Am I free?

As a child, I always used to pity each and every tree that I pass by. Reason- it cannot move, it stays at the same place for years together, braving scorchiest of summers, coldest of winters and fiercest of storms, but alas it just cant move and last but not least its not free. Its not free to decide which bird to come and sit on it, its not free to decide who has to pluck its flower or eat its fruit. Its just not free.

And that used to made me think I was special, special because I am free, I am at my will, I always had a choice to protect myself from, the heat of the summers, the cold of the winters and from a lot more brutalities the tree might have to face. I had a choice of choosing whom I want to be with, I used to think, and a choice of eating what I want and a choice to do or not to do a plethora of other things; and here I am, thanks to the society and all the protection from my parents, to think that I am free.

But, am I free, rather was I ever free? When I asked this question to myself and looked back, what I saw was rather a matter of rudest shock. My life was nothing but a web of shackles, which I progress and regress between. When ever I progressed, I did so because I was what others wanted me to be and regressed because I am what I wanted to be, though not always, this has been the trend, and this I guess is the trend with everyone. We grow up thinking that we are free, but the reality is that we never were and we never would be. There is no will of yours in your birth, nor there would be any in your death and all that is between is just a game of probability that we play. And the only difference between tree and us is that we know what is happening to us, where as the tree just stands there irrespective of what happens to it, now I think, how good it would be, if I were ever to have an option, to be a tree when I want to. Standing there, with will and freedom, irrespective of what is happening around me, any severity hardly be able to change me, blossoming to life after each severity, not bothering who is with me and who has left, just being there because I should and doing what I am meant to !

Now that is freedom, ain't it?

When truth becomes a dream....

I know, I cannot forget
But still I loved; now I regret
When the wounds refuse to heal
And my heart refuses to feel
Death says sorry to ignore me
And time refuses to help me
People laugh at me as if I were a clown
Ah! What do they know? I am about to break-down.


I go to bed, I want to sleep, I can’t
Coz it’s just you in my dreams, you hunt and haunt
What is a dream of seconds?
Before a life of decades
But when a dream comes true, you ask how?
When truth becomes a dream, then its love
When truth becomes a dream, then its love!

Weird........

There was a loud scream, a scream from a female, as I opened the door. With in no time, there were more furious screams, I was shocked and was unable to comprehend why there was a sudden uproar in an otherwise calm floor. It hardly took any time for me to realize that the screams were more of a reaction to my entrance to the room; me, a man of good response to stimuli, started running. It would have been a real bad idea to get into a fight with a group of furious women; I would rather shoot myself than doing that.

It has been a long time since I ran, it was a strange feeling when you have an oscillating kind of feeling in your intestines, though I did not enjoy it, I kept running. I took a u-turn when I realized I have reached a dead end and the whole female group took a u-turn and it all looked as if I were a comet with the tail being a group of females. I always hoped that I were the man in that axe ad, where a plethora of women chasing me; but I never realized my dream would come true in this furious way, as I retraced the path, I just happened to realize that I fancied my way into a women's restroom.

I looked back and started running faster as I saw a generous female who did not mind sacrficing her heels to attack a moron that I was. The likes of Ishant Sharma hve been put to shame when lady threw her sandal at speeds clocking 160 kmph(how did I measure the speed??), Keanu Reaves gotten into me and I bent back at 90 degrees, at the edge of the floor, to sniff the aroma of the lady's heel, as I did it, my feet went off in air and I started feeling weightless-ness and as I looked down after a few feel good somersaults, there was good four floors of air beneath me. I started falling.

Thud, I landed. It was dark, I checked myself, I was OK. My eyes got accustomed to the darkness, no it was not a hospital, it was rather very familiar. It’s my room and I just fell off my cot. I returned to bed cursing myself for thinking about how a ladies' restroom looks, and with this experience I slipped into my blanket thinking about Katrina Kaif.

Thinking on your feet......

