Shut ‘em kids up
Following thoughts might hurt the sensibilities of all the parents who love their kids and whose love emanates from some unknown new found euphoria which brainwashes them to ignore the nuisance kids cause to general public in public places. I might even sound childish or immature in my observations but that’s OK because that is precisely what I call myself too.
We have heard a lot about people marginalizing themselves into confinements of self incarcerations. They are not waiting for redemptions to happen in their lives. They are just climbing stairs after stairs without checking out that there might be an elevator somewhere, happily living away their closeted existences, so to say. First marriage, then kids, then kids of kids, changing diapers, potato chips, wailing kids, all the symbols marking their ordinary, petty lives. I have not the right to be judgmental about others, but its hard to remain un-opinionated in these matters. Opinions make a man after all.
Every time you come by such people caught in the crossfire of “here or there” you almost feel that its how humans usually behave when they come in contact with a richer society, whatever that means to them. You are born in an ordinary birth, live in an ordinary society, get an ordinary education, an ordinary higher education, an ordinary further higher education, finally an ordinary job and then.
And then come the years and years and years of self denial that this is life. This is what the fuss is about. What else is there to it anyway?
Modern third world generations have an interesting twist in the story. They get their ordinary jobs abroad, which can fetch some royal living. This is a far more dangerous situation as it lends fillip to the idea of striving for that ordinary life. On one hand you have that basically unexciting life tied around 5 days a week and the dreadful 9 to 5. And believe me it is very hard to free oneself from the tyranny of 9 to 5; impossibly hard for people with families, kids and responsibilities. You can’t suddenly zone yourself out of it. Can you? In fact many of us don’t really want to. Especially the ones who get married and start asking right after “Well I got that one out of my system. What now?” and end up with kids as only possible answers. This is such a narcotic life that you are not only fully content with your jaded lives but rather start boasting about it. What if it’s peppered with wailing kids, husbands at times bashing their wives, in-laws cursing you for not bearing a boy and your parents who love to the see your back marrying you off as soon as they legally can.
And a few moments later another bitchy thought creeps in…
This idea has somehow stuck in me. I can’t seem to move on, I simply can’t. And am I the only one to hate wailing kids so much? I guess not. Kids on a flight, for instance. I bet there are quite a few of us who don’t like ‘em there. They are too unceremonious.
Second thing I hate most is the Bollywood and its corny movies. Out comes that shit time after time after time and it leaves you curbed down. It’s as if you are going under, and this constant mediocrity pervades you everywhere. The streets you walk, the elevators, bus stations, shopping malls, trains, and office. Oh yeah, office space breeds mediocrity, even thrives on it. To have such a low life treatment and lack of space to have my leaves approved by a supervisor. And don’t forget the relentless 9 to 5. The clueless, dull and boring weekends those begin too late on Saturday afternoons and end too early on Sunday mornings. Bi-yearly getaways to some sunny location where you don’t know how best to enjoy except getting bored on beaches, with a bottle of beer which you don’t enjoy after a few sips and follow that with some shitty looking Indian tasting Thai entrée with mounds of capsicum dominating the age old chicken-capsicum war in Chinese cuisine of cheap Indian restaurants.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Musings
You have to be an Island at first to be a part of the big land later. If you start considering yourself as essentially being a part of the mainland then you won’t be able to etch out an identity for yourself. This is an identity crisis of the worst kind as apparently it doesn’t seem to be a crisis at all. What can really be wrong in being a part of the whole? On the outside, nothing; but on the inside, everything.
A direct outcome of this realization is that you have to learn to believe in the ephemeral existence of things around you before trying to monumentalize them. Let me elaborate on this further, suppose you have a personal experience which can make a pretty interesting story, you have to first train yourself to fully flesh it out as it is. At this stage, do not bother about how appealing it might sound to others. It may or it may not. In order to fully realize that personal experience into a story, you have to spit out whatever you have around that; free-associate. Just get is out of your system, you will feel unburdened. You are now convinced that you have it in you to put something out of your sheer experience into a sensible narrative that appeals to at least one person in your knowledge. That is you.
Several story ideas don’t even see the light of the day, despite their high appeal value. They pass out through that initial self-censorship phase. Those that make it to the next level have a slight chance to making it even bigger. Therefore it is essential to spit it out, and see where it takes you. Remember, the best of the stories were merely “an idea” before they became timeless classics.
In the process of writing these ideas, sometimes you need a certain degree of detachment. You don’t want to color the impressions of your ideas by something that has already been present in a much matured form to you. One of the challenges of modern times is that you are living in an age of overwhelming visual experiences where peoples’ (including yours) aesthetic and cinematic senses have heightened manifold over the past few years. Any nascent idea dies out a quick death due to a lack of visual thinness. Good thing here is that your gut feeling still prevails. If your instinct says it can then it will. But sensitizing one’s instinct is like rolling the dice and watch the luck play out. Instincts are moody whores. Any moment could be as wrong as it is right.
By severing all the connections and curbing all the cravings to go back to civilization, you embark on that inner journey which is full of unseen passages and unturned twists. Sometimes to reach that deep inside, you need to dissociate from others and just be unto yourself. Like a remote, lonesome island. Easier said than done.
A direct outcome of this realization is that you have to learn to believe in the ephemeral existence of things around you before trying to monumentalize them. Let me elaborate on this further, suppose you have a personal experience which can make a pretty interesting story, you have to first train yourself to fully flesh it out as it is. At this stage, do not bother about how appealing it might sound to others. It may or it may not. In order to fully realize that personal experience into a story, you have to spit out whatever you have around that; free-associate. Just get is out of your system, you will feel unburdened. You are now convinced that you have it in you to put something out of your sheer experience into a sensible narrative that appeals to at least one person in your knowledge. That is you.
Several story ideas don’t even see the light of the day, despite their high appeal value. They pass out through that initial self-censorship phase. Those that make it to the next level have a slight chance to making it even bigger. Therefore it is essential to spit it out, and see where it takes you. Remember, the best of the stories were merely “an idea” before they became timeless classics.
In the process of writing these ideas, sometimes you need a certain degree of detachment. You don’t want to color the impressions of your ideas by something that has already been present in a much matured form to you. One of the challenges of modern times is that you are living in an age of overwhelming visual experiences where peoples’ (including yours) aesthetic and cinematic senses have heightened manifold over the past few years. Any nascent idea dies out a quick death due to a lack of visual thinness. Good thing here is that your gut feeling still prevails. If your instinct says it can then it will. But sensitizing one’s instinct is like rolling the dice and watch the luck play out. Instincts are moody whores. Any moment could be as wrong as it is right.
By severing all the connections and curbing all the cravings to go back to civilization, you embark on that inner journey which is full of unseen passages and unturned twists. Sometimes to reach that deep inside, you need to dissociate from others and just be unto yourself. Like a remote, lonesome island. Easier said than done.