Saturday, November 17

How Daft is that


I downloaded Untrue by Burial today. What a mind-blowing album. This recent discovery just reinforces my long-held belief that Whitelight should really be my best friend.I feel like making a huge banner scribed with GET IT and flagging it outside my house. And then get t shirts printed with the logo. You know, word of mouth advertising. And someone so brilliant wants to be anonymous? It's a crazy world. If I was that guy, I would have bought myself a house in Bristol and make journalists scamper around for my radical sound bytes. Anyways, so I also got Shocking Pinks which is another indie wonder. And Between Voices by Anti Atlas. The fact that Chris Hufford, manager of Radiohead and Supergrass, is the man behind this outfit might have something to do with the the kind of music it generates. Although if someone downloads this album based on the kind of bands he manages, then please don't come back here to swear at me. It's not as phenomenal as I expected it to be. Now trip hop is probably my favorite genre, so maybe I'm not impressed by yet another hotch-potch of Icelandic totand Japanese vocalists to make the album sound suitably global and inversely, exotic. It's nice, but I might not put it on after a month.

Daft Punk is downloading right now. Been searching Alive, live set for 2 hours now. Everything has been already deleted, now let's hope this is not another empty file. This is one band I'm dying to watch live.

You look at something like this and I get this sinking feeling. Because I'm here. And forced to make do with events like the Sunburn festival where a target of 10,000 people showing up is considered ambitious by most. Now the line-up is good, but there aren't enough funds to have systems that'll reach up the sea. So you're going to have something like this, and then force people to get jostled like ants with no dancing space because the music can't reach wide enough. Last I heard they are going to have sniffer dogs to detect drugs. WTF? And this is at an electronic gig! But how can I blame them, that's how things work here. You first have to suck up to State officials who want free tickets as well as their own sweet conditions on how exactly people should party. If this issue wasn't frivolous, maybe more people would be concerned. I feel like guffawing when people like Nikhil Chinappa proclaim that guys, you don't need drugs to enjoy music. Man, people were fried listening to Velvet Underground. And you're trying to tell me that you're brilliant enough for me to dance on your tunes for 3 hours sober? Seriously? Hahahahahaha

Thursday, November 15

Wake up for pancakes...


This is probably the most testing aspect of my personality, my inability to sleep. Or rather, the propensity to sleep at odd timings. Sometimes it strikes me as really unfair, as I miss out on so much bright cheerio sunshine part of the day. Also, day time is better because things get busy and it makes you distracted enough to fret on mundane things. Nights are something else. It's just you, there are people I can call and yak my night through, but sometimes there's no balance and most of the times no one seems engaging enough. There are certain limits to which you can have mindless conversations with people on Messenger, and not too many awake at 4 am anyway except firang idiots who have yet another question pertaining to their ever-increasing plans for Goa. Really, I don't get this hyper-ventilation over South Asian travel. If you're already so chicken shit, don't bother coming here anyway. Don't fucking stand with me at Khan Market and gobble 3 malaria pills before downing your kebabs. Really, how gay is that. How come you didn't get your mommy too.
I spent some time trying to make my blog look different. But I found nothing that made me interested enough to discard familiarity. Blogger is so predictable. Only for Oh I've been doing Photoshop since I was 6 kind of people. Everybody I know is crazy about Photoshop, and they use it generously to make themselves look marginally attractive or more intriguing on Facebook. Actually, it's pretty dumb for me to crib because if I was an Adobe expert, I would do that too!
So night time is my time. I stay awake most nights on the computer making Google my best friend. So now I know enough about the Boom Festival to book my tickets for 2008. And I also know that Neil Armstrong saw alien spaceships on the moon, owing to which there have been no further excursions to the moon. Then I try to watch television which is always a bad idea that lasts for exactly 5 minutes. Tv is something that I just need in my house, in case I'm dying to watch something live. Like the news. But once it's there, I end up watching it twice a month. And I vowed to myself that I'll only commence my viewership once Shahrukh Khan is done with the promotion of his movie. Because if I'm subjected to yet another sight of him on any channel now, I swear I'll cut my hair, put on red lipstick and run naked on the streets. Why, I don't know. Right now, that really seems crazy.
This is something I do when I'm not trying to convince myself that there are chances that self will fall asleep. So I try to bury myself in blankets so that the warmth makes me drowsy, sometimes read Ramachandra Guha to make me sleepier. Nothing happens, I stay wide awake thinking of how I have nothing planned for the next day and it will truly suck if my mom sees me first thing in the morning yet another time. And then she'll make her ancient call center joke. Then I'll bug my maid to make breakfast. I'll read the newspaper, crib on how there's nothing else to read, not pick up my phone, in case I do, make excuses to people wanting to meet, like how I'm too unwell or too busy with nothing in particular. The thought of staying awake and interacting with someone in a bar in Delhi, thinking of the old times makes me nervous. Mostly because I remember nothing. And if I do recall snippets, those are not enough to last 3 hours with someone. There are others who I meet once a year, and hence not important enough. I wonder, am I turning into a sociopath? Or it's just that I suffer from abominably high standards.



