One hundred again.

I’m a blog, 100 posts old. An uncompromising, sometimes radical, often ranting, supposedly satirical, barely humorous, BLOG. Born out of the deepest desires to do something useful and, many things useless, a getaway, a place of solace, a test of sanity, bearing the burden of the unexplainable. The writer likes to make people laugh, he has made people cry too, and some have literally wept over his laziness and oversight of poor choice of words, punctuation; grammar, shpelling mishteks and topics, like this one.

He thought he made people laugh, little did he know, they laughed at his inability to be funny. They thought he made people cry; little did they know, he cried with them. Some thought he scared them, that was his worst fear, worst fears do come true and you live through them, somehow.

Joy and Sorrow, sadness and laughter, tears of either kind. Words queuing up, tripping over, long and short sentences, good and bad paragraphs, as random as tears of either kind in a lifetime. Sometimes making sense, other times making sense only to the writer, rarely saying something, while indicating something else.

There have been metaphors and smilies used, without knowing the proper distinction or caring about them. This is my personal diary. Metaphor.
This is like a spiritual diary. Bad Simile.
Worser example.

See.

I’m as clueless about the readers as I’m about the writer. A recently written film review generated 174 page views a single day, none commented. Readers come in randomly from all over the world, the power of the internet rather than the skill (if any) of the writer. Hardly a purposeful blog, but in the hope, a skill is being developed. A log of interesting things happening in the world, happening in the writer’s life and sometimes in his heart.

Past, present, future and, stark reality. This moment. A part of the present that’s finished before you have seen it, or known it. You have just lived it, and it’s over. There, it went by again. And you are still looking at me, it won’t be long before you close this page.

The unpredictability and the stuff being written about it. Sometimes direction less, sometimes too complicated to reveal the direction, most of the times, lost in translation from the idea to the keyboard.

In spite of this, THANK YOU. I wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for you. And for the writer’s friends and their families. And some really special people who do check it out regularly.

In the next post however, I won’t be a blog that is 100 posts old. I’ll be a blogger, 26 years young, who thinks he wants to be a writer. One who writes with mediocrity because of the need, rather than one who wrote with the same mediocrity, but was once inspired.

Just another day(?)

While Kodsi went on an errand and was back at 10 AM and rushing to work, I got up. I haven’t felt a sore throat in 4 years like I felt today, quickly rushed through samachar and indiauncut and Times of India in 5 min and was at the car showroom for servicing, had planned to go there at 7 AM, was late by almost 4 hrs, called up work number and informed I will be late. After dropping my vehicle off and deciding couldn’t sit there for an hour, called kodsi again and told him, wanted to go to the new Thai place for lunch, cursing me inside but too polite to say anything out, he obliged and the coconut soup did some good to the sore throat.

Got back to work and finished up some small tasks while still struggling to figure out how to condense an 80-page report into 3 pages without being too technical. Opened rediff and skipped through headlines and then Tehelka created a tehelka in my mind. Rushed through the interviews of Babu Bajarangi and the likes who were bragging about how they killed and burnt people in the Gujarat riots of 2002. I stopped reading and closed all unnecessary browser windows, tried to finish up the remaining tasks, the sweetest secretary in the world then brought the cheque for this darned H1B renewal and I called up kodsi again for dropping me off to pick up my car, swearing he wouldn’t want to see my face again, he came promptly in 6 min as I waited and got my car, dropped the cheque at my H1B lawyer’s office and rushed to get the VIP (ahem!) free tickets for Ravi and Anoushka Shankar’s show on Monday.

Finished up as much stuff on the grant as I wanted to and went back to Tehelka, three interviews on youtube, each more saddening than the other. Babu Bajrangi’s transcript, I began to wonder what stuff this shit is made of, I mean Babu Bajrangi is made of,

TEHELKA: How could you organize it all in such short time?

Bajrangi: Little time… We organized everything that night itself… We mobilised a team of 29 or 30 people… Those who had guns, we went to them that night itself and told them to give us their guns… If anyone refused, I told them I would shoot them the next day, even if they were Hindu… So people agreed to part with whatever cartridges and guns they had… In this way, we collected 23 guns. But nobody died of gunshots… What happened was this: we chased them and were able to scare them into a huge khadda [pit]. There we surrounded them and finished everything off

All this to a reporter who said he was pro-hindutva..

Bajrangi: It was a huge pit… You could enter it from one side but you couldn’t climb out at the other end… They were all there together… They started clinging to each other… Even while they were dying, they told each other, you die too, what are you going to be saved for, you die too… so the number of deaths increased.

TEHELKA: Then people poured oil in…

Bajrangi: Oil and burning tyres…

And then it goes worser, worser and worser [for lack of a stronger word]

TEHELKA: In other words, the way [you] have killed will go down in history.

Bajrangi: Arrey hamari FIR me likha gaya hai… ek woh pregnant thi, usko to humne chir diya thha (It has been written in my FIR… there was this pregnant woman, I slit her open, sisterf****r… Showed them what’s what… what kind of revenge we can take if our people are killed… I am no feeble rice-eater)

Later in the evening, I went to the art exhibition 10 min late, the first painting I saw, and I had seen a few times before in the home of it’s creator, a woman whose back is facing me, she has a bare back from the neck until her waist, she’s holding a pot above her head with her two hands, and there’s a red fluid flowing at the top of her neck and then from the front of her body then covering her decency again from her waist at her back.

