Your body just died. May you live long!

Whenever I hear a friend or anyone saying “ I would never read books on a Kindle. Nothing equals the smell of a new book” etc I smirk.  I look at them with pity as if they are grandmas who cant understand technology and say scornful things like “ Do you think our ancestors felt sentimental about parchments? Had everyone been for parchments and writing on barks, you would never have books. Perhaps the parchment guys were hesitant to move from stone/clay tablets? etc. It makes me feel super cool for being in with technology and against the mass belief of a hard copy being better sentimentally than its advanced tech inhuman version.

I believed I was soo for technology. Until I discovered I wasn’t.

It has been an accepted fact for some time that until science finds a way to delay natural ageing, the only way to remain immortal is to transfer your consciousness to a machine and live as a machine forever. I just cannot get on board with this.  I am soo attached to this biological way of life that it irks me to even think I can live inside another body. I refused to watch the movie “ Her” because the idea of a man falling in love with an OS with consciousness repulsed me. It did not matter that the machine could think, feel emotions, and was in all aspects – a person. It is like falling in love with a person over the internet, only you will never  ever meet them. I know all this, I just cant wrap my head around it.

I want to scream and shout “ But this is how it was meant to be. You cant interfere with nature” as if I am living in the middle of the jungle and hunt deers for dinner. I do not define myself by my body( maybe if I was thinner and prettier) but now, no- I do define myself by my thoughts only. Yet, it is impossible for me to let my thoughts live in another container.

I guess I am more old-fashioned than I thought I was. I really need to stop smirking at the Kindle critics. 

Why put off till tomorrow what you can avoid altogether

I am a serial procrastinator. I am not proud of it, but I have to admit it, if not to the general public atleast to this blog. The things I dont want to do, I understand putting them off. They are annoying, a waste of time and generally a pain to deal with. Everybody has those- tax returns, paying bills etc.

But what I dont get  is the inclination to put off things I really want to do. I really want to learn Italian, Duolingo is right in front of me- Why do I choose to aimlessly refresh my Gmail and read the last two mails, instead?   I want to clean my room, i love the feeling of having cleaned it, the thought of cleaning does not really discomfort me- why do i lie there like an insipid stone whiling away the entire afternoon?
I really want to apply for jobs- the portals are in front of me- why do i put it off? What is this fear that is lurking deep in my mind that prevents me from doing not only the things I ought to do, but also things I enjoy doing, and things I need to do to be happy? Is it fear of failure?A fear that a job done badly is much much worse than the one that is not started at all? Perhaps then I can attribute the failure to the fact that I didnt start it anWyd therefore there is no way I could have got it. The alternative is too horrifying- imagine applying everywhere and still not having a job- imagine the humiliation, the depression it will bring about, imagine all the pain. It is like holding on to the float boat and refusing to learn swimming for fear of drowning.

How do I then convince myself that doing something is better than not doing it? For a annoying trivial tasks I try and follow a very nice line I read somewhere " procrastinating doesnt make it go away. doing it makes it go away". But I dont really follow this. I cant imagine the amount of money I have lost purely because I was late in booking teh flight tickets even though my plan was firmly fixed. And i would end up paying the highest amount to book flights in the last minute. This behaviour of mine baffles me as much as  my friends- its as if i have a hatred for money and wish to waste it away as much as possible and not gain anything in return. I have tried and tried to analyse this behaviour- constantly putting off something knowing fully well taht it is going to cost me.  Its like a form of slow mental self destruction that I am unable to control.  I try and practise discipline and it works but my natural tendency is to not do it until my ass is on fire.
The worst part is that when i do end up doing the cleaning or the italian learning I feel so happy I wonder why I was putting it off in the first place.

Take for example,this blog. For many years I have told myself that writing regularly would help shape my thoughts and help me become a better writer, but for all the initial paragraphs i frame in my head, possibly one hundredth find their way as a full post on this blog. I have no fears of failure when it comes to this blog and I genuinely enjoy writing and do believe it improves me significantly and yet this blog is amongst the top representatives of my procrastination. It is as if i have evolved to live in an extremely resource-constrained world that i need to avoid anything that is not crucial to my survival.