Have been listening to the Thaw Sessions lately. A lot. Why do most people like to diss Verve? Yes, they sucked after Urban Hymns, but that's what happens when retards deviate musicians from the main purpose by treating them like God. And when they start to think that they are indeed God, You just act pish tosh about it, labeling it too commercial for your taste. Hahaha. Actually, I've never been a huge Verve listener, but if these 14 minutes are a true sampler of what the rest of the album is going to sound like, I may just become one.

Thursday, November 8

Drama Queen

Hmmmm. So what should I say? That posts written at 3 in the morning ought not to be trusted. That it's too much of a hassle to make another blog. That writing all this longhand will be a chore and will need to buy newer journals every month. That although I wasn't 'forced' to continue, it's still nice. And that it'll be frustrating if I have to say all this to someone who feels obliged to respond, when he's clearly ill-quipped to come up with anything remotely helpful.And that I can see the point of posterity. So tadaaaaaa...I love faceless people.

*******

Saw Mighty Heart yesterday. Is it a deliberate attempt to shoot it in that documentary frame so that people take it more seriously? Good to see Hollywood producers having the sense to do at least that. After watching a real story, I went on my usual business of searching on every little detail about the movie. Now this man was your average Stanford graduate out to change the world with the power of the mighty pen. I'm tempted to dismiss such personalities as being too yuppie for their own good, in a South Asian country that is clearly dangerous and unreceptive to Americans in general where he was out interviewing a jehadi. What did he expect? Rogan josh and tid-bits on recruitment procedures? How can these firangs be so goddamn naive. And how can journalists in general be so goddamn naive. You don't really earn the right to delve into anything you bloody well please just because you have a press card. I think journalism makes the average rookie think that he's infallible. That he isn't the common man anymore because he can expose all the dirty details. But who the hell is listening? Like this recent Tehelka thing about Modi. Does it affect the Gujarati businessmen who are going to vote for Modi anyway. Or does it affect the riot victims who saw Kar Sevaks bursting open wombs. Or the plethora of journalists who believe Modi to be the criminal irrespective of anything else. Mere validation should not make you feel so great about all that you're doing. And judging by the methods employed to sensationalize something that needs a bit more drama, who is going to believe them anyway. It's terrible, but why do the wrong people have to be touchy about the right things whenever they feel like.
The media wasn't so gung-ho about caste riots when the Sikhs were burnt in Delhi. Tytler's dismissal was enough for them. And no one talks about it today because Sikhs didn't wail about it too much and went on with their lives, and the Godhra riots are anyway more recent so let's fuck Modi over it. If Godhra is so bad, then why is Congress still an Indian intellectual's favorite party? Of course it's politics and shit happens, but it makes no sense to build up something which you were complicit with some years back.
So Daniel Pearl was that kind of journalist. But whenever you hasten to dismiss someone like him, I read something that makes me cringe. This man refused sedation before his beheading. What sort of a person does that? Where do you get the courage to do that. And for what purpose. Is this the sort of world wherein you can romanticize the idea of a revolution. He rebelled against discrimination for his identity. I'm Jewish and if you're going to cut my head over it then so be it. You hear that and you feel that he was a hero. It's only the average joe who would think that. And make Hanukkah videos for Pearl's son so that he knows how brave his father was. But the problem with authority persists. Apparently his wife had to withdraw her case in Pakistan against the perpetrators because she had a tussle over legal fees with the Wall Street Journal. This is how being a revolutionary makes no damning sense. These people are going to make you believe that you have the power to do something different, that there were hundreds before you but you are going to be the one. So go ahead and prove that US bombed a civilian factory instead of weapons of mass destruction as they falsely claimed. Go ahead and bust your ass somewhere in Pakistan with your pregnant wife because the answers you'll get are going to make the world a better place. And these are the people who are going to endanger their own people by handing over information to the CIA and then warm their hands away from it calling it routine procedure in the general interests of the country. Who the fuck is crazy then. The jehadis who are not beating around the bush of what they want, or these fake fuckers who are driving more and more people on to a path that doesn't exist.
