The End Of An Era

I declare, that today is the official end of an era as we speak. Two minutes of silence as we mourn over it.

"What is over is over, look ahead and broaden life as it cometh"

                                                                                                            - Shakespeare

The Atheist Diaries

Dear God,

Hi. Nice day, isn’t it? Btw, do you exist? If you do, do you know that we exist? If you know that, do you know why people hurt others so much? Why do people kill so much? Do you know that some people kill others for sport? Apparently not. Then, you would do something, right?

Without much further ado, let me get into what I wanted to say. I say that people are finally tired of dying. Yup, I am finally tired of trying to go out into the road afraid that any day I might just be sent to you for no rhyme or reason. After all what is my fault? Is it my fault that I hope to live? Or mine that I believe that you exist? Or still mine that someday that I may love and that I may have children only for them to be sent to you for fun. No sir! That is not happening. Tell you what, I need this from you, in order of preference:

1. I need you to send a reply to this mail, a.s.a.p
   
2. I need you to start killing those who kill for sport
   
3. I need you to start taking prayers seriously
   
4. I need you to decide between good and bad
   
5. I need you to finally stop sleeping and do something
   

When you do these things, I will know that you exist; else I am sorry to say that the world will not be tolerant anymore. Your happy-go-lucky attitude has cost us a lot already, and people are not so tolerant that they will just sit back and watch others die.

Nice day, isn’t it? I hope you reply soon. And yes, since you are immortal, I don’t mean soon to be another half a million years.

Thanking You,

Regards,

Mankind

Cigarette, anyone? Anyone?

October 2nd, 2008; A. Ramadoss, the Indian Health Minister's pet project, the smoking ban in public places comes into effect. Smoking ban? Right. There is a ban against making bombs and blowing up public places too, I am guessing. Do people follow those? Apparently, not. Yet, the Government of India seems more busy to get nuke to the country and ban smokers from smoking in public places. Fat lot of good that is doing to the smokers, even the passive ones. 

The passive smokers who really get affected aren't the ones who inhale the smoke once in a blue moon in a restaurant. They are the ones who share a life, a room, lots of time in company of the smoker. Yeah, ban them too. It would be much better if you make social outcasts of smokers and teach them a lesson, anyone speaking to a smoker gets a spot fine of 500 bucks! That ought to do the trick!

Matchsticks have been doing nice tricks too in this country, not just to light cigarettes but also to fuse little homemade bombs. It is kind of silly to think that Ramadoss is going for the heads of smokers and the harmful effects on our children, rather than trying to ban the internet. Isn't it strange how suddenly, there is a huge upheaval of terrorist activity? Too many bombs? Yeah, why shouldn't there be, after all, you type 'bomb' in Google and you get around a million pages to tell you how to make a bomb right here at home.

I am not really against the government on their anti-smoking stand. It is a good thing, no doubt. But it is high time that someone really prioritizes action in these governments. Corruption, poverty and tripled with illiteracy are the country's problems. And of course, did I mention the politicians who make the laws? Them too. Look at Mamata Banerjee for instance. This woman is a member of Parliament, yet she decides to take the future of West Bengal in her own hands and bids 'tata' to Tata (excuse the pun). Very much in contempt of the Calcutta High Court's order, mind you. But instead of her behind bars, we have the State of West Bengal in a state and Mamata claiming that the CM Bhattacharjee and Mr. Tata had a gameplan and they wanted to actually take away the Singur land so that Tata could set up the Nano factory somewhere else. Yes, Ms. Banerjee, we believe you, especially since the gameplan involved the total annhilation of the people who had the Nano factory as their sole income source, a waste of crores of rupees making the factory and to top it all, future prospective industrialists running away from the State! What a masterful gameplan, both Tata and Bhattacharjee would gain so much!

Things need to change, and I am not talking about the smoking ban. We need a change from the core, we need a stable government, we need to eradicate silly regional politics and concentrate on a bi-party system. Else corruption, and with it poverty and illiteracy will never cease to haunt India. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the judiciary need some teeth to tackle non-compliance of their orders? This country needs a better breed of politicians, but how will we give it to her? Not without proper constitutional reform. No wonder we are getting bombed! People aren't happy, they want change. It is not Hindu vs. Muslim anymore, it has become India vs. Government of India. With this, India's smoking problems seem to be the least of her worries, eh Mr. Ramadoss? Cigarette, anyone?

These Walls...

This is so hard for me
To find the words to say
My thoughts are standing still

Captive inside of me
All emotions start to hide
And nothing's getting through

This is never really hard for me. Words can come and go, emotions can fly, but the walls will remain. Facade after facade after facade has made me lose what is really me, I still don't know who it is. The words I say, the emotions I feel, the thoughts I think, are they what I really say, feel and think? Or are they the outer layer's doing? Confusion can often lead to loss of identity.