Now that I have documented it, let me see if it makes any difference.If it doesnt, well -atleast a blog post was written. And it wasn't even the one i had half-framed in my head. 

Intolerance is not in our culture

The recent furore over the Section 377 ruling with the major political party opposing the acceptance of homosexuality, stating that it is against our culture, while disappointing is not really much of a surprise.  We have seen it happen multiple times- women going to pubs was seen as an affront to culture, speaking about pre-marital sex was considered a moral crime  and so was celebrating Valentine's day. Whether the party really believes that these are all against  Indian culture or if they are doing it to appeal to some section of the votebank, is anybody's guess.

But what they are not considering is the fact that "culture" as we speak of it today is not  fixed- it is something fluid and dynamic, something that evolves as we move towards being a different and progressive society. We are currently not upholding the culture of the Indus valley civilisation, what we consider as culture is really an amalgamation of contributions from various past societies, each of whom have added their flavour.

If we were to stick to rigidities and not change anything we would be living in the very ancient past- which if the texts are to be believed, was a much freer society than today. Prostitutes were legal and respected, women were allowed to have more than one husband, and after the practice of one husband set in, they were allowed to have children by other men with the consent of the husband. Somewhere along the line, these rules shifted to become more rigid , possibly because the styles of living changed.  In those days, transgenders, eunuchs and other different people were respected and treated alike. Devdutt Patnaik has eloquently written about the importance of Shikandin- neither a man nor a woman, in the Mahabharata, and the many instances of transgenders in other texts such as Ramayana. Arjuna, who is one of the most revered heroes of the mythologies, spent a year as a eunuch. While it was not the best way to live, he certainly seems to have had much more respect than a gay person does in modern India.

And this is not an isolated incident. Women wearing western clothes is considered erosion of Indian culture. However using televisions, smartphones and BMWs is not. While men strut around in their T-shirts and fancy cars, women are supposed to be sitting at home in sarees upholding Indian culture.  The actress who spoke in public for the use of condoms to prevent AIDS, was insulted and humiliated with brooms and chappals, as pre-marital sex was against Tamil culture. Apparently beating unarmed women with brooms and chappals was very much a part of Tamil culture. And incidentally, Tiruchengode- a place in TN supposedly has amongst the highest AIDS ratios in the country.  While people conveniently give up their culture for convenience, there seems to be a huge uproar when other people give up theirs. Slavery, sati system, dowry system, and untouchability were all a part of the past. Should we continue clinging to them ridiculously as giving them up would mean that we are disowning our past?

This is not to say that we shun everything in our quest for progression and convenience. A lot of people strive to protect parts of their culture-specially when it is art. Usually a lost craft, a disappearing style of music or dance, or a language which is fast moving into obscurity are  forms of art that people cherish and therefore, struggle to preserve. That is preserving beauty for the sake of beauty.  There is no reason hold on  to silly practices that bring no joy to anyone and have no tangible use.

What  is even more irksome is that all this is done under the name of Hinduism. It is one of the most tolerant systems in the world. It imposes no restrictions, judges no one and offers everyone a guidance to lead a good life. So, this is for all the bigots- be as judgemental,  homophobic and intolerant as you wish to be. But dont blame it on the gods. They are all inclusive.

No one knows who killed Aarushi..

.. but its clear the Talwars were killed by the media.  Goes a status update by Ramesh Srivats, a popular social media personality.


I completely agree. I have ranted earlier about the uselessness of the Indian media, but they seem to be stooping even lower than the abysmally low standards they have set for themselves. In this case, they have assumed the worst in every human being involved in the case- it was conjectured that the victim- a Delhi schoolgirl was involved in an affair with their old cook, the father, who along with his wife, murdered his daughter, had an affair with someone else, the mother is a stone who assisted her husband in murdering her own child, while being aware of her husband having an affair.

