Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Jump to Lko now

It was Delhi 5 days back.
Then Nainital (KQ/G).
Lucknow now. Distances remain the same but travel times have increased, thanks to the perpetual blanket of fog that wraps cities by the evening. The hills are doing better in this sense - bright sunshine through the day and cold yet clear nights; it's almost like the nature trying to maintain an equilibrium.
Lucknow is pretty normal today on the New Year's eve. Things don't change much - the same irritating weather, same irritating traffic snarls and the same irritating assholes roaming about orally ejaculating tobacco right next to your feet. Shouldn't expect much anyways. Chowk was an exception; it was alive - the lights, the variety of sweets, the controlled chaos and the evening cackle of the birds. I wonder why my friends didn't choose this for our usual hangout. The food here is amazing, and the variety...just startling. Chowk beats the other markets and those overpriced, snobby malls anyday, it gives that warm feeling.

On a personal level, it was a day well spent meeting and beating up nephews, and more of that still remains. The makhan malai wallah seems to have deserted me, for its been a second day in running that he's been absent; the longing remains. It was fun chasing away the monkeys, monitoring their progress from every direction.

rightnow: nothing. waiting to face an organised assault from my nephews, missing gems, missing dark chocolate, missing the hills again, being called downstairs.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

A slice of Corbett country, now online

Finally put the image gallery to a recent trip to parts of Kumaon that you might never hear about online. If not for procrastination, this would've come earlier.
It should be worth more when I'll add some route descriptions and maps as resources. Hard to give a title to this post, but Jim Corbett can be reasonably assumed a binding factor behind the places (and jungles in general). The most obvious binding factor seems Nainital, duh, or Kumaon.

Jo bhi hai, I hope it expresses those 4 meticulously planned, pulse-racing days nicely.

Wsup nthnmch

What is so fascinating about a person admitting to being idle? What is the need to make him feel worth? What is the need to dig into their lives to 'really' find out what they are upto? Why do we turn into investigators? Why does an idle person attract attention; is it such an aberration? Do the circuits flip when you give back an unusual reply? Do we take the reply as a hint towards malfunction and set to repair it?

If you thought one had to say something really smart or dastardly to get into a conversation, you been wrong. Even a 'Pretty much nothing' seems startling enough to fill people with some sort of anxiety that makes them ask lots of questions unless the statement is contradicted; the longer they've known you, the more insistent they'll be. And this is something at our very core; there's no distinction between those who obsess over our lives - family, friends, teachers, aunti-jees.

Our society is built on factors of cooperation and reciprocity. I guess its unsettling for somebody to find me playing a zero-worth game - it leads to conclusion that either they end up the same, or they involuntarily end up being 'karmic'. So when I claim being redundant, people take measures: they will try to make my living feel worthwhile; or if my state of idleness poses them a threat they'll try uprooting me. Or maybe people do so because they try to establish that their lives are different and rather more dynamic. Or maybe they want to confirm that my definition of 'nothing' doesn't define their everyday lives.

It becomes difficult to realise when somebody is actually admitting to 'nothingness'. There rise fakers, since it has grown into a fad for the great conversational strategy it is. These fakers generally start with similar catch phrases, because:
# it ensures that their image can't be debased further
# so that it would be necessary to have a long conversation with them, and
# they will stage a revelation to hold you in awe of their latent grandeur.

To my kind of 'nothings' this tendency is purposefully asocial. But in the case of fakers, to the contrary, it shows the greatest desire towards being social. One can't really put their desperation to being inseparable from the society in any lighter and terse fashion. It is similar to an expression that a cog in the spring mechanism of a clock would use: without the other components of the clock its function is of little relevance and it is 'nthn mch'; it becomes worth only in a greater context. Similarly, those who make it their tagline are making a plea for greater involvement towards the common body of society. This is almost like asking for a mandatory communist setup.

One has to express a void to have somebody do the filling, the sociable creatures we are. Hello Sartre, Ridley.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

-1 year

O' blog I'm here again; for a while it felt I wasn't worth you.

