Deuce Tickalow.

Mr. Ray, the Daddyness says,'When beauty-with-brains walks past you in a busy mall, you think it's Dennis Rodman's dog'.

There was always ridiculously-painful-sense-of-humour, leveraged-comic-timing, crackerjack-punchlines and now, this. Takes Daddydom to weird levels, where even the dopamine goes crazy. Gah. Papa knows besht. *hiccup*

A little orthogonal Christmas cheer.

Wrinkle wrinkle, little star.

Don't you just love it when your grandfather's neighbour chooses to let his hookah do the talking? The plate of baked sardines set on his lap, the colour draining from his pink cheeks as he deliberately regales you with a long drag and cracks his knuckles in your face. Windswept oily hair, that is as well-groomed as the whiskers of my librarian's dog. These Bengali octagenarians would have you believe otherwise.

Six months. Those rabid howls sill ring in my ears when I walk an unlit street. That feminine, primal scream still keeps me awake most nights. Why did I have to see it? And why did I react the way I did? Depravity. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Pushing bread.

The milk in my teacup squirms as the tea-leaves try to grope their way into its creamy smoothiness. Sometimes, I think the statistical chances of a person ruining these chai-soaked, breezy December mornings is close to zilch. I mean, who knew that the istri-wallah would suddenly take it upon himself to ask for Christmas-baksheesh when he is as Christian as my potted bougainvilleas?

Zaalim.

Why I raise hell when I can't settle with a person's history will always be cause for concern to me. I sidestep around the games people play, and then I realize I have been playing them all along. Heaven help you if one day I decide to go rogue and lambast all of you with my ego.

Powder bean.

Truth be told, coffee is sex in a cup.

These li(v)es. Balderdash in Bombay - Part 2.

The cigarette dangles from my mouth like nobody's business. We are sitting on a quiet curb near Colaba Causeway. Mohsinbhai is dishing out faloodas laced with saffron. Michellia is tugging at her shirtfront absent-mindedly with one hand, and waving the other at Mohsinbhai to get us another cream-crumpet. Out of the corner of my eye, I observe the slow undulations of her breasts, as she motions to Mohsinbhai to refill her glass. I look away hastily, fearing reproval. To our left, a 'secondhand-book-seller' is plying his trade without his usual chirpiness (that is an occupational hazard here). As she digs into her backpack to retrieve her Nikon,I look around for a suitable place to stub out the cigarette. There is a tinkle of glasses and cutlery, as I reach for change in the pockets of my jeans, and Mohsinbhai's face is gleaming as pockets the change, stowing the spoons away in his rusty steel container. 'Phir se aana, Ayanbhai. Memsahab ko bhi faloode pasand hain na'. 'Zaroor', I reply with a smile. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn my head to see Michellia click a rather uncalled-for picture of me. I try to protest but she grabs my hand and tells me she wants to walk. I comply.
I had expected the city to change. While I was in Manipal, Aunt Valerie told me that the city is changing, for the worse. I hated her when she said that. Because there's so much that would go away were this city to change. No more sleepy afternoons in Matunga. No more catching up with classmates in Koolar & Co. No more of the peddlers ingratiating themselves to me. Sarah, my ex-supervisor, once told me that every time she came back to Bombay after a long time, she expected a little more modernisation, a little more variations of globalizing tendencies, a little more molestation by international exposure. When I was younger, my mother befriended a Keralite housewife who had lived all her life in Sion. She said something like,'Aiyyo! Woh jo tightrope-walker hota hain na mele main, waisa hi lagta hain. Hamesha lagta hain - abhi girega, par woh toh hamesha aasani se cross kar leta hain'. My mother would smile benignly and hand her another cup of Earl Grey, which she would slurp in great earnest. Thomas Hardy wrote extensively of his time in Dorset and the relationship he built up with the place in the space of many years. I look at my relationship with this city, and draw parallels.