Maybe its the middle class educated person in me speaking- but none of this makes any sense. I refuse to believe that parents who had a normal relationship with their daughter and bought her gifts on her birthday would do something gruesome the same night. I refuse to believe that the parents would come together and plot the murder of their child.  You can argue taht there are psychopaths everywhere and I am biased because of their education/affluence. I would have agreed had it been the mother killing her child or the father killing the child. Two psychopaths getting together, staying married, leading a happy normal family life and suddenly deciding to gruesomely murder their daughter just doesnt make sense. And most importantly the cook murder business makes no sense.  It is just the kind of nonsense an impulsive murderer would do, not a carefully manipulative psychopath. If nothing, I think I can vouch for teh Talwars' intelligence- if two doctors are planning a murder, they wouldnt do such a botchy job. And the "honour killing" which our media has taken a fancy to- seems so beyond reality.

Regardless of my opinions, the world is a strange place and any thing is possible- the way the media handled this was shameful, to say the least. With absolutely no benefit to the accused, with no concern about the fact that they might be parents grieving the death of their only daughter, they were baying for stories like a bunch of bloodthirsty wolves.  All journalistic ethics and human compassion flew out the window as they competed with each other to produce the most sensationalist bit of this whole episode. If one said the doctor had an affair, teh other rushed to accuse the mother of being a stone, and yet another channel couldnt stop talking about the affair the young school girl had with teh cook. No one stopped to think what a horrid thing this was to do- IF the Talwars were pronounced innocent by the court. Now that they have been proven guilty, it puts things in a different spin. Am sure very soon we will hear the distinguished opinions of Alyque Padamsee and Chetan Bhagat on the matter of parents killing their own kids.  But had they been proven innocent, will the media ever realise that not only did they act so insensitively towards two perfectly decent people who had lost their daughter, but also defamed them and changed their lives so much for the worse? Would they have been able to get back to regular life ?

And from what little I have read of the case, there seem to be too many holes.  Having watched a few episodes of  " The Practice" I would have thought it wouldnt pass muster in the courts.  Anyways I dont know.  This post is not to debate whether the judgement was right or wrong. This is about how the media pronounced them guilty long before the courts did. And did so in the most sensationalist way possible, that no one involved in the story got out unscathed. Its as if they thought " Hmm, whats the worst thing this person can do in this situation?" and went right ahead and accused them of that.

We call them the watchdogs of the society, but sometimes they become the bloodthirsty hounds we all fear.

PS: I was reading about this case, after writing this post and one of the links said " the truth is an inadequate weapon".

City of Djinns

As a typical South Indian (think- half Saree and jasmine flowers)  with a love for filter coffee and curd rice, it came as much as  a surprise to me as it it to my friends that I love Delhi so much.  Yes, Delhi is filled with Punjabi snobbish types, yes, Delhi is a rape capital and makes you feel extremely unsafe, and most definitely yes- I am seen as a "Saawth Indian" by most Delhi-ites ( Most of whom think Cochin is in Tamil Nadu and that we eat dosa and zaambar for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  But not to sell them short- for the longest time anyone above the Vindhyas was "Hindi" to us and Sardarjis were all fools . I am glad to say I have changed my opinion about one at least :P ). Most of the stereotypes about Delhi are unfortunately true- it is every bit a City of Sperms and most of them cant think of/imagine that there is life outside Delhi.

Having lived near the city for a couple of years however has made me see things a little bit differently though- it helps that the city is so beautiful.  Most of my earlier memories of the city are from my campus days when we used it as a transit point and therefore all I remember are the sweaty dirty railway stations, the creepy men around the Delhi stations and the general poverty. But most of the rest of Delhi is so beautiful and so bloody green- it would put certain parts of Bangalore to shame ( the Bangalore of my childhood and the Bangalore of my imagination, mostly. Real Bangalore is beautiful in parts too, but not half as much as I imagine it to be). Delhi winters in morning is definitely amongst the most beautiful things I have seen- So much greenery shrouded in fog gives a sort of a mystical fairy tale quality to the place.  Even commuting in this city seems like traveling.

