The State of the State

… is pathetic if I have to describe here in one word.

To elaborate on this, I don’t know where to begin with, as things are pretty much messed up in all directions. As much as we all love to point fingers and bad mouth the politicians and government (which is true not at all questioning that), the problem is equally because of the ignorant, arrogant, unaware and not willing to open their heads or no anything citizens. But here I’ll stick to rant on the government for now.

For now on my part, the only service I can do is first be aware myself, and use my power of talking and writing. Otherwise this will remain just another one of the zillions of everyday rant without meaning.

Looking at the recent string of events here in the country, I want to talk about women. Being a guy, dedicated to the as we put it (which I still don’t know why really) ‘the better half’ of our lives, for her who probably was your first friend, and especially for her because of whom anyone who is alive on the planet (even if you are an animal intelligently capable enough of reading this) right now. And just note, while I don’t want to trivialize this issue at all by making some puns, just that without a usual pun or two might end up making you cry and your device wet and then blame me, we don’t want that do we?

And how do the proud men (and equally disgustingly women too), so called leaders and citizens treat her? Just like a commodity, piece of shit. Not being harsh, but the truth, No matter how proud one is of your so called culture, religion, community or whatever the fuck is its, facts show largely otherwise. The horrific Delhi Rape case which occurred in December 2012 threw the country in outrage and hit international news. I refrained from writing anything on it because, for what? What did all those stupid (extremely I might add) candle light marches achieved? In the recent years, I saw birth to a new class in society, the ‘candle march’ class who will do nothing to prevent something like this from happening, do nothing to help and only such drama while at it.

Oh pardon me, I was supposed to attack the government and not the foolish people right? Well the irony is, after that ‘incident’ the only thing which has changed is the increase in the no. of such sick assaults and rapes happening, and what’s the use if all this horrible acts which were happening for years brought to highlight but nothing done upon? And then comes the wonderful media, various NGOs screaming human rights and the politicians in the mix without knowing even basic communication skills let alone English. The horrible mindset which is so ridiculous I don’t even want to type here, I would rather spam tell the government go fuck yourself a hundred times and that would still be more decent!

Anyways, apart from the usual ranging from utter non-sense to false promises by the government to the momentary burst of enthusiasm by people, nothing much is happening. There are those who are trying to bring about change but just mocked and looked down upon by the real useless lot. So don’t be on the latter.

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While the government has a lot to do to make things better, first change will start only from us, the people. It’s only your will which determines and what truly matters. Rest just follows. Respect women, and not only women but everyone regardless of sex, age, beliefs, race or anything else. Unless someone is not worthy of it and the world is better off without whom needs to be shot dead, but that’s not for you or me to decide.

That was my side, you can say from a guy’s perspective. As a woman, here is a wonderful piece I read some weeks back on Women’s day, where the writer nicely puts it from her side, how and only when the situation of women will improve when they stop sympathizing for themselves and getting so called special women privileges.

IndiBlogger had a meet with The Times of India for this campaign Mumbai For Women, an initiative to highlight the city’s duty towards its female citizens. A duty that the city (and I must add the country and perhaps the world?) has been repeatedly ignoring.

The life saver at 2 AM

Here is perhaps (one of) the best examples of a 2 AM photo.

ImagePardon me as I’m not much of a social climber you see, and hardly get communication in the day let alone at 2 AM, well except for when some have some work to get done by me in that case you can make the scenario out.

Besides since it’s phoneography month going on, and since I still haven’t able to figure out how to take a screenshot in my relatively new phone Lumia 920, I decided to go with something more realistic as usual. As I already stated above, this is well suited for it. It’s a picture of Maggi noodles (the most common/standard one, Masala flavour) which I cooked around that time last night as I was extremely hungry out of not eating anything the whole day which wasn’t great in any case.

