The Fish

Once, in a land far, far away, in a time aeons ago (give or take a few centuries), there was a fish, in a lake. Content, swimming along the bed, around the stones and flora that flourished in the waters that played host to him and others of his phylum and class, he whiled away his time. The one day, a flash from the heavens struck him and spirited his body away, leaving not a trace. That is the end of his story and we can all learn a very important lesson from it, though the exact details of which I’m yet to figure out.
In the same land (far away and long ago) there was a fisherman, yes the land was inhabited by anthropomorphic beings much like you or me, that’s about how far my imagination will stretch at the moment. So this fisherman, would sit at the banks of a shallow lake, crouching on a boulder that stuck out of the pale blue water, holding his spear above his head. Perfectly still he sat, sat and watched the little fish go about their business , swimming around in the water. He gave them names, he sat and described their lives to himself, every little twitch of a tail would mean something to him.
“... and this little fishy here, he shall be known as Balthazar, why? Maybe because it’s the shape of his scales, the way they catch the sun, he’s a pretty one for sure. I’m sure the lady fishes dig him.”
Balthazar swam around in his little pool of discontent, he was fucked, he’d just about managed to drag himself out of bed half an hour lat and now he was so going to be late for office. He sleepily swam his way to the nearest weed that looked remotely edible and gave it a quick nibble.
“Ugh what crap, well no time now for anything fancy, will pick up a fly or two at about noon I guess”.
He managed to reach the school just as they were doing their fourth lap of the course designated for the day. They flicked in perfect unison, “left, right, now double time, fifteen degrees up, now against the current, work folks, work. You, you, the late one, fit yourself somewhere at the back, I’ll have a word with you later”.
“Damn that Ali, he’s managed to get in next to Radha, the bastard, just because his father could afford to pay to have his scales chromed, he thinks all the ladies will fall for him, I’ll show him.”
Just then a loud shout can be heard from across the water, “Balthazar, get back here, what are you doing with that spear?”
“Coming Maa...” shouted the fisherman, “Look alert, shouted the fish leading the school”.
With a twist an a leap, the fisherman, dove into the water, the fish scattering under his shadow as he passed over them. With long strokes, he drew his brown skinny body through the water heading to the shore where a heavy set woman could be seen gesticulating in anger, one hand over her head, the other swinging at her side, a thick leather leash clenched in the fist.
Later in the evening, leashed to the veranda by his neck, Balthazar knelt over the ground, over an ant hill, he watched the busy little buggers go about their work, frantically dragging biting, dragging, feelers waggling and their tiny little feet whirring, left, right, left, march, stomp, dig. Head held low, scouring the earth some in disciplined lines, others, randomly seeking out new scents.
He enjoyed drawing lines in the earth through their columns, interrupting their progress, then watching them flow from that point outwards and inwards again till they picked up the trail. Try as he might, he could never interrupt it too long, anything short of kicking up the dust for a couple of feet around them was ineffective.
He wished sometimes he could have been an ant, busy, work to be done, surging forward, ever forward with thousands others, he wished he could be a fish, free to swim in the lake beyond the grove. He wished he was a coconut growing on a tree, high up in the grove, disconnected from everything around him, he’d be so far up, so fucking far up that no –one would ever be able to reach him. From up there he’d be able to see so much, he’d have so many stories to tell. He’d be able to see his mother from up there and she wouldn’t be able to bring him down, he’d see his uncle from up there and he wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore. He’d see the ants too, only they wouldn’t bite him in his sleep.
Thinking, quietly, he rested on his hands and knees, his eyes closed and face twitching as his neurons flickered on and off. Then as often did happen, a fit of rage. Screaming at the top of his voice, he began to stomp at the ground, kicking up dust obliterating all the ants he saw.
A loud shout from inside the house and uncle came out, belt in his hand, swivelling off the ball of his right foot, he let loose on him with his right, crack as the leather flicked through the air, followed by a loud smack as the dead hide came into contact with living flesh. Then shoving him into the shadows and glancing over his shoulders to check if anyone was looking, he pulled open his trousers.
The sun came up, the fish awoke and the ants poured out of their holes again, the morning breeze ran through the grove, carrying with her dried leaves on her invisible cape. He could hear her giggle as she passed him, like a little girl amused by his prostrate form on the ground. He reached out to her as she passed and in response, she did a little pirouette in front of him, raising a whirlwind of dust near his face. Then with another giggle she ran again, looking over and beckoning him to follow. He would, one of these, days, but not now, he had to get back to his fish, get back to the lake somehow, he had to see if anything had transpired since the afternoon of the day before.
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Will anything transpire? Will I actually manage to beat myself back into the chair to continue this, will I stop taking out my anger on fictitious characters?
Who knows?
El Oh El