Although it's late afternoon, a cool summer breeze makes its presence felt. I see the boys playing cricket at the MCC. I see the babus getting haircuts from the roadside barber (who raises his head to look at us, his customer unafraid of getting nicked by inattention). I see the street urchins laughing unguardedly as they flick marbles with their fingers. I see the fat Parsi patriarch resting his huge bulk on an armchair and feasting on akoori and pora. I see the disapproving glare of an elderly couple as they pass us. I see the paan-stains on the lamp-posts. I am back.

Avant-garde playwright.

Her skirt flaps around her knees as we stand on the top of the monument, her knuckles white as she grips the hand-railing tightly. It is a beautiful moment. I look past her pale shoulders and see the grey clouds in the distance, and let out an audible sigh. She looks over her shoulder at me, and smiles. The smile is genuine, and so is the emotion behind it. The lights of the night encapsulate her figure completely, like a cocoon, and there is such a frantic urgency with which the breeze moves about her, that it is hard to tell which is which and who is who. The dress she's wearing is so delicate it might remind one of gossamer, yet she does not show the slightest bit of discomfiture. The setting we find ourselves in mimics many of the films we have watched in the past week, but do not find this fact annoying. Yet. It looks like a natural and commonplace sight, but it is not. If I wrote a song about this moment, it would be the most sanctimonious one ever written. She is scared of falling, perhaps she has vertigo - I do not know, but watching her framed in the greyness of the landscape is titillating.

It would be a lascivious one too, if I told her I would be breaking up with her the next day, because she has the intellectual capacity of a needle.

Plainspeak in Suburbia.

The summer breeze makes my shirt billow outwards like a tent, and the soft drink I am sipping through a straw begs to acquiesce. It is one of those oh-too-lazy days where nothing really gets done, and through the maze of mildewing bath-towels and half-eaten brownies, you try to compare your life with an idyllic one and see what semblance it bears towards the latter. More often than not, you end up unearthing quite a lot on the topic of relationships and how they affect the more professional aspects of our daily life. Sometimes, when I am feeling upbeat, I like to think about myself as an Icarus who soared too high and burned out his wings of wax. Fell to my 'death', consequently.

No one likes to think of their relationships as dysfunctional. When I was young, my teachers instructed me in some of the teachings of Austrio-German social scientists, most of which basically contained the maxim - You have to provide for someone in order to be provided for yourself and have your affairs in order. Most relationships - filial, marital, sexual or otherwise - operate on a level of co-dependency. You fixate on a person's strength of character while you fill in on the points that need filling. One does this on a conscious or unconscious level. When it is done on a conscious level, the relationship is more volatile than what it would have been if the individual had not seen his cards before laying them out flat on the table.

Besides, it is easy to idealize a relationship. It is easy to 'connect the dots' and say that you have it all figured out. What I think, though, is that all relationships grow more if the individual is eager to learn. I think the mistake I make (and most of us make) is bring the baggage from the previously concluded relationship to the next one. In doing so, we wrest the fairness of the 'deal' from the hands of the other individual. So, for now, lets say that the Zen of relationships is that we must always empty the cup. Easier said than done, though. The process of constant cleansing requires that no dregs stick to the bottom. Most of us are vulnerable to emotional volatility. We might handle the stimuli themselves with varying degrees of stability, but our perception towards these events remains the same. We still know that our next response to a similar set of emotional circumstances will be quick and efficient. That forbears on my judgement of a relationship pattern. I have heard friends saying that they feel manipulated and used when a relationship takes a turn for the worse. I have no advice to offer to them - none, whatsoever. It is because one can only control the events that are directly related to oneself, you cannot bend a behavioural trait in another individual to your advantage. The least you can do, at this point, is to be honest and hope the other is honest too.

