debriefing for re-entry

it strikes me only now when i am mentally preparing myself to get back home that northern europe is completely free of chootiyas and haraamis. unbelievable but my year here has been absolutely free of any sexual harassment bar a couple of exceptional encounters.

when i walk in the city, i don't have to shrink so that my boobs don't stick out too much into the public space. if i am returning home late at night and someone walks past me on the street, the hairs on my nape don't stand up in fear of an assault. on the streets, i don't fight everyday battles against non-physical violation of the male gaze.

i don't know whether the commonplace disrepsect for a woman's body and the swarms of depraved hormonal lunatics are a product of patriarchy or sexual repression or both, but the streets of delhi are a regular battlezone.

and i am already tired at the thought of the daily skirmishes.

on the record

coffee break is over. about time too as i was getting giddy with my own wholesome happiness.
not that i am a spawn of satan, but faking good cheer at all times is exhausting.
oh the things we do for our progenitors.

time to go home

60 days to departure.

in the aftermath

he winced 'you had a crush on me?'
she said, 'umm... yes.'
he asked reluctantly 'and now?'
she said with convincing confidence 'don't worry, it's under control.'

long time.

mike-testing mike testing. one-two-three. checking if i can still log on.

i haven't enjoyed logging on since the day blogger was tied up with gmail and i had to invent another id just to make sure that my breathing space remains sacred. is there anything that is not tied to google? i would rather abandon blogger, but at this point, i can't seem to export my posts to another service. and besides, i like my blog name too much to let it go easily. so, we shall give it another shot, what say?

but now that troubled times are here, it's going to be fun posting again. i have always known that happiness does not make for good writing.

when two theorists fall in love,




they have contextual intercourse.

once upon a time

so, i was in venice. and this is what i saw at a kiddie shop. quite a strong message that.

maybe the web is gender-neutral

sometimes, i wonder if my life would have been different if i had a more conventional feminine-sounding name. like rekha or rachel, ananya or anna. i wonder if other women also get as many solicitations for 'being the man your girl-friend fantasizes about' or trying out 'VIAGGRHA without the embarrassment of going to a doctor'.

the thing is...

laugh if you must, but i have just begun to plumb the depths of the internet (as the recent spate of youtube links would testify). many a time, i am just thrown back with the vastness and the range of things 'out there'.

whether you want to look up facts or to learn a language or be amused, or just surf voyeuristically - the amount of information is enough to keep one stuck to the chair for at least 4 lifetimes, not including the hours required for sleeping, eating and shitting.

is there something called internet addiction? even if there isn't one, i think i can offer myself for medical study into the field.

p.s. the internet also salves the ego battered by the daily act of living.

sad-ads

for me, the most pleasurable part of watching TV is the ads. my vacation is evenly split between my bed and in front of the TV watching ads. so i could probably tell you through an academic study of ads, when the indian IT went mainstream, how indian sexuality has evolved over the years etc etc. i adore indian ad-sense. the release of a new ad is always a time of great excitement for me, almost like the childhood games of hide-and-seek played from under beds and behind cupboard doors. my sister watches out for me, and my co-mediawatcher buddy calls me at odd times to inform me when a particular ad is on some channel.(my other TV obsessions are Simpoo Singh and Lola Kutty. but more about them another day).

of course i know admakers are the footsoldiers or rather the mataharis of hypercapitalism. they seduce us into salivating for objects we don't need and into spending money we don't have. creating illusions of hunger and want is what they are supposed to do and if they must manipulate our finer sensibilities, so be it. i am smart enough not to have any money to spend, and if some fool wants to consume, i am okay with that. as long as the ads make me chuckle/laugh/shed a quickie tear in 30 seconds, i say bring it on.

but i draw a line at their unimaginative attempts to coopt our sacred symbols for consumption. and i don't mean pop-icons like stars of bollywood and cricket.

as an example, some time back, Rediffusion-DY&R created an 'express yourself' campaign in a series of many. it uses the same distinctive A.R. score that has very much become a part of the urban aural landscape. the visuals however are unoriginal and offensive. as words like 'one dream can change the world'/'two (fingers) can win a world war' roll underneath, images of Mr. King's 'i have a dream' speech and Churchill's victory image appear on the screen. now wait a minute - Martin Luther King and Churchill pitching in for Airtel? i am not sure if they were the kind to have made money out of product endorsements, let alone lending their names to a telecom company.

one could say this ad went beyond narrow corporate image-building to the higher purpose of rousing people to speak up (for what is not clear). if the theft of images of 20th century history was to inspire people to greater participation in the public domain, that ad failed. the ad did not get the india with cellphones to call up the prime minister's office to ask why farmers were killing themselves in vidarbha and andhra pradesh and karnataka. no, urban india still continued fixing up appointments for a cup of coffee in the evening and not much else.