Why do I write blogs? Rather, why do I write and publish them here? This thought provocation was more due to two gooselings, my colleagues, who rather bravely put forth this question. Well, I am to blame for this. Of late, any public/private/general/personal talk with me ends up with a reference to my blogs. My success with boring people to eternity is so great that, people, whenever they are confronted with a trivial frustration, wouldn’t even think once to suggest me- "pappu, blog likhle", there were even more generous people wishing me luck for CAT panel selecting my essays for their RCs. Though there were an occasional anonymi who seem to have serious conflicts with world, as they keep commenting on my blogs, thus encouraging me to write more mind boggling posts, with each post itching readers cerebrum to the most irritable extent .Having said that, I do not hesitate to attribute the loss of my bike's front right indicator, the scratches on my bike's tank and my inflated mobile bill to my irated readers who succumbed to my advertisements of asking people to read my blogs.

But this shall not deter me, because at age of 11, I promised a pair of raging bulls, who seem to have found a soft target in me, that I will endorse their shit if they spare me, they did. And here I am, the man of words, endorsing bullshit. Do you need a better reason to blog?

But, people, bull-shitting is not that bad at all. When you go incomprehensible describing your feelings, when your manager seems to be asking for too much, when your girl friend is getting too smart with you, when there are lots of smart asses around you trying to out smart you the only weapon you have is bull shitting. Bull shitting is not an art; it is an instinct, a response to the stimuli called incomprehension. It is like a PMT bus when there are no auto rickshaws; when you have to invent something to meet your necessities, when sense becomes your enemy, when resources are sparse; bull shitting becomes your good old buddy on whose shoulder you can rest your head upon.

Once you understand what bull shitting is, you can easily talk about any thing and everything on the face of the earth ranging from, how meditation helps you improving your sex life to how American politicians influenced Raj Thackeray to make those inciting comments. Basically, bull-shitting is nothing but thinking on your feet, when your brain refuses to work. Though very few people have the inborn talent to bull-shit naturally, it, like many other arts, can be imbibed with a little practice.

I think you got my answer, I would have told, I like to write that is why I wrote, but....you know what I am good at.

P.S: I will offer, at free of cost, classes on bull-shitting. Mail me with your details. Remember I am looking.

Gyan...

All pleasure is negative cessation of pain, so happiness is nothing but avoiding pain.

Where have all the donkeys gone?

Long- long ago, there used to be an intelligent donkey species, called i-donkeys. These i-donkeys are special; they are a rare combination of intelligence and hard work. They used to slog their life off for any work assigned to them. They used to work for a pittance, a small perk used to excite them to death and a tempted onsite opportunity would make them work 48 hours a day. This species continued to exist happily until Murphy happened to see these creatures through his naughty binoculars. And the inevitable happened, slowly- fastly, rather, fastly- fastly, this race has started to get extinct, when I say fastly, I mean it got extinct faster than the most endangered species in the world. But how? The answer is the story of Daddu, an intelligent donkey.

Daddu was an intelligent donkey, thanks to his mother; she made sure that she has taken a Mentos a day during Daddu's gestation period and thanks to his mother again, she fed Daddu with a Mentos a day until he grew up to be an intelligent youth. And hence, Daddu has become a rare combination of intelligence and hard work and evolved as an i-donkey. He was very happy to see the article "an" instead of "a" before his race's name; and was even happier to get a job. A job where he can prove his intellectual capabilities and a job where he could show case his hard working capabilities.

Daddu started off; he liked his company, it gave him lots of facilities, which inspired him to work even harder, say 48 hours a day. He was introduced to a lot of alien things during his work, there are people who talk about etiquettes, how to eat, how not to harass the female i-donkeys, how to talk on phone, and plethora of other things, he learnt them, but for him work was ultimate; after all, the ultimate purpose of his life was to work hard and he thought he was doing what he is expected to, only until a new concept called appraisal was introduced to him where he was told that he just met the expectations which is not enough, he needs to show case what he has been doing. He did not quite get what that was and he continued working hard.

