Requiem for an Un-rhyming Poet in Less than Five Minutes

The problem with this world is that it doesn’t change,
The only thing that history has taught us is

That history repeats itself again and again.
Why is that? I have asked and will ask again.

Quite simple you see – the world does not change.
I look back with my mouth wide open

A fly enters and finding nothing interesting inside
Buzzes back outside to the never changing world.

But how can it be – I have seen the world change
In front of my eyes, eyes which have changed with

Your so called never changing world.
Aha!! It is only your eyes which have changed my friend

The rest of the world around you remains the same.
Haven’t your eyes changed along with mine –

I say to this condescending friend of mine
Oh yes they have changed but the world hasn’t.

And who is responsible for all this un-change
For that I’ll give you an answer you’ll hate:

It is the poets who do not rhyme that are the
Cause of all this misery, all this pain

They refuse to rhyme and be coherent
And make our lives more prosaic than

They ought to be. Death to these poets
I say – death, hang them by their

Toe nails and set the raven upon them.
Which raven, I ask, the one whose existence

Is familiar, matter-of-fact, pointless,
Prosy, unembellished, uninteresting,

I see you have acquired a new thesaurus.
Ah!! The very best there is – Roget’s.

Raven, Raven up in the sky
Why the hell don’t you die die die

Take this un-rhyming poet along with you
And burn in the depths of hell till you smell

Raven, Poet die die die
Go to hell and fry fry fry.

Rotting in hell – Anshumani Ruddra © 2004

An Evening with the Alphabets

I have made two new friends recently. For the sake of convenience and anonymity I shall call them Alice and Bob. Now Alice is seventeen and Bob is eighteen and they have just started going to college. In a very short time both of them have endeared themselves to me and I look upon them with brotherly affection. They are quite naïve (probably because they are young) and have a lot to learn about the ways of the world and for some odd reason they think I am some kind of a wise old man (just shows how naïve they are).They are also madly in love with each other and for some odd reason I end up becoming the moderator in all their fights (and they fight a lot – perhaps it explains the ‘madly’ part of their love).

Some days back we were all sitting around in the bar of a very up town hotel with a number of other friends. Alice and Bob were on my left. A rather beautiful specimen of the fairer sex, Clarice, was sitting on my right and was jabbering away to glory with Dick (wonder why I gave him that name, maybe because he is one). Every now and then she would turn around, touch my hand and ask me whether I agreed with what she was saying. Since I wasn’t paying any particular attention to what she was saying (because I was busy checking out the butt of an Eleanor standing near the bar counter) I always replied in the affirmative. Watching Eleanor’s butt and answering yes-you-are-absolutely-right to Clarice was soon interrupted by the chipmunks on my left.

Alice was beating the shit out of Bob for having called her a bra-burning-feminist. Now I have been caught in this situation before where a girl was protesting that she was not a feminist. I also happen to know a thing or two about feminism.

The word has been degraded over the decades to a man-hating-children-hating-housewife-hating woman. This is probably due to the negative impact of the second wave feminism of the late sixties when some misguided women decided that the root of all inequality and all evil were men and women who wanted just to be mothers and housewives. But so strong was this movement (still is) that it overshadowed the feminists who were just asking for equal rights for women in all spheres of life. Sadly all feminists (even the ones who still like men and want to have families) are considered to be a part of the misguided feminists.

Some feminists are so deluded that they do not even accept the physical differences between men and women and want to engineer a society where everyone is the same. Thus, a few stories recently have been about schools removing urinals from the boy's bathrooms, and telling the boys they should piss sitting down, like the girls. This is to eliminate the sense of power that boys supposedly have in using their penises to direct urine where they wish. These Americans are absolutely crazy.

So I explained to the two chipmunks that ‘feminism’ wasn’t a profanity and the bra-burning never really happened (it’s an urban legend). Then I went back to admiring Eleanor’s butt and touching Clarice’s hand (by this time I had already downed a number of beers and was in full flow). I also noticed that Dick had lost his perpendicularity (if there is a word like that) to the ground. He was snoring peacefully in one corner.

Now the topic somehow shifted to mythology which happens to be home territory for me. Clarice wanted to know about Pandora. I was feeling quite high by now and was about to achieve one of those rare moments of absolute clarity. My thoughts were being coherently translated to words which were smoothly flowing out of my lips and I was getting higher because I had everyone’s rapt attention.

What followed was my usual comparison of all mythology (Greek, Roman, Indian and Biblical) and how there was this underlying theme running in all of them, that women were the cause of all misery on earth. Though we Indians worship women and consider them (Shakti) superior to even the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh we do have instances in our mythology where women caused strife. Kunti (mother of all Pandavs) for example could have stopped the Mahabharata had she told her sons that Karna was their elder brother. Yudhishthira when told the truth after the war cursed all womanhood with the inability to keep a secret - hence all the gossip. Helen a mere woman caused the Trojan war, Pandora opened the box given to her by the gods and released sorrow, disease and conflict and Eve decided to eat the forbidden fruit (essentially had sex) and got Adam and herself thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Humanity was also cursed with procreation (which isn’t really a curse) and women had to undergo labour pains as a result.

