Got a groovey thing goin'

The first time I ever heard the name (they have to be spoken without pause, written without space...for they may be two names, but are one person to me), I almost believed they were another comic-duo on television, like the likes of Laurel&Hardy, Tom&Jerry...to be frank, the two even looked the part...only to discover in them my first ever musical sweethearts...Simon&Garfunkel (and I bow down in reverence).

My generation would roughly be the one that grew up with the Backstreeters, thought Nirvana was so 'cool' (kool?) and swore they woke up to heavy Metal every morning (I did too!)...oh, and even Britney was around then (as she is now. Only then, she was a teen-ier sensation).

Confession:
a) I never found a single backstreet boy, 'cute'

b) I have never heard 'Smells like Teen Spirit'

c) and I could NEVER make sense of metal (I tried, though!)

What I did listen to (and consequently made sense of) were The Carpenters, Abba, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, THE King (Presley, ofcourse), Cindy Lauper, Jim Reeves, Paul Anka...someone who sang 'L.A.International Airport'...and every song that came out of a tattered, old 1968 diary...Grandfather's Clock, Poor Old Joe, Top of the World, Barney O'Hea!, Seasons in the sun, Killing me Softly, Old Folks at Home, Something Stupid....The diary belongs to my mother, and the songs are my inheritance, so to say...along with a cake recipe, a hostel expenditure account, a timetable and tidbits of news items, dated 1975 (that's stuff for another post though)...

But one of the most precious find off those pages was...'Sounds of Silence'. Hello darkness, my old friend...still make my spine tingle...the first strum of the guitar...and those words...I've come to talk with you again...Oddly enough, I always (in a manner of speaking) thought 'Sounds...' was a Beatles song. Simon&Garfunkel were, to me, synonymous with - Mrs. Robinson, Boxer, Scarborough Fair, Bridge over Troubled Waters and (the less popular, though equally beautiful) Bright Eyes - but never their single most smashing hit! That was an orphaned entry on the yellow pages...people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, people writing songs that voices never shared...till such time as I did not have google and wikipedia to enlighten me. Here's more of what wiki told me...the song was supposedly written in the "aftermath the assassination of J.F.Kennedy...as a way of capturing the emotional trauma felt by many Americans." Another interesting bit states, the song was "originally recorded as an acoustic piece for their [S&G] first album Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m."....and the album was declared a dud...leading the duo to their first split up. The song went on to become a hit in 1965, after Tom Wilson re-recorded it with electric guitar, bass and drums and released it as a single. I recently discovered a rather amusing version of the song, covered by (Bob) Dylan and (Paul) Simon...Dylan, growling and Simon bravely attempting to do the harmonies with him! Makes you appreciate Simon&Garfunkel (without pause, without spaces) all the more!

Anyway, trivia aside, what's so beautiful about the song is the haunting tenor that talks of, for me, a people snug in status quo, happily espousing the cause of antiquated traditions and neon gods...no one dared, disturb the sound of silence...of the human race that lies self-assured of its genius, yet writes its own doom every passing minute...in silence. The song is about us, the masses that go into the theatres to watch 'Rang de Basanti', clap and cheer and walk out feeling cleansed after the synthetically savoured catharsis...

I, for my part, think I absolve myself by writing socially critical blogs (bravo! bravo!). Thus can I sleep peacefully during the day. For, as in the words of me darlings...

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail

Yes i would, if i could, i surely would

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail

Yes i would, if i only could, i surely would

Away, i'd rather sail away

Like a swan that's here and gone

A man gets tied up to the ground

He gives the world its saddest sound

Its saddest sound

I'd rather be a forest than a street

Yes i would, if i could, i surely would

I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet

Yes i would, if i only could, i surely would.

Slumdogs? eew! Not in here!

The outcry has been oh-so deafening, even my cumulative ear-wax of 3 months couldn't save me!!

• "Shiv Sena protests screening of Slumdog Millionaire alleging it hurts the religious sentiments of the Hindu community."
• "Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan rubbishes Slumdog Millionaire for portraying India as a 'third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation'."
• "Slumdog stars sued for 'defaming' slum-dwellers."