Everything around Daddu changed, except for his position, but he continued working hard only until he was repeatedly told that he just meeting the expectations, he was heart broken, he did not understand what he lacked, until he looked up and around, where he saw a whole race of i-donkeys. They were everywhere and in huge numbers. Everyone had the same problem, they are working hard but gaining nothing, the praise, award, reward, everything was given to the "cool" donkeys, while the i-donkeys are slogging and slogging, but remember Daddu was an i-donkey, he could think, he understands and hence slowly he phased himself out of the hard working mode.

Years later, after a saga of managing a lot of donkeys, Daddu's manager thought, where are all the i-donkeys gone?

The answer is, they evolved to "cool" donkeys who do smart work. Remember, there are too many i-donkeys and a few cool donkeys who claim the reward for i-donkeys' works. But, i-donkeys are smart, they wont let younger i-donkeys to suffer like them, rather they just advice them to be a cool donkey. Daddu did it, he made sure that there are no i-donkeys in his team and so did many other unrecognized i-donkeys who forced themselves to evolve as cool donkeys.

Now, the world is full of cool donkeys, each cool donkey show cases too much, where the actual work done is nil. And all those managers who enjoyed the saga of i-donkeys are now thinking, where have all those donkeys gone?

Do you call it an extinction or an evolution or a genocide?

Xenophobia and Politics......

I will try to be less caustic in this article, but in any case, if I am percieved to be too caustic
then please bear in mind that I could have been even more caustic.



Xenophobia: Xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign peoples. It comes from the Greek words xenos, meaning
"foreigner," "stranger," and phobos, meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of foreigners or in general of people different from one's self.



Now, let me just copy a few more lines from wiki so that my readers could understand the implications of Xenophobia.

The effects of xenophobia (dislike against the genetically dissimilar out-group and nepotistic favoritism towards the genetically similar in-group) are analyzed by many sociobiological researchers. Some see it as an innate biological response on the part of the evolved human organism in inter-group competition.



Many anthropologists have discussed the concepts of kin selection, ethnic nepotism, and the biologically-rooted tendency of people that are more similar genetically to behave more generously toward each other. They also argue that all human beings "have an innate, evolution-produced tendency to seek proximity to familiar faces because what is unfamiliar is probably dangerous and should be avoided. More than two hundred social psychological experiments have confirmed the intimate connection between familiarity and fondness. This
universal human tendency is the foundation for the behavioral expressions of ethnocentrism and xenophobia"


I do not know how computer literate Mr Thackeray is, but he got hold of the concept well and if I ever were to have any power, I would hang him till his next birth's death. I see this whole drama as a sheer publicity stunt, capitulating on xenophobic tendencies of human, who according to me, albeit all the evolution of millions of years has regression and mob mentality topping the
list of quintessential tendencies. I do not blame my Mumbaikar friends who were generous enough to condemn MNS's stand but at the same time susceptible enough to share the sentiments of our beloved Mr. Thackeray that Bhaiyyas and Biharis are capitulating on local fishermen, vegetable vendors etc., it, as I had mentioned earlier, is but natural.



We need to understand one thing, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, New Delhi, Mumbai are cities because of the people who live there, without people cities are just concrete jungles, and they do not mean a thing. Arguing about restrictions for internal migration in a country is as good as demanding a new country. India and China are developing for human resources they have, Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh or any other state cannot claim for more or less for India's development. And Mahasrashtra or any state, if ever were to become a country, with 9-12 crore population ruled by a group of chauvinists will never be able to compete with India, unless you tend to become Japanese which is remote considering the Xenophobic tendencies.