Now there were a lot of women in our group so I went ahead and said something on the lines of – but what are men without women, which brought a smile on Clarice’s face (I hadn’t noticed before, she had a dimple on her left cheek). Bob however was very excited about this whole women-being-the-cause-of-all-misery thing and was also a little drunk. So he went around and told every woman in our group that they deserved labour pains. Most of them forgave him for being young and foolish, but Alice went ahead and knocked the daylights (nightlights, maybe) out of him.

The evening went on like this and we all finally decided to call it a day around one AM. Clarice asked me if I could drop her at her house. I was more then happy to oblige and was looking forward to a long romantic drive in my car. Yeah but these things never really happen, do they. Alice and Bob had come to this party with me and I had to leave them as well. Both of them had sorted out their differences by now and were in a very lovey-dovey mood. They were also considerably drunk and couldn’t stand properly. So I dragged the two of them to my car and shoved them in the back seat. Clarice sat with me on the front seat and we started out.

The talk revolved around men and our apparent immaturity. Alice and Clarice were putting on a good offence and I was busy driving and Bob, well he was being himself and was shouting at the top of his voice that he was all grown up and was very mature. Suddenly Alice quipped that Bob hadn’t even bought his first pack of condoms. Now this was hitting below the belt and hurt Bob deeply. “Find a chemist, find a pharmacy immediately and I’ll show her that I can buy a pack of condoms”, shouted Bob.

Perhaps it was the booze; perhaps it was the fact that Clarice was looking at me with those pretty eyes and luscious lips; perhaps it was that by helping Bob I wanted to make a stand for the weaker sex (men, of course). So we went around the city, at that god forsaken hour, on a wild goose chase (rather a wild condom chase) in search for an open drugstore. It was wild; it was fun; it was extremely stupid.

We finally found one open. So Bob stepped out of the car to prove his manhood and fell down. I had to get out and carry him to the front door of the drugstore. “Wouldn’t you come in with me”, said Bob. I could imagine the Horrorz (Ravi, Suds and Nijith) saying –man that is sooo gay, two guys buying condoms. Gay or not I had to help Bob in picking up the last remaining shreds of his manhood. So we went in, me holding Bob, and stood there for sometime. Bob tried. He definitely did. “Can I ... err… can I … ahmmm … can I have some Chlormints.”

“Dumb ass”, I thought and gave him another chance. This was getting out of hand. The girls were sounding the car horn as if proclaiming their victory. Something had to be done. So I turned my back towards the car and told the chemist to forget about the chlormints and give me a pack of Kamasutra. This guy didn’t even bat an eyelid, as if this happened to him daily (it probably did). “Pack of 3 or 10”, he said. “Ten”, exclaimed Bob out of nowhere and looked up at me. I was getting very angry by now so I took the pack of 10, shoved it in Bob’s hand, handed over a 50 and didn’t even take the four bucks change the chemist owed me.

We went back to the car. Bob was now showing off to Alice: “Naaa na naaa na naaa, I got the condoms, I got the condoms”. Alice seemed very proud of him and they again went back to their lovey-dovey mood and before long I could see that they had dozed off. They looked very cute, like a pair of chipmunks. I laughed to myself. Clarice just said, “You are my hero” and gave me a peck (Dictionary – to kiss briefly and casually) on the cheek. We needed a drink and so decided to hit the bar again. That was one long memorable night. For the perverts - all I have is a peck on the cheek to remember the evening by, more on Clarice later.

Roots

I have no roots. This never bothered me before, but it is something which has been weighing me down lately. I was never a religious person and thoroughly believe that religion is just opium for the masses - a way to channel their faith and give them something to believe in. I have also never been able to identify myself with any group based on region and language, which is probably a great thing but at times is disadvantageous. So I am trying to run a thought experiment in my head and elucidate this subject of roots.

I was born into a Brahmin family in the city of Bhopal (MP). Both my parents have Kashmiri roots but their families have been living in Punjab for generations. So for all practical purposes they are Punjabis. But because of my dad’s job they have lived away from the northern part of our country for majority of their married life. Hence we always speak Hindi/English at home and though I can understand a bit of Punjabi I have a hard time speaking it. Because of dad’s job we changed places regularly because in a bank each promotion is usually accompanied by a transfer. So over the course of my first eighteen years on this third rock from the sun, I changed eight schools.

