she bought a new handbag: a fur bag resembling a young teddy bear, She bought a dozen candy bars, with the dark chocolates melting on her lips she kept licking her fingers like a child. She then entered the huge cafeteria and took a seat In the middle of a hundred tables, she ordered food that she had never heard before, she had never ate good food all her life, she cooked delicacies for her family while she sat behind and ate the left over lunch, when someone gave her a sweet at office she denied the temptations to eat, she saved it in a roll of paper, and brought home and gave it to her kids, when they ate it she smiled with contempt. She lived for them. She was denied love by her own children. A gentle tear rolled to her cheeks, now she denied the temptations to cry. She feasted on the delicacies that lay in front of her, she feasted like a beast. She wasted more than what she ate. She sat there for a long time as the lights of the mall where switched off one by one. When she came out of the cafeteria the people had left, the lights were down, the mall was getting back its own reality. She bought a huge cone filled with ice cream, ate it with the excitement of a kid, ran on the empty floors of the mall and when she reached the entrance and looked back, the mall was already dead. She knew the time would be nearing midnight, she didn’t have much time. She walked towards the taxis and her eyes rejected all the brown fiats and the white ambassadors, she wanted a huge car with the glittering paints, she wanted a car that resembled a ship she wanted a car inside which she should feel the winter sky she informed them. The men chuckled at her, one informed her he could get one from a nearby travels but that would cost her five times more. She agreed, she sat on the empty steps of the deserted mall. She sat blocking the way through which nobody went in and nobody came out. Licking the bottom of her cone, she waited for the car glancing at the roads which had flown out of traffic. She sang an old school rhyme which she remembered and licked the ice cream, with shining white eyes and even brighter smile she looked at the city which stood firm before her. The huge white colored car with wide and dark windows arrived and stood below her feet.

The Pub

She ordered the AC to be increased; she ordered an English song to be played. She then asked the driver to take her to a hotel where she could drink alcohol and dance. Shocked, the driver turned back to her he was never asked so by any of his women customers. He was bewildered by the boldness that the woman showed, he wondered if she was the owner of the car. She sat with her legs stretched out inhaling the cold air that filled in the car, through the tinted glass window she looked at the city which was getting ready to sleep. One by one the buildings got deprived of light, the signals turned to constant yellow. The car cruised through the empty streets of the city, it crossed the gates of a famous five star hotel, and it stood on the pathway which leads to the lobby. She alighted from the car like a queen. She walked past the majestic wooden door and entered the hotel, she almost fainted looking at the place. Decorative lights which send out signals directly to the brain, huge and wide sofas, people of different sizes and colors, the whole place was so mystically lit in mild yellow, the place resembled a heaven that she saw once in her childhood dream. She thought god must be residing in one of the numerous rooms of the hotel. She stood there trying to understand the place as curious eyes looked at her with bewilderment. She reached the reception and asked where she could drink, she was escorted to the first floor and the doors of the bar were opened to let her in. Nobody noticed the middle aged woman who walked in wearing a reddish yellow dress. The place was almost void of light; a few lamps were glittering at regular intervals. They were busy dancing and drinking, men and woman, the young and the old and before everyone there was a glass filled with a divine colored liquid. Men and woman danced in the middle of the floor, they were not caressing each other or molesting each other as she had imagined and as she was informed. They were just dancing, wildly and madly to a tune that almost heard like a loud heartbeat. She walked and sat on a corner table, she was presented with a card with list of names. She looked around there were hundreds of bottles lined on a corner, she glanced through them and her eyes stuck on a familiar bottle. The bottle from which her husband drank, a bottle filled with a dark brown liquid, the same bottle which lied empty watching her when he slapped/raped/slaughtered her. Alcohol was his excuse to torture her, he became an animal when he drank. She asked for the same bottle, the bartender poured a few drops of it on an empty glass, the rest was filled with soda. Nobody was watching her, she sat in front of the glass, she looked inside it, bubbles were beaming from the bottom of the glass and they travelled in crisscross patterns and reached the top surface of the liquid, where they exploded. She lifted the glass near her eye through the liquid she saw the life before her, through the dark mustard vision she saw a world which invited her to become a very part of it. She drank it. Her eyes were closed. She could feel the acid travelling from the throat to the stomach and from there to each and every cell of her body. She poured more in her glass added a little soda, she drank it again. It was like getting a thousand goose bumps at the same time, like getting bit by a million snakes. She loved it. She could feel it happen inside her body. All the tiny cells were tied to a single strand of rope and were pulled towards her brain. Her body tightened. She took the bottle in the glass and started drinking from it. Raw alcohol, tasted like eating a rotten fruit which bred worms inside it. She drank it. She emptied the bottle till the last sip, licking the final drops which dangled on the edges. She closed her eyes and lay there still and quiet. When she opened her eyes, her neck rested on her shoulders. She was not sleeping but she was not awake too. She was somewhere in between the two. The eyes pushed her inside while her soul pushed her out. She was drunk like any human. She stood up with trembling feet, she was shaking as if an earthquake occurred inside the core of her brain. A brain quake. A soul quake. She became her husband, she became a drunken man. She was insane with joy. The sound of music hit her directly inside her chest bones. She started dancing, she danced. She danced with no patterns; she danced like the primitive woman of the stone age. She invented her dance. She got into the crowd and she was lost into it. She unleashed the free woman on the floor, the woman who always wanted to escape the fakeness of the life she lived. She danced for all her lost yesterdays; she danced giving out all the pain she suffered. She danced holding the hands of American men and African women. She danced with her breasts bouncing all over the air, she jumped as she danced she danced as she jumped, at times she let down a few tears which got stamped by a hundred pair of legs. She stumbled on a man, a handsome old man. She hugged him. He removed her hands which were wound tight across his shoulders. He held her tight in his arms and looked at her, he glanced her from top to bottom, he asked her if she was willing to come to his place. She agreed. Holding the hand of a unknown man she walked outside the hotel as they got into a car, a bigger car this time but it was painted in black. She lied on his shoulders while the car travelled to hell.