Delhi to me is spending afternoons wandering through Dilli haat and looking at beautiful handicrafts. Delhi to me is meandering through random markets and coming across exotic spices, randomly beautiful pottery, heavenly roadside tea and brilliant paranthas and pani-puris. Delhi to me is the bustling madness of Chandni chowk- insanely great food  and sweets and a view of the Red Fort. Delhi is the colorful summer markets of Sarojini which  transforms  into a  more solemn winter market by October. Delhi, to me is the luxury of space- roads are wider than in most cities, homes are so spacious and there are parks in every streetcorner that would be bigger than Sanjay Gandhi national park.

And the best part of Delhi is all the history it has soaked up without making such a big deal of it. There are monuments and old ruins everywhere- here you see one tomb of some poet where the neighbourhood kids play street cricket, few blocks away is another ruin where middle aged men chill out with their drinks. There are so many many ruins that pop up unannounced as you drive, with no one to care for them, no one to brand them as tourist spots and charge a few bucks to enter. One of the best spots I have been to in Delhi is a tomb of some obscure Khan oposite the Qutab. The place is on a level higher than the road, so at once you are in an old structure from where you can see the Delhi traffic but should you choose to not see it , you can look straight ahead at the beautiful Qutab and the greenery around. That is the image I carry when I think of Delhi.  William Dalrymple ( whose book I have just started reading, which is the inspiration for this post) compares the city to Rome and Istanbul- modern cities which so much of history in them. While I wouldnt go so far as to compare it to Istanbul ( despite never having been there) Delhi does have enough crumbling ruins and monuments to keep you interested and intrigued. And the residents have taken it in their stride- Lodhi gardens - the summer palace of some king- has a water body right in the middle of a vast expanse of garden cum forest, a tomb right in the middle of the greenery and what do people do with it?  Use it for morning  walks. There is an Agrasen ki baoli which is right in the middle of connaught place- A damn stepwell in a shopping district. The sheer numbers of monuments which are neglected makes it even more interesting for me than if they had been protected and wrapped in tourist-friendly packaging.

Even the tiniest and most obscure of them give me so much happiness and a sense of joy- almost enough for me to overlook the straight haired "Delhiness" of the people.

Erase those memories

Some things are meant to last.  Friendships you develop in residential colleges that you can get back to anytime, ability to cycle even if you havent touched one for years, memories of your first kiss etc

And then there are some things that you just cant shake off. Your memory of the utter humiliation you felt when you made an ass of yourself in front of a whole group, the feeling of terror you remember feeling before an important result or a moment of  professional failure. These are things you try so hard to forget but they are impossible to dislodge from the recesses of your brain.

And then there are memories that actually are insignificant but refuse to leave. Bits of events that happened long back that you remember vividly for no reason, residual hazy images from your past you cant completely remember , shards of memory - the complete picture of which your brain discarded long back.

I am going to tell you about one such thing. You know, when we were young ( not like yong and foolish, i mean really really young) when the cable tv hadnt taken over our homes and life, there was one thing my sister and I did religiously- the weekend afternoon movie on DD. We got this luxury once a week,  we were going to make the best of it. We were well prepared every movie afternoon- pillows and covers, lights off, favourite seats occupied and chips- honestly, the movie was kind of the least important part of this whole bit. I have watched so many useless, non-light-of-the-day seeing movies this way and I dont remember much about most of them.

Except one.   It was called " Ninaivugalai neeki viduga"

The title means Ërase those memories. And it is the creepiest movie I have ever seen. I like horror movies a lot and am not scared of them at all and I had seen a couple of horror movies atleast , before this one. The plot is incredibly soap opera-ish - An ordinary housewife meets with an accident and gets a brain transplant. The brain she gets belongs to an actress, so the actress continues to live in teh body of the housewife.And she is unable to accept the fact that she is now an ordinary woman- there are multiple scenes of her imagining fans coming to her only to suddenly see her face in the mirror and getting freaked out most ordinary scenes that I wouldnt remember the next day if I saw them today. But for some reason this has stayed on.

And not just stayed on like some vague memory in some obscure corner of the brain, every time I recollect this movie, I feel a chill down my spine. The worst part is that when I recall it, it is soo real, it is almost as if I am recollecting something that has happened to me, and not some bit of a movie. And the creepiest bit is that the movie has the same effect on the two other people who I know have watched it.  I am unable to figure out what it is about this movie that torments me so much and why it has left such a strong impression on all three of us. There is no trace of it in the internet so I cannot help but wonder if there are other people who have seen it and remember it the way the three of us do.