Just Because It had to be Said

Just a random collection of questions that have been haunting me for quite some time, stuff I had to say, just I couldn't, not to anyone I know, so I put it up on the net (!), anywho, no poetry will result from all of this.
For Zee: It all remains as it always was, it’s just the conditions you laid down are too difficult for me to handle, I’ve tried, honestly I have but it just eats me up inside.
How long can you live disconnected from reality before everything around you comes crashing down on you? How disastrous would it be if everything you live is carefully constructed in your own head, how fucked up would it be if one of those flimsy playing cards that you stacked so carefully, so painstakingly into formation with about fifty million others, just one, slipped bringing the whole damned thing crashing down around you, leaving you stranded in the ruins of your pointless cardboard existence. How long and to what extent can you deny the obvious before reality screeching past, deafens you?
Just how much would you give up and ignore, just for the chance, for the remote possibility that what you want so badly may come to pass? To what extent would you suppress your ego, how much of your pride could you swallow for a fleeting moment of happiness.
Is standing in the face of obvious defeat the ultimate act of heroism or is it complete and utter stupidity.
I don’t think I’m ready to figure any of this out yet, but I guess that’s a good thing because if I had all the answers all ready and polished, I wouldn’t have seen and felt a lot of things, stuff I hope I will eventually be able to look back on without regret.

Rant

Aaaargh... I am so beyond pissed at the moment. I've come back from a long day at work, a long, long tiring day. Then as I'm riding back home with veggies for dinner, hanging in a plastic bag off my wrist, it hits me that the worst is yet to come. It hits me, yes at a 120 freaking decibels, louder than The Who, louder than anything you would want to imagine. It's Shaadi(wedding) season here and the one going on in the bleeding hall next to my place is blasting the most godawful racket and baby they are going for broke.
I have only myself to blame, when I decided to rent the place, I checked the orientation, exposure to the sun, rent, neighbors, square footage, hell I even inventoried the local dogs. Somehow I forgot to account for the Shaadi hall that shares a wall with our place.
They're playing an annoying mix of Hindi and Telegu songs and what makes it worse is that it's a bleeding live band playing fuckall electric noise machines. Everytime the octopad hits a bass note, my windows reverberate. Everytime the male singer hits a high note they coo lovingly in response. Everytime the female one hits one I feel like bringing out the old battle axe and going Friday the thirteenth on the thousand or so people I can see queuing up at the buffet (pronounced like buffet as in 'buffeted' by the wind). Honestly no-one's even listening all they are concentrating on is flicking enough grub to last them the fucking winter, I swear I can see people leaving with their cheeks bulging like goddamn squirrels.
I managed to get dinner cooked and eaten in the racket but now, I just want some peace, some quiet is that too much to ask for, honestly you tell me.
What's wrong with this country are there no zoning laws? Who in their right minds allows the construction of a bleeding open-air Shaadi Maidan (ground) in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
Aaaaaarrrrgh.....
The only thing that I get a little sadistic pleasure from is thinking about the people who complained one weekend when we got drunk and sang too loud too late. Who are they going to complain to now, the cops? Hehe, yeah right, I bet those motherfuckers are just waiting for a complaint so they can turn up sirens blaring and collect their two pieces of silver, if they haven't already, the bastards.
I need to relax, I need to work, I just need to be and I'm going insane. I'm listening to Amon Amarth at full volume and I don't care if I go deaf, anything to get me out of this misery.
I still remember the last one which was much worse, not only did they have their own troupe of off-key sirens, they had fire crackers too. Of all the buildings around the ground, ours is the lowest, so they carefully aimed the things at us. I remember running up to the roof, drunk, while the sky rained hell fire and brimstone, trying to get my clothes (which were up to dry) down before they caught fire.

Oh Come On

So I step out of the office for a quick smoke, I'm tired, I've been working like a dog, no wait hold on, this bugger's lolling around in the grass on his back. Work evidently is something dogs don't particularly care for. Where did the phrase come from anyway?

Quick Update

Yes this looks different, mainly because I've scrapped the old template that I'd lovingly coded more than two years ago. This blog's going in for a major overhaul, inspired by Terra who's totally sexified her blog. I'm leaving it as a standard template, for now, but come Saturday I'll try do a little more to make it 'my space' again.
I had to make the upgrade, my old template prevented me from adding a whole bunch of widgets that I guess I want now that it looks like I'm back to blogging. Sooo.. for the time being put up with this till I can mess around with some graphics on photoshop and presonalize this bloody boring template.
Cheers till then.