In India if there is something and probably if it’s the only thing that a person knows to cook, it must be this. It is such a huge part of food here in India, that people just consider the word ‘Maggi’ as the instant noodles (and adding prefixes/suffixes for the other flavours) despite the fact there are other branches of food stuff like sauces etc. available too. Heck I can easily say 90% to perhaps even 99% if I may that barely someone even knows it’s manufactured Nestlé. Many might even think it’s a national or even local thing. It is perhaps in the heart of every Indian, because of being relatively cheap and extremely handy, it stretches out even in small parts of the country. There are so many recipes using this.

I’m no exception here. When I was in another state in a crap of place for 2 years of study, Maggi was the safe haven for me and millions of other students even today. Even at home right now when there is nothing and whether it’s in the afternoon or late at night when nothing is available, no money, Maggi comes to the rescue for the hungry. Especially for a hungry demon person like me who can manage to eat the equivalent of three regular people and at times is usually hungry! Just like it happened yesterday among countless other times. In the packets, behind they print small stories of people with their various stories which they have to say, like how it has come to the rescue late at night at work, or for preparing something for unannounced arrival of guests. Stories of daily life with Maggi.

Cooking Maggi is one of the most done things by me (and so many like me) perhaps in my life. And especially after sort of literally living on it for 2 years, I’ve become the Maggi expert who can measure and put together the ingredients and water just with a glance (getting the amount of water wrong, more or less is the biggest pain in the ass which can totally ruin it you know). Heck people specifically make me cook it at times. Thank you Maggi for being for the hungry stomach all these times. And writing this has made me even hungrier now, I might just go and cook another bowl for myself!

Weekly Writing Challenge: Abstraction

What could this possible be? ;)

So for this week’s writing challenge, I played with one of my earlier uploaded images. What made me go for this is the details of the (original) photo. So what could this possible be? 😉

Cookies if you can get it right. I’ll give you a hint, this has got to do with a previous challenge too. And subtlety I gave another hint which a regular challenge abiding blogger might get.

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

538287_10151310369867883_770463414_nCourtesy of IndiBlogger

As per your wish, here is not one but many happy smiles hearty laughter. And a bonus, I’m there too 😀

This was taken at a bloggers meet by IndiBlogger, India’s largest community of bloggers. Connected Music IndiMeet (we technically add ‘Indi’ before anything here, sort of) sponsored by HP. And as another bonus, here is what happened there in glorious detail (kind of) in a previous post of mine – The sound of blogging. Well okay, I already mentioned this in another previous challenge, but still that post is so awesome. (so kindly don’t jump on me please)

Coming to the title, this poem was what immediately came into my mind.

A Dream Within a Dream.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe

Dystopia or Decadence?

Age of braindance decadence: We didn’t get rid of our problems, we multiplied them.

The above lines are taken from one of the world’s most interesting genres (and my favourite) cyberpunk. (more here)

Whatever is the case, that holds true. Not only for today but perhaps in the future too. I dare say definitely and it wouldn’t be too hard to find (most) people agreeing on it. After all, balance is what’s most important. Here thanks to this week’s writing challenge, for the first time (in either case) I’m thinking of the opposite of the dreamed utopia – dystopia.

ImageNow many of us love dystopian based settings (except my laptop/browser, which fails to recognize that word and suggests to me utopian) in books, movies, tv, video games and love watching our heroes (or was it the villain?) suffer (I was being modest, actually die).

Now this always begs me to question – what if our future actually turns out to be such a dystopian? (ironically, to me we are already doing great in that regard) And what does dystopian actually mean? Decline in the world, or really, decline in people, ourselves?

urlDogs. Always a man’s best friend. For eternity.

So you’re hit by a car tomorrow and, just like in the movies, they put you on ice and wait for medical science to make it possible to revive you at some point in the future. And revive you they do, some 20, 50, or 100 years later (any later than that is just cheating). Lo and behold you’ve woken up into your personal nightmare vision of the future. Tell us what it looks like.