Watch me
Fading
I'm losing
All my instincts
Falling into darkness

The fading and the losing and the darkness. Failure of what really is mine can never be seen as someone else's fault. Instincts tend to take centre stage when man is in control of himself. Instincts bear through all kinds of feelings, but when the walls inconsistent with such feelings are up, instincts tend to fail me. They take forever to respond, to react! The grass might be greener on the other side, but on my side the grass is always dead to pitch on my instints, my nerves.

Tear down these walls for me
Stop me from going under
You are the only one who knows
I'm holding back

It's not too late for me
To keep from sinking further
I'm trying to find my way out
Tear down these walls for me now

The Walls are up. They surround me and I am trapped inside. There is no way out except out itself. You must tear these walls down. You must free me. You are the only one who knows that the walls are up. Break the walls down or else I will lose myself, I will lose my originality. There is still time for me...

Afternote: This isn't a poem. I would like to thank Dream Theater for writing such a wonderful song of the same name as the title of this post. Go listen to it. Meanwhile don't bother about my take of the song, it's just my take on the song.

Story of A Clown

Today is the day I have planned to narrate the story of a clown. Clowns are very lovable people to say the least. They make us laugh, so much so that we almost cry with laughter when off to a circus. So, today’s story will be about a clown. Let us assume that his name was Gogo, a name which is not his true identity, which is being hidden by the author for his and the clown’s own good.

Gogo used to work in a circus far far away from his hometown. Everyday he would come out and entertain the people of that city. He was very famous for being the clown that he was. People used to say, “Look at that clown, he is so dorky and strange! He is so weird, God, I wonder where they make such people?” His life of entertainment went on very smoothly, yet no one really saw what was hidden beneath that painted smile with varnish, and that red nose which little kids used to love to press. No one saw past his silly gimmicks, and no one really questioned them. After all, why should they? It did not concern them in any way.

Our friend Gogo was an emotional little clown. His heart yearned to go back home and spend time with his mother; after all, he was just twenty years of age. He yearned to make friends, to have a sweetheart, to feel loved. He yearned of a lot of things which he did not get. Sometimes, he smoked twenty cigarettes in a day. It was not as if he liked it, he needed it to keep his mind of the dull pain beating away with every heartbeat. Yet, he was the ‘happiest’ clown to the audience. He was the one who could make just about anyone laugh.

Some nights before sleeping, he used to look up at the ceiling of his ill-furnished room and tears flowed down his eyes. He himself did know why they came, yet he used to cry soundlessly, looking up at the ceiling, making sure that none of the other clowns could hear. His silent tears reflected insecurity, angst, pain, hate, jealousy – insecure about his future, whether going through all this would actually lead him to more despair or light is there somewhere at the end of the tunnel; angst at his bad luck, which was the only thing that never left him; pain where it hurt the most, for not being loved, for being a clown to everyone and nothing more; hate for the society which failed to recognize his true inner self, hate at himself for expecting anything from society; and jealous of all those people who get the company of they the people they love, of the people he loves.

Sadly, our clown never hoped. Hope was something our clown did not believe in and it kept him going. He never hoped to be loved, he never hoped to be back home someday, he never hoped about a better future. This myriad mixture of feelings created a balloon in side, growing everyday, waiting to burst unexpectedly, create clown sheek kebab. After all, one less clown in the world would not make a difference to anyone…

After Note: This story does come with a moral. But the author is not a preacher; hence he would like his readers to find their own moral in this story. It would not be difficult to find more than one moral in this story or none. This story is about no one in particular, but sometimes is for everyone in general.

Mood Swings

There was a time when I used to bother. A time when there used to be some idiosyncratic direction to what I was doing. Right now, there is no such direction, no such movement, no such definitive meaning to what is happening to my life. Helplessness grips the edge of reason, and throws all rational thought over such an edge. Right now, life just is.

I looked out the window before starting off on this, and the only thing I noticed were the dead leaves in spring, the shadows cast by the brilliant sunlight and the clouds covering the Sun in sporadic intervals. It all is very inane, very disquieting, very disharmonic , the way one sets anger lines over one’s life. Yes, I am irate, hurt, pained, angry, livid and fed up with the turns in life. It’s all very well to say that I am in a bad mood, but it is all the more difficult to say, why? Why this constant erratic changes in disposition, this absurd conduct, this coarse behaviour?

The best or the worst part of all this is that I really don’t know why. Yet it weighs me down like nothing else does. It rips a part of my heart and soul wide open and says, “You will be poignant, you will be miserable, you will be despondent!” Most of it is attributed to the fact that I do not believe in the feeling of hope. Many will argue that hoping is being optimistic, yet hope also brings us down to our knees in anticipation and when all expectation is broken, hope kills us by battering at the very feeling that keeps us rapt in attention.

It is a very thorny state of affairs. One where there will be little solution, yet more questions. So right now I shall satisfy myself by having an ice-cream. Ice-creams are the answer to most of these normative enquiries. Chocolate Chips, if you please!