The chain of places I have lived in is something like this: 1982–83 Bhopal, 1983-84 Itarsi, 1984-1988 Bhopal, 1988-89 London, 1989-1991 Bombay, 1991-1993 Mhow, 1993-1996 Bhopal, 1996-2000 Chandigarh, 2000-2002 Mumbai, 2002-2004 Hyderabad/Mumbai and 2000-present Chennai. The last four years while I have been living in Chennai and studying at IIT Madras my folks have moved a number of times.

Now I live in Chennai. Though I have spent a lot of time in Bhopal during three brief stints and have a lot of fond memories of the city and my schools, I have a hard time calling it home. I loved my brief stay in Hyderabad and thought that I could finally call some place home. That didn’t happen. Chennai is one city I truly love probably because IIT is here. I love my alma mater and it is perhaps the only place I can call home.

But the real problem is that though I have enjoyed living in so many cities and making so many friends, I have been unable to keep in touch with my old acquaintances. There are some people who I have luckily found because of the internet but there are hundreds of others who I’ll never see. Most of my IIT friends have gone abroad or have taken up jobs. They will eventually get over IIT because they will make new friends and their new life will keep them busy. I on the other hand decided to become a writer and continued to stay here in Chennai. Although I have lots of friends here, I have had a tough time getting over my IIT friends. But well that is a different story.

At a very young age I started liking English and soon it became the language in which I thought. Even my dreams now are in English. It is the only language in which I am able to express myself (and IIT lingo of course). In some ways this lack of roots and any kind of lasting association with a region has made me the person I am. I remember writing in my CV that I have excellent interpersonal skills and I am as extrovert as they get. This is quite true. I am able to make friends with anyone I want to and am not hindered by language/region. But on the other hand I don’t have the qualities (good/bad) which an archetypal north Indian or south Indian would have. Hence I have never been able to identify myself with any such group. I am a misfit in more ways than one. But I have been lucky enough to meet people who liked me for what I was and accepted me into their lives. To all those friends – thank you. Home is where your friends are.

Ars Gratis Artis

I have finally acquired my own set of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy in five parts written by Douglas Adams (known as DNA to his countless fans throughout the galaxy and perhaps the most popular man now at the restaurant at the end of the universe – Elvis comes a close second). I read the five books around three years back and kept reading them again and again even though it meant bunking all my classes (which I did very gladly anyway). Our world lost a truly unique man on 11^th May 2001. May his towel come in handy.

After reading a recent entry on Pracci’s blog and following the ongoing battle of wits and slandering in her comments section I decided to investigate this need to be a member of one cult group or another. Why is it that we feel the need to identify ourselves as ‘Metallica’ fans, ‘Harry Potter’ zealots and ‘Stanley Kubrick’ aficionados? Before going any further let me clear my own stance on this subject. I am a die hard buff of the following people and their work:

Note – A list of favourite films, books, TV sitcoms, performers, etc. would be endless and require a Herculean effort to prepare from my side (maybe I will do it). These are the people I worship

Al Pacino
Charlie Chaplin
Douglas Adams
Hobbes (not the philosopher because he was a materialist)
Homer
Ingrid Bergman
Jim Carrey
JRR Tolkien
Mel Blanc
Oscar Wilde
Ovid
Quentin Tarantino
Roger McGough
Stanley Kubrick
Vivien Leigh
Yoda (I know he isn’t real, but that is the greatest tragedy of this world)

These are the names that come to my mind at this moment. There may be others but more on that later. The point of this list was to show that I am inclined in a rather extreme way to follow other people and their work and worship it. I also spend a lot of time discussing the philosophy behind a particular work.

A friend (Blue pussy I think) once said that the reason people become admirers is because of peer pressure, they like Lord of the Rings because every other person claims to be a fan. I completely disagree. Yes, there are those who could claim to be adherents of a particular film/book/actor because all their other friends are claiming the same thing. But I don’t think a 20 something guy/girl would claim to be a Harry Potter fan until and unless they really adore the books (I like the books but Rowling has a lot to learn about fantasy writing). The reason why you love something is quite hard to explain. Often the reason turns out to be quite trivial. Take for example Tarantino. All his movies are pointless, lack any coherent story and yet are so entertaining and visually stunning that he is regarded by many as a master director and story writer.

But recently I have seen another trend. Most people would claim to hate an otherwise popular book/movie just to appear different and stand out. Some of them haven’t even taken the effort to go through the books which they claim to hate so much. These are the people who are in a cult of their own – the cult of the We-Don’t-Like-Cults.

But wait. There was something else that I had in mind. The real question (three of them actually) in my mind was the following – does the creator of fiction (writer/director/actor/painter) always put his own personal philosophy forward through the medium of his work? Should the receiver (reader/viewer) really be forming his own personal philosophy based on somebody else’s work? Is it necessary for art to have a meaning, a message?

