TERM

This blog, ends here.

Thank you for reading.

TP

The Half-Way there man.

"When he grows up, he'll be a great achiever!"

"So smart when so young!, He is sure to be great naa?"

"Tumhara beta toh bahut tez hai!"

Fucking illusions.

Dealing with expectations is tough isn't it? Dealing with your own, thanks to things Uncles and Aunties told about you when you were 6, is hard enough. Dealing with others is a different ball game all together, the mocking in their eyes is tough enough to take without dealing with your parents disappointment.

I'm no superman. damn it, i'm not even daredevil. The Children of destiny, its what we thought we were... kids who were Prodigies, one's who name will not be forgotten by history, and lie not its footnotes but mentioned as great. The achievers. Twenty odd years down the road, bruised filthy and already on our way down a familiar path, we realise we wanted to be those who made their own path instead of worrying about which to take. The dreams of our childhood, the ambitions of our heart now lie vacant, like the lies told to children.

Where is the glory we went out to hunt? Where are the triumphs we wanted, why does it feel so much better to just fall in line and be only slightly better than the rest. We remain unfulfilled prophesies, like a palette of colours ready to paint a spectacular fresco, but one who's artist has given up... to work on something better. The neglected heroes, the could have beens.

The middle children of destiny, thats what tyler calls us. We have nothing, we have made nothing. We didn't fight for our independence, we aren't the messiahs of peace, we are the parasites sitting on top of an infested heap, we are the lords of garbage eaters. We had so much promise (was it false?)... and now we lie here, looking for happiness, looking for something to believe in, wanting a better world, but wanting a world where we still form the infestation pyramid, is it really wrong to ask for meaning? what is this foolish hunt for self-satisfaction when the world burns?

We have become the symbols of plenty. Is that good? i wouldn't know.

But wait, what am i saying? We are the youth, we are the silent force that'll change the world, we will bear the brunt of the old ways, and remember to not pass it on when its our time to go.

Can we aid our world in that little way? can't we as we have failed in so many things, fail once more? fail to pass on the prejudices? Maybe in our shame, even in our cowardice, Fail, so that maybe a different day what should matter to us will succeed. We can't be warriors, can we not at the very least, be martyrs?

We will be remembered, for sacrificing our lives, so that those will come will learn to live the right way.

We will always be, The Half-way there men.

Promises they kept, but they weren't their own,

Battles were fought, though seen they were not,

Remember their names, for they sold their soul,

To let you keep yours, the martyrs of this age,

The Half-way there men.

Why Progress hates happiness.

Imagine if Plato's utopia came true. Wouldn't the world have been a better place? Think about it, we would have had no wars, no clashes of Religion, no discrimination.

It would have been Heaven on Earth.

But consider this, if there was a Utopia. There would be no Cell phones, no Television sets, no Airplanes, no Trains, and Definitely no Steam Engine.

You can't be happy AND driven, let me rephrase that, you can be Happy and Content and be driven. The need to excel comes from some sense of lack of achievement or to be BETTER than others, which is a direct result of the Unsatisfaction in one's life. So technically speaking, once one reaches their goal, that is, there is no NEED or a survival instinct to KEEP working harder.

And Considering we are now in a capitalistic world where work being done is solely for the purpose of being able to Afford doing something else, the moment we reach satisfaction we've hit the wall.

If we were satisfied with what we had, we wouldn't have had fire. So now we are at a crossroads where the separation of satisfaction and Happiness is going to a very important tool. And will need addressing. The end of satisfaction is the End for the need to create and improve, there is no reason to fix something that isn't broken. And not being happy and being miserable isn't really the right approach either. What we are looking for is being Happy while simultaneously being unsatisfied with the levels of achievement and Pushing forward to do things, not yet done.

This is probably the reason Tenured professors generally have a lesser work output, now this shouldn't be taken as an argument AGAINST tenure. What i'm saying is that the "promise" on a end is itself the carrot that drives the young and eager to create something that will shake the world. (e.g. John Nash) So in terms of that, tenure is a great Reward.

The sooner we realise that Happiness doesn't start "after" an event, or when this happens or that happens. But instead that the moment is Right here and right now, its a drastic change of perspective. Satisfaction however is a different thing, those we can set personal milestones. And the being unsatisfied is a MUCH better option than being unhappy.