Coming to the solution part of the whole issue, what the brainless chicken, led by Psychic goof ups, are trying to do is eliminating the effect without bothering about the cause. It is natural for any human to migrate in search of livelihood, if he cannot sustain in the current environment. So, the problem here is multitude of unsustainable environs in India, what ever development that India has seen till now is localized; I would like to call it clichéd. We need to have more Mumbais, more Bangalores and more Hyderabads per state, though this takes time, it shall happen and I wish to see an India with 54 Mumbais, 54 Delhis etc by 2100. Hope, is always good you know?



P.S: Raj Thackeray will be a failure, not that he was successful before, but he will be a failure because he cannot deport millions of the claimed North Indians from Mumbai, Hitler with all his genocidal tendencies could no do it and it never happened in history and even if Mr. Thackeray were to succeed by a Tsunami wave of luck, then as well, he would be a failure as with out the
North Indian issue he is just another person in Maharashtra, whom the junta would hardly care for.

The beep, the bark and the puchuk........

It was a warm winter day in Pune, as the sun tried to hit the middle of horizons; he inquisitively and carefully looked around for food near his favorite dabha on the highway. Alas, he was not as lucky as his other mates who will be fed to death all the fat rich food in air conditioned rooms. He, like million others in India is a road side habitant whose daily routine is spent in finding food.

He looked into the infinity, as he munched on the bony remains of what was once a rooster, his food now. He is new to this place; he belonged to what they called Bangalore. He lived by highway, there as well. If not for the unfortunate incidents in his life he would be having a gala time with all the girl friends around him who would be more than excited to have a fling with him; and marriage is just alien to him.

He is feeling nostalgic now; he is missing those days where he used to do nothing but sing at the top of his voice for all the day and hang out on streets with his friends all the night, scaring the shit out of anyone passing by him. He was missing those days where he used to pick those verbal fights with those rich. There was no single moment without a fight, such a belligerent character he was and proudly so. The fight could be for any reason ranging from a leg of a chicken to a girl friend; and for that matter there can be no reason at all, but just a fight. He was sure, he enjoyed those days, his youth, where he slept with anything close to be female in his society, until the disaster stuck his race.

He realized that life is not a bed of roses, especially on Bangalore highway. He never used to understand five lanes of horn blaring, light flashing Indian traffic where rules, if they ever existed, were a rarity. He and his whole race were never in terms with the cab and truck drivers who have the skill and audacity of air force pilots and whose only aim in life is to overtake and who follow the maxim -to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail, to stop is defeat; with all the vigor and determination of a soldier in a war.

His bad time started when his father was knocked down to death by a truck when trying to follow his mother and his mother expired, knocked down by speeding car when she was trying to have a last look of her husband. Slowly, almost all of his family members started to disappear and then his friends, girl friends and ironically all of them, except for him have succumbed to the war called crossing the highway. And when he tried the feat for the first time in his life, he was hit by a car and flew and fell on a truck and when he regained his consciousness, all thanks to the nice kick on the ass by the truck driver, he realized that he was in Pune.

Pune was no different, it seems people here as well are going extinct when they try to cross the highway, he realized that within an hour. He then took an oath that, no matter what, he never in his life would cross the highway. Life is going on well; he enjoyed his exclusivity, as there was no competition, until his animal instincts took the better of him. That night, after his dinner, his urge to mate has reached its biological peak, thanks to 3 months of sexual inactivity. He became restless until he sensed a female on the other end of highway, he knew he should not cross, but love ke liye saala kuch bhi karne ka hain, after all, he thought, pyaar kiya tho darna kya? He accumulated all the courage he had and headed towards the other end of the highway.....


Screeeeeech, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, wooow bow wow bow, puchuk.......


The next day's news paper read " Ramu, the last Indian dog, reared by the Lash da Dabha's owner, has been killed when he was knocked down by a speeding cab when he tried to cross the highway, no one knows why the dog tried to cross the road. As claimed by the people working at the dabha, Ramu was an intelligent dog and never tried to cross the highway. Following the incident the animal rights activists, staged a rasta rokho and set ablaze a few passing taxis. The dead body of the dog was cremated in the nearest cemetery......"