The answer to all the questions according to me is no. Great books which changed the way people thought or which were at least aimed at trying to change people are few in number. And yet I believe that a work of art is not necessarily a projection of the creator’s philosophy. It could be, but not always. A writer for example chooses a particular set of principles for his book. They could be similar to his beliefs but could also be their exact opposite. His integrity, and therefore the book’s integrity, lies in his staying true to the set of principles he has selected for his book, not in his following his own personal philosophy (which could be a superset of the book’s principles).

Example – Thomas Harris has created perhaps the greatest villain of our times – Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal loves human flesh and has killed many. Yet for some reason we find ourselves attracted towards him and are rooting for him when he is going on a killing spree. That is called integrity. Harris has remained true to his character even though he himself might be disgusted at the idea of killing and eating another human being. He has succeeded in creating a character we fear and love at the same time. There is never a sudden change of heart where Lecter is himself disgusted with his habits. A part of him is evil and is convinced of its own superiority and its right to kill and eat the ones who don’t deserve to live. Lecter is the law. He punishes. Does that mean that it is Harris’ belief that a man should take the law into his own hands and go about killing people who end up on his wrong side? I think not.

A better example would me Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Humbert Humbert is a pervert and ruins the life of Dolores Haze (Lolita) and yet the reader feels his pain and the reader’s heart goes out to him. Yeah so he did some regrettable things and fell in love with such a young girl. But Humbert has our sympathies. Nabokov’s descriptions of Humbert’s fantasy at first shock us but slowly we get involved with it because of Nabokov’s beautiful word play. Now that is integrity. The writer does not approve of child molesters and perverts and yet he has created a very endearing character that does such abominable things. The reader can actually feel himself giving advice to Humbert – don’t do it man, it isn’t worth it, she isn’t worth it. Your sympathies don’t go out to the nymphet Lolita, which in retrospect seems strange.

Douglas Adams loved science and believed in it. He knew its limitations and yet believed in its greatness. Still in his work we only see him bashing science and just showing its extreme limitations. His books are covered from page to page with eastern philosophy’s simple rules - there is no coincidence (which perhaps makes all science useless), things happen for a reason, all things in this universe are completely interconnected. And though these are parts of his personal philosophy some aspects of his books are contrary to his otherwise western ideas.

On the question whether art should have a meaning, I believe meaning is overrated. There is no need that a book should have a message. It could be plain old Pulp Fiction. It is in no way the creator’s responsibility to give a message to his audience. I believe in the aesthetic movement – art for art’s sake – ars gratis artis. Ars gratis hominis doesn’t make sense because I don’t think that the artist is answerable to, nor has an obligation towards the audience. It could have a message and the audience is free to interpret it any which way they want. So I give my thumbs up to David Lynch’s latest movies (his old stuff like the Elephant man is pure gold but his latest stuff is just his self-expression and nothing more). This brings me to the second question.

If the art does have meaning/message, is it necessary for us to intellectualize about it? Yes. But do we form our own philosophy based on it? No. Any form of art even if it rambles on for thousands of pages cannot be kept as a basis for a complete set of human principles. Rand’s and Salinger’s characters are too idyllic for the real world and wouldn’t survive in it. One could appreciate their traits but could not live their life by them. A man/woman who does not compromise would never enjoy his existence because he/she would never find love. And what is life without love. And though Roark found love, it was only in fiction. He would not continue to be in love if he doesn’t compromise.

So read/watch books/movies, have fun interpreting them and worshipping their creators, but don’t lead your life by their support. Books/movies make great companions but if they are your only companions then you are in trouble. So I am in trouble. I need to get out and get some fresh air. Maybe I should go out with some friends for a movie.

The Life of Stanley Vacant (continued)

The story so far: Stanley Vacant, a middle aged voice artist by profession, has joined the local gym after having endured some stinging remarks about his appearance from his girlfriend Tricia.

The girl on the reception desk had a sweet smile and a good pair of knockers. That is what she is being paid for, I mean the smile. She asked me to fill out a form with some personal details while she called my personal trainer Ricky.

Ricky, sounded like a hoodlum who had spent his late teenage years in prison, where unquestionably he had felt the need to bulk up. I could easily picture a guy six feet four inches tall, weighing 205 pounds with a motor bike tattooed on his left shoulder. The description turned out to be quite accurate except for the tattoo. It had ‘I love my mom’ engraved on a valentine heart. I did not trouble myself in trying to understand the underlying currents of the statement. So he loved his mom. Good for him. We need more people who care about their parents.

Ricky stepped forward and shook my hand. “You got a firm hand shake there Stanley. I can see you going all the way. Just work with me on this regularly and within 12 weeks you’ll be giving Brad Pitt a run for his money.” I smiled weakly back at him and proceeded to finish the form which then I handed over to the girl with the great knockers. Sorry, I mean the girl with the sweet smile.