Things are complex for the moment - to the extent that I'm thinking about things, but there is no single emotion that is apt - so I end up seemingly profound. Perhaps I can backtrack an year in the past if I'm looking for sedation. Reset. This time the previous year was spectacular, both for the things that I was going through and ones that revealed themselves later. It was different air back then. Being consumed by new events which had an immediate cause/effect cycle; being forced to find time between things; shifting bases - Delhi to Rishikesh to Delhi to Lucknow to Delhi to Nainital to Delhi. I hope its not nostalgia, but rather an attempt to scoop an exciting slice from my past life and fit it somewhere in the near future, without the hints towards a yashraj banner production.

I do get back on the road again, the very same locales, but that does nothing to ensure everything else. Or maybe travel would eventually take my mind off all this thought.

rightnow: a cosco ball, boiling water and gems to give me company.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Treachery

I've had this tab on my browser open for the past day, its a ghastly sight. Our rapacious tendencies at full display; we've claimed everything on the planet and spread like pests - and very selfish ways at that. This is a proof of our treachery; for all that we took from nature, we gave back nothing - toxins, at best. I had to write about it before the tab goes into oblivion.

Have a look on the google maps: The partition line is the Pusta Road. This road is a riot between the hours of 8AM to 7PM, when most set out to illogically travel long distances to earn mere subsistence money. To the left are the watershed plains of River Yamuna, some farmland and forests, where live the Nilgai (Blue Bull); to the right: us. Our concrete paradise, is it?
Zoom out, and that patch of virgin land reminds of that timid girl surrounded by filthy, greedy goons - a cliché from the bollywood movies of the 80s.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Reasonably happy over things :

* Delhi's rickshaw-wallahs.
* Prevailing national solidarity.
* Shiela Dixit staying in power.
* Restrained cold/fog.
* Delhi's food - yesterday was an exception.
* Installation art.
* Meeting with friends.
* Finding lost stuff in pockets.
* Lower-end power supplies.
* My room.
* Ego connecting to the id.
* This cup of coffee.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Terrorists terrorise Government terrorise People

The Mumbai siege doesn't make terrorism to me, or anybody around - we still dress the same, walk and talk the same, act and laugh the same. It was more of a feeling of helplessness that crept into the nation, and they tried overcoming it by being scholarly and 'proactive': talking about it as much as they can, throwing facts and making cute inferences, trying to mimic the investigation agencies, taking out candlelight marches, signing shit online petitions that only sound smart, putting it all on Pakistan, etc. Now that they've "made a difference", they can focus on having peanuts, which are hot in this season (remember - Jaipur peanuts are better than the Raipur ones).

And as far as that feeling brought about by terrorism - terror - goes, I was unfamiliar to it until I met with the ways of the government. Not the terrorists, but the state bullied me to feel intimidated and unsafe. On a day at CP in CP
#1: All entrances to Central Park have been blocked except for one. They frisk you, then review each item in your luggage. Large queues at the entrance, great potential for massacre. Way to go. As a side effect, there are lesser crowds, and couples have gone bolder, and scenes of kissing and fondling are the norm inside.
#2: The Z++++ security is pointless when people are jumping over the other gates - huge 3ft high structures that can only keep the cows out - without reservations. The Mujahids would find this very convenient.
#3: Food items banned inside. This kills the joy. But there were some food vendors inside, dressed in normal clothing. Fishy.
#4: Laptop usage is banned inside. This goes beyond all reason; I guess the Indian intelligence supposes that the terrorists would want to sit comfortably on the lush grass inside this park to coordinate a massive attack. Is our intelligence not aware of other technological offerings, mainly that called "mobile phone" and its evolution, the "PDA"? That aside, I was made aware of the fact an hour after I'd been leisurely using my laptop inside.

Somebody ought to challenge their policy, make an RTI.
Just because the terrorists used a laptop to run their command center doesn't mean laptops are evil. Just like you don't ban the jackets or shoes they were wearing.