Stories for the less sane

Oh, come with me to old

Khyyam and leave the Wise

To talk; One thing is certain, that life flies

One thing is certain, and The Rest lies;

The flower that has once blown, forever dies.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyyam: Quatrain 26

How does one feel when one can feel life slipping out of his hands? How does it feel to see the ebbing waves of a life long lost as you surf through the tsunami of a life newly embraced? How does it feel to bear the accusing stares of a world forsaken, boring into the back of your head, cruelly lashing out to you with the pains and sufferings of generations spent in torment and servitude?

I don’t know what I have experienced today. For all I know, they are experiences of the crypt of forbidden adventures. It will fade away with the morning light as the mellifluence of the music around me drowns me in its melodious notes.

Music is the true essence of a human existence. No, this is not some extremely clichéd way to appreciate the efforts of the Music Club and its bid to create, ‘The B****iest Night Ever’. (Even though no amount of praise can be enough for the brilliant mixture of songs, transcending above the narrow specifications of genre and the musical divide.)

Today is a day of realizations and great expectations. While my past plays Miss Havisham, ever reluctant to move on and flashes images of days of joy, the seductive lure of a future gaudily flashes its beauty in the flickering neon light of its temporary life.

Brilliance of a day (well)-spent is in its temporal beauty. Days are not forever, lives are. How rationalist can we get in a world where survival’s law sees it fit to let a poor child starve, while a rich one does the same, only the reasons at the different poles of the social and metaphysical spectra?

I can see a bird from my window. The bird looks back. It chirps. And then it grows. Grows into a Charizard, a dragon and an Toruk. Are they the same thing manifested in the manifold imagination of an escapist race? Or are they different avatars of the ultimate iconic eye in the sky?

This is insane.

There is no such thing as a black orchid.

This is insane.

I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now.

This is insane.

And the light… The light was unbelievably bright.

This is insane.

Makes you wonder how much of this world is true.

This is insane.

Same thing that we do every night Pinky—try to take over the world.

This is insane.

Issa long way yet, till morning.

This is insane.

It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world to die in.

This is insane.

And this isn’t Sparta either. So, no semi-naked heroics.

Damnation.


When you’re in a dream and you think you’ve got

You’re problems all mapped out

Pieces of the scheme seem to rattle up

And then to rattle down

And when you start to fall, and those footsteps

They start to beat

Then you know you’re going down

Yes you’re falling on the ground,

And you know you’re going down,

For the last time.

‘Going Down’- Lou Reed

FUCK PAKISTAN

I am sure that most of us, faithful tabloid reading schmucks that we are have had our visual and all other senses assaulted by the latest endeavor by the Times Group to save the world. The front pages carrying the large caption.

‘Love Pakistan.’

‘Aman Ki Asha.’

‘An Indo-Pak Peace Project.’

‘THE FIRST STEP.’

And a red and a green dove trying out the latest sex position in pigeon world.

Well, I guess the heading of this blog post kind of makes my feelings on the matter very clear.

Fuck Pakistan.

Terror, hatred and fanaticism are apparently the words very unduly related with Pakistan. The article claims that we have been fed these words in daily doses over the last 60 years.

Bull shit.

The words have not been fed to us in enough amounts. If it had, then we wouldn’t have committed the grave historical mistakes that we have been committing very consistently over the 60 years. That we started committing a few months into the birth of our nation. That we have committing ever since. Diplomatic blunder after diplomatic blunder. Tashkent, Shimla, Agra. We have been harping about the brotherhood of a nation that was never united with us except under the whip of colonial masters. We have been cheerfully waving our hands at them while the President of the country declared to kill our country by bleeding it death. We were cracking smart-ass jokes when they were committing the best minds and half of the national budget to developing a nuclear bomb after India had one. We were even silent when an Axis of Evil was created connecting China to Pakistan through Kashmir, land that is through all legal documents, Indian.

We have done all that. We have lied to ourselves that it’s the politicos and the dictators that are the original villains. We have been waving for 60 years, hoping, praying that someone on the other side will wave back.

They haven’t.

It says that the people across the border are ‘like us’.

They are not.

The fundamental difference between the two countries lies in the fact that Pakistan is a failure.

Pakistan is a failed state in every respect.

Its pretense of a democracy has long stopped functioning. There have been dictatorships followed by puppet corrupt governments much worse than the latter. Each attempt at stability by the people has seen bloody coups with beheadings to boot.

It is presently a nation at war with itself. There are more Pakistanis dying as the result of the Frankenstein of terrorism that they created. And even as this ‘first step’ is being taken, the latest ‘people’s government’ hurtles towards another army led coup.

And even as every cynical reader would snigger at the very mention of democracy and point at our own, I have just one finger to point at them.

Guess which one?

In spite of all its shortcomings, the Indian system continues to function. In spite of corrupt politicians, communal riots, nepotism, and demands by everyone from the Mormons to the Rajnikanth Fan Club for separate statehood.

It is a diseased, polluting, broken-down machine. But it functions. And it functions better than most countries in the world. And keeping in mind the diversity, differences and all that jazz, we should be damn proud that it does.

Which basically brings us to a very basic question that I have been meaning to ask.

What do we want to do with our time and money?

Do we spend our efforts in taking sides in the schizophrenic psychotics of a multi-headed rabid animal while it spends its time in cooking up the latest method to kill us?

Think about it.

I guess even self-righteous schmucks should have better things to do with their hands.

P.S.- Gonzo rocks. If only people would start listening to me now.