Ricky explained how on this first day he would take me around the gym and give me a thorough tour of all their facilities. “I am going to check your endurance and strength today, Stanley.” I nodded my approval and entered the inner sanctum of this commercial temple of physical beauty. Like Aphrodite’s oracle, Ricky proceeded to tell me what the function of each machine was and how this enterprise was totally dedicated towards combining cutting-edge-state-of-the-art technology with good training practices.

Now around me I could see a lot of people sweating profusely and working out real hard. Young and old, fat and thin men and women were trying to improve their health and their looks by working out to some fast paced rhythmic music. The only good looking people with perfect bodies were the trainers who were moving around the whole place, smiling a broad smile and giving little nuggets of advice to anyone who would listen.

Ricky asked me to try out a machine which had a lot of complicated gears and weights. I had to sit on a seat and pull a bar of steel with both my hands towards the back of my head. This bar was connected to different weights. There I was sitting on this complicated looking machine trying to do an exercise I had never done before and also trying not to hurt myself in any irreparable way, when my eyes landed on the most beautiful, the most exquisite women I had ever seen in walking daylight.

She was exercising on a similar machine directly opposite and was facing me. A small bead of perspiration rolled down her forehead, onto the side of her cheek, down her neck and disappeared into the valley of her round and firm breasts. She looked so athletic, so angel like that I could not hear what Ricky the oracle was saying. In this temple of beauty, I had found Aphrodite.

I had seen her somewhere before but I could not place her. Then I realized that she was the model in the Estee Lauder perfume ad for which I had provided the background voice. She looked far more beautiful now. And what was this. She was staring right back at me, without batting her eyelids. Come on Stanley this is the time when you take destiny by the forelock.

“Yes Stanley you are doing it perfectly. Just bring the bar down a little slower to feel the tension in your muscles.” The oaf was telling me how to use this damn machine correctly while this most beautiful sweating creature was staring right at me. Wait a minute. She was watching me exercise. Come on Stanley be cool now. You are the voice of Baritone Bunny, the most suave and dashing rabbit in the world of animation. Do this exercise properly. Pretend you have been doing it for ages. Listen to the oaf.

“Yes Stanley you are doing great”. I am doing great. Is that a look of admiration I see in the eyes of the Estee Lauder model? Yes it is. I am admiring her and she is admiring me back. He hits, he runs, he scores. Stanley scores? This is a new feeling.

“I’ll increase the weight a bit Stanley to check your endurance.” Go ahead oracle Ricky. Increase any weight you want. Stanley is on a roll here.

But what was this? The bar was stuck in the air and I couldn’t bring it down. Be cool Stanley; bring it down slow and easy. She is watching you man. For the first time since I had started exercising I could feel my forehead perspiring. It took all the strength I had to bring the bar down. “Very good, Stanley. Just nine more times and you are down.” Nine more times. Is the oaf trying to kill me or something? Aha! Jealous is he, Aphrodite’s oracle jealous of her lover Hermes. I wouldn’t give you the pleasure of seeing me lose. Stanley Vacant’s ego had just been challenged and he was ready for it.

With great effort I brought the bar down again. She was still watching me. Oh! How gracefully she was doing her exercise - power hidden below the veil of beauty.

By the sixth repetition I was thoroughly drenched and didn’t have an ounce of strength left. Did I just catch a look of dejection on her face? Her hero had turned out to be a loser. She finished her exercise, stood up and walked away, without looking back. I could take this exercise no longer and let the bar go. It went and hit the pivot with a bang and a few faces turned around to see the culprit. I could see looks of been-there-before-buddy on some of the faces.

“Don’t be disappointed Stanley. It’s just your first day. Within a few weeks this would be a cake walk.” The oaf was gloating over his victory and applying salt to the wounds. “Yeah, I suppose so”, I replied and stood up.

It has been more than an hour now and we have finished the tour of the entire place. I am sitting inside the steam bath. Each and every muscle in my body is screaming out right now. Ricky says the pains would go away in a few days. The muscles are just getting used to the exercising. I got up and took a shower, got dressed and all the while I was thinking about how very different I was from Baritone Bunny. Except for the voice (which is mine anyway, or is it?) we have nothing in common. He is cool. The chicks dig him. He could have done all those exercises single-handedly. He could have won the heart of the Estee Lauder model in a snap. Well at least he can’t speak without me.

I stepped out of the gym with my gym kit (a gift from Tricia) and made my way towards the car. Suddenly I heard a voice from behind “Mr Vacant”. I turned around to see the Estee Lauder model running towards me. “I have been waiting for you outside, for some time now”, she said in that sweet nectar like voice of hers. “You probably don’t know me. I worked in a commercial for which you provided the voice. I am a big fan of yours. I watch Baritone Bunny every week and absolutely love it.” I could not believe my ears. Here I was, fantasizing about this goddess and she turns out to be a fan. “Would you like to come to the recording of next week’s episode of Baritone?” I spoke in the most sophisticated voice I could conjure up. With that I gave her my studio card after having scribbled my home number at its back. She seemed very excited by the prospect and thanked me. “I’ll see you in the gym tomorrow then. And thanks for inviting me to the recording.” I said sure and with that I entered my car.

