Haven't blogged for a long time,
There is so much to say, so much in my head,
"But I say: That which is falling should also be pushed!
And him you do not teach to fly, teach - to fall faster!"
~Neitsche
My latent Cyberdelic tendencies came to the fore before my recent peregrinations to the Himalayan mountains of Uttarakhand which lasted for over two weeks across the New year and Christmas break. Will upload the trips photographs (on my flickr stream)as soon as I have recovered from the journey and its aftermath (more of which in later posts)
This life of mine, if life I can call it, has become a strange affair, a kind of a metamorphosis in which every thing has changed.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that it was required of a man that he should share the action and passion of his times, at peril of being judged not to have lived, and for most of my early life I've followed this percept with uncommon faithfulness.
But now of late (the last decade or so) I find myself entangled in a web of days, time passing in a kind of a slow motion, yet seemingly the years flit by and I remain in the same place, unable to flog up interest in the world around me or the people who inhabit it..
I'm much like a meandering river still searching for a sea to unload itself of all that water.
This sort of detachment and apathy sometimes scares me.. but still I doggedly stick to the path
But to what purpose? What end?
There was really something very beautiful about this particular sunset over the Ganga in Varanasi.(where you normally tend to get golden or pale bronzed sunsets)
The title is inspired by a song by Death Cab to Cutie.. and specially in Varanasi having just seen the Burning Ghats it described my state of mind very aptly
Tibet has been in the news recently and after having visited there last year, I am quite interested to see what will transpire in Tibet in this year when China holds the Olympics. Tibet will undoubtedly be the most controversial topic this year and as the games get nearer it will be interesting to see whether the native Tibetans can garner world sympathy and opinion to their plight under China.
These photographs were taken last year during my stopover in Lhasa, Tibet..
Although it was a peaceful demonstration still a lot of police were out and it was mostly young people who made up the crowd . In the afternoon the police cleared out the square of all foreigners and then dispersed this crowd with a lathi charge and tear gas, but they were back the next day too and shouting that soon they would resort to other means if their demands were not met by peaceful demonstrations... I guess the latest riots show that the ire of the Tibetans has finally broken loose of the government apathy towards them.
The Tibetans were protesting the Hanization of Tibet. Its a policy pursued by the Chinese government which gives people of mainland China tax rebates and extra pay for working in Tibet and often these Han Chinese look down upon the Tibetans as Second Class Citizens and consider them uncivilized and religious fools. Their food mostly comes from the mainland and the 2 communities seldom fraternize with each other. There are more Hans in Tibet these days than Tibetans and it is mostly the Hans who control key government positions and businesses even with the curio stalls around Lhasa there were many more Han Chinese than Tibetan owners.
This is one of the many reasons for Tibetan discontent specially among the younger generation who have grown up under such regressive policies and deny them a level playing field with other Chinese when it comes to jobs and education.
My overall impression after my visit was that the Han Chinese and Tibetans live together in a co operative segregation: language, food, dress. religion and attitudes divide them. People bought up on Noodles don't like to switch over to a staple rice diet and vice versa.
This is poster from McLeod Ganj, where the Tibetan government in Exile is Headquartered.
I've been asked to write a series travelogues of my trips for a weekend supplement of HT called BRUNCH and one other Travel magazine....
Naturally am over the moon and I've been going through my earlier writings and collecting the bits and pieces of all those spur of the moment words written on paper tissues, napkins and even some toilet paper (Yes I do a lot of thinking there... Plus you can't let those spur of the moment insights slip by, you gotta nail them down when they appear because like inspiration they are tenuous things, coming along when least expected & deserting you when you need them most.)
The present is a luminous ball.
Behind it - the past; in front of it - the future.
The whole soars in total darkness and reels to and fro, now gently, now vigorously.
Below there is an abyss, above vapor, It is pitch dark.
Either the ball crashes, then all is lost or it glides into the future and renews hope.
Which way is it going? I for one am totally helpless and can't seem to influence which way the twin headed hammer of time will fall and what will be the result.
Sometimes I feel that I am suspended between 2 worlds the one that I see and perceive and another which keeps on eluding me.
She stands apart from all the rest of her kind.
A bit aloof, not snotty but just a bit imperious...
She is a shy woman..
She preserves her modesty always,
clothing herself in layers of white petticoats
like a greedy bride..
A thin VEIL shrouds her face but
Now and then she gives you an intoxicating glimpse
through a momentary shift and a flank is revealed.
Pristine, smooth as silk, almost flawless....
I try to picture her whole
from the fragments that I see revealed.
She towers above all the rest
one can easily spot her in a crowd.
She is definitely attractive & she holds me enthralled,
I want to explore her body
Discover her deepest darkest secrets
which she clasps so tightly to her bosom..
She is moody....
Sometimes she cries
and her white tears dot her pristine form,
Rivulets run down her body
it saddens me to see her so..
She is temperamental, & somewhat prone to melodrama
this makes it difficult for one to know
where one stands with her...