i think i am writing this because i am part of that impotent india with cellphones. all i can do is protest against being manipulated by a telecom company into believing that if i made my impotent calls on its network, then i would have done my bit. (dayymn. and i was thinking of posting something funny.)

here is
the ad.



as you must have figured by now, i have just discovered youtube and the 'blog video' function on the bottom. i can't even imagine what the world is going to be like in the next five years.

subtexting ads

Haka Dance



the ad above is for a sportwear company - adidas i think. it plays on the imagery of the martiality of war and sports, and uses the haka as the theme. the tattoed faces of ancient warriors are juxtaposed with the somber ones of modern-day rugby players of All Blacks, New Zealand's national rugby team. in new zealand, rugby teams have been performing hakas since 1884. as war cries go, hakas have lent themselves well to sports wars.

All Blacks are sponsored by adidas. but as a national sports team, they belong to the country first of all. the Haka is a maori taonga - a cultural treasure and the All Blacks perform it with respect and pride. can a sponsor of a sports team lay claims to a national treasure and turn it into an ad pitch?

anyway, here's the text of the haka and its translation.

Ringa pakia
Uma tiraha
Turi whatia
Hope whai ake
Waewae takahia kia kino

Slap the hands against the thighs
Puff out the chest
Bend the knees
Let the hip follow
Stamp the feet as hard as you can.

Ka Mate! Ka Mate!
Ka Ora! Ka Ora!
Tenei te ta ngata puhuru huru
Nana nei i tiki mai
Whakawhiti te ra
A upane ka upane!
A upane kaupane whiti te ra!
Hi!!

It is death! It is death!
It is life! It is life!
This is the hairy person
Who caused the sun to shine
Keep abreast! Keep abreast
The rank! Hold fast!
Into the sun that shines!

DID i do it?

i am becoming a borderline case of dissociative identity disorder.

waiter,
coffee for mommy
cannabis for me.

clut-clut-clutter

i am messy. my physical space is never fully uncluttered. there is always one loose paper on my desk that i don't know where to file. and thus too my mental space operates. the one unsorted feeling, that last messy thought has to be tossed away in the secret drawer of my mind. once in a while, it all spills back into my life. my life hinges on sloppiness. on sloppiness it will unhinge.

from the empirical evidence, it appears that our existence is marked by love - i am in love, i am not in love, i am out of love, i want to be in love, and the saddest of all, please love me.

i need to run a regression on this.

have i tolja this one before?

what do you call a horny man?





homo erectus obviously.

i finally deleted the mails from the traveler. as always, it was just a piece of my imagination. inbox cleared, mind released.

there is nothing better for closure than one simple act of pushing the 'delete' button.

works all the time. sort of.

mellow pee

a few nights ago, i was lying in bed wide awake. as is the wont of the most obvious thoughts, it struck me that i'm a language orphan. i do not say it with melancholy. just to record the fact.

i was torn away from my mothertongue when i stepped into pre-primary school. instead, i learnt english and hindi. we sang 'a-b-c-d-e-f-g' and threw in an 'el-lem-mellow-pee'for good measure. by the time i was ten or eleven, i could write adequate english (like enid blyton, i must confess) but now i wanted to speak it as well. that's how, even the little remnants of the mothertongue left within the domain of the home was exiled.

now consequently, my self-expression is deficient in all the three languages. i am what you may call... uhm... a boat without moorings on the sea of babel.

besides, i have problems with mixed metaphors too.

update

by the way, the setting has shifted to europe for the next fifteen months.

vishal bra-burner

besides the fact that he's an accomplished dialogue/screenplay writer, adapter of shakespeare, composer, director, lyricist... damn... now a singer too, there's another reason to like vishal bhardwaj. he is also a believer in the equality of the sexes.

for proof, recall the scene in omkara where mr. omi is crushing out sugarcane juice. as he twists the cog of the mill, his pectorals strain with the effort and etch themselves against his dark chocolate skin, and his waxed-clean naked torso gleams in the sun with beads of sweat. it is a beautiful, real body - lean and strong, not a body pumped up on hormones, that suits a comic superhero better than a real man.

with that scene, mr. bhardwaj deftly reversed the direction of the Gaze that had been focused on the female body for as long as there have been movies.

thank you. thank you.

be careful what you wish for

vasundhara raje is flummoxed that her desert state is under severe flood threat. she shouldn’t be. it was her party bhai narendra modi who had insisted gujarat needed more water and had berated the dam oustees for being selfish for refusing to get submerged.

mr. modi, how’s the view from under the water now?