She was still standing some distance away and talking very excitedly on her mobile. She was telling someone, apparently another girl, about how she had met the voice of Baritone Bunny and how she was going to the studio for the voice recording session. She was as excited as little kids are when they are promised a tour of Disney world. Seeing her in this new light I realized that she was hardly a day over sixteen. Oh my God! What was I doing? I had been fantasizing about a young girl, a girl who was still excited about cartoons, a girl who was young enough to be my daughter. I hung my head in shame. Sophia would be as old as this girl now. I hadn’t seen her for ten years. Her mother had got her custody when we got a divorce and then had moved to Paris. All I had were a few photographs and letters from her. She was going to college this spring. Maybe it was time I met her.

With these thoughts I decided to drive back home to Tricia and tell her that the gym was a bad idea. She wouldn’t be happy. But I can’t take this pain in my muscles. For now Aphrodite and her temple are not meant for me.

Stanley Vacant © Anshumani Ruddra 2004

The Life of Stanley Vacant

There is this character in my mind that is yearning to see the light of day in a book. Sadly for him, all spaces are currently occupied and he will have to wait his turn. But the problem doesn’t end there. I wish it would. While I might be his creator in every sense of the word, he also is a resident of the over active world that is my mind. And hence he is a part of me, a part of my being. And he wants to share his adventures, his crusades with the rest of the world.

First I though a brief cameo in my book would be sufficient for him. But then I realized that it would be an absolute waste of a terrific character, which he is, a very likable character who deserves to be the protagonist of his own book. So here is another solution: the blog. From now on Stanley Vacant, who is a middle aged voice artist (provides the background voice for ads and supplies the voice characterizations for over half a dozen animated characters) would make regular appearances on my blog and would hopefully stop bothering me.

It is my firm belief that fitness and health and good looks are overrated. These days everyone seems to be running after a good physique. Every man wants to be like Brad Pitt and every woman wants to be like the latest cover of Cosmopolitan (not like the cover but like the women on the cover). I believe our capitalists have once again succeeded in making absolute fools out of us. First they cut us up into little pieces and then they recommend ten different ways to stitch us back.

While growing up you are coaxed to eat tons of junk food. As a teenage boy you have to hang out at the cool places and eat the cool food or you become an outcast. TV commercials tell you where all the chicks are hanging out. So you go there and what do you do? You eat and eat and eat. And before you know it you are 30 years old and weigh 250 pounds. Even if you are not 250 pounds your wife would constantly nag you about the love handles that you have developed. People will constantly crack jokes at your expense and make your life miserable.

You go in for magnetic radiation therapy which according to Jim from the shopping network helps you lose an astonishing fifteen pounds in just a few hours. You end up buying and hoarding exercise machines which promise to give you chiselled abs and good looks. But nothing works. Out of frustration you just eat more.

On the other hand are girls. Women in our society grow up looking at anorexic super models vouching for the latest fashion products. You see sixteen year old girls dieting and trying out the latest health products from television shopping networks and ending up in the hospital because they haven’t eaten anything in the past one week. Face creams, face packs, fairness creams, oil-free soaps, extra moisturizing soaps, grime removing soaps, dandruff free shampoos, revitalizing shampoos, extra conditioning shampoos and much more can be found in the bathroom cabinet of an average sixteen year old girl.

Women are constantly conscious of their weight. They will not eat that extra piece of cake even if every cell in their body is crying out for it. Sitcoms joke about how every chocolate you eat ends up going to your butt. So you try very hard to retain that knockout figure. It doesn’t work and again out of frustration you eat.

On the other end of the spectrum are people who are naturally thin. Any amount of junk food, chocolate pastries and ice creams has no effect on them. They simply don’t put on any weight. But this doesn’t mean they are happy. Quite the contrary, even they are yearning for those chiselled abs and well toned muscles.

So we live in a society where majority of people are either overweight or underweight or are simply not happy with the way they look. The remaining 0.1% appear on television and in films and make us feel bad about ourselves. We are simply not happy about our appearance and spend both precious time and money in improving it.

Luckily I am very happy with the way I look. Or at least I was happy till a few days back. Tricia and I were watching a film sitting in my nice cosy apartment when she turned towards me and said, “Why don’t you join the gym and put on some muscle?” The question caught me off guard. But I made a quick come back in my smooth Baritone Bunny voice, “Say babe, you not happy with the looks of your lover.” “No”, came the reply and silenced me. I could not think up of a reply in my hundred or more different voices. The voice which enthralled millions of people on television every week was silenced by a very pointed “No”. I got up saying, “… it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.” Tolkien would have been so proud.