Keeps me on my toes...
When aroused she is frightful to behold.
She whips up a mighty tempest
shedding some layer of white clothes in rapid succession
& off they come sliding off her body
But for all that passion
she is a distinctly cold woman
One ought to be wary of treading too close
for she is possessive and a jealous lover..
if she catches you dreaming
she will keep you enslaved in her various folds.....
But then I was always attracted to such devious females....
yes...she is definitely my type ....
she is my ICE MAIDEN....
and she cometh....
{Kanchanjunga as seen from Dzongri, Sikkim} Kanchangjunga is the third highest mountain in the world after Everest & K2
I'm in a daze, no more a fog which seems to make everything so surreal to my eyes and brain right now.. It has a dreamlike quality about it..
There is no recall as such when I try to remember what I did the whole day today or yesterday night both of which have decided to entwine themselves within each other, clasped together into one entity engaged in blissful copulation. Lost in each other, engrossed in each other..
(Poe's " Dream Within A Dream" comes to mind, but of course I can't remember it fully)
I'm on a plane ... I can't complain (Nirvana).
To keep my mind from wandering off into Lulu land, & trying not to drift into a Wonderland of Hallucinations, I have been playing games with myself. Yes playing Little Games
In this strange place I am at present, between inertia and vibrancy, I’m torn between the abandoned and amusing – well, it amuses me – this limbo that I am currently in, all I can do is muse and enjoy this fantasy fueled lethargy..
I have few words right now; this is my way, to grasp with intuition rather than intellectuality until the sediment has completely settled and formed crystals of the senses to be recorded at the peak of their ripeness.
I am in the Parvati Valley of Himachal Pradesh, another week before I am back.
Till Then I will watch this Rock Growing inside the split oak tree.
Why: such an eternal and often unanswerable word that operates also as a question.
It implies a meaning and an intent, a cause and reaction, a chain of events.
It is basic and elemental.
Some words are laden, heavy, weighted with meaning. Some words once meant deeper things, but the meaning has since been lost, like those words absorbed by the English language beginning with "wr" that indicate a twisting motion, or misdirection.
The word writing itself describes a twisting motion of the wrist (which turns and twists to drag the utensil across the surface).
Such meanings have since become wraiths, the lost haunting shadows of words.
We type but we call it writing. The physical act described means we're doing something else when we sit at a keyboard and tap away at the keys.
What, exactly, are we doing, and why are we doing it?
- During Dinner her feet dance under the table. Creeping snakes!!
Looking intently at her plate she devours her food, the picture of innocence.. not responsible
for the footwork going on under the table ! like nooses her legs get hooked. Here and there.
- I take her for a ride on my bike, a long way from home.
Her hair always in my face.
There's no avoiding it any longer. This feeling has been growing in my mind for the last decade and it is time I elucidated on it, otherwise I will constrain myself too much.
I don't like any of my friends. I've just flicked through my address book, a thin volume it has to be said, and was filled with irritation, distaste and an overwhelming sense of boredom.
{There I said it.... it just had to be said, }
None of my classmates from School feature in it. The friends in college I keep in touch with have dwindled. Most are from out of town, maybe distance is what does it for me, I’m a very private person as it is and I don't like it when people think they know me too much.
One of the great boons of living in a citylike Delhi is that you don't really need friends to exist and keep yourself entertrained. There are 97 million people within walking distance, a thousand new people every day for the rest of my life and no need to repeat anyone.
No, I like Acquaintances: a wide circle of faintly familiar people who smile and wave but whose names escape me.
An acquaintance has all the expectation, desire to please and vivacity of a first date.
They flash wit and compliments and don't expect you to call or go to their children's weddings.
Friends are only necessary in the rural country or when you go where your being an island is of no use, Where you have to have them, otherwise you stand in serious jeopardy of ending up in one of those institutions which instead of calling themselves Mental Asylums, prefer to be known as Institutions of Meditations & Mind Relaxation (just fancy names for Re - hab centres).
This is not to say that I have foresaken everybody.
There are a select few whom I count as true friends and all of them know this about me by now, that they still remain friends with me is something which is strange. They too are like me in many ways. They share the same passions and appreciate some similar things in life. Maybe we have got used to each others eccentricities long before to give a damn.
I have given up on my other so called wannabe friends, the more you know of another person the more distaste, gorge rises in your throat, common decency prevents me from telling them what i really feel about them. But I have recently done this and I feel lighter in my heart of having cut off those 2 from my former so called “friends”.
Trusting another person after having been betrayed is a very difficult thing for me to do. I can forgive easily but forgetting is the main problem for me.
Why do I cling onto the past so much. Is it because I think I have no future?
No there are things I look forward to but those things are not everybody’s cup of tea.
I try and reconcile to the fact that at least I was morally correct. But that doesn’t help either. Morality doesn't give you squat in todays rat race. yes morality is not a commodity whose stocks are soaring at the moment, while those of deceit & deception are soaring high, every one wants a piece of the action.