The Sado Maschoistic Self.

"I want to be happy" "I am a happy person!" "I hate introspection!"

And so many more lies that we've told ourselves. Of course not! of course we don't like being happy. Being happy gives us the illusion that we are in fact living a hollow non-meaningful life! without the ability to question or for that matter evaluate who we are and what we doing.

Being "Happy" makes us think that we've semi-shrugged our responsibilities and have become a trivial person, who doesn't think or act deep. WE CANT LAST through the sunshine for more than a month without thinking or something or the other to make us feel bad.

Feeling bad/unhappy/sad , gives us (again) the illusion of focus. It makes us believe that we are at last looking objectively and meaningfully at life.

Such are the lies of the head.

The truth is, we are so Sado-Masochist when it comes to our own feelings. We DONT like feeling happy for the simple truth that it makes us feel careless. That we haven't toughened up to world. The major difference when people say they are "growing up" is the elimination of actual happiness because that "time" is now over. Who ARE you kidding?

We love our despair so much that letting it go is just not possible, we will cling on to the things that make us miserable for trivial reasons which don't feel so trivial. To help us create this entire persona of being "Victimised", are we really that much of Attention seekers? Do we REALLY need all that sympathy?

The Society is twisted in its ways too. I mean everybody digs the "Dark Streak" in people, so some reason we are so attracted to it. What is it with humans and the affinity to damaged (whether real or perceived) people? I mean the actually happy guy, is ignored as boring, the nice guy is termed as boring. Now take a guy who pretty has the same physical appearance but serious vulnerability issues and he'll have to beat away girls with a stick.

Am i the only one who thinks society is BRAIN DAMAGED?!

The guys who would drive dangerously and who drink to death and basically try to put themselves in harm's way are the ones suddenly so MAGNETIC. What people don't realise is that they are doing that out of some serious insecurities in their lives. They ARE DAMAGED.

Sober up, even the Guys are so hooked on to parasitic women with the need to feed on their emotions, slowly sucking the Life out of them and they love it.

We are so DAMN Sado-Maschoistic its not funny, i think there is a self-destruct switch in our brain and we love fiddling with it.

Defense of Decisions, Life, Love and the Ancients

"What is DoTA to you?"

"Why are you so addicted to it?"

"I feel second hand to a game!"

These are the various, and oft repeating questions that i have been asked. Some of them who are gamers themselves. Often, they said, we are playing dota because we have so much free time, and that's all there is to it. DoTA was never just a game. In fact, Gaming itself was never just about the game.

There is so much more, oh so much more.

DoTA is the glue that brought us together, that to an extent kept us together. It is the reason why we spent countless hours in strange rooms whose owner's names we didn't know. What we new were their True names... their gamer names. Names aren't chosen randomly. You have one that is your True name and then it comes to you.

There is a lot in name, it prisms our personality and what was hiding behind the depths is suddenly out. In time, when we ready, we were worthy of our True names, I became MiSFiT, K became hUmtydUMty, A became Bleed, S was sLUdgy, D was well... for most of the time something that started with D, the other D finally settled on {FD}Merlyn, Ki will always be Mental no matter what his current name is, P was SadismRox at the time we didn't realise how prophetic he was being, Sa was Ter, you'd think that this is the only one which doesn't have a story, but the lack of a "name" gives in itself a perspective.

We EARNED those names, through sleepless nights, through heated fights on the Map and off the map.

And this was the Beginning.

I don't want to paste a timeline of when things happened. I'm not a good chronicler and there are many things i dont' know about. But the important thing is, it happened.

What DoTA meant to us, no MEANS to us, is not something that can be put in words. But, through words, those who were there, will have the privilege of feeling the bond we share.
I can Honestly say that the best freinds i ever made, and on whose strength and support i managed through my four years are those who play DoTA. And i wouldn't trade them for anybody else in the world. Yes, Merlyn included.

I can honestly say, that i made my most significant friends in the corridors of B-Block, and in that mecca G-451. In the early days, everyday wasn't short of magical. Literally.