But the truth was that her remark really did hurt. I have an average height and an average weight. I never played any physical sports or did anything adventurous. I had average grades in school and was not the most popular guy either. But people liked me. They still do. My voice impersonation of Mrs. Higgins, our seventh grade mathematics teacher, is still the stuff of legend. Nobody ever cared about how I looked. But they loved my voice because it could make them laugh. My voice for the ghost in Hamlet back in college is still considered by many to be a benchmark in voice quality. Every week I make kids laugh with ‘Baritone Bunny and Friends’. I have given the background voice for more than two hundred commercials and have the distinction for providing twenty one different voice characterizations for a single Disney animation. Critics have even compared me to Mel Blanc. How foolish of them. Nobody could be like Mel Blanc. He is a legend and can never be matched.

But something needed to be done. I like Tricia and see a future for the two of us. She is not demanding and makes me very happy. She has a great sense of humour and makes excellent pan cakes. But now she wanted me to be someone I was not. She wanted me to take care of my health, join a gym and build muscles. She had never asked for anything before this so I decided to do this as a gift to her. So here I am standing in my local gym after having taken an annual membership. With all my negative views on people’s obsession with their own looks, I am standing here inside a monument dedicated to commercialism and the victory of capitalism.

Stanley Vacant © Anshumani Ruddra 2004

Sadly, Disenchantment Equals Truth

Throughout my life I have been a dreamer. My dreams have been a constant source of images which are sometimes abstract, sometimes detailed; sometimes bizarre, sometimes beautiful; sometimes fear-provoking and sometimes calming, images that have left such an indelible impression on my memory that it is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish them from reality, images that have enriched my senses, all of them, so thoroughly that I remain eternally thankful to the process of sleep and the imperfectness of the human brain which leads to the random firing of weakly associated neurons, hence producing dreams.

I often wondered how exciting it would be if I were able to spend all my time in the land of dreams. Dreams constantly challenged my notion of reality. They provided me sights so colourful, so rich in texture that the real world started looking dull, morbid. They provided me such thrills, such rushes of adrenaline that nothing in my otherwise regular, ‘real’ life could match up to them. I looked forward to sleep, dreams, nightmares, visions with enthusiasm such as I had never felt for anything else. Dreams were my sanctuary, a life away from life which pacified my on the run, over imaginative conscience.

So it seemed like providence when dreams came to my aid, again. Dreams would finally help me realize my ambitions, my dreams.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. [Marcel Proust]

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth. [Jean-Paul Sartre]

The Himalayas

I am back in the civilized world and the only way I can look in retrospect at the events of the past month is fond remembrance. After saying my final goodbyes to IIT Madras and leaving her serene campus I felt the veil of motherly affection that IIT had put on me for the last four years lifting up. Two contradicting emotions, one of happiness and the other of extreme sadness and pain, engulfed my heart. Happiness on finally graduating and starting out afresh in the world and sadness on breaking all ties which had become more important than even blood relations. There is always email, my friends told me, and a phone is never far away. But deep down in my heart I knew that I had lost what had become the most significant, the most vibrant thing in my otherwise colourless existence.

So when a few of us decided to undertake a trekking expedition to the Himalayas my heart jumped at the opportunity. The trek involved going to Yamunotri, Gangotri and Gaumukh (the place from where the Ganges originates), three rather important pilgrimage centers for the Hindus, all situated in the Garhwal region of Uttaranchal. The best part of May went into organizing the trek and on 5th June 2004 five warriors from the Indian Institute of Technology met in Delhi to undertake this arduous and life threatening journey (or so I would like to believe).

From 6th to 11th we braved through harsh weather, difficult (at some places excessively steep and slippery because of horse shit and mud) terrain and back breaking walking paths to cover almost 50 kilometers and visit the three places. A day of walking was followed by an even tougher bus ride in the mountain roads. But it all had its payoff and the memories from this journey will remain with us for the rest of our lives. The view of snow capped mountains and beautiful shimmering water (the Ganges however is very muddy even at its origin because of grey sand which is also a part of the ice crystals in the glacier) filled our hearts with joy.

The journey had its rewards but not without a good dose of danger. Once we were caught in a land slide in a particularly dry mountainous region caused because of some rather stupid mountain antelopes. It felt like being a part of a video game where the villain is throwing small projectiles at you and you are running and jumping as fast as possible to avoid getting hit. The adrenaline rush I felt while crossing this part will be a constant source of inspiration (and maybe perspiration) in the future. The same patch on our return trip was rather calm.