In order not to encourage other people to really get to know me, I form a wall around me, this is my private domain, if anyone comes close to intrusion, I behave and act in such a hostile manner that usually I succeed in keeping the walls around me solid, no one and nothing is allowed in here. This makes me think that I am a callous human being, maybe yes, maybe I just can’t fake it no more. .. Just cannot be bothered.
No one you meet for the first time sees the real you, what they perceive is really your representative, who puts the best foot forward and keeps up appearances. But I am not like that anymore. I have developed this aura by which I repel any curiosity which is aroused in another person about me.
I have seen some people shudder when I act like that. It doesn’t make me feel good or pleases me to be so obnoxious but lately I don’t even have to concentrate to bring this ugly face of myself to display to the world.
Over time I have realized that I like mostly unfamiliar faces around me, where no one knows about my past, my present and very few will know about my future.
While everyone thinks they know all about me, I let them delude themselves of this folly, if they think they know me, they will not pry into my affairs that much.
From sport to sport they hurry me to stifle my regrets.
And when they win a smile from me they think that I forget..
(But I never do forget..)
It is not a comfortable thought that I shun life away.
I rationalize with myself that I reach out to people in other oblique ways, help some without showing my face. Do deeds which soothe me and try to piece together my shattered heart. Like a big bad Jig Saw puzzle, I am patiently trying to get it right, but fragments of my heart have been lost and don’t want to be found again.
I will not pretend anymore. I am sick of pretending, this farce has run its course, and it must end before I go to the valley below.
I have known people from a distance whom I like without having ever met them, and I feel that somehow that distance is best to keep a long friendship going and not meeting everyday, frankly no one can keep up with the kind of shit my mind conjures up, and they either act bemused or look incredulously at me saying "You all right Mate!!"
I mean WTF!! I prefer seclusion to companionship,
I have changed and so has the world around me, that I don’t feel like a part of the world anymore, it is just my shortcoming and I try to live with myself for not learning the ways of the world. (maybe I missed the classes).
I used to be very different, I used to make an effort to befriend everyone in college, reach out and embrace strangers but now I shun even the people I know really care and worry about me.
I feel nothing, I am numb. I am very cold blooded. I am stone cold.
Where did my humanity go. down the shitter is my guess. How I became like this is a mystery to me, maybe what I need is a self forensic exam to trace my humanities disappearance.
It has dawned on me slowly, there were clues galore but maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right place or maybe I chose to ignore it.
Self-deception is very easy to achieve. Don’t you think so?
I deceived myself while I went on deceiving my audience.
Maybe I will meet humanity again or maybe I will just wither away in the time honoured tradition of solitude and be a recluse for the rest of my time before my dying.
Maybe like the late great Jerry Garcia of The Greatful Dead once said :
“I'm shopping around for something to do that no one will like...
In mind he was tierd, worn out by years of hope deferred, of lonliness, of unrewarded toil.
In body he was almost prostrate by the pain.
Bodily pain stung him like a personal affront " Someone will have to be made miserable for this ", he once said during the thores of an excrutiating toothache with a malicious gleam in his eyes...
He was no stranger to mental fatigue, but when to that was added corporeal anguish, and self induced imsommnia --he came very near total collapse.
He capacity for work was constricted; the mere sight of his writing material filled him with dread, But because he had a horror of being discovered in a state of inaction, after breakfast he sat down and as usual tried to write -- to fill the empty screen which seemed to him to be mocking him.
Dazed in a torrent of ideas, he painfully waited for the words to start flowing, but remained stumbling in a maze of disjointed ramblings., he frequently lost the thread of his argument, now and then, in sheer exhaustion of thinking up something to write he looked at the half filled screen, trying very hard indeed to string two coherent thoughts together... but the effort drained him..and he slumped in his chair and thought about the futility of it all and once again cursed the block which had stolen his writing from him...
The words refused to flow as they had once done and this in turn resulted in a depressing sadness creep slowly all over him. It wasn't the meloncholic ecstacy which he was emanoured to but a much darker, sadder mood which seemed to overpower him and disturb his solitude as he tried to feed off his nostalgia about the good ole days when he had been wedded to words... This recent divorce was not to his liking and he hated it...yes absolutely hated it.....
It was a nightmare and he wished he would wake up and smell the coffee....
The music I listened to last night in my house was intoxicating like red wine, pretty when held up to the light, sharp and then smooth against the tongue.
I found my thoughts dervishing, great billows of whirling energy, connected between earth and sky like a spinning dancer's hands, one hand open to the ground, the other open towards the sky, forming a conduit like a high priest of ancient gods I evoke the spirit to rise from the ashes again as the song faded out and I was left alone once again to begin once more as the guitar struck a new chord ….
– Kungfutse.What vanity in the art of ZEN ARCHERY,
wanting to hit the target!There will always be one stronger than you.The only importance is the correctness of the
movement.