I have seen some relationships that are so spontaneous , so effervescent, so beautiful that they are almost too good to be true. These have involved little to no efforts from either of the two individuals in the relationship. Probabilistically speaking, this is indeed possible. There must exist two people with the same value-judgements and the same moral compasses, and when you bring them together you will get a relationship that works with the least friction. There is just the slightest bit of turbulence by external factor(s), which then gets eschewed into the relationship and finally is excreted because the relationship has strong roots, and hence can shake off the snow. It is resourceful to think of oneself as being constantly on the make, because there is nothing much that one can do to avoid turmoil in relational landscapes. When I say this, I speak from a direct subjective standpoint. It is easy to be objective and say that two plus two equals four, but what happens when the screen gives you five? The least we can ask of the other person is to be authentic in his claims and his desires. History, theology and philosophy have always influenced its students to one particular end - do your best to salvage what you can from the ruins of your last relationship and graft it to your new one. Because, then you are more wise, more objective. But, let us ask ourselves one thing, what does it really mean to be rooted in objectivity? All that we achieve from this one-sided objectivity is a myopic vision of where a relationship is heading. Let us now see what happens when you broach the topic subjectively. Yes, you are more vulnerable because you don't know what to expect, and you don't know how to read the writing on the wall and draw the lines that need drawing. But, you do feel a tremendous enthusiasm to look things in the eye and honestly accept the fact that you are giving what it takes to keep the relationship going strong. Feeding it, nourishing it. One might argue then the enthusiasm dulls with time, and that honesty dulls itself through and through. Contextually, that is in line with our bourgeois conformist values because whenever we feel that we are not getting our share of the relationship pie, we wear out our welcome and cease to see things as a story, as a continuous opportunity for growth. Cookie-cutter responses to day-to-day stimuli may be very well relaxing, but they do little to alleviate the pain of that constant cycle of emotional instability.

I have no stratagems to apply here. I am learning too. All I can do is grab hold of life by the horns and hope it doesn't blow its nose

Good good. So, our affairs are in order.

The Going.

So,it is with a misplaced need to unbelong that I step off the train that brings me back to Bombay. Six months in Manipal. Perhaps Bach felt the same way when he wrote his first composition. Who knows? I'm taken aback at the weather here - it is chilly, and it is a welcome respite from the weather I'd encountered back there. A porter's throaty baritone jugs my mind to the present and I start walking towards the exit.

As I start to walk across the footbridge, stray memories jostle for my attention. I will be honest. There were times I felt like screaming and tearing at my hair, there were times when I lost myself in the subjectivity of an eighteen-year old's emotions, there were times I laughed till I cried. No emotional roller-coaster, really. More like an emotional Ferris wheel. I never did the math, because I never felt like doing it. Because that would involve being stoic, distant and detached - which, by the by, can never be practised in Manipal, and because it would not allow me a chance to observe, to ponder, to reflect. I'd rather amble along here, although, frankly, it's not a bad idea any longer.

I hail a kaali-peeli. Shove my bags in the rear and myself in the front-seat, and head towards home. Looking at the faces whizzing by.

Go, Tamerlane, go.

As the football spins in the mud, and I careen around the center-back to meet it, I realize that in this noisy moment, when my striker is telling me to pass the ball over to him, and I am working my pace gradually, threading my way through the defence, I will find my serenity.

The ball misses the goalies outstretched arms by an inch, and I'm in. I kneel and feel the hands of my teammates hoist me up onto their mud-caked shoulders. And the rain fractures my quadruple identity into a million little pieces of hope and hesitation.

Something of a discolouration.

This from a fellow blogger - Katie West. She's very talented. Really talented, so to say.

Where I decide to throw you overboard,.

I am the woman who deserves so much more than you. I would’ve been the greatest woman you should now admit to never giving a chance. The woman who would have done your laundry, and baked for you. The woman who would have sucked your cock in the back seat of your car and fucked you better than anyone ever has every time you came to town. You could have stared at my perfect body, my disarming eyes, my soft skin while I read in coffee shops and discussed with you the theory of getting what you want. I would’ve kept you safe and made you feel loved. I am more than everything you ever thought you needed. You would’ve thought I was too good for you.