Right from our P breaks, which included mega strategy discussions. And much jumping around corridors in the middle of the night through to the cold calculations we had to make in-game while playing for pride.

Gaming was where we turned when we were disillusioned with the cruel unpredictable world outside, which never played by the rules. We went instead to a world, with rules, with Rules that weren't written but honored and those who didn't were swiftly dealt with.

Rivalries in real life were dealth with much easily on the map. And no matter what, we always came back. Because that was the power of the game.

It wasn't wasting time, it was bonding... because the game brings out not only the anger. It brings a wide variety of all your traits, everyone's job in the game was they were, TRULY in life. I played support. hUmty played carry. and so on... although it did happen that our roles often changed. But our best results came when we stuck to our inner charactersitics.



But, i had to make a choice, a choice to leave behind what had for a greater part of my life defined me. I had to leave one thing i loved, for someone else i loved. And there was no question about what was more important to me.

See, DoTA isn't timepass, it isn't something like going to a hairdresser, you go once a week and its done, it is an intense effort to keep getting better, keep being ahead of the game. And when i wasn't doing that, i had a moral obligation to my Clan to not make it hard for them. This came out in a particularly intense game in Saadhana. Where we ended up third. And involved me dropping an Infernal on an image of tb.

There always have been three aspects to my life, my work and projects, my love, and Dota. There was time for only two of these. And i had to make one of the hardest decisions i ever had to make. But i wasn't a martyr i made the decision because my self interest. DoTA doesn't have feelings, but the girl i loved did. Maybe she'll never understand what DoTA is to us. But that has always been the case with us, with the true followers, we were never understood. We were always misfits in the real world...

P.S: The Brain Damage Line.

The following graph is an indication of how balanced your life is. As long as you are above the line, you'll proabably be the kind of person who will call DoTA a "video game", and if you are below the line you'll never manage to keep it together.

Delay Explained.

A Particularly fine month involving rather colorful, eventful and memorable happenings has kept me away from writing. I have to say, i expected a bit of boredom, but i seem to be occupied all the time these days with enough work to fill the time.

Anyway, life has given me a much deserved break from the fun and frolic, by getting me sick.

I know shall be able to get back to writing. As now i have the perfect excuse to do nothing productive for the period while i'm sick.


Ha ha! Be positive they say in AOL... i guess this is what they meant ;)

Shame And Arrogance

I've been meaning to write this for a while. However a deep sense of shame, disillusionment and mostly anger restrained me.

People of my Nation, i Salute you. Because you are most wretched electorate the world will ever see. People would Obviously question MY authority and knowledge on deriding the intelligence and thought process of an entire nation, however i intend to break that illusion as well.

I have no hope for this nation, or for its future. For, we have never learned from our mistakes, and don't intend to... and forget the lessons we did learn. I have NO hope for this nation of fools who has in its wisdom put the same family in power for over 40 years of our 60 odd years of independance.

We have traded in our self respect, and one dynasty (the tudor) for another ( Khan-Gandhi-Nehru)

In all our wisdom, the electorate votes its caste to power. 

And what is it that the Winning Party needs? approval of 28% of voters, t0 have a near majority in the house.

This ladies and gentlemen, is the Indian State.

Sides without ideology are the only ones who will win, the liberals will not vote. In Fact the trend is, the more educated you are, lesser the chance that you will go out and vote... so obviously the parties dont give a shit about you. Don't crib its your doing in the first place.

Everything, that can go wrong has gone wrong. We are on that  predecided path to nothingness and stagnation. 

Have fun, i'm getting the hell out of here as soon as i can.

Love (Sex?), Money & Ambition

the SMA, :) pretty much the only three things we are worried about.

Suprisingly, 20 years from now, it'll still be the only things we'll be worried about. What changes? Magnitude, i guess. Now, its about getting a dream job. Ten years from now, it'll making it to the top of the corporate ladder and 20 years after that, it'll be getting to the bathroom without any help.

Money comes money goes, moneys stays there, money grows.
Money kills, Money feeds, Moneymakes you a Star, Money makes you Funny.

Nothing changes, the retardedness will be the same, the conversation will be the same. The intentions will be the same.

So as far the M and the A are concerned they are taken care of.