She’s a Gujarati woman, I observed, all the blood flowing and she still can’t cover herself from the prying eyes, which is better anyway? Enveloping yourself in blood or exposing your bare body in front of everyone. SHIT.

I have never felt this way about the painting before, it used to be one of my favorite paintings when I visited my friend’s place. Here it is, as an exhibit - one of the very few pieces clearly labeled NOT FOR SALE. And I can’t think any better. I liked a few paintings, but as much as I was a self proclaimed connoisseur of oil paintings for 2 hours today, I don’t think I can spend 300-400$ bucks on a painting.

While coming back, I stopped for chicken, tomatoes, yogurt and two bottles of Robert Mondavi 2005 Merlot (a.k.a cheap red wine), it was already 11 PM and I could sense a slight feverishness in my body. My first urge was to jump into my bed, but didn’t want to struggle tomorrow evening, so cleaned up the chicken and tilapia from the freezer and emptied two cups of red wine into the bowl of chicken pieces.

Blood. God damn it. This is not wine, this is blood. He ripped of a foetus. And has his own mouth and his head - both physically intact.

My first urge was to dump everything into the trash, however, there are 8 people coming in tomorrow, from Kansas city, Philadelphia, Houston, Charlotte, Atlanta and others a few couple of blocks away. I promised them I’ll have the chicken and fish ready.

In a couple of minutes, the chicken pieces soaked up all the wine, all I could see was the spice mix, and crushed ginger garlic. This is what probably happens when the ground soaks up all the blood in Gujarat, the men, women and children, none exist.

No one cares about what’s not visible, as long as it is not visible.

Then articles about how this Tehelka expose might end up as a benefit for Narendra killer Modi.

To add to my OCD and ADHD ( two of the countless I diseases I suffer from 2 minutes a day), there’s depression/anxiety whatever physicians can call it. People (actually, only one) who claim to know me very well, have another name for it - overly emotional.

I can’t leave you guys on such a confused, negative and depressing note, so here’s a picture of another favorite painting to cheer you up. I liked a couple of other pictures, but I don’t personally know their creators. The painting in reality by s.h.r.u.t.z is amazing. I just couldn’t take a good picture of it.

Biology 101

I saw a dissection today! The first in my life (if you don’t count eatables like fish, maybe crab and chicken). But the ones I’ve cooked have been neatly cleaned inside out (except for crabs, I cannot understand, how all aunts and grannies in my Mom’s native village handle live crabs with perfect ease), the first time I went to buy chicken by myself when I was in middle school, and saw it cut, I couldn’t eat chicken comfortably for a couple of weeks. But today it was a mouse, farm raised. I’ve been handling a lot of animals - wild mammals (Grey squirrels, flying squirrels), raptors (birds of prey - Hawks, Owls, Ospreys),then the curtest (and only) beaver I have ever seen in my life which cuddles up in your arms like a human baby, and then all those bugs - crickets, beetles, beetles still in larvae stage and whoosh…I hope I’m not spoiling your appetite.

But there was this adult red-tailed hawk that ran into a glass window and broke its wing, its feeding instructions included a rat, Farrah was the animal care tech training me today, and she showed me the whole dissection process, intestines, stomach, liver, lungs, brain, teeth that start from the farthest end of the throat and finally inside the brain. I’m not much of a biology person, and by far the internal organs I’ve seen are a human appendix in my biology lab in primary school. Five seconds into the process, I failed to notice the disgusting/nasty part of the whole process. Five min later when I checked the red tail hawk with its majestic talons that can pierce your skin like knife through butter (of course I was wearing gloves, similar to Dhoni’s gloves -somewhat thick), the hawk had eaten every inch of the rat, I didn’t find anything remaining of my first dissection sample. I then told my mentor, I need some more time to do a dissection myself

But count on me when I tell you, flying squirrels are the cutest mammals you can feed (you use a syringe and feed them dog formula milk with some other compounds added). It’s a pity I can’t get the pictures, but I’ve a mental image of every animal I’ve handled, from birds like cardinal, to a quail, to a barn owl, a red hailed hawk, animals like a beaver, grey squirrel, flying squirrel then, not to disgust you with crickets and beetles, yeah not very pleasant to deal with insects, but ducks and squirrels LOVE crickets.

Err, did I mention the nightly ceremonial walk by the ducks - made from an open enclosure to an inner cage room- they know the route! Trust me, and my job? usku usku , I mean I’m not speaking Hindi, I get behind their asses and wave my arms to get them out of their enclosure and bingo - left right left towards their safe room for the night.

I think I love animals. More, I love helping those that are injured and need help. Of course, DO NOT try this at home, I was under the supervision of expert volunteers who have been doing this from 14 years. Of course, I have an experience of 40 hours , in the past 5-6 weeks.

www.awrc.org

Located inside Oak mountain State Park.

Birmingham. Alabama.