And you would’ve been right.

Day-glow cologne.

I am leading a dangerous double-life. It will get to me. Till that day, I will have to rue my time. Cash in on immediate profit, ease up on the merchandise, the works.

Yellow Submarine Crashed. In a field full of bagels, cologne and popcorn.

The world is my motorbike.

Who am I to say that the little things don't matter, when they stick to me like clams to a rusty, unclaimed pier?

Ban(ne)d.

Dominatrix. Let's hope the name sticks.

The man in the cereal aisle.

Look at this man. This man makes me dream of lamp-posts, autumn leaves and freshly-cut grass. He's not the swallow-your-pride-whole-handsome-Hollywood-lackey or the womanizing, libel-spewing, politically-active actor. This man is Dustin Hoffman. He makes everybody feel contrite with his inherent goodness. He is at ease with his sense of goodwill. I mean, how many of us have ever thought that a man can be so free of astuteness and chronic ill-will?
PS. Maybe it's just an image. But, what we don't know won't hurt us, no?

I think God is waving his wiener at us all.

Not again.

Maybe one day I'll have a European wife and then I can treat our children to Lindt. Just maybe.

The virility of Death as we know it.

I am sitting at my desk in the assembly. My Windsor knot's making me gag, so I loosen it and squint at the corner of the podium. Oh,it's him. Hair tied back neatly into a ponytail, and with tie fastened perfectly around his collar, he would have been just as attuned to a Pearl Jam concert than he was to this meet. I had met him three years earlier. He was so blase then. now he looks at his friends passively, his face neatly arranged into a mask, so that all people, high or low, cannot measure his attitude from his countenance.

When the meeting is over, I walk to his side and ask him whether he would like a drink. His face lights up. I didn't notice you, he says. Where were you?

Oh, I was hiding near the coffee maker. Spilled a little of it on my conscience.

We laugh and he proceeds to tell me of his life so far. He is not a very successful person. His grades are average and his projects are never turned in on time. He tells me of working with students of NSD, and I listen to him, amused. He seems happy. Unlike the last time, when his claws were out and he was baying for my blood. Because he thought I had wooed his girlfriend. Messy affair.

We exchange notes on the proceedings and then stop at a bar. I leave my shirt open at the collar, and ask for a mug of Heineken. He does the same. He looks at me and says,'So,how's it going with Michellia? Slept with her yet?'

If it had been anyone else, I would have shoved his head into the ice-box, but I shake my head. No. The whole friend-angle. He concurs, smiling to himself.

You were good today, Ayan. I really liked your views on some of the topics.

Thank you, thank you. (It's awkward. How do you talk to somebody whose girlfriend you have slept with? A childhood sweetheart at that? Maybe, I really am a bum woman-trafficker).

It's okay, you know. She left me for this guy who landed a place in Cornell. I knew she wasn't going to be mine anyway. Love hurts, man.

How are you holding up?

Fine. I mean, it was bad at first. I didn't take it very well. Refused any contact with humans. (laughs). But you gotta pull through. You gotta. She was everything. Light of my life, and all that shit. But, you know what, these things are better left alone. We men needn't bother with pointless human emotions. Otherwise, it chews up a hole in you the size of a Big Kahuna.

True, that. (uncomfortable silence)

He breaks down into aching sobs.

La-di-da, la-di-da, la la.

Annie Hall. I never got over Woody Allen's prima facie story of Everyman's desperate attempts to find meaning in absurd, emotionally-overwhelming and beautiful relationships. I could see this any time of the year, any time of the month, any time of the day and still be satisfied with where my life is heading. Tough call, really.

Where does a body end?

I have been listening to a lot of Swans' work lately. Michael Gira's voice has started to grow on me a little. Besides, they are formidable in their approach to the post-industrial/noise scene.