What we are left with is Love (Sex). [ Sex is the fermented grape juice which becomes love]

Eternally we search for it, its the only thing there is... we go through life with one aim, to find Love. Am i confusing it with happiness? maybe. But i really don't see the difference, i've hardly seen an unloved person happy. Have you?

Candy Celluloid.

Okay, i'm Pissed. With a Capital P.

I  have been watching all these teen movies, teen soaps, teen etc etc... for gods sake teen **** too.

And the stereotyping is just so pissing off... the melodrama is just so clichedly ridiculous, i am pushed to the verge of sanity and repulsion.

Most of this is directed at the audience... the filmakers just feed the desires of the mob waiting to gobble it up. So most of this intense dislike is at you motherfuckers.

Take any series okay... your typical protagonist is a geeky looking scrawny guy. right? And then you have this Van Wilder guy saying... "They are all cool in their own way, we need to give 'em a chance to show it" and exactly what is the gratification??? having typically tanned females on your arm. Really? so its all about havin "hot girls" who'll sleep with you? 

For its so called, 'morale'... media has a pissing of quality of making women thinking they look like shit. Seriously... whats with that?

We Interrupt this transmission for a Message from the Writer.

Good [insert time of day here]  ,

This abnormally long absence of my writing has been primarily to not spread more sadness in this rather already piss of a world. The last few months have been monotonically depressing and opressing, and anything i would have written is sure to have had rather large Doses of Dark, Depressing, self-Depreciating, and character assasination overtones. Keeping this in mind, i have carefully made sure i dont come anywhere my blog when i have a keyboard in my hand.

Prefering ofcourse to use the keyboard for the more useful things in life, such pursuits that add dignity and give skill to you... as well as give joy to those around. 

Basically i used it to play Guitar Hero. :|

Anyway, now that sembleance of my heretofore banished personality is showing signs of bursting through the shiny and blurry effects of alchohol induced delirium. I have deemed it possible that i can start writing without going into the effects of post-breakingup syndrome. 

[yes i can make fun of it... YOU can't.]

So, yes... if there was a doctor who decided whether i could write or not...

He'd be saying, "Oh yes, he is perfectly sane to start blogging again"

and then he might say under his breath "for a given amount of sane..." ;)

Genuine Inspiration.

There have been very few works of art that have moved me, a lot have me left me in wonder... but few have actually moved me. Its not very hard to move me... all it takes is melodrama and some overdone mush, however fleeting. I have great respect and love for cinema, i also hate cinema... it is a digressor of coherent thought, a meaningless display of vulgarity we are too eager lap up.

An overdose of useless and incoherent trash tailored to keep us from actually using our braincells.

There are times however where i like it for exactly that. 

Once of those times has been the last few Months. I have been feigning that i'm alright... i've been putting up a manufactured facade of non-chalance... whilst the undercurrents have been tugging at me, bringing me close to the edge... and knowing all this, i almost willingly threw myself over. And in this time came to me what in my life will go down as a significant turn.

[Edit: I know this is sucking... there is a reason i decided to not write, but i guess i have to try]

I choose to go a movie which people called a good remake of an old melodrama, it is supposed to be a modern version. I accept i had high expectations and i can't deny that one of my major reasons to go to it was to wallow in my self pity... and see it on screen. I intended to go there and hate the women who made the central character miserable.

And as usually happens in such situations, a volte-face happened... i hated the guy and loved the women.

And that brings us to what this post is About... This post is about Kalki Koechlin. This is going to be a maniacal fan's narrow, all forgiving view of the most beautiful character in the movie.

And the most wonderful onscreen character i've seen in long long time, and as good as any. Trust me i've seen enough art movies to have the aukaat to say this.

Where do i begin? 

When i try to sort through the various different scenarios that left me spell bound and glued to her character throughtout the movie, and pick one... i get reminded of my days in the classroom and the age of 14 where we used stick our hands up hoping to get the attention of the teacher, and our teacher used to take her time to pick the next person to have the "honor" of reading out loud.

Dozens of images, like flashes in a pan light my vision...