But I am sure whatever happens, this movie will come back to freak me out in the most unexpected of times. In a life that is so unpredictable, this is probably one of the few things that will remain unchanged. And I will never know why.

Musicophilia

Amongst all the topics I could have chosen to resurrect the blog, music is the most unlikely, but perhaps most fitting, in some ways.  You see, I had spent all of my life trying to be cool. And cool was achieved by two ways- by genuinely being better than others at something or just being different from others, without seeming to try hard. Since the former required some semblance of talent combined with efforts, both of which I famously lacked, I gravitated to the easy path.  Amongst my many useless attempts at being different was  one I genuinely believed in- that music was not important to my life. I had once proclaimed "If all music were to disappear from my life, there wouldnt be too much change" much to the  amusement of my friends.

I couldnt have been more wrong.

 I had never shown much inclination to music and was mostly indifferent to the popular songs my peer group listened to. Of course, I had my favourite songs but most were the ear-worm type catchy tunes that would get stuck in your head for days( think Rabba rabba from whatever raveena tandon movie that was) and I had no ear for the supposedly complicated music that my friends understood and appreciated. Even the non-earworm songs I liked had a lot to do with the voice, the lyrics etc more than the music itself.   I assumed that I was cursed with a flawed ear and accepted it with a generosity I never bestow on myself and went about making the best of it by loudly trumpeting my indifference to music to whoever cared to listen.

My only use for music then, was to serve as a memory tapper- a song that I associate with something would immediately transport me to that particular event/location assaulting my other senses so powerfully- When I hear "Black hole sun"I am always taken back to S'room during that hailstorm day- I can taste the sand in my mouth and can feel the gritty wind blowing on our faces , i can almost sense the depressingly dark room and our dirty selves. It is almost as  if the song has taken control of my brain and instead of taking sensory inputs from the eyes and nose, is sending the  song-inputs to my sensory organs. Many songs take me to various events- indian ocean to the backstage audi bringing back the dull throbbing excitement ( there is just no other way to describe the feeling ) of the stage set-up or some tam songs taking me to the dark sleepy afternoons of TV watching with my sister.

But as with most things I was proved wrong, but this time I am not complaining one bit.

A year back, I listened to some flute songs on youtube to pass time and found myself enjoying them quite a bit. But not in a life-altering or a soul-searching way and so like a person you become friends with on a cruise  trip, I got back to my life and forgot all about it, only retaining vague pleasant memories.

Then I bought a fancy phone and like a lot of things that I would never have done without the fancy phone, I once  listened to something I heard in a friend's car, first thing in the morning. It was brilliant, and I realised how awesome it is to start the day with music.  I remembered my little flute experiment and started listening to Celtic flute stuff which then lead me to other instrumental cool stuff ( god bless "related videos") which further lead me to heavier stuff based on celtic instruments and before I knew it, I was listening to some weirdly named bands in genres I didnt even know existed. And evoked reactions in me, I didnt know could be evoked by hitting a piece of metal with a stick. Like all true addicts I continued searching for more stash in the giant called the internet and while I still dont know what exact genres most of my songs belong to ( hell, I dont know how many kinds of metal are there) I do have a list of favourite bands stored away on a spring pad, to be listened to, at a later point. My mornings are spent staring at the traffic from my balcony lost in some battle music and the winter fog only adds the LOTR-ness to the whole scene.

I cant believe I am doing this so late in my life. All those afternoons spent on campus staring blankly at the ceiling could have been enriched so much, all those funny mornings of dredging through FB looking for gossip could have been embellished with sound-effects, all those nice mornings of tea and breeze could have been oh-so-perfect with background music. If I could, I would give the younger-me a slap that she so richly deserves.  I suppose I am being ungrateful here- Shakespeare said "How much sharper than a serpernt's tooth it is, to have a thankless child"  The past-me would consider the present-me thankless. After all, she was just trying to be different.