Writing on the wall...

Did you ever tried to imagine how these amateur paintings are done in railway toilets .. in a shaky train compartment while exposed to the stinking odor of uncleaned toilet those 'artists' are expressing themselves using a mere ballpoint pen and that also with amazing clarity .. it requires some level of skill and  patience.. Its a wonder what makes these folks stick to their job with dedication against all odds ..

Human race lived in caves for a major portion of their quarter million years of life on earth. Cave paintings and cave writings were obviously their global past time and these toilet paintings might have a possible connection with this history. While the cave men tried to express what they see around, like trees and animals, our new age cave men focused on the thing they never really had a chance to know much about - the opposite sex,  and they did it in a language far more rotten than the nasty smell around them. This 'art' seems to have spun out from a combination of evolutionary urge of wall painting with the suppressed sexual frustration of a typical desi male. 

But on a closer look I noticed a strange pattern. Most of these paintings were pretty old and newly painted walls were hardly touched. It was strange, since these kind of social disorders never vanish all of a sudden. What happened in last few years which made the difference!

Then suddenly it unraveled before me .. it was quite  obvious if you look around - the smartphones and internet in every hands and the similar disgusting odor coming out from many comment boxes. Nothing really changed, the assholes simply chose another wall ...

A descend to darkness - When sitting together becomes a sin

All these protests by girls and boys across campuses, for their right to sit together in class room, is turning out to be a rather shameful episode... The shame, however is not caused by the students who fight against this absurd restriction, but by the pathetic state of our society where a 'protest' is needed for such an elementary right - for two individuals to sit together !! 

10 years back during my college days boys and girls siting together in class room, even during the lecture hours, was a common scene. It neither caused any harm to our percentages nor melted away the so called 'morality'. Why were those classrooms so different from the one we see in news today? 
One reason could be the relatively younger and probably more liberal teachers we had back then and also the warm and healthy relation ship we shared with then. An old-fashioned teacher who distance him(her)self with students will be apparently disturbed at the sight of a boy and a girl listening to his(her) lecture while sitting within a 'touching distance' from each other . For them sitting next to a girl it will be impossible for a boy to concentrate or even think about anything else apart from that girl ... and of course vise versa

20 years back during my school days, we boys followed a strange practice of untouchability towards the girls in our class room. If we accidentally happen to touch any girl or even her book or bag, we have to rub our hands in the desk or wall to remove the 'impurity'. One day our tuition teacher happened to know about this and gave us a lecture on how ridiculous our act is and advised us to consider girls as one among us and not to discriminate .. I think if the same scenario happens today the teacher might instead pat on our back and appreciate us for the high 'moral values' we are maintaining in the class room ... such is the kind of 'progressiveness' we gained as a society in last couple of decades !

As some one said "half a century ago, from the peak of renaissance and enlightenment, we started our descend towards the valley of darkness" .. Today, it looks like the pace is faster than ever before !

The origin of 'Busmukhasana' or How to become a yoga guru in 45 minutes!!

At 8 pm in the night at Thrissur bus stand while boarding the last bus to Vadakkencherry little did I knew about the historical events that were going to unfold. Since we got into the bus 30 minutes before its departure I managed to get the last available 'seat' in the bus which was right on top of its dashboard literally kissing the front glass.

But the real fun began when the bus started to move. Five minutes into the journey I was forced to bent the upper part of my body to a 45 degree vertical angle since I was obstructing the driver's view of rear view mirror. But since that angle naturally makes me face to face with the driver in an awkward position I have to bent my neck at least a 30 degree horizontally. I was doing all this circus by keeping both my legs in the air since the floor is already filled with the feet of other people sitting in the side seat and on top of gear box. But the best part is yet to come .. Since there was no scope to get a solid grip and nearest wall is the front glass of the bus which is not an ideal place to lean up on, I had to keep this posture in between my dire effort to balance my body. Things got even more exciting as bus started jumping through all those pot holes for the long and grinding 45 minutes !!!..