...patronising westerner intentionally insults the DIGNITY OF INDIA and its billion-plus pious (Dettol-sanitised) population...with his derogatory portrayal of (the otherwise beautiful, down-to-earth) Indian way of life. Uff! They probably didn't know we have Aishwarya Rai on offer for purpose of all international projects!

And what about the incidental fact that India is really a third-world, developing nation? Or that we are a people limited in our way of thinking...willfully blind to our own excreta? What about the fact that we beat our saffron-white-green-breasts because Mukesh Ambani resides in a 60-storey mansion, while 85.7% of the population subsists on less than $2.50 (PPP) a day? Or the fact that our dignified faces beam when Sunita Williams flies off to outer-space (it matters not that she wasn't even born in the country! She does have the requisite remnant Indian gene)? (Perhaps the Big Bee has answers to these questions...would he care to blog?) What about the fact that Mr.Marathi Manoos is terribly proud, for some mysterious reason, of the Dharavi bungalows (I dare not call them slums for fear of being lynched)? Or the fact that we use (and will continue using, for a long, long time) religion and god as excuses to avoid owning up to our pathetic selves, even though 'god' has been dead for quite somewhile?

What about the fact that this face is real...?

"Who cares? We need a scandal. Nolimus Aut Velimus. So like the Americans and the British we can be true Social Democrats and at last be able to shout, 'We're upto our necks in shit, it's true, and that's why we walk with our heads held high'."

-Dario Fo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Jai Siya Ram!

“…feeding a little life with dried tubers”

Those words…they’ve been making more return journeys my way, than usual. Now that that's out of the way...It's one of those days again.

One of those days when the damp, even more than the chill penetrates your bones and you feel muddied all over. One of those days when you feel like picking at scabs till they turn blue or start bleeding. One of those days when your hair aches to the very roots. One of those days when the shower chooses to go cold on you and repeated cuppas of tea refuse to warm your innards. One of those days when the sun will fade the moment you settle down in hope of soaking some. One of those days when you call up someone and they’re just too busy to bother and the only ones available are the ones you shun like a plague (and you’re almost tempted to talk to them). One of those days when you open your mailbox 5 times a day just to admire the amount by which your spam outnumbers your regular mail. One of those days when the (must-must-read) book you’ve been pursuing for over a month declares, ‘I am undisputable tosh’. One of those days when you realize you’ve been in the process of ‘getting there’ for the past half a decade…and that maybe you will never really ‘get there’! One of those days when the butter is scanty on the toast and the omelet is runny. One of those days when you feel you’re all wrong and nothing can make it right. One of those days when the spray of yellow light from the bedside lamp won’t cheer you up anymore…and instead you manage to find solace (and a soul-mate) in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. One of those days when there is an invisible draught of cold air even inside the quilt and nobody to talk you to sleep. One of those days when Bugs-Bunny seems like a pesky big-toothed, big-eared rodent. One of those days when you realize rabbits are not really rodents. One of those days when it dawns on you that you actually know nothing…nothing at all and it has been a wild masquerade all along…you realize it’s time to walk off the stage

...and your warm wooly socks have suddenly developed holes. (and that's the crux of the entire post)

Yes, it is one of those days, yet again, when you go all whiny and think blogging about it on a public forum is a good idea!

Death of the Reader, anyone?

"We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is

necessary to overthrow the

myth: the birth of the reader

must be at the cost of the death of the Author."

...wrote Roland Barthes

I have memories of childhood. Fond ones. Memories of being read Barthes and Derrida and Nietzsche to bed. I do not wish to imply that these were in any way soporific (barring on Sunday afternoons)...but I digress...today as I sat reading Barthes, I was reminded of my father...an exemplary reader, a lenient father and very a patient teacher...I have memories of innumerable after-dinner conversations spent casually discussing the arbitrary nature of all that existed (for it exsited only in language)...during these leisurely lectures (they are in a way, all my education) my father took it upon himself to personally introduce me to Mr.Signifier and Ms.Signified (they have made for good company over the years) Foucault's panopticons and Derrida's loopy deconstruction...he taught me to pronounce funny names like Al-bear Ca-moo (Albert Camus) and Jyauck La-caa (Jacques Lacan)...he diluted Saussure's phenomenal thesis exclusively for my tookish ears...it was he who told me that sex is biological and gender, social...it was from him that I first learnt the relevance of 'normal-within-quotes'...from him that I learnt not to believe in absolutes (for, 'all experience is subjective')...he spiked my desserts with Semiotics, Cybernetics, Linguistics, Structuralism, Post-Modernism, De-contsruction, Philology, Psycho-analysis, Sociology, Anthropology, literary criticism and no, it wasn't a troubled childhood. I rather looked forward to those evenings...transfixed on a chair (not willing to move a muscle, unless it be a sign of disinterest) as Papa jumped and read and explained and then read a little more...from book after book till there was a pile of 'to-be-reads' as tall as me...a special favourite being Gregory Bateson ("The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named") tee hee hee...