I once worked on the US sponsored torture all over the world and the stuff out there is really something else. You can't exhibit such outrage when you are doing worse to Arabs in Cuban prisons. Such hysteria over the beheading of a white Jew looks laughable when under trials who are 'merely' suspected of being jehadis are being shipped to Uzbekistan torture centers so that confessions can be forced out of them. You have a nexus that circulates all over West and Central Asia on the ridiculous pretexts of self-defense, and then you blame this community for being paranoid of your intentions? That's fucking great, that someone can do an Iraq in this world and still have the balls to condemn emergency in Pakistan. What in the hell are they so worried about? Wasn't Musharraf's presidency supported by the American agencies since forever. And anyone with a functioning brain could foretell these course of events from him. It's getting more sinister.. this blaming business centered over where you come from. And the presence of American and British powers is just making it murkier.
If they consider themselves a paramount authority on world peace and the country that has the responsibility to restore democracies and propagate dummy governments, then why is there such silence over the events in Myanmar. Is the American manpower not enough to topple the militia? I feel that even a large part of this Arab and Jewish animosity is being fueled for American self-interest. If they hate each other more, then there's less time to hurt the Americans. Such a wonderful country, then is it surprising that I have never been there on principle. Missing out on airport check-ins regulated by the colour of my skin. And of geographically challenged Americans opinionating on the dismal state of democratic choices in South Asian countries. Sometimes it's best to be a soft power, you have to be too ugly to retain number one. And I'm good with that.

Monday, November 5

Bye bye capsule

So this is it. I was hoping to do this for some time and tonight has been a decent catalyst. This blog is over. And it makes sense to me too, what do I write about lately anyway? A lot of people here can translate what they feel in better words. But no matter how bottomless I feel, it still looks less sinister on paper. That bothers me. I started to blog thinking that there's no one I can actually talk to. So maybe I ought to try this. You have so many terrible secrets, spill it out anonymously and no one will know. But it wasn't so simple. Even something as simple as this has been page 3-ised by too many people. Some ar apparently publishing books over their fictitious online personalities and people are buying it. What does that have to do with me? Nothing much, except that it riles me up. The hesitant thought before you think of telling someone that you feel they are full of crap riles me up. You as it is can't do it for real, now is it so difficult to do it with masks on too? That bothers me.
I did it because no one knew me here. Especially a certain someone. Now if I count, 5 people reading this blog know about my identity. Not that I'm writing of my bedroom escapades with assorted strangers, but it still bothers me. It's because when you write something as random as this, I really do not need the wrong people to read half of it and fill up the other half with what they judge. That in itself should have stopped me long time back. But I didn't, and I poured some more and now the shit is flying off the wall.
Maybe there's nothing wrong with anyone at all and it's just me. It's probably just me. How come I develop newer issues with every medium? How come my randomness gets me into trouble everytime?
It's just predictable. The moment something starts to make sense, it's taken away from you. Not that I'm being honest here anyway, so fuck it. It's too late to call anyone, and there's no one to call. Now that's an honest admission. I wouldn't tell anyone that. Would I tell anyone that I can feel something creeping from behind? And that nothing feels good anymore. And that after loving my body for some time, I feel like damaging it again.
Have read some interesting people here. Will miss someone else going like oh, I so know what you're talking about. So it's back to capsule.