Conclusionae.

Okay. Manipal it is. Four years. Hmm. Good, good.

Snap! And you're mine.

Michellia - Too many rocks in my pockets. If it weren't for these, I might have flown away to the moon.

Ayan - I wish the force of gravity was not so indiscriminating.

Michellia - You don't get the point, do you? These people are crazy. They are not allowing me to be myself. Strangling what's left of my manic creativity. I never wanted to front this girl-next-door image. Whenever I do that, these bastards make it a point to wallop it, till all that's left of is a light sepia longing.

Ayan - Good, good. Let me eat my cheeseburger in peace.

Michellia - Sonuvabitch!

Ma,Hanna-Barbera killed my puberty.

Sometimes, all you want to do is fuck Wilma and yell 'Yabba Dabba Doo'.

How to skin a lamb.

Another swig of whisky,
Another gleam in the collective eye,
Another rumble as the clouds part expectantly like the lips of her vagina,
Another drunkard trying to squint at the streetlight,
Another rodent scrambling for the safety of its home,
Another prostitute wrapping her mink stole tightly around her bruised body,
Another tramp chokes on his ale,
Another bartender wipes his hands on his trousers,
Another starstruck couple exchange work anecdotes,
Another pickpocket eyes his next victim surreptitiously,
Another urchin finds a furry mint in his shirt pocket,
Another general beats his wife in his condominium,
Another philosopher reads a Confucian text,
Another husband makes angry love to his tired wife,
Another thief pockets the opal he stole from a fellow man,
Another star processes the hydrogen,
While you regale me with stories of your incomparable incompetence.

Alphabetry and other juvenilia.

For me, the transmutation of thoughts into words has always been a tedious albeit intensely pleasurable one. It is because the thoughts in my head are too based in jocularity to have any actual significance when they are converted to ink or to a harmless pixel. But, what's burdening me for quite some time now is the burgeoning growth and availability of New-Age literature that most literary experts would consider 'bad writing'. Let me try and address this issue both heuristically and analytically. Lets see if I can be sardonic enough.

Most of us have been aware that bad grammar has been a symptom of ignorance of the English language for centuries. There can be very few collective efforts to directly influence this symptom in an apt, positive manner without adverse effects. What I have been noticing though, is the unprecedented growth of a lot of sloppy prose and puffed-up text so full of alliterations and metaphors, that it becomes impossible to decipher what the writer really means, although the writer never intended his prose to be cryptic and undecipherable. And the sad part about it is that the writer is absolutely convinced of the importance of his work and is so keen on generating more lugubrious scandals , that he keeps on writing and forcing his way into the literary consciousness.

Personally, I have always avoided reading the blogs of a few of my friends because their writings are so entrenched in colloquial intonations, it becomes a chore to read them after a few paragraphs. Academics will, perhaps, agree with me when I say this observation is not only limited to the Internet, it extends to the works in print, even. Literary richness is soon becoming a thing of the past. And while I have been practising the 'Out of sight,out of mind' maxim, I know it will not cause these elements to disappear entirely.

I have no problems with rookie writers. Thoughts can be expressed in the coarsest of language and yet be significant to a certain number of people. But, for the sake of the English language, don't post to the public domain. We don't want to hear about your criticism of David Fincher's next (or the untimely praise you heap on some unsuspecting fashion model)in a language that leaves us at the mercy of Neanderthal communication.

As long as the human mind is convinced of the potency of its thought, such literary debacles will continue to proliferate. I just hope the cancer doesn't metastasize to the collective consciousness.

The lovely wives of Tutankhamun.

I think it was a compliment when my acting coach confided in me that I had the emotional diversification of sand. I really love acting. I guess it's not too high-handed to throw words like 'love' around while I'm at it, but 'love' isn't really a word I have used in any of my recent relationships. I think when the proper pill-goddess comes along, I WILL say it.

Anyway, I did a decent job with the play. Acting is a fuckin' harrowing job. And Jean Anouilih drives me crazy with his dictated emotion. Makes me want to dig holes in the director's shirt with a scalpel. And my ongoing romance with his daughter isn't helping. Every time I reach across to pat her back or to share a pretzel with her, I imagine his ratty eyes goring my back like cheddar in a cheese factory. Yesterday, as I was having a quick lunch with daddy dearest, and he reached over to grab the salt-shaker, he told me something I will never forget - The pen is mightier than the sword,because it evolves and can be refilled. Not like the sword which always remains a blade and nothing more. As I opened my mouth to protest,he silenced me by saying,'Be a doll, and don't speak of the katana-toting samurai'. Trust my old man to pull words out of my mouth.

I guess it's hard being a douchebag when you have two pieces of salmon in your mouth. I leave you with a disturbing, all-seeing apron.

Momversationally stupid.

My mother calls me a Byronic hero, while my father calls me a conversational dinosaur. I'm all for the 'Whodunnit-while-you-were-sleeping?' angle. Who is to blame, signore?

Skepticism ka mooh kaala.

My friends wanted me to list some of the epithets they have bestowed on me to be visible on this blog. So, here goes.

Aarti - Best friend. Tube of toothpaste I like to squeeze whenever I need whitening.

Ramanuj - All-rounded bastard. Always unshaved. Cross between night cologne and rum in the morning.

Sunetra - Expert contortionist in love with the world, passionately. Physical manifestation of hard-to-ignore-male-ego.

Arjun - Kaay ka epithet? Ek din da words will feel shy in hiz presence.

Nafisa - Man with possibly the best sense of humour. Ridiculously sucky at saying he cares. Has closeness issues.

Karan - Oh, one day you're going to get married.

I can't stop smiling. Heh.

Good shit

Doug - How do you tell a woman that makes your kids' lunches, to suck your balls and spread her ass wide open, like a geometry compass? How, Andy, how?

Andy - I don't like this game anymore.

How I wish Nancy was my dealer.

Did Little Johnny really want to play?

Or did too much television fry his pre-pubescent brain?

Colloidal pellets of celluloid.

I think the Indian Cinematic Experience (or, the Experience) is skewed in principle. Or what's left of it, anyway. If the hallowed,musty, mildewy interior of a Prithvi can be likened to a Miles Davis concert, then the Experience can be, for all I know, a Miley Cyrus musical. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Every time I guffaw at some grammatical flaw in Rakhi Sawants English or at Kashmira Shahs lack of tact, I feel something is amiss. Why does the industry spawn thousands of crass starlets and wannabe actors every year, and then discard them - or rather, distance themselves from them - in some, nation-wide pogrom reminiscent of the bubonic plague? The beautiful thing about us humans is that we can draw from our hypocrisy, as and when we see fit. That alone makes the Experience worthwhile.

Many of these aspiring actors come from the humblest of financial backgrounds. You can see their mothers swabbing floors in high-rise buildings and their fathers drinking - or moonshining - in peeling-paint chawls, while the eyes of their siblings are staring listlessly into celluloid fantasy. In spite of all the accusations the tabloids chuck at them on a daily basis, one should not forget that these people are not so much as potential thinkers, as they are performers. You can't expect them to be all aquiline and laid-back, because that's not the function society wants them to carry out. They are entertainers. They are marionettes. So, while they straighten their ties and smoothen out any snags in their frilly dresses, let them be. You haven't given them enough to work with, stay off their case. They come from the slums, you want them to shake a leg and expose their collective cleavage, and then you want them to be aesthetically articulate, too? Well, that's just not done.
Because you can't lay to rest these little inconsistencies of thought. You have to go through a certain lane of influences, and only then will you land up in a place where you can perpetrate puns and throw around articulate witticisms like nobodys business. When you trace these individuals to their backgrounds, and the tremendous cultural inequities they've faced (unlike many of us), you can't help feeling sorry for them. The creativity a producer espouses, the creativity a director envisions, the creativity a cinematographer enjoys - they are all markedly different from the creativity the performer chooses to show. His limbs are his property, and he chooses to make do with what he has, to let cinema-goers have the time of their lives as they pop their popcorn. When you see a Shah Rukh or an Aamir, you fail to see that their ability to make the nation hold it's collective breath has stemmed from a single, repeated stimulus - they learnt through trial-and-error what makes Indian audiences happy (i.e. the sights they want to see, the sounds they want to hear, even the people that they would like to see as their favourite actors' arm candy). So much so that a vast portion of a celebrity's life is public. They can't even trim the unwanted facets of their life at length because the critics start questioning the motives that led to the trimming. So, be judicious in your judging of the nautanki.