It was a huge house with large rooms, they were sitting in the balcony and he was pouring alcohol on both the glasses as the security guard watched them from a distance with a sigh of apprehension. He drank more and he smoked, they had nothing to speak. They kept drinking till they emptied two bottles. They removed their clothes and he fell on the bed and called her towards him. They made sex. For a woman who was deprived of all the little happiness and relief that the act of sex gives, for a woman who lay like a stone when her husband crawled on her, for a woman who always gave pleasure and never received it back, this felt like her first night with a man, she felt like she is going to loose the virginity that she preserved inside her soul for the very first time. She unleashed herself on him, she became the master for the first time and she dictated. Like a queen who dictated to all men in her province. She dictated to him.She did things that an Indian woman is not supposed to do. She broke moral barriers, she broke emotional barriers and she enjoyed the simple act of sex for the first time in her life. The man injected his poison inside her. She lay idle looking at him, then she spat on his face. She spat at him right in the center of his face. Her spat was her essence in response to his. A spat which fell on every man in the world. She spat with hate and disgust. She removed herself from him and got dressed. The man, who was caught in the sudden shock, came running to her holding the bottle, he hit her on the face blood started oozing from her face. She stood idle and she looked at him, with a drop of blood spilling from her eyebrow. She looked back at him with an open eye, an eye that conveyed a supremacy, a force which can annihilate him. He avoided her gaze he crawled like an old beggar wit impaired limbs. He bent his head down as she walked away.

The Streets

She was walking in the midnight on the deserted road, fearing nobody, she walked in straight lines, she walked with her head held high. Just as the poets and the leaders dreamt of, a woman walked alone in the middle of the night, but she was bleeding. It was still bleeding from the wound in her head. She had always wanted to look how the city was after the midnight and that wish too, was fulfilled. She walked past people sleeping on platforms, she walked past the mid-night tea shops, she walked in the middle of the busiest road in town, she walked past lorries and trucks, she walked past panicky eyes, she walked past the statue of a woman who was celebrated for her chastity, she walked past all kinds of roads wide, narrow, black,grey, teeming, empty. She walked throughout the night as she reached the street which hosted her house, the first rays of the mornings were reflected on the old limestone walls. The house was already awake as she walked in, nobody noticed her coming in, her husband was sitting with the news papers covering his face, her son was lying on his bed crossing his legs in air, her daughter was getting ready for her early classes at college. She stood in the middle of the house. It was her husband who had a first look at her, he then called out for his son and his daughter too joined. They saw a woman dressed in torn red t-shirt and a dirty jean, they saw a woman who was bleeding all over her face, they saw a woman who stood idle in the middle of the living room and she was their mother. All the three kept their eyes fixed on her, after moments of silence she spoke. She recited everything that she did over the night, she explained it in detail without hiding any single fact, she recited with her head held high, she recited it with a clear voice, she recited it without closing her eyebrows in the middle. It was her son who came running to her, he kept shouting Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! And then he slapped her. He kept slapping her. Her daughter went back inside her room and started combing her hair sitting in front of the mirror, her husband kept looking at her for long. He asked her son to throw her out and got back to the papers continuing from where he left. Her son caught a strand of her hair and pulled her till the door, he pushed her outside and the door was locked.

The life that she tolerated all her life was not tolerated on her for more than a night. She knew In her eyes of her husband she saw the fear and guilt, which he covered with the morning papers. She had done things that even she may not approve of, but she did it. For the first time in her life she scribbled in her book called fate, the book in which only her father and her husband wrote till date. She didn’t write a beautiful poem in it, she just scribbled. She knew life would be tougher after this; tougher than what it is today, but this toughness is what she chose for herself. She rebelled, She knew she will struggle, but she will live through the struggle. She, Born Shantalaksmi Natarajan, lived Shantalaksmi Dinakaran, was just Shanta now. There were no more tags attached to her, the tags called daughter, sister, wife, mother, goddess, angel, river, flower, nothing. She was just a woman. She was just herself. She stood on the steps of her house still dressed in the bloody piece of cloth. She felt light like a feather. She stood there looking at the street, woman clad in tight sarees were on the floor doing their morning rituals, they looked at her in shock and went in to inform their men. Soon a small crowd had formed before the house. Shanta stood there; she was looking at a place which only she saw. Then she laughed, she laughed at everything. She looked at the sky above, with no clouds to block the rays, the morning sun stood nude in front of her. Brighter than ever. She kept staring at the sun for a while.

Then she stepped down from the house and started walking. Not humble, not on the sideways with her head down.

She walked right in the middle of the road.

