Sudd-Suddenly #3

My dad has been advised to have his lower set of teeth removed and replaced with dentures. He isn’t too happy about it.
If we are all taught very young that ‘Aane vaala pal, jaane vaala hey’, will we be better prepared?


Rajnath Singh explains ‘Varun will behave’.
Whether good, bad or ugly seems to be the question.


Tata plan to expand their telephone and mobile network in rural areas.
Will the campaign ‘Tata in-de-gaun’ fit the bill?

haiku

Monsoon:
Orphaned old lady in dire poverty
is dressed in a rich bright green velvet gown;
An abandoned well.

Kalai:
Asayaamal, amiedhiyaay amarndhirundhu, ivvoviyan
en nenjai thodum oviyangal theetugiraan;
Sattai pyeyill viethirindha yen ink pena.

loosely translated into:

Art:
Unmoved, sits this artist in silence,
and does paintings that touch my heart;
The ink pen in my shirt pocket.

Sudd-Suddenly #2

9:30AM. Turned on computer at work and put on earphones.

Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it’s quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us…

The doors opened… I was transcended.

Sudd-Suddenly #1

(Sudd-suddenly: Recording random thoughts)

NRI family at Thanjavur temple during their annual India visit.
Kid: Appa! Look… F1 elephant!
Dad: What?!
Kid: Look there… that elephant has a chequered flag painted on its forehead. Can we go for a ride…please, please?! I’m so bored. Let’s experience some G-forces!
Dad: Strange… wonder what that is. Is the Indian Govt already into promoting the 2010 Delhi GP? May be he’s the mascot, called…hmm… Thezu?
Mom: I think it’s a new marketing strategy by Mr. Mallaya for his Force India team.
Paati: Abhachaaram…abhachaaram! Is that wine-shop fellow now trying to penetrate our sacred temples and ruin their sanctity? Oh krishna paramaathma, protect us.
Thaatha: Calm down. That’s just the effect of criss-crossing of horizontal lines painted by one group and vertical lines by another.

Red she now stands tainted in

Red she now stands tainted in.

Brutally scathed by two groups,
She appears ragged,
Smeared all over with red stains,
Stains of dirty red,
Stains of ugly red.


Group 1 -
Armed with heavy artillery,
bombs and sophisticated guns,
And fuelled by a brain-washed mind,
Shooting almost at ranges point blank,
They left her belly wounded and bleeding,
A horrific red,
An inhumane red.


Group 2 -
They shot, too.
Wielding weapons of a varied kind,
Driven by a brain-washed-off-all-sensitivities mind.
Earlier, a quick-fire conference had been summoned,
“the prime motive, I want us all to comprehend,
is that in the issue’s vigorous and relentless coverage
our ‘Terrorism Roko Pracharan’ we will aim to boost and leverage.
Cash-in Now News-brigade, Infiltrate Bombay’s Nerves.
Times Now Right-here, to present the never-before-seen
Nauseating-levels of Dramatized Terror Viewing.
infuse fear in the mind of the common man... to the TV sets, may he be stuck.
to step out, scared stiff should he be, like he has never been Aaj Tak.
and do remember the rule of the day… only flash news and breaking Headlines Today.
happy hunting!!!” they hi-five’d and dispersed.
Operating well beyond the point of cerebral-space-gone-blank.
sucking in anything seen around,
it, they cut, chopped, grated and ground,
chewed, chewed and chewed
and then on her, spat and spewed,
leaving her doused in red scum,
A cheap red.
A filthy red.


And then the great Indian circus trick,
Performed by a bunch of powerful political pricks.
One party cries foul over the other being ‘soft on terror’,
The accused scramble for a scapegoat to sacrifice,
in a desperate effort to cover up a costly error.
The spotlight falls on one… ageing but not ill,
The man known by many as ‘the one who’s always dressed to kill’.
“we know its difficult for you wise guy,
but looks like its become impossible for them to stand your banter
and this time they are all over us you see.. left, right and centre.”
“This doesn’t suit you well anymore” they go on to say,
“But if you aren’t sent home now… we just don’t stand a chance to stay”.

Yes… we have all shamelessly grown thick-skinned,
Sick of continuously getting ripped and skinned.
For we all know… those with power,
Blame games they will continue to play,
Bloody lame games that they always play.

Bright and vibrant colours,
well known for these has she always been,
But with colours having become filthy, fake and deceptive,
The need has now risen for her to come clean.
Let us all go colourless for a while,
no saffron… no green… no white…
And bring to a halt the grinding wheel of supremacy fight.

PS: inspirations to this post - RS's, KA’s and GS's

An SMS epitaph

My new mobile had a fall,

simple and clean,

landing flat on its screen.