The second bout of danger was self invited, though I will remain eternally thankful to the universe for instilling the spirit of adventure (which I found to be bordering on sheer stupidity at certain occasions) deep in my heart. We were around two hundred meters from the mouth of the cave carved into the giant glacier from which the Ganges originates. Around us were snow covered mountain peaks and the giant glacier right in front of us. We could see huge blocks of ice floating away in the shallow but strong current of the river coming out from the mouth of the cave. However there was no clear path to go towards the mouth of the cave and this troubled me a lot. The message “So close and yet so far” kept echoing in my brain when suddenly I decided to find my own way through the rather rough looking rocks which could slip at any moment and fall into the river. More importantly these rocks were part of the ever changing and melting glacier but my mind was fixed on reaching the cave and I kept on moving forward. Looking back I think I was rather foolish. I had my doubts in the middle but the moment I saw my friends following my footsteps I surged ahead. And finally we had done it. We had come as close to the cave as was humanly possible (without drowning oneself in the river of course).

A sudden calmness took over me once I was there. I realized that I was having one of those rare spiritual moments. I let my mind get completely soaked with this feeling for I knew that it was ephemeral. The beauty of that moment will live with me for ever.

Others joined me shortly on the same spot and all spiritual ecstasy vanished. We saw a huge chunk of ice fall into the river with a loud splash which gave us a scare but we let it pass. It was now time to make our way back. This was when nature decided to tell us that we had been playing with its might like little idiots and we were at its complete mercy. The whole glacier gave way and rocks came tumbling down from all sides and we were dead even before we hit the water. Well not really. What actually happened was that a rock the size of a football (enough to kill a man) decided to land right between two of us. The whole thing happened so suddenly and without a warning that we were shocked. We stood fixed to the spot and stared at each other. Nothing else happened. We reached our base camp safely. Thinking back I feel that the rock was nature’s way of saying goodbye and asking me for something.

I swear to return to the same spot some day when I have accomplished the task set by nature.

The Nintendo Generation

In 1957 a large object from outer space crashed into Earth's Amazon basin, near ruins of the lost Mayan civilization. Scientists world-wide heralded the incident as a trivial cosmic occurrence, and thus the collision was soon forgotten.

Now, thirty years later, rumours of an evil force have swept into the Pentagon's front office, and tales from frightened villagers of a hideous being with an army of alien henchmen are sending chills down the spines of top military brass.

Unwilling to upset current political stability, an all-out assault on the region has been overruled, and instead, two of America's most cunning, courageous and ruthless soldiers from the Special Forces elite commando squad have been selected to seek out and destroy these alien intruders.

Congratulations, pal, you're one of the chosen. But before you take pride in being the best, be warned.

You're about to come face to face against Red Falcon, the cruellest life-form in the galaxy. He arrived on Earth thirty years ago (that's six months time in an alien's life) to establish a foothold from which he will attempt to conquer our world and then use it as a stepping stone toward his ultimate fiendish goal: domination of the entire universe. Needless to say, playing hero won't be easy. But you have no choice -- you must be a hero. Because if you fail, life as we know it will cease to exist, and the vile Red Falcon will rule forever. If you succeed, well...it doesn't matter, because I doubt you will.

If you haven’t yet guessed which game this is then you are definitely not a part of what is being referred to as the Nintendo Generation by social scientists and anthropologists. Contra was released for the NES by Konami way back in 1988. This game soon became a classic side-scrolling shooter, with a variety of weapons, challenging game-play, and 1 and 2 player-simultaneous modes.

If your age is between 15 and 25, and even if you haven’t played Contra (shame on you for that), you are a member of this Nintendo Generation. We as a generation are unique, especially in India, since we are a part of the ongoing technological and cultural revolution. Most of us can remember a pre-cable-television, pre-western-fast-food-joint (McDonald, etc.) India. Cable TV came in 1993 and Mc only came much later. Heck none of us had an email account six years back and yet we saw Yahoo and Hotmail become billion dollar enterprises offering 4 Mb storage space. And today I have a Gmail account which gives me a 1000 Mb of storage space. Talk about revolution. We saw the rise of IT, the dot com crash and we saw the revival of tech stocks.

We grew up playing our own video games (or even renting them). We were the generation who stopped going to the theatres and preferred watching movies at home on a VCR. And still we saw the revival of the movie theatre experience and the rise of the multiplex. Computers and cars became a necessity while we were growing up. Our generation saw the entire country undergo a change. Children born in the last few years are not a part of this generation. Their generation was born in a tech savvy environment and they learned to say ‘Digital’ before ‘Dada’ and McDonalds’ before ‘Mama’. We on the other hand saw the old traditional India in our childhoods, but still accepted the modern with open arms. As the years roll on, our place in society will become exceedingly important because we are the connecting link between the traditional and the ultra-modern. India as a country and Indians as people have virtues which the western world doesn’t and I am not trