VTech..

I am sure people have had enough views on what happened in Vtech and so I m not going to dwell on what or why but say I was truly shocked and found myself feeling really sad at what happened. It was one time that I am happy that I do not have easy access to a television set and am not being tormented by stupid news channels like FOX and CNN adding to good material for the Daily Show! I have been following the story though through the net mainly the BBC website. I came across this blog on the website from the editors and found it really interesting. I thought it was real nice to see that they were facing a moral quandary about featuring the “NBC videos” and felt a responsibility to share their thoughts on the whole scenario..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/04/why_we_showed_gunman_video.html

The Magic Faraway Tree

My mom instilled in me the passion for reading books. Through my formative years she read umpteen number of books starting from the book of magical tales, Tintin, Asterix, and Enid Blytons galore( Noddy, the wishing chair, Mr.Twiddle…). When I was in the second grade I took a brave step into the reading world be reading the second book in the faraway tree series by Enid Blyton- Folk of the faraway tree. It took me two whole days to read the book and my mom applauded me for the effort. This is what started off a beautiful relationship between me and books. The best retreat from the mundane world. I went the cycle- the famous five, the hardy boys ( being a boy keeping away from nancy Drew!!..:D), Alistair mclean.. and then Crichton. I read “Disclosure” by Crichton when I was in the ninth grade. My brother tattled on me telling my parents its was an adult book not for me. My dad came up to me that night and said-“disclosure eh.. did you know the movie had Michael Douglous…( a pause).. and Demi Moore in it?” I just blinked and said no. He then said.. “ Enjoy the book” and gave me a fatherly smile. I never felt that elated in my life having snubbed my lovin bro in an unobvious way. Thinking back my parents helped me in a big way to form my own opinions and did not thrust theirs or what others thought onto me.

Recently I found out that there was a fourth book in the Faraway tree series and was trying to buy it on Amazon. I couldn’t find one copy but I did find the faraway tree stories with different titles. So I looked it up on Wiki. Apparently the moral policemen and women felt that Enid Blyton made several sexist and racist undertones to her stories! She had her characters named “DICK”! so they changed the name of characters and cut out many a chapter such as the one with Dame Slap.. ( for those of u who havnt read .. she is a character who spanks naughty children)!! What a load of crap. Being an adult you find any undertone you want in the simplest of sentences. Its like joey can sordidly comment on a sandwich on Friends!

When I read the books as a child it propelled my imagination and helped me do things a kid can do in a calvin way not in a “pornographic” way. Enid blyton in my opinion is as good as Tolkien and Rowling if not better and wrote childrens books not adult pornographic material. There are a lot of things that kids of today are exposed to with the media rampage that is.. but Blyton is not one of them. Books are a way of having some clean fun that takes you to a different world and tests your power of imagination that the idiot box could never do.

The roach strikes again

The roaches had a son that I did not know of
Harboured in the same place that I talked of
For those of you who did not know
It’s a special place that I know of
A special place that takes and takes
And hopefully doesn’t give back any time soon
It’s a place that I pee into

Twas only an egg when its parents were poisoned to death
Its birth a miracle in itself
It grew up to be a big fan of Sherlock and batman
It also grew up to be a man that desired revenge

Its detective abilities grew too soon
Figuring out twas a roach on the hunt
On the hunt for a murderer
On the hunt for a person it did not know of
On the hunt for an insensitive human
Who did not understand that a million years from now?
All that would survive a nuclear war
Are thousands of its descendants!

I had a lot of rum and coke that night
The rum extremely fine
But the coke as poisonous and cancerous as ever
Got back home late at night
As usual alone and making sure my other sloshed friends
Got back home too

The coke seeped through my kidney
Harming a lot of organs along the way
Found its way into my bladder
Filling up all the way

The roach lay waiting to ask a simple question
Why? why? why?
Why cant humans live in peace and harmony
Why can’t human learn to live in harmony with their surroundings
Why did I murder his innocent parents?
A lot of questions for a little roach brain

The ability to aim lost
Since I was sloshed
The toxic coke laid rum and water
Some percentage of salt as well
Splurged all over the bathroom
Everywhere but the place that takes it all

In the morning I found a dead roach in my bathroom….

inadequate speech bluh...

It wasn’t so long ago that I was in school. Back then I used to be a chatterbox according to the most polite teachers who did not want to scare my mom too much. I mean I could talk about anything and everything. Like any other city bred kid cable tv, fiction novels and comic books contributed big time to my imagination. I did not worry about what I said what my best buds and me talked about. I did not have to be politically correct becos most of the times such topics were never touched upon.

But since then I have been through 4 years of engineering school and now grad school. The four years of engineering school passed in a haze I must say. No I wasn’t a drug addict or anything. I just thought that I wasn’t in the best engineering school and having missed out on going to any one of the iits (was a big deal to me bak then) I sulked my way at some level through four years connecting closely to very few people through those years.

Somewhere between school and now I lost my eloquence and became a moody person. I never saw myself as that. Now I find myself thinking about what to say in many situations going over it before the words come out through my mouth phonetically that is. Many a time I have blurted out the totally politically incorrect thing getting myself into awkward situations. And then there are times when I am just not in a mood to talk and someone comes up and talks to me and I find myself talking the dumbest phrases and not being able to defend my point of view from an intellectual stand point. I then there are times when I just go bluh blugh bluum and ppl are just looking at me thinking this guy sure is a weirdo.

At times a shodow of the eloquence that once was does creep through charming some unknown stranger but most of the time I seem to be going more so into a world of my own. I have a feeling I have become too introspective worrying too much about what I do and how it affects ppl around me and then there is the depressing world that I often like to put myself in. I have no idea how things are going to turn out.. and how I am going to win back my lost eloquence which is probably related to lost innocence….

Trained like a DOG

Now I mean no offence for the dog or its species. You know how dogs cats or any domestic member of the animal species can be trained to respond to certain events such as eating at a particular time and so on so forth.. well I was wondering the same of humans. We react in so many situations in such a trained fashion and we don’t even know that we have been trained!

Consider this—I travel by bus a lot and have a university bus pass. Everyday when I get into the bus I pass my bus pass though a reader. Having done this for months I do this as a completely trained response without even thinking about it. Once when I got into the bus the machine wasn’t working and the driver had his hand over the slot so that I wouldn’t use it. Even though my brain registered this and heard the driver say just go in my hands were at a loss trying to get to the reader irrespective of all that was going on around this. The driver stared at me and finally feeling really stupid I went to the back of the bus to sulk at my idiocy. But then I noticed everybody who got onto the bus that day, reacted similarly walking back with the same smug expression on their face.

Then on St Patrick’s Day which was Saturday bus travel was free. So they had a cover over the reader with a sign that said..”Free”. I got into the bus and my hands were at a total loss looking for a slot somewhere where I could insert my bus pass! My brain kept telling me “Dumbo just get in and don’t block the way” but my body would just not respond! Again feeling really stupid started finally walking to the back of the bus.

This got me thinking that there are so many situations that we respond in such a trained manner from reactions that we assimilate through life. That scares me so much that half the time I don’t even think about what I am doing and what impact it might have.

Myriads of Meloncholy

Myriads of Melancholy


Depression seems to be an integral part of life. Movies they say reflect upon the society that makes them. Look at the most critically acclaimed movies that are nominated for the Oscars for example.. if there aint some depressing moments they will not be nominated for the Oscars let alone have a chance at winning. It is the same of all awards. Why am talking about all this? Well it relates to two facts- one I am feeling depressed at the moment and the movies that I have been seeing recently- highly critically acclaimed movies don’t help the cause at all. Depression to me somehow inter-tangles with the want for some sort of a release from our cares and one of the easy ways out seems to point to drug addiction.

Two movies that have gotten me thinking on the throes of drug addiction -Trainspottingg and Requiem for a dream. Both movies are highly influencing in the way they have been made. I was talking to a friend of mine( Su) about “requiem” and he said to enjoy the movie for what it is u either need to be an addict or known someone close to u who was lost to addiction. Somehow I couldn’t agree with him at all. To me the best movies that I have watched are those that make me feel one with the main protagonist even though I might not be in the same situation. And I could do that with this movie.