So that’s the scenario. While a future version of yourself is an interesting (and very common-exploited-overly-used these days) topic, being your present self thrown in the future in perhaps the closest realistic way, and considering it to be on the dystopian side, how could it be?

  • Relationships: Does love still exist? Are people allowed to choose their own partners? Has the very idea of partnership been replaced by meditating about spoons? As far as I know, people can’t seem to grasp the concept of love (for the layman) today anyways. I personally think the union between people will prevail till the world ends, despite all treachery, lies and illusion. And If I have to talk about me personally, well I rather not say. 😛
  • Privilege: Are some people much better off than others, in terms of their freedom, opportunities, or daily lives? This is sadly also going to remain. Be it a better or (much) worse world, in cases it is required, but in most others as we know it’s unjust. This image just subtly sums it up.
  • 3787_427055664034331_1950340374_nMind control: Do people have the freedom to think for themselves? I already question that even today. I dare not even think about it. No I’m not talking about the problems by the ineffective governments all around the world, that is step 2. Step 1, people themselves.
  • Politics: Have conditions pushed the world in the direction of far-right fascism, wild anarchism, or opulent anything-goes liberalism? Or has politics been superseded altogether in the presence of giant brain eating cockroaches? Politics, something (along with Religion) which I will always have to think about before saying anything. Not that I’m not right, just that I prefer giant brain eating cockroaches.
  • Technology: Have we become more dependent on technology, or has it become useless? How does technology shape the experience of our everyday lives? Technology not just shapes our lies but the whole current world and that is just exponentially increasing everyday. I wouldn’t be surprised if we witness a cyberpunk world in the future. I don’t much believe in reincarnation, but I sure would like to witness it if not in this life. And in a way, at the same time, it is also leading to our disaster, which has already started. It’s only a matter of time when something good turns evil.
  • Environment: Have changes in the environment forced us to live in Hazmat suits, or are we all living in brain-wired fantasies of infinite pleasure? That meant like in the movie Inception. Not really.
  • Gender roles: Has the gender power balance shifted, drastically or less so, in one direction or another? This is a parallel to the aforementioned privileges, only difference being that the former in cases becomes necessary for the bigger picture, while here this is an absolute necessity of being in equality. I’m not going to comment on this, as I at times feel ashamed myself of being in the so called dominant male species. You might get what I mean.
  • Food, water, shelter: Has basic survival become an everyday struggle, or is the entire planet undergoing an obesity epidemic the likes of which we’d never have imagined? The way I see it, technology and this, we often focus on only about 30% of the earth’s current population in a way, the middle class complaining about how poor they are and the upper class getting all the privileges and opportunities of life because of wealth, while they themselves complain on the contrary how humanitarian they should be. What a fucking joke. Except all the sympathetic talks and so called charity and rural development going on, is there really progress? Not limited to worldly progress, but as compared to the ‘common’ people like us how we put it. That’s one of the reasons while I like WALL-E, it’s sort of rubbish. Except the most fortunate who haven’t realized or seen it yet, most of us are already are on survival mode.
  • Post-humanity: Are humans still “on top,” or is the planet now ruled by monkeys, robots, or *gasp* monkey robots? Cyborgs and zombies I tell ya!

Apart from some of the fears I’ve written so far, being a internet lover, a way of putting this fear would be this. Truly a dystopia, which I again fear has already begun.

google-2084

Blondie!

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:

“What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

― C.S. Lewis

Seeing this writing challenge reminded me of my school days. In school, in the subject of English language among essays, various forms of letters and countless other things, I remember we having this topic of character assassination sketch. Basically, it was your free ticket to bitch about people sounding all professional and sophisticated. Well, almost. I got the daily/weekly email when I was chatting with this person and in that instance I decided I’ll write about a friend of mine (who chooses to remain anonymous and hopefully won’t sue me) After all, this is not unsolicited. 😛

Loves: Eating, eating, watching tv, YELLING, a bit shopping and sleeping. More or less.