The Pianist

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 06:54:19 PST

Once there lived a butterfly, a little one, a beautiful one, its wings were filled with colours and shades that were rare to find as if nature hand picked its hues and contours, It was an innocent little butterfly which swapped its tiny wings to fly around the greenerys of the woods, it stood on top of ancient tress, it flew amidst the morning mist,it kissed the dew filled grass, it drank from the yellow flowers covering the floors of the river bed, it befriended nature and where ever it flew it carried with it a beautiful melody which was heard in the air, its wings wrote a fable on the unending pages of the sky, when it flew on top its little eyes always fell in awe with the beauty of its mother nature,one day a wild strom changed its path,caught in the wind it flew in unknown directions, it travelled across landscapes to reach a war field; the little butterfly had no clue, like a drop of blood woozing from the eye it flew in the forbidden land, it sat on top of glittering swords,it flew amisdt the raging bullets, it saw men fighting with rage and anger, it saw people killing each other, it sat on top of corspes, it sat on top of bleeding wounds, the innocent little butterfly which knew nothing but the beauty of the world was confused, it was distressed,it observed people killing each other, it obeserved the soil turning red, it tried to flee from the place but a sharp knife scissored its wing: the wing which was once filled with a million colours now fell on the ground and was filled with red blood, the wing kissed the ground and slept with the corpes, our little butterfly which was hurt and bleeding, flew away from the warfield fighting the air with a single wing, its little eyes dropped a tear which evoporated before it reached the earth.Now replace the butterfly with a pianist and the warfiled with thestruggling city of Warsaw of the 1940, what u get is a movie in return.The Pianist(2002) a polish/english movie by Roman Polanski is the real life story of an innocent pianist a jew who underwent the worst days of his life living in Warsaw during the German invasion of Poland, a movie which portrays the sufferings that innocent men undergo during a war, a movie which teaches u the ill effects of war like a slap on the face, or in simplewords The pianist is the story of a butterfly caught in the battle.

Władysław Szpilman is a famous Pianist in all of Poland and all of Europe, a man who is made up by music, a polish jew by birth he lives a contented life with his family of 6, untill terror strikes, the German forces invade Poland and the city of warsaw is under siege the family which lived a peaceful life till then is made to undero struggles they could never imagine, along with other jews they are made to vacate their homes and are made slaves in their own land, they are tortured by the nazis and finally are taken to an extermination camp, Szpilman escapes as his entire family enters the horrific mouth of death, then the movie travels with Szpilman in his plight for survival in the holocaust, A man who knew nothing but music is made to undergo pain and torture which almost breaks him into pieces, a pianist by soul Szpilman is made to work as a slave, he is made to walk on corpes, eat rotten food, drink dirty water, he is beaten to death, he hides behind closed doors, suffers from illness with no one by his side to take care, he grows beard and roams around like a lunatic in the demolished streets of warsaw with the memory of his lost family haunting him for an eternity.Finally when the war is over, he survives and all his struggles end up as a brilliant tune which he plays for his land, his people and for his survival.

Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman won an academy award for his performance in The Pianist, I was mesmerized watching him perform as a naive young man, in a particular scene where he is caught in a room with a piano but he cant play it because any sound may bring troops up there, so he plays the piano on the air without touching the keys, the minute emotions he shows as a Pianist who is denied his play shows that he is legend in the making. Described as Polanski's best film till date the movie takes us to the streets of Warsaw, where life is living on the edge.The movie is no-sugar coat when it comes to depicting the pain the torture that the world underwent in the hands of the Nazis is visually translated on the screen.The movie doesn't compel any idea on you it has a very detached view.What we see at the end is a movie which is so honest, bleak, and powerful that it disturbs you more than a live wound.The cinematography is a high point depicting the past in hues of green, brown and grey and the final scenes which dwells on hope takes a slight variation in the colour tone,a master work.The movie considered one of the best films made on Holocaust and struggle of Jews won high credits at the Oscars and at Cannes.

In the defining moment of the film, when a German official asks Szpilman to play a tune in the piano when he is caught inside skeletons of demolished buildings,sitting in front of the piano in a place which is void of life, Szpilman's hands tremble to touch the piano, then he plays a tune, a tune from the inner depths of his heart, a tune which conveys his pain, solace and all his anger, the sound keeps violently filling in the space like a prodigy of the suffering he faced. His hands travel across the black and white blocks of the piano, and that single tune conveys the soul of film, after all what can an innocent and musical pianist do, except to play his tune? I am not a very compassionate person by heart, but moments in the film did make me shed a tear, my mind was thinking about all those butterflies caught in the Battle, in Lanka, in Israel, in Bosnia, in Iraq, in Palestine and in every other place where children, woman, elderly suffer for no reason of theirs, how many more musicians, poets, authors would be suffering right at this moment? please leave them alone their beautiful hearts was not made for war, let them enjoy the beauty, let them walk in breeze, there are still millions of butterflies those who loose their wings in unknown battles, they too were meant to live like the rest of us, please spare them from your ugly wars, after all the beaks of the butterfly was meant to drench in honey not in blood.

To visit my World Cinema series click here..

Fountainhead

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:23:22 PDT

There are hundreds of books filling in my little library, books that I grew up with, books that made me grow up, books which fulfilled my secret desires of adolescence, books those made me think beyond my adolescence, books with beautiful women on the covers, old and brown books with strands missing in the middle, books which remain as just a complex jumble of words, books through which I learnt life, books through which I learnt nothing, books bought for mere pride and books bought with the excess of money, books cutting through the interwoven lines of languages, genres, tastes and changing preferences over the ages. There are hundreds of books filling in my little library, and then there is The Fountainhead. It is not just a book , it is a soul resting in my bookshelf, a book with a mystic eye which keeps looking at me, a book which guides me, a book which threatens me, a book which parodies all my foolishness and my hypocrisies, a book which came to me in the time when I was searching for a foothold, an collective expression of my philosophies, a vision through which I am going to look at the world beyond, an inspiration, a platform on which im going to build my future upon, a hidden vault of energy which is going to help me live my life as it should be Lived. “Ayn rand” a name I never heard months back is now a name which im never gonna forget all my life.