I don't know if similar posture is already present in 'modern' yoga .. but if you know how Mr Iyengar and his beloved guru Mr Krishnamacharya 'manufactured' and even imported more than 200 asanas on top of the 32 original ones, I guess I have every right to name my asana as 'Busmukhasana' and include it as a new one in the list ...

Now back to the all important question... benefits??.. first one is surely the feeling I got just after completing this asana, didn't felt such a 'nirvana' (or in other words relief) for a long time.. I also felt my tummy touching half way mark towards six pack, at least it is quite evident in the left side to which I bent. On top of that there seems to be a sudden rush of creativity and memory power ... what else explains such a long and honest disclosure and that also at 1 am in the night

'Uber' wale ki maya

There are moments in life that makes you question the very ideology you were holding with utmost conviction all your life. I was never really impressed with Gita and neither with its twisted and ridiculous 'interpretations'. But while waiting for a ride in the remote outskirts of Kochi on a dark and rainy night, the chapter 4 & verse 7 of Gita revealed before me with all its glory !


After the 10th auto driver also failed to perform his dharma and remorselessly denied two helpless & tired people a ride, (s)he incarnated before us just after a single click.. Often in human history god was given different names based on when and where they are needed .. I guess right now in Kochi it goes by the name 'Uber'!!

On the flip side, the kind of divine services we are getting now might well be a temporary 'maya' .. but then who gives a damn !

Feeling the fall ..

When was the last time you felt a waterfall ?

No, I am not talking about being there or even about seeing one. I am talking about feeling it

Standing in front of the fall, absorbed in the marvelous exhibition forged by the marriage of water and gravity, I asked myself the same question and sadly the answer was 'never'. I recalled that in almost every other visits all I cared was about capturing the fall in a perfect frame or trying to make it a mere background behind my lovely portrait .. I was simply following the herd, not able to visualize the kind of life the 'fall' is bringing to otherwise still and calm 'water'. Can any camera possibly capture that life with all its emotions?

However this time around I stood there, with mobile kept inside my pocket and eyes hooked on the fall. After a while it started to grow beyond just water, rock and fall. I could imagine a mind heavy with feelings, finally bursting out, thumping down one after the other to the hard rock of reality, expressing its fury in a wide canvas and then spreading its energy all around through those tiny droplets filling the air .  After the show it was slowly attaining a state of nirvana, resuming its journey steadily forward vaguely resembling the relief of an artist after completing a masterpiece or that lazy, relaxed nap of a couple after one real wild round in bed ...

I stand there feeling it for minutes, could have stayed for hours if not for the others waiting for me. On my way back I saw people rushing in to fill the space we left, holding tightly to their cameras, mobiles and tabs. I could only wish that in between their frantic attempt to preserve those moments they could at least take some time to live a few of it as well ..

So, when was the last time you felt a waterfall ??

Overcoming stupidness - A self help strategy

Every one does stupid things once in a while and I am not an exception. But do you know what's the worst part of doing something stupid? Its the feeling which immediately follows, the silent but strong realization that you are stupid enough to do something really stupid. Its a hit on your pride and its a feeling that slowly eats up your morale and eventually brings you down. To overcome its repercussion you need a way, an escape plan to get yourself out from that thought process. Let me tell you how I get this done

 "How do you make a line smaller without even touching it?". My strategy lies in the solution of this puzzle. I simply draw a bigger line right next to it. In other words you can feel yourself less stupid, by looking at some one stupider than you. However its easier said than done. It might sound simple enough but the fact is - 'its impossible to find some one completely stupid'. So instead of finding stupid people I started looking for 'stupidness'. I needed some thing categorically stupid, relatively common and at the same time something that passed the test of time - of course I was not interested in spot-stupidness. 