And all these cunning heavy-weights he brandished at me with such non-chalance...an off-handish manner, that almost deceived me into thinking they were nice folk...until I saw this-

"Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event," if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural-or structuralist-thought to reduce or to suspect. But let me use the term "event" anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling."

...wrote Jacques Derrida

...and I trembled (and sometimes I yawned and sometimes I sniggered)

Years have passed now and "the map is not the territory" has become the longest standing joke around our household...I have grown up and appreciate my education a tad more (Thankyou papa, you made Barthes easy)...still, the wonder that never ceases to sieze me by the brain is, why couldn't any of these philosophers write in a manner that was comprehensible?! Was their language, like their thought an expression of rebellion against traditional epistemes...if only it didn't come across as so confoundingly abstruse...if only they didn't conspire to kill the reader...if only they were as endearingly simple as papa...

(and I know this is a lot of dumb-and-blind criticism...but see, papa! I was listening all the while and I caught a few words too!)

Do you ever get stuck on words? Or rather do words get stuck on you? You know...obsessively...stuck like an especially stubborn chunk of eclair that won't go away, no matter how much you pry about in the dark with your tongue....Well, I do. (get stuck on words, I mean) And quite often. Very whimsically too. Words with no relation to anything...you wake up in the morning and it's there...just..........like...CATACOMB.
heavy word, that! Like something you could beat the dust out of a carpet with...or it could be something like a honeycomb...you know, just cats instead of bees...sounds logical enough. No idea what you do with it, though...or what 'it' could do with you. But why not throw it around in conversation...to add that touch of intellectual flourish (that so eludes me otherwise)...something impressive sounding...'wandering the catacombs of my life'....end with a sigh...take a bow (applause)

The problem with such 'problem' words is that you never know what they really mean and you're always too lazy to find out. You just keep saying it over and over in your head...rolling it around left right and all those other directions possible... catacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacombcatacomb....until, well, until nothing. The word is headstrong...but it won't spring to life if you chant it repeatedly...and it certainly won't start making sense. You may sit and 'cogitate' all day...soon, if you have too much time on your hands, you'll be left wondering what it would be like to comb a real cat...so much for the catacombs of my brain.

P.S. - Anyway, since I decided to put this on the blog I thought it would be a good idea not to appear like such a popinjay...so here's what a real CATACOMB looks like...



P.S. 2 - For those still wondering about the meaning...
cat⋅a⋅comb /ˈkætəˌkoʊm/
–noun
1. an underground cemetery, esp. one consisting of tunnels and rooms with recesses dug out for coffins and tombs.
2. the subterranean burial chambers of the early Christians in and near Rome, Italy.
3. an underground passageway, esp. one full of twists and turns.

I am currently reading up on their genesis and progression through time and human history...those catacombs must be kept alive!

requiem for an indian road

Every inch spat upon

not a sliver rests unwashed

...a stigmatised existence,

indeed.

Aponia

Tonight, she has decided to poke a needle through your eye...the naked twin looking out from the mirror. You are to be her special guest for the night, it seems....and for many more to come. Always thought it was the other twin that was naked...Naked Desire. But when this one takes hold, you are stripped of even the last ounce of shame...a feast on the ugly, putrid remnants of a sorry self...must feed her well, given her corpulence.

Tonight you are an untalented, ungifted, unintelligent, unwanted, miserable lacerated excuse. Go choke on your own bacchanalia...and don't look into the mirror, you're not pretty!