Saturday, November 3

Waiting and wishing

It's really pathetic that I'm actually contemplating if I should write another 'I'm so sick of marriages I could kill someone' kind of post in here again, but that's what I want to write about, in addition to other things sooo.. My mother is tripping around the house and calling 7 people every minute, and then exchanging details of those talks with me. Strange, if a relative of mine got married every month, me and mom would be in the Hall of Fame for best buds till we die. Now my mom is usually finicky about money, I think it's more to do with her upbringing than anything else. Or maybe the exorbitant amounts I seem to be expending on useless material pursuits. So I was obviously shocked when my mother suggested that why don't you get your make-up done from some fancy salon because you're a silly girl who can't put liner the right way, and anyway, all the other girls are doing it. Hmmmmm.I was silent as I swallowed the insult. None of the men I've been with have had the balls to say something like that to me. Is it possible that my mother thinks I'm ugly? Poooof...channeling mind not to veer in this direction. No, I don't want to get dolled up with blush and liner because I aim to be au naturale. And also to be the only girl over there who seems to be sane enough not to want to look like an aging geisha in the environs of a Delhi farmhouse. I know my mother is worried that I should look the best so that she can beam over everyone else, that look, even though my daughter smokes cigarettes and is living alone in another city and is suspect by all of you of being an overtly bigda hua type, she's still better looking than all your daughters put together, so who's eating the pie now eh. Hee hee. Looks like she's equally trivial-minded. Ah. Mother and daughter.

*******

My father was in a strangely introspective mood today. I think something happened with him on his way here and he refuses to tell me about it. He remembered his college bike brought from his own money and how my mother was so happy to have a fiance who had a bike of his own. So you don't need money to have happiness. That's what he concluded. I'm giving you too much too soon, maybe if you waited for things in your life, you would appreciate them more. What do I tell him? That I did wait, for him to talk to me like this. For him to think of how he treats me. For him to dispense time from his whole day on how he's giving me too many 'things' and not anything else. Just yesterday I was having a similar conversation with a guy who got uncomfortable when I talked of all the things I would like to own one day. I don't understand why people get so fidgety whenever you discuss money. As if it's a crime to want things for yourself. It's the second biggest taboo after Indians not having sex like bunnies. What makes me happy? I don't know anymore, but I'm happy when I buy shoes that look too pretty to wear on my feet, and I don't care if it makes me Paris Hilton to think like that. Anything you want, in any which way, costs money. The sooner these people see that, the better it would be for my state of mind.
But he said something so warm. The girls waiting on bus stands, on Delhi roads. They are usually attired on office clothes and must be working in jobs that fetch them 3-5000 bucks a month. Now they don't work for ambition, but it's for need. To satisfy the financial gap in the family. They look uncomfortable waiting for the bus for so long. Because you never know who could touch you. And you've been on your feet all day and want to reach home without having to encounter yet another man on the bus. Any time. They wait for the bus at 9 in the evening. At 10 at night. My father talked of this scene with so much pain, and how he wished he could give a car to each one of them. With drivers. Ha ha.
He seems so different to me some times.