Let me start with Grace. Its very easy to be graceful when you're wearing the right gown and the right shoes, with the perfectly done hair and the oh-so-perfect makeup. That's easy, as easy as getting a donkey to be graceful for an animal fair.

The talent of blending in, of giving the audience a feel of comfort, whispering almost... softly like the sirens of the high seas... "its okay, my love... just relax... it's me on the screen now..." lulling the audience into believing that its not make believe. And all this while wearing a Pink Wig, in a school girl's uniform which is designed to be screaming at your senses "I'm a WHORE!". That is grace. Madhuri? with all her jewellery, and pretense of being a "courtesan" and hiding under other kinder words like "hand-maiden"... she didn't come close. 

Strip away the greasepaint, and you see a Chanda... a chanda stripped of all the nonsense that t.v. likes to make us believe is happening out there... with our oh so obedient kids. You see a real girl, a real girl in a real situation. It happens, Wake up. Chanda was the most realistic potrayal of a 17 yr old that our cinema has to offer.

The beauty they say, lies in the detail. Lets talk about detail.

As a School girl, small details like Chewing gum, because it looks cool... having an "older" boyfriend on a hot bike, skipping classes, folding up the band on her skirt. This was the beauty of the character, the finer strokes that distinguish the master's work from that of a novice.

I've been appreciating the character so far, yeah? Could anyone else have done a better job? the question is as ridiculous as asking...could there be a better joker than Heath ledger? we don't know the answer and its best not to speculate.

The only avatar of Kalki i've seen is as Chanda. So to me... she is chanda, nothing more... nothing less. It is possible that the interpretation of Chanda is more of a director's dream than the actress herself... but creating a character is always easier than playing one.

Now, getting back. Chanda's potrayal, from the way she interacts with her family about the issue to her outburst against her dad, is masterful. Her angst against the fact that it wasn't what she was doing, but that it was filmed was the main concern. Her rage towards everyone else's hypocrisy... these are the emotions that fill up the character. To be locked up in your own house, for fear of shame... to avoid facing reality is hell.

Usually we're treated, with the "she doesn't eat her food, and the continous crying" that is the extent of the ability that typical actors have. But on the other hand, going through something like that is much worse, it is the constant heaviness which you don't want to be weighed down by... but will for always change the way people will look at you. You don't sit around crying, you try to do your work, get MOVING... but no matter how hard you try... the walls will NOT budge. They will be stubborn and eventually when enough tears have been shed, when enough time has been allowed, they budge.

And that was the brilliance of Chanda's character, she doesn't blame herself for her father's death.. as we are so used to wathcing these days. She looks at it like a real 17yr old. 

Now, Lets talk about the real Chanda.

Chand the Whore, the randi   or as she quotes a customer "C. S. W"

If i had to pay money to have her company, i'd proabably part with it. And definetly not for the sex.

Using foul language on the screen is an overrated activity it generally generates so much hype and the way actors deliver it... make it sound so... FORCED. usually. 

Not this time... words smooth as butter, which would as the saying goes, make a salior blush. Are delivered with such ease... they fit right into the dialouge, there is nothing fake or dramatic about it.

And i can go on. All i can say is... i'm still reeling from the acid trip... that was kalki's performance as chanda.

Issues

I thought i was quite fine, but i get it now that i have issues and a lot of things are quite wrong.

I shall therefore be not posting for a while.

Not that anyone actually cares, but i thought i'd rather say it... it would make the blog look less... abandoned.

--

TP

The Elixir of Life

I am an Addict and i accept the fact. But it isn't the effect that i am addicted to, its the purity and the divine aroma and taste of it. The richness and smoothness of the brew. 

The single greatest contribution of the arabs to world. Coffee.

Its taste is unlike anything else in the world, and totally inimitable. Its a gastronomic Orgasm.

I LOVE my coffee. In all its forms, the ability of brewing it well requires such skill, that it is nothing short of an a art... and its brewers artists... and magicians, for there is such a high probability of being scorned and cast aside.

Which makes the finest brewers the greatest magicians, for those who can weave magic into the few drops of a drink are great indeed. A great many things have happened over coffee. A great many wonderful things. 

If there was such an elixir, as those foretold by the great socerers and witch men of old.

This is it, this is the elixir of life.