Fountainhead is the story of this orange haired man Howard Roark, the Man,self-made, self-sufficient, self-confident architect who lives by his own rules, who is hated for being himself, who can never be hurt, who can never be influenced, who will remain himself at any cost, who has learnt the virtues of being selfish, the bench-mark of a man, an end of all ends. The story is the story of Roark’s triumph amidst the repression, the story of a man against everyone. And his love for his woman, Dominique Francon, according to me she is the perfect woman whom I have ever seen/read about, a woman matching the integrity of Roark, a woman who lives her life for herself and for no one else, a woman as a woman should be, who loves Roark so much that she sets out to destroy him. The story is about the people who connect with Roark and Dominique who from rigid frameworks of all the different kind of people who make up the rest of the world, i.e the rest of us, Peter Keating a successful architect, an example of the kind of man that the world wants, the man who could never be a real man, everything that is opposite to Roark, fake and fragile, Ellsworth Toohey,an example to the men/worms who dictate our age old rules and morals, a so called intellect, an evil who hides behind collectivist and altruist masks, a poisoned soul, a second hander and finally comes Gail Wynand a newspaper mogul, an example of the rest who are caught between the fight of the man whom you are and whom you want to become, who is aware of what he is but still who prefers to be what he is, a manipulator of the masses, A man who could have been one. Through them and the other people with whom we live in the torch lit streets of New york of the early 1900’s for nearly 700+ pages, Ayn rand in a subtle way and prepares us to question everything, every single rule that prevents humanity, she teaches us to defy and inspires us to live a life, a selfish life, a life in which I don’t I don't think of you but about myself, a life which can only be true if I live for myself.

The fountainhead, a book written as it should be, a book from which you can either find all the meanings or find nothing, a book that helps you understand you first, a inward travel through which we reach the very essence of human beliefs and standing on the peak of all our believes, you question everything, YES everything that has been said and done and when the questions fetch no answers we invent them, the real answers which are hidden deep down inside. Ayn Rand teaches you her philosophy through Roark, the philosophy of Objectivism which states “proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest by being selfish”. Living in a world that asks/pleads/threatens us to live its rules/beliefs/wishes/morals, the book opens the all the hidden fountains in the brain and there flows a rivers of thoughts, “Why should I fall prey to others peoples dreams?”, “Why should I forego my dreams myself in the name of sacrifice when im gonna regret it all my life?”, ”Why cant everybody agree that every human is selfish by nature?”,”Why should I live by every rule that were set even before my birth? Why shouldn’t I invent them?” more and more thoughts keep flowing that washes away all the beliefs that your inner mind had always awaited to break. A few days back when I was down, when I was sinking and acting crazy I saw The fountainhead staring at me from the shelves, I felt ashamed, the mere sight of the book brought me back with myself. Can a book influence so much that you fear it?, The fountain head does. The time when I spent reading the book, I was at my best, the clarity that it induced in my thoughts when I read it was like an enlightenment, I judged myself better and found where I stood and where I wanted to move from here. whenever I feel losing out with myself, I keep the closed book in front of the eye and I stare at it, some chemistry unveils and peace sets in. That is the magic that this little book has done in my life, I believe the book was written for me to read it someday. A good book has no real ending, the book never ended in me, it began in me, as a never ending search. Im still haunted with the book, ill be for a lifetime till then ill visit Roark in his little office at the Dana, ill stand by his side looking at him draw his sketches, when he is busy drawing the angular lines on paper ill be staring at the majestic shadows of New York, ill wait till the wind gets colder, ill wait till he gives an indifferent glare at me, ill cherish the moment and ill get back to my reality just to make it better and to make it mine.

Thanks Asha, for introducing me to the epic called Ayn Rand.

On the edge of night...

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 03:08:57 PST

Like little drops of ink filling a clear glass of water, the night is filling in the sky. The front yard of the village house is empty and the glitter of the moon is reflected on the land, on the tiled roofs, on the wide green leaves of the banana tree, on the fillings of water, and on the corners of my pale eye. A gentle breeze blows from below the earth, the chill on the feet travels across and ends as a smile on the lips.I stand here in silence,I stand here in the darkness, I see no vision but i could feel the universe. I look up till the head becomes perpendicular to my frame, i look up till all the earthly visions disappear, and then there is only the distant moon and the thousand stars, and then there is only the sky in sight, i feel as if there is nothing in-between us, between me and the sky, between me and the craters of the moon, between me and million stars, I float in the sky, my fingers reach for the sky. They try to play with the clouds, they try to steal the moon, they try to write a lovely name connecting the stars, my legs are not grounded on sand, I don't feel my body, this is something else that i feel, as if becoming a part of the truth, the truth of existence, the truth of the universe, a single truth that connects a star thousand light miles away with a man standing somewhere in the streets of a sleeping village.I keep looking at the sky above my head, if everything above the land is the sky then I stand in sky and I stare at the universe, and in these moments i feel that time is standing still, it is waiting for my word to start ticking again, time is relative; it is the human desire that keeps pushing the hands of time,let time wait for some more time, till then it will be the sky above and a soul below.