The story

For Zee.
There are two sides to every story, there’s mine and then there’s reality, there are three sides to every coin, two you know of and a third that never did exist, there are four corners on a triangle the three that you see and one just around the bend.
I live in a world of fantasy, where it’s all love and hate, fast cars and machine guns, where the sun sets on scenic beaches and I fight villainous characters in dense marshes. Where love is in the arms of the first beautiful woman that you lay your eyes on and success scales dizzying heights. I’m the bastard love child of a growing economy, Hollywood and Scandinavian death metal , I’m a victim of IT and offshoring .
Today, the day before Diwali, the day when Hindu good won over Hindu evil, the day when we light up our skies with the blood sweat and tears of a million children, we celebrate, I celebrate, (I raise a toast to you my dear friend), fuck, we are in a frenzy of hell fire and brimstone. Rockets, rain down from the skies, bombs leave ear-drums ringing, dogs squeal, children yell and nothing can stem the flow of consumerism and the ostentatious display of wealth.
I’m living the dream of the nouveau kitsch, markets crash and I don’t care, I applaud myself for never earning enough to save, to invest. I applaud the government and the opposition, a standing ovation for the left. Kudos to Mamta, way to sock it to big industry, India on the moon, India lying drunk in a drain, kill some more Christians, their own damn fault for being a minority, it makes me want to cry.
I ride, the October night flies by, frigid at the speed of ninety-seven. A green streak illuminates the sky and I look up as it disintegrates into an umbrella of reds, blues and yellows, another in red flies up from behind me and fizzles out midflight. I slow down, peak traffic, Audis, Mercs, Beamers, bloody hell, where are all these cars on normal days. I feel like such a pauper, dead if sample some paint with my handlebar.
But that’s enough on that, this is the festival of light, a time for celebration, a time of family and god and that kind of stuff, the Hindu Christmas. Is it all in my mind or is the city more beautiful all of a sudden, I see smiles where I only noticed sullen frowns, I see lights, strung up and blinking and merry where till today, all I saw were dark and dusty, cob-webbed corners. I am happy, really I am, it’s only the alcohol that’s getting me down. Is an atheist allowed to enjoy a religious holiday? Strictly I don’t think so, but if you don’t tell anyone, neither will I.
I’m on the roof, I’m floating fifty feet above the city, I’m a bird and I’m a snake. Who am I as an individual as an Indian and a citizen of the world, insignificant? Or is that giving me too much credit.
Flying high, buffeted by the wind, coasting through clouds, a festive city burns of its own volition, I pull out a torch, light it up and lean back on the breeze, dig my heels into a patch of smog, twist and release. The flaming torch describes a neat arc as it falls through the night sky. As it reaches the earth, a burst of flame and seven rockets fly back toward me, converging and exploding, the rainbow, a chameleon sky and then all that’s left is the smoke trails.

The Peacock

He struts through the room, a spring in his walk, he owns the room oh he does, he’s got the brightest most magnificent plumage. Rivals slink into corners, hoping he won’t notice them, but he won’t he’ll just strut on, unconcerned, unperturbed and unmolested.
He’s not got much in particular to do, he just paces the room, up and down, up and down. Not falling flat on his feet, weight thrown slightly on his toes so his heels touch only on every alternate step. This makes it look like he’s lighter than air, floating an inch above the ground, that very ground that we, mere mortals are fettered so irresistibly too.
He can, so he will, he executes a quick pirouette, it would look ungainly was it not for the riotous mass of colour that balances him, leaning forward, stretching his plumage, open, extended, balancing him. It catches the light as he spins, rays reflecting, a glimpse of heaven, a concession, a hint of what we do without, what he takes for granted.
We stand awed, envious and impotent. He’s a god, a superman, a shining peacock in a naked flock.
I’m nothing more than a plucked chicken, free-range. Clucking, pecking and laying to my heart’s content, satisfied with the empty life I lead. Devoid of any beauty and pride, lacking those few feathers that could serve to elevate me above my lot.
Those feathers belong to me it think as I hurry to tuck my adolescent growth under me, fearing he should see my innocent aspirations. Like a prepubescent beard, one that won’t be shaved and will not acquiesce to grow, my tail feathers just stick out, loud, undeniable evidence of my lack of power over them.
I coax and cajole, plead with them to grow, but they won’t, they have a life, a mind of their own. In due time, they reassure, when the time is right and not a minute sooner. Till then I guess I’ll have to do without.
Till then I guess I’ll have to just look at what he has and just have to wish, to hope that someday I too will have it all, the color, the light and the grace to pull it off.