The movie talks about the life of four ppl and outlines their degradation to drugs through a connection to seasons- summer fall.. and so on. I kept watching the movie waiting for “spring” and to feel happy tht there is hope. But it was not to be so. The film ended with the cold winter and no hope. I guess that’s what happens in life. Trainspotting is kind of a similar story of a group of frnds who fall to drug addiction but then the basis of the story is not the drug addiction. The ending was nice happy secure for me.. I dot know what other people feel but to me I need this .. why would I want “movie” to end the same way that I see so many depressing stories end in real life!.. a movie is what I see to escape from real life.. the thing tht keeps kicking you in the ass..no matter how springy u get urself to feel.

The want for the season of spring is what keeps me going keeps me motivated and if that is taken away from me I don’t see what else would keep me going……..

Subliminal Brainwashing

Something that I have been thinking about for quite sometime now in the way the news media sinks to new lows on a daily basis. I have always thought the media are more interested in gore, sex and ratings rather than looking at events from a neutral point of view. They do not seem to take any responsibility to the fact that they are influencing opinions of millions of people and biasing their thoughts in such convoluted fashion that the truth has no value anymore. And the people don’t seem to care less to the idiocy that they are being subjected to.. they are willing to take the media at its face value.

I read a book a couple of year’s back.-“Vernon God Little”. When I read the reviews of the book I must say I was quite put off and was contemplating even skipping this supposedly dark gross book. I had bought the book though and decided might as well give it a chance. It was something I had never expected it to be – in my opinion “Charming”. It talked of a lot of issues that I had been thinking about put things in perspective and had an ending that I admire and -call me conventional- that can be termed “happy”! It showed to what depths the media could sink to- not very far from a true scenario- it talked abut all those dirty issues we like to brush below the carpet not address in front of others and seem to want to completely ignore. There are people who get off from seeing “amputees”.. there are perverts who abuse young ones.. they are all a part of the modern society. They seem to exist everywhere. Of course back home (in India) people seem to come up with an argument that these are just problems of the west and are non existent in the “Sacred” east. I say bull. Just look at our news channels ad the war of the media for ratings that has been going on for the last 10 years. Just look at all the stories of child abuse that come out on a daily basis and then there was the gore of the serial killers- it seems like a bad typical American movie from the eighties. We seem to no better and the news media as bad.. just trying to pep up non issues in order to get more advertising space. The book I love- because it gave me hope that however perverse our civilization might become there is still some innocence left and in the long run some good is retained in all people.

Another influencer for me was this documentary by Michael Moore “Bowling for columbine “. It had this cartoon about one of the reasons behind the gun culture here in the states. All you need to do is switch on any news channel at primetime and all you will hear and see are car chases people being killed shootouts and what not. It is a theory that the average person gets psyched by all the violence and needs some sort of a cure for his fears and here in the states the answer is seen as owning a weapon of sorts. It makes sense once you think about it. I grew up in big cities back home and consider myself lucky in the sense that I have been exposed to freedom of thought a lot more than most people. Of late I hear a lot of these stories of young women being raped and most of the cases that are publicized seem to point towards these big cities. There is a strong school of thought that these women that get raped are to blame themselves because they flaunt and go out at night after 10 and some pity for the actual “raper” so to say- what non-sense! And the news channels make a mockery of these cases by reporting some of the high profile cases through the day trying to interview the family of the victims the victim herself and torturing them more and of course this helps improve ratings! A lot of the cases of crime that comes out in the city involve kids in 10th 11th and 12th grade who in my opinion are extremely influenced by the media! It might not be gun culture that is promoted in countries outside the states but the problem is as deep rooted as it is here.
On the one hand I thought that “Bowling for columbine” was a “commercial“ documentary so to say but the issues that it raises are extremely valid though only one side of things is presented in it and I must say it influences your thinking towards one side rather than provoking a neutral thought process. But it did get me thinking and that’s why I liked it so to speak.

The modern society seems to be degrading on constant timeline and things that would shock my mom seem to have become a normal scenario for me.. and sometimes I worry where this is all taking me .. but I would like to believe that there is still some integrity left in all of us that comes out in times of adversity in a way that is shown in a movie that I watched recently- “Crash”……