I wake up looking forward the night, I believe my day begins to take me to my night.The best moments of my life happened to me in the midnights, I became a bibliophile with the moon leaning across my back reading with me all my favourite books, I became a graphic designer creating images with colours when the world around me went grey, I invented my philosophies of life carelessly lying in the lap of the night, I searched for a million truths in the dark walls of the midnight making my soul as the candle of flame, night gave me lessons, night gave me peace, night gave me emotions, night gave me a shoulder to cry, night gave me a reason to laugh, night gave me solace, night gave me a chance to hear angles speak like women, night is where i belong and the day is where i un-belong.You can boast all through the day, but you have to be humble in the night, because night is a mirror placed in the dark, in the darkness we see ourselves, we laugh for ourselves, we cry for ourselves, night lets you be - yourself.The real emotions come out when we are rest assured that no body is there to watch, night gives a chance to be you and to invent you. Night is where we remove the masks, the masks spotted for the sake of the society, for the sake of people around, below every bed you could find these invisible masks scattered across, night is where all the hypocrisies fade out, night is where the conscience gets awake while the body gets to sleep.The real person can be determined with the last thought that he has before going to sleep.The hidden vault of the mind gets open when we lie idle before sleep and inside it lies our deepest desires, our most beautiful memories and our intolerable sufferings.

They say the brightness of the stars depend on the darkness of the sky.The sky is dark, pitch black with some grey scattered near the clouds surrounding the moon.The clouds keep colliding above my head, like hiding the most beautiful princess they try to hide the moon from sight.The moon, the tajmahal of the night sky.Moon has been with me for years now, I remember the day when i was a little kid.I had to travel between two cities in the midnight and when the journey started i saw the moon above the grilled window of the train, as the train went to sleep i kept staring at the sky and the moon kept following me, I alighted from the train to find that the moon is still following me.I started crying fearing that the moon is here for me, to abduct me to space.The fear of the childhood became the friend of the adulthood.The sun belongs to all of humanity- the sun is a collective entity, but it is the moon that belongs to each human- the moon is an individual entity.You can be intimate only with the moon, the moon is a friend for some, philosopher for some and the hidden source of love for some.The moon is a silent observer, you can laugh at it, you can make love to it, or you can keep staring at it for no reasons.The moon doesn't complain, it stays there where it is and sends out a sense of belonging.For me the moon is the source of selfless love, and then there are the stars, my best friends for life.I count the stars till i run out of numbers, I gaze at them one at a time.These stars above my village sky remain my companions when I'm alone, i share all my pain, i share all my dreams, I share all my secrets with them.They send out a silence which can't me matched my any spoken word.

Im in the middle of the night, I decide to climb over the wall to reach the roof of the house,I climb into the night reaching the tiled roofs of the age old village house.I walk without making a fuss,I reach the middle and I look around.The village is asleep, a few dogs bark at a distance, a few lamps remain lit in the temple below the tree, I remain the only man there, i feel like im the only man alive in the whole wide world.I see the village getting drenched with the silver light of the moon, this is how the world really looks without the borrowed light of the sun, I share the sight of the first man when he was awake on the very first night, this is the real world, the darkness is the glow of the world.The mind dwells in calmness, the mind dwells in peace.I imagine travelling into the sea when the sky is dark, the sea looks like flowing landmass in the night.I imagine travelling in a little boat across the dark sea on a dark night, mind flows with thoughts like the fishes swimming near the waves, I throw a huge net across the sea and i catch the thoughts which swim deep inside and the scattered thoughts- i present them to you as words.Standing on the edge of the night the mind travels inside and the calmness you feel needs a new language to express.This moment, with the stars looking at me and the moon adding to the serenity, this moment, where i stand on the top of the village house starring at the sky,may be a moment of no specific importance, but i feel it is these little moments that make up my living.It is these moments that keep me alive and keep me going.I stand here on the cliff of the night, on top of the dark rocks, below me flows the yellow river of the day, i shall soon jump from this cliff gliding and colliding into the yellow, swimming across the day to reach the bottom of another cliff and to climb the dark rocks towards the edge of another night.I may leave in sometime.
.
But the night will still be alive outside my window.