But let me tell you, it was a challenge to find cases that met all criteria. Since humans are constantly evolving species its tough to find people who remains genuinely stupid on one aspect for a long time. But then I found this one set of people who fits the bill perfectly. They spent their time, money, effort and literally bet their ass on a fictitious ideology which any one with a fraction of common sense will throw in dust bin. Their stupidness is so stable that nothing in earth and definitely nothing above the sky could unsettle it. And talking about their availability around us, they are so easy to find that if a bird can poop while flying then 8 out of 10 times it will be shitting on them

You might want to know more about these folks and probably use them too. But for obvious reasons I cannot name them. May be I can help you with some pointers. Here goes some of their golden rules, hope you can figure them out using it ..

1) Your whole life is a pre-written drama which is determined purely based on the time at which you were taken out of your mother's womb. However this 'exact' time is decided presumably by the doctor based on various factors from your and your mother's health to the availability of labor room

2) This drama is scripted using a cryptic language which can only be interpreted using the view of celestial bodies(millions of kms away) from the exact location in earth where you happen to be born at that exact time when your head made its way out

3) Normally you cannot change the script. However you have the option to manipulate once you manage to decrypt it. To elaborate it further, imagine life as an online exam with a series of multiple choice questions. It gives you choices ranging from who should be your life partner to which direction your toilet closet should point to. In a normal scenario you trust your logic and instinct and select a choice which makes sense (which however will end up to be exactly same as what was already written in script) and you either get lucky or get screwed up. But then, there is an alternate way of doing it. You can also do cheating by looking at source code of the web page(or full script here), understand which should be the correct option and then choose it to guarantee success

Feel free to use my strategy whenever needed, unless of course ... you know what I mean, don't you?  :)

Tailpiece : I talked about the drama and an obvious question could be about who scripted it. Well I rather not dig in to it now. Its opens up a bigger can of worms and way more absurd ideologies which could be hard to digest in one go

NOTE : Edited on 9th Aug 2015

Image source : http://all-free-download.com

From Deepa till Alfred - The fun in watching the world burn !

Hope you remember Deepa!
Yes, the same Deepa who followed Akash like a fly around lighted candle and eventually got burned by its flames. Finally it took some consoling words from Sid to bring her back to reality !

Wondering what made me remember her after all these years ?? 
Something that happened today made me recall her or rather one of the dialogue she told in the pub that day 
"Akash lets go dance and make other couple jealous"

Today afternoon while gazing through some of the old photos I posted in Face book and once shared in Orkut, a thought or rather a question cropped up inside me. What was the true inspiration behind sharing these photos ? Beyond the various obvious reasons like "keeping friends and well wishers informed", "joy of sharing" etc, I some how felt there was a much stronger motivation behind it. I did an honest introspection and even applied  '5 Why' principle to reach the bottom of it. Finally I reached that hard and painful conclusion. It was exactly what Deepa told Akash that day - "To make others jealous" 

Now you might think what's so wrong with it. Well, when Deepa told it that day, me (or Akash) made fun of her along with the Sid and Sameer. We jeered at the trivial idea of doing something with a sole purpose of making others jealous. Now a decade later I am doing the exact same thing with out a shade of guilt. Height of hypocrisy isn't it ! 

The idea planted by Deepa that day seems to have grown inside me. Now I am able to comprehend more with Deepa. I could even imagine myself as a fly around the candle, but here its my own virtual alter ego that I am orbiting around. Each of those photos I shared was nothing but an attempt to bolster the image of my counterpart and secretly imagine the world flaring up with jealousy. May be one day, just like Deepa I might also get hit by the flame. May be that day a Sid will wake up inside me and bring me back to reality !

However it might all take a while... in the mean time let me share couple of rocking selfies from last night's party and then sit back, relax and count the 'likes'.


Going in the lines of Alfred Pennyworth

"Some men just want to watch the world burn .... in this case with jealousy though" !

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NOTE : After reading the whole post if you are still trying to figure out who the hell is this Deepa, I would suggest you go and buy a CD of the 2001 Bollywood movie "Dil Chahta Hai"