Streaks of bright yellow and green,

are all that is left to be seen.

beep, beep,

weep, weep...

Rest in peace.

Desire

The eyes met.
A few moments passed, gazes still glued.
Within, emotions swelled... joy and desire, guilt and fear,
an intoxicating concoction of pleasure,
high on which, did the eyes dilate and shimmer.

The lips, they remained still... a shy stillness.

Then...
like the tiny glow, from behind a veil, of a lass' eyes,
born was a ray of light, her lips when they gently moved,
and there, tenderly sprouted, a little smile.

(This is a translation of ‘Eerpu’ posted earlier)

A spore of fire

Well… I’m back to what I do the best… brood.

Not that I haven’t been doing this at all. Actually I do keep brooding most of the time, at every opportunity my mind feels a bit untied and temporarily disconnected from everything happening around. But, using a technical term (and since I have also been attempting some ‘subject-surface-scratching’ - trying to understand some very basics of the subject matter I have been handling for more than 2 years now) this can be called ‘implicit brooding’! Here you brood, but only within. Yes, I acknowledge that brooding is by itself an ‘internal phenomenon’, pretty much concealed from the external appearance. But the implicit variety is like going another shell or another layer inside. Call it ‘inner-internal-phenomenon’ if that makes things simpler or sounds acceptable. You are so bogged down by activities/tasks/things/duties that you are left with very little time to devote to anything else. And so you brood in gaps/intervals/breaks/pauses, only for a few moments before you are rewound and catapulted back to reality.

And then there is the other, the grand, independent, carefree, unperturbed sort – ‘explicit brooding’! The state of mind where the foremost slot of application of the mind is allocated to brooding, second to none. It drives the machine and everything else rides pillion. Lets call it ‘outer-internal-phenomenon’ to stay inline with the other variety’s description.

If you consider yourself a seasoned brooder, you will at once recognize this to be an activity which aids in attaining supreme mental satisfaction. To me, this is the satisfaction arising from a session of analyzing and streamlining emotions. Happiness, sorrow, confusion, complacency, inspiration…everything appears to distill down to a solitary feeling of anger, which in turn fuels a craving for creativity, fuels a drive to do only things I want to do and not need to do and fuels the urge to attempt that big-leap, from what appears like the bottom of the pit currently.

Agni kunjodru kanden,

Adhei angoru kaattilo pondhidie veithen,

Vendhu thanindhadhu kaadu,

Thazhal veeraththil kunjendrum moopendrum undo?

A spore of fire did I sight,

It, in the dense of a forest did I hide,

Burn down to ashes, did the forest.

In their blistering rage, can one say a spore of fire from a blaze?

Eerppu

Vizhigal saendhana,

sila vinaadigal inaindhu ondraga nindrana,

ullangal irendilum perugi ezhundha aanandhatthil

kangal virindhana... jolitthana.

Udhadugalo… vetkathil asayamal nindrana.

Piragu,

mugavalaikkupin maraindhirindhu

siru oliyaai thondrum oru azhagiyin kangalaipol,

aval udhudugal sattre vilagiyadhu,

oliyin oru bimbam angu uyir kondadhu,

siru punnagai ondru angu mottu vittadhu.

A '?' day

Today was a ‘question mark’ day.
One of those days where you keep questioning yourself as to why you are doing whatever you are doing.

Questions keep shooting out of your mind like bullets from a machine gun.
And the most difficult part is that you have to face these bullets alone, no army, no team. Try dodging them and you’ll see that they boomerang right back at you. There’s no escape, no refuge, the questions seem to work on the same principle as that of guided missiles.

Why did you join this company?
Why did you take up engineering?
Why are you working on such an outdated technology?
Why can’t you be technically strong in whatever junk you are doing?
Why are you still sticking on to this field even after you know its bad?
Why are you only mediocre in whatever you do?
Why cannot you make a firm decision on what you want to be?
When will you learn, gain knowledge and be a true champ at everything you do?
How difficult is the other stream you are trying to enter?
Will you survive if you take a plunge or will you drown?
Why can’t you dedicate even 1 hour everyday to improve yourself?
Why is this code looking endless?
Why is the logic appearing so undecipherable?
Why is the cafeteria playing music which is so loud and lousy?
Why isn’t anyone complaining against the bad quality of the food?
Why is it that everybody seems to be happy with the rip off prices?
Why is this cocky rotund clown my manager?
Why is he questioning me on my performance when he does not seem to know, in any sense, the word’s very meaning?
What qualities did they see in him to make him the manager?
Why are all the clocks appearing to run so slow?
Why can’t they function in the way you want them to?

At the end of the day you find yourself swimming against a high tide of questions. You are trying to reach the other side. But then you realize there isn’t a destination at all. Swim or sink. Its your call.