Chennai to Colombo via Mumbai

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:13:17 PST

Departure 29 Jan 19:27hrs

Chennai, I still remember the rainy morning when i came to you. Back then I didn't know that I am gonna love you so much, Now standing here in the deserted platforms of tidel station staring at the majestic tidel park which glows in yellow and blue, I never knew that I am gonna miss you so much.I came to you with a million dreams, you gave me my first money, you gave me my first identity, you gave me all the treasures that you safeguarded inside you for years.I am grateful to you Chennai.You were a friend, a kind of friend who makes you feel complete, a kind of friend who teaches you to live.When i was in you i discovered myself, i discovered people, i discovered things i had been searching for ages.Now standing here just minutes ahead of leaving you, I look back at you.I think of all those houses which hosted me and my friends, I think about the everlasting fun that we had in you, I think about all the streets in which i drove my rusty old bike, I think about the people whom you made me meet, i think about my first day at office, I think about all the tea shops which came to life in the midnights,I think about your night sky, I think about the energy that you embedded into every soul, I think about the hot summers that you had to offer, I think about the million people who are gifted to live in you tomorrow and the day after. They say that a city is just a bunch of streets and buildings, but i knew that you had a soul, a soul which is reflected in every face that lives in you. You are a collective reflection of the people who live in you, dark, white, grey and pale in skin and soul. I had always been fond of you, when my friends made fun of me that i had never been to chennai till 21 years of living.I decided that someday I am gonna conquer you, but you conquered me.Im in awe with you.I may go places from here, I may round around the globe but I am gonna miss you Chennai, I am gonna miss everything that is you.I am gonna miss bessy, I am gonna miss OMR, I am gonna miss those long drives in east coast, I am gonna miss getting drenched in the middle of deserted mount road, i am gonna miss the clouds those collided above my head when i spent my most beautiful nights in your presence, i am gonna miss the Andhra messes, I am gonna miss the pubs,I am gonna miss the electric trains, I am gonna miss your magnificence as a whole, I am gonna miss the wheatish girls from the north, I am gonna miss the little wooden BENCHES in my office.:)But someday ill be back to you and stay with you for a lifetime ahead cos you are my capitol, cos I love you. Ill be back to you Chennai, till then take care of all the loved ones.Take care of yourself and stay the same :)

Refuelling 22 Feb 10:27hrs

Slumdog millionaire, i am glad that i watched it months back when it was just another Independent movie that craved for attention. I watched it with no real interest, but still liked it. Days passed and SDM became the talk of villages, towns, and cosmopolites. I watched it again and this time i liked it even more. No it is not the BEST film that one can make out of Mumbai, it is not the best film that suits the Oscar profile, it is not the best by any means and that is why i feel it deserves the recognition(wait a second...even i don't understand what i just typed but just let it be:)).the film never takes itself seriously, it is not too good and it is not the kind of film that wins the Oscars and this makes it the favourite at the academy's this year(wait another second...I promise you I don't understand what i just said;)).These ppl in the west are real crazy they are bored with the kind of films they make and see, and films reaching the final stages at the oscars are just the same, similar crew, similar making, similar acting so when they saw SDM it was like seeing a pig defecate in the busy streets of Manhattan, they have never seen a pig to shit in there, they have never seen something like the SDM so they are celebrating and I am sure SDM is gonna sweep. Rahman may end up holding the golden man in both his hands(but still he will be greeted by shitty indian directors who will ask him to score "Sir, hero nadanthu varan sir appo pakkathula oru ditchu, utthu patha athukulla namba namitha face theriyuthu sir, appo neenga "jajak,jajak,....jakak" nu oru bitta potta pasanga meranduruvanunga sir)Apart from all this I like the movie, it has an Indian soul, and for all those who complain about the bad light in which Mumbai was projected, plzzz the movie was not taken in Mars, those slums are real the poverty is real the cruelty is real, when we are getting used to accept the realities we will accept movies like these. Let's wait till 22nd, kudos SDM, kudos Danny(but Mr.Anil kapoor U SUCK... i hate the way you behaved at the globes, you are a a**h***)

Emergency Landing 04 Feb 16:18hrs

I don't understand what is happening in the Island nation,No i don't have a clue.I have heard stories, I don't believe in Rajapaksha(ppl just look at him, he looks so cruel, like the Nambiars and Asokans, it is tattooed on his face that "I am a villan..ha ha ha"), I don't believe in LTTE, I don't believe in the Indian government, I don't believe the jokers in Tamilnadu who keep shouting for no good reasons, I don't believe the media, don't believe in a thing all I believe is that my Innocent brothers out there are suffering and i could feel the pain here. Days back i read about a girl from kilinochi, her grandma and her mother were raped in front of her little eyes no one came to save her and the woman in her house. Damn it!! they are suffering out there and what are we doing? Leave out the Tamil factor, aren't they human as the rest of us? I feel responsible to do something but what can i do? what can we do?.And days back one of my colleagues from north asked me a question "Why are you Tamils so regional fanatic? After all those people belong to another nation". My answer for him and all other Indians who don't understand the pain we as Tamils share all i would like to say is "Fine, you say that I am Indian, yes I am an Indian and i love my country, You expect me to be a brother to all those ppl who live in this country, to the ones from Nagaland and Assam(even though they are Chinese to me), to the ones living somewhere in the distant villages of Bihar and Jammu(god damn they look alien to me..anyway), I agree with you, I agree that we are one country and i agree that we are united in diversity, but these people for whom i speak are my kith and kin, they look like me, they speak like me, they call their mothers just like the way i call mine, they belong to me. We are united not by diversity but by identity, I am an Indian, but more than that I am Tamil by birth and life and I am always proud to say that. So let us care for our brothers, they may have killed your(hmmm…ok OUR) once PM but don't forget that you guys raped their mothers in the name of peace and harmony. Pain is something distant from language and region, its paining for them, I am not pleading you to care for them, but when we do it please don't find faults. Let peace prevail, here and there. Let my brothers and sisters spell P-E-A-C-E not in Tamil, not in Singhalese, not in any other language that humans speak. Let them spell peace in their smiles, lets pray for them after all that is the only thing we can do.

Girrr...Burrr...Dirrr...