It's an evoulutionary imperative. Now, as for whether this thought process follows positive or negative evolution, I cannot say. What the film fraternity deems as an useless appendage, it will discard. No one can say whether the discarding was appropriate, given the shifting focus from artistic endeavour to commercial profit. There will be subdivisions in cinema. There will be always be commercial and arthouse cinema. It's upto the audiences to pick one variant and stay connected with that cinematic code. Or follow the worthier nuances of both. The pervasiveness of Bollywood in the Indian cultural ethos is commendable. There are computer-generated vinyl movie-posters plastered over 'stick-no-bills' walls and the product endorsements dot the faces of many a tea-stall and barbershop across India. It is an ubiquitous aspect of our daily life. It permeates everything - from haute couture to popular music, from talk shows to billboard adverts.

It is more a study in economics than a study in visual aesthetics. The law of commodities - You agree with a product's reliability, you stick to it. The value we associate with a product reflects on our choice to cherish it. This is a necessary catharsis. Film pundits may tut-tut at the lack of brevity in the dialogues, but you can't ignore the buying power that is being credited to Bollywood through the churning out of a thousand films a year. Moreover, soapbox feminism is on the rise, what with the disillusioned stay-at-home mom finding her feet in the chauvinistic quagmire that is urban India. Now, this is where I draw a complete blank. I am seeing my feminine counterparts swoon over articles of clothing that grace the shoulders of the leading ladies on celluloid, I am seeing them speaking in hushed tones about weepy sob-sisters and I am at a loss. Some of our films subtly insult the collective consciousness. So much so that to a vast majority of the Indian middle-class, the insult goes ignored. It is just another cliche to them. Maybe, it is symptomatic of the wider rift between consumerism and minimalism, or of the integration of a more culturally-endowed India to Western demographics. Only time will tell. Till then, lets sit back in our swivel chairs and enjoy the show.

Botox is gewd.

The world is my orchard and Lisa Rinna's breasts are my world.

Cheap Cigarette Men. And the Works.

He's dead. He's fuckin' dead. Who will love Jack now?

Domesticity for the average seafaring salesman.

It feels good to be back. To be at my desk, reading up on electric field lines and magnetomotive force, with Ornette blowing on his sax. Feels good to tilt my head back, to cross my arms behind my head and think about how I had solved that last calculus problem in a jiffy. Feels good to look sideways at the nightlamp and reassure myself that it is still there, flickering. Feels good to write on napkins in restaurants, feels good to discuss Proust with my physics professor, to debate whether Nietzsche really meant what he said with the owner of the oft-visited hookah joint, to admire Schopenhauer's beautiful writing style in my underwear. Feels good that my present squeeze is twirling a particularly long strand of her hair between her fingers and doing a Cirque du Soleil with her tanned legs in her bed as she speaks into the mouthpiece. Feels good to have my appetite back and to feel the steel give way under my fingers. Feels good to bring novelty to the kitchen table again. Not that I have a kitchen table in my hostel room.

Causality - 1, God - 0.