Hates: Well sorry, can’t have everyone annoying the shit out of her, so I’ll leave this as it is. 😛

Favourite quote:

“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.” ― Oliver Goldsmith

Actually the last line actually goes (Ar)go fuck yourself, but will come to that later. As I was saying above, she was busy working on our college magazine of this year, she being an editor (or something like that) and I being so busy doing absolutely nothing was lending my services, as I was such a good friend after all. 😛

I don’t exactly remember when we met, but it was through a mutual old friend of ours and I got in touch around the time I came back to Bombay in 2010, as we both were on the hellish path of Engineering in the hell known as SFIT/Mumbai University. Well so far at least one of us (she I mean) is making it.

Usually everyone would go on to write about one of their parents, siblings, partners, best friend or some figure, and I have mostly spontaneous all my life, and besides neither of us are of the socializing nature, only key difference is one among is a normal human and the other is, otherwise. For getting started, read the starting of the post again. Initially it was something like that. And the beside picture is from first year of college in 2010, simply to annoy her dedicated to the sweet friend of mine.

I remember her being the shy girl only opening up to her bunch of girlfriends and few others [insert this creature]. Well she still turns instantly red or blue, depending on the context, and it’s rather very hilarious to see her so, safe to say now it’s somewhat on these lines:

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While she has a white face (smiling or otherwise depending how much annoyed she is( don’t be fooled, she is not your average damsel in distress. Sometimes I get scared myself when she goes bonkers, but also entertained at the same time. One of the things I like about her the most is the usage of clever and well, hilarious language instead of regular crude. But it is infinitely more amusing to see her screaming and abusing when she totally loses it. Once we had a bet, and of course I won, she totally lost it and started jumping and stomping on the floor, hurling her love for the wonderful e-achoo-cational system of the college (and honestly I had nothing to do with it here!) 😛

But she is not all the cold, abusing joker as so far I mentioned you might think, actually not at all. Inside is a sensitive loving soul who loves and cares for the people around her. But being my friend, she won’t ever admit it. Quite some times she drowns into her inferiority complex and needs to be pulled out, but oh well that’s happens to us all. Or not. Well at least she listens, sometimes. We both often share our disdain for many things, one mainly being idiotic south Indian family trends, which we both deeply *sigh* at. We are also similar in many aspects, such as love for movies and tv. And yes how can I forget Linkin Park, how we became fast friends in the first place! (okay a big number of people I know is because of that reason). And while not so much, just like many humans need to brush teeth, have a bath (twice), and all the regular routine of a regular person, I do that twice a week or so. Satisfied with the fact I brush my teeth for the least. She is a girl who is cautious of her health (I guess?) but (as I already mentioned, did I?) loves to eat. Me? Only the latter part. She keeps complaining how sucky her hair is, while me on the other hand, well I would rather not say. 😛

In India, the common response equivalent to a yes or roger, irrespective of the language of correspondence is ‘ha’. And combine that with a ‘huh?’ here and you get this: “haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan“. Notice the ‘n’ syllable at the end. That’s the best I could re-produce her weird-hilarious-awesome response in text for both situations. Gets me everyone every time! 😀

Well this might have been bit deviated from a proper character sketch, but I do/write what I want. I might be good at reading people, but not at making a report of it. And while I’m not all sugarcoating it, she is a bitch at times though (okay more than few times), but still at heart a sweet person and a cherished friend of mine. 🙂

AFK.

Now if only she kept her word at times and treats me something to eat…

Paperback or eBooks?

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So for this end-week’s challenge, being asked between paperback and ebooks on which medium you prefer reading, I voted for paperback and not so surprisingly that was in the majority about three fourths in number relatively.

Now why is that so? Well for I actually don’t mind either, as I have read lot of books held in my hands and in the past years lots on my computer and my cell phone. While I never owned a e-reader, tablet computer or fancy cell phone, so I can’t really say how much enjoyable reading on one is, say for the few times on an old cell phone of mine and many others on my laptop.