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:12:58 PST

(To my roomies reading this, i know i went over-board, as always pardon me ;) )

What if you are super-sensitive to sound? i.e even the sound of a dropping pin on the mosaic floor, barking sound of a dog in a latency of 3 kms would wake up from sleep? and you live in a room with 6 other gentlemen in which 5 snore and 1 farts all night? now that's me.That is my life for nearly two years now.No i am not complaining, im just laughing at god who created me, laughing out loud, laughing out helpless, laughing out insane.There are days when you try hard to sleep and when you feel sleep is nearing you, you start hearing this sound like the sound of a grinding machine, you loose hope on life, your nerves get tighter, your blood flows hot in your veins, you run down to the PC and google for where you can buy unlicensed guns in Chennai, you find that you get it in a corner shop in north madras, you decide to buy it the next day and just blow of all the snoring heads, but the next day comes you wake up hearing the same old noise, you wake up to cry, you wake up to curse and you then google to find out what are the 10 most easy ways of committing a suicide.Now please don laugh, im serious.It is a room where bachelors stay in the morning, and at some magical point in the midnight the place i live in turns into a zoo.I open my eyes to the darkness and I start hearing these sounds, noise of a stranded whale, squealing of a pregnant pig, cawing of a fat dark crow, grump of an injured camel, gobble of a mature male turkey and the howling of a green eyed wolf.I always live with the fear that any time i may become a prey and only my skeleton would remain in the next morning.I am even planning for a night safari in the pathways of my room with an entry rate of 30/per head.Guys lemme know if u r interested, i guarantee for an once in a lifetime experience. I know my limits, ill stop here. :)In a way im getting used to it, how long can you keep worrying for things that is out of your control?.Im planning to do my thesis in snoring, "The sound engineering behind sleeping Indian men" is the title. Wow what a learning it has been for years now, how many varieties we have in a simple snore? from the loud noisy snore which travels across 3 rooms to the vibrator snore which reaches your ears like a drilling machine.The graph patterns that i depicted observing the sounds has led to graphs with sin waves, cos waves and even ocean waves.It is all fine but when you loose sleep over it, hell is not so distant.And the other aversion i have is the aversion to light, i wake up to the sudden glow of a zero watts bulb, I wake up to the glow of the TV screen on my closed eyes.In some nights where i need a lot of time with myself for solace, someone will switch on the creepy television at 4am and hear songs in the tunes of "satti suttathada, kai vittathada".I go helpless guys. And all my otherwise lovely roomies reading this, Im not blaming you guys you people have all the rights to snore after all it is your tongue and your nose.Blame my parents for bringing me up like this, blame god who created me as a naturally sensitive ***hole.Blame me.I cant sleep with sound, i cant sleep when i find a small ray of light intruding the bottom of my door, i cant sleep when the TV keeps running, I cant sleep while people speak, I need a graveyard like silent atmosphere in order to completely sleep at peace.I know i have become a nightmare for most, nobody prefers to sleep near me just cos u guys know i mouth very bad words in your ears when i get irritated, I kick at times to bring you back to normal, at times i even wake up people and say "I have no problems in you snoring hard, but please can you stop snoring like an owl and start snoring like a cuckoo bird?".I know that i have become a pest to most, I know that everybody prays for me to get a wife who snores all night,but please stand in my shoes.Apart from this you guys are the best one can find in the world and I love you guys when you don't make those quirky annoying noises. (im not saying this fearing a mob attack making me run nude in the streets, im sayin this cos i really love you guys :P).And for all those others reading this, my thesis is nearing its conclusion and ill soon give the answers for the age old question.Where does the snore come from? Is it from the nose or the mouth?

keep guessing till then... :)