Is it possible to adopt a non-linear stance on life? Is it possible to satiate oneself with personal feelings entirely, and go so far as to distance oneself from the socio-cultural aesthetic without being egotistical, conceited or bashful? I do not know whether any branch of popular philosophy or epistemology delineates a set of examples that could bring these principles forth as external manifestations in attitude, ideology and conversational patterns. Most of our cultural, economic and sexual organizations follow a set of rules - policy/protocol, if you will - which, if deviated from, could lead to one being cut out from the overall picture in part or in totality. When I speak about this Overall Picture, I refer to the status society accords an individual on the basis of him establishing, following or digressing from the rules.

The human race, says the Pope, cannot be trusted to do the right thing in times of doubt and/or pain. Then, he says, we should turn our eyes towards the heavens and allow ourselves to be subjugated to God's will. One is tempted to ask - what then, is God's will? I looked it up and came across a slew of the basest metaphors, that didn't quite allow me to empathize with the whole concept. It is suggested that the Lord had plans for the human race even before Creation. So, that would mean any change in the human consciousness - individual/collective - was preplanned and willed. This belief troubled me, ans still continues to do so. In a broader, simpler context, that would mean any man could get away with murder. In a courtroom he could insinuate that God willed the victim to die. That, to me at least, is philosophical sacrilege. It is the equivalent of a criminal reading out his Miranda rights to Justice itself. Perhaps, religion is the opiate of the masses, perhaps it isn't. Who knows? All these taxonomic variations of religion and philosophy just leave me knowing less than I did in the first place.

Atmosfear.

The truth is palpable. And, my condition is pitiable. Well,almost. I am trapped on an island. I have friends - they never fail to remind me of their existence, I have the approval of the fairer sex - I can enter their bodies at will, yet I have nothing. I'm not lonesome,no. As for boredom, there is none. If there was boredom, then it would be understandable, at least. I have always found comfort in the company of solitude. Life is too short to be willed away like this. If there is an all-encompassing Truth, then this Truth can be broached by understanding oneself. Or inasmuch as the mind can understand its own involuted self. There is much to be uncovered. There is much to be confused about. I can chip my fingernails on the subject, but I can rest happy knowing that my fellow man has taken the effort to solidify his investment in himself. As long as ignorance remains a point-of-view, there will be arguments, but no fruitful discussions. I prod myself continually, hoping to elicit some response to the sadness I find myself facing. I find none.

I never quite understand why society is so notoriously straitlaced in matters of sex. Aren't the biological implications of sexual happiness reason enough to be satisfied? When Society turns its cold, unappreciative eyes on sexuality with malevolence, I'm confused. Aren't bedrooms part of society's mainframe? As if semen is pus, and ovulation is liquid irony. Why do you shift so uneasily in your chairs when the talking heads on television tell you they had had oral sex done on them by other talking heads? It is a part of life. I may be young and bloodless, but I know that you cannot set limitations on what you deem as vulgar when you yourself extrapolate that vulgarity to your sex lives. That is why moral policing is stupid. People will derive pleasure from their own perversity. It's always too late when the youth come to terms with puberty. You can't put your finger on one thing and say,'This is it. I have found the Mother Lode'. I am seventeen. Pubescence brought about changes in me, yes. When I see those changes as having a personal quality, I understand. Because they are a extension of what principally constitutes my sexuality. When you force me to acknowledge what's right - contextually or otherwise - I will have a hard time swallowing your advice because for me, the parameters are different. I draw the line on the slate a little bit thicker than most others. So, all I can do is wait for morality to come to me, not the reverse.

I look up at the starry skies and I find peace in the colossal emptiness. Maybe, in the distance, I can sense the cores of white dwarves and red giants as they burn hydrogen to helium. The arrangement of atoms differs, the up-quark meets the down-quark. The conductors hands flail wildly as he falls from the stage, to land in a heap among the cellists. The crowd finds its feet. And there is an eerie silence as the conductor is carried away by the paramedics.