Both have their own advantages. Like in ebook form, I can have many I want with me while traveling and not worry about any additional volume or weight. I have GBs of ebooks (not counting comics, which is another massive world of it’s own) on my computer which if each one were a paperback, I guess I would have to own a building library or something to store them all. But the hassle is, while on the go I’ll have to worry about the battery and the device itself not being screwed.

While on the other hand I don’t have to worry about ‘charging’ my paperback books (or hardcover for that matter). I can read anywhere and in any comfortable position I want (please don’t think about sex, one thing at a time folks), while I could do the same with a e-reader just I’d have to be more careful. Here personally I might be favouring the real thing more as I already said I never had the comfort of a e-reader and lazying around.

But in the end, what matters really are the quality of the book and your level of interest in it. That aside, it should matter much through which medium you enjoy a good read.

E-Readers with e-books are the future, which is what seems likely. But still, the sheer joy of going into a bookstore, the smell of fresh new books and random smiling faces who get your same feelings is a pleasure of it’s own.

The lonely tram

ImageInterestingly what caught my attention first looking at the image the first time was the tram car, probably because it’s in the center. It’s quite fascinating how much stories one picture can say.

To the highlight is a cute couple embracing each other, probably seeing each other after a long time (even a day is considered a long time these days, just saying). And to the right, near the tram car is an old couple walking on the street, along with others. Probably tourists visiting Lisbon, Portugal or just random folks. Interesting to see two different ages of togetherness in one frame.

But here less than the people themselves, I’m more intrigued with that tram car. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have people in our lives (and find more) is something one would easily think about or appreciate (or not), what about that tram car? It serves hundreds of passengers everyday, yet it stands on its own, going where the path leads it. Are you alone yet not lonely?

I would like to visit Portugal someday, as traveling around the world is one of my big things in my bucket-list, or should I say, wanting for life itself. The artistic subtlety and style of the photograph is one of my favourite kinds, and the road going down with the stones decorating it on either sides looks beautiful. And while I enjoy solitude I wouldn’t mind a hug from a beautiful girl either 😛

The Devil in and around me

I can see him clearly, or her, for they are genderless, unless you think so. So here I shall call it it, get it? Shining brightly while glancing back at me. Staring back for too long hurts my eyes and watery. It is a beast capable of doing wonders, when asked and worked with in the proper manner.

It rests on top of its mighty dark throne, which keeps it cool from becoming hot tempered. What it has to say is heard with the help of its two accomplices which each lie on its either side, and serve as its voice. Like ministers to their kings. But they are not the only ones, for it’s council does not end there. Although it has adviser of its own, it has another powerful outsider which guides it on what to do without which things can be less convenient and sometimes impossible. And this powerful adviser has a special place of it’s own. And not to forget, most importantly it has vast various resources which are kept by its agents who are the most important here perhaps, and responsible for keeping things and make them flowing. And lastly its army is joined by many other soldiers from time to time, making it truly powerful.

The first impression one can get looking at it is like looking at a bright as well as dark beast. I know quite the paradox. Like us humans, it’s capable of changing its bright colours, only here I mean quite literally! For now it shines in vibrant blue, where from every part comes a calming light of blue. Each organ shows off the master’s colour and thus its glory.

On a side note, blue is supposed to have a calming effect on the viewer, no wonder many sites too like WordPress, facebook, Twitter etc. and heck even he chair I’m sitting on right now is blue! Still not getting what I’m speaking about, or was that just blabbering by me? It is none other than my faithful partner in crime, the devil – My laptop. Right now where I’m sitting at and typing all this.

In a previous post, I had already covered a bit about my writing space along with the rest of my living room, so now going into more details I thought it would be a bit fun to write it that way. Hope you enjoyed yourself, you can have a look at that post so see how It and its council looks. 😀

This was in response to this week’s writing challenge. And I find it a bit funny the fact that I’ve been playing this game DmC Devil May Cry which just released few days back The devil is everywhere I guess.