The road

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:05:37 PST

The road was empty, there were no people, no tress, no clouds, nothing. It was an empty road in the middle of nowhere. It was filled with deserted sands on either side. A wide black road caught in-between brown sand plains. The sun was feeding on the little grains of sand, the yellow rays were flowing all across the road, the noon looked hot but felt warm. He was there. He was riding his old bike in the middle of the road. His eyes were closed. He was bearded; his shirt was unbuttoned and was beating against the wind as he drove. He was riding his rusty old bike with his eyes closed. He knew it was his road, he knew he had to travel it. He was roaring across the road with the speeds matching his heartbeat. There was no other noise there except the groan of his old metal bike which was pushed to its limits. His eyes were locked; there was no vision that reached his brain. There was dust and heat surrounding him. But insides of him were filled with something pure. She was there inside him. In his heart, soul and in every single atom. She was there filling in him as he was riding the bike like a lightning on the desert land. He could feel the breeze hitting on his face, it was not breezing air, it was breezing days. Days from their not so distant past was hitting him on his face. He was traveling amidst those days. The day when they found each other, they day when they started adoring each other, the day when they first exchanged letters, the day when they first spoke, the day when they fell in love, the day when they found that they were one soul split across two human bodies, the day when they cried to each other, the day when they exchanged kisses, the day when they planned about their future house, they day when they named their yet to be born children, the days when only happiness filled in their being, the days when they felt complete in each others company, the day when she was torn apart from him. It was all days that hit him on his face. Wide and vivid images of the days just filled him in his closed eyes. He was traveling into the life that they had lived till date, he crossed the days, one at a time. She was there with him in all those days, they were the only two people in their world. She, not a thousand angels can match the genuine beauty of the woman, not a thousand poems are enough to sing about her beautiful soul, not a thousand books can praise her qualities, not a million days would be enough for a life with her. She was the only one he got and the only one he wanted all his life. She was not a fairy, she was a woman. A woman with legs not an angel with wings. A woman filled with flesh, blood, ideals and love for life. For him she was the most soulful human he has ever met, she was the best in his world: In the way he perceived the world. She loved the rain, she befriended the moon, she loved being lost in words, she loved the midnights, she loved being alone, she loved people, she loved being a kid, she loved the taste of dark chocolate, she also loved him. On a moon lit day she said to him that he topped her list, always. He was not the best around, but she believed he was. He was as flawed as any other human, he messed up things, he spoke whatever came to his mind, he could never hide his emotions, but she loved him for his flaws. She loved him completely. He never found any flaw with his woman she was complete in every sense. They were soul mates, She overcame his weakness and he always gave his shoulders. They were the two little lines that made an "=" sign. They were living just for each other. He wanted to surrender his life to make her the happiest woman on earth, he wanted her life to be filled with happiness every second and he wanted them to cherish every sunrise and sunset together in each others arms. But people and the world cheated on them. The anger got life on his journey in nowhere, the bike was crying as he rushed it, he drove like a mad man at breakneck speed. His nerves got tighter, his eyes remained closed. He remembered the pain when it was bleeding, he remembered the tears she shed to him, he remembered being helpless to save her, he remembered all the pain that was endured. He kept on turning the accelerator, and the bike shivered in speed. The sun was on the top making the temperatures rise in and out and the bike traveled across the wide black empty road. The bike rushed past sand storms. Tears from his soul kept weeping through the little corners of his eye, it turned into little razors, small sharp razors which cut across whatever it met. The tears traveled behind him as he rushed with his bike, he was filled with tears and pain but he kept her safely in a warm dark corner of his heart. When it slowed a bit, it was again breezing. He traveled across their memories; he saw what was on the sides of the deserted road with his closed eyes. It now hosted their memories. He was traveling past the little coffee shop in which they first met, he was traveling past the cinema hall they visited, the corners of the road was filled with book shelves from the book shop they spent hours in, he traveled past the streets they walked together. All those came to life in the deserted sands, the streets, the buildings, the shops and everything. He smiled as he biked through them. The smile which she loved, the smile which she certified as the only good looking part of him. He traveled past people now, hundreds of them. They were standing in line on the corners of the road. People, people and more people. From the writers they loved to the actors they hated, everybody they spoke a word about in their long non ending conversations were standing on the sand streets. He looked them with his closed eye .From Ayn Rand to Andrei Tarkovsky. His friends and hers, his parents and hers. Everybody were there looking him travel his journey on the deserted road. Some were waving hands at him, others kept it tied. Some looked caring ,some looked angry and some just didn’t care. He went passed them, there was just only one more person he has to meet, that is her. When people ended the road came back to its form, empty and dusty. He rushed again, now there were no more people to look at, no more memories to visit, no more days to hit, all is left is only her. He was traveling to her, he was rushing to her. The sun was getting warmer but the speed kept increasing. He just cant wait anymore, he has to end his journey at her, the one who he believed to be his only reason for existence. He pushed his old bike to its limits, the very bike in which she sat in the pillion on a blissful rainy day. The bike kept roaring in the lonely road filled with sand on both sides. He drove miles, he covered lengths. He kept rushing till the wheels got evaporated in heat. He kept rushing till the road cried. And at some point he knew he was nearing her. He could feel her, her voice in the air. The same voice that showered love on him, he heard it and he got insane with joy. He rushed. Her voice was coming from the little fissures of heaven, it filled the road, it got louder as he drove, all that she spoke was entering his ears like a thousand violins playing. He breathed heavily. He knew he was nearing her. The bike was cruising alone with him into the world named "her”. He always felt his mother in her, now he was moving to his second womb. When he knew that his journey is gonna end, he opened his eyes, they were red. All he could see is a bright light. There was no more roads in sight. He crash landed into the light he was thrown away from his old bike. He was taken in the air and he crashed into the floor which was filled with the brightness. He was not hurt cos he landed into her, he landed on her. When he stood up he could not sense a thing, he was surrounded by brightness, the brightness called her. He stood up, he could feel her breath in the air, he was inhaling it, he was being filled with it. He stood there; he raised his hands towards his heavens. He closed his eyes again; he was feeling her in his soul. Slowly he started withering, atom by atom, they started tearing away from him and they got dissolved into the brightness, he was slowly dissolving into the brightness. He was losing himself into it. And finally he was no more, he got dissolved into the world called her. They became one. Nothing else remained except the brightness. The heavenly brightness of love. And soon they will be reborn again.

He and his She.

இந்த மழைக்காலம்.

noreply@blogger.com (Vignesh) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:58:47 PST

என் முதல் கவிதை முயற்சி...குழந்தைகள் கூட மழையை முறைத்துக்கொண்டிருந்த-உயிர்ப்பில்லாத ஒரு மாலைப்பொழுதில் எழுதியது ..

இந்த மழைக்காலம்.

இந்த மழைகாலத்தின் கடைசி நாள்.
இருள் கவிந்திருந்த இந்த மாலையில்
தூறலுடன் பெய்கிறது இறுதி மழை

காமத்தில் வடிந்த எச்சில் போல்
காயத்தில் கசிந்த உதிரம்போல்
கிழவியின் அழுகை போல்
துர்கனவின் சிறுநீர் போல்

ரசிக்க ஆளின்றி என் வீட்டு
சாக்கடையில் விருப்பமில்லாமல்
பெய்கிறது - யாவரும் பழகி சலித்த மழை

வானம் பார்த்துவிட்டு
வீட்டுக்குள் நான் வந்த நொடியில்
ஏனோ இறந்தேபோய்விட்டது
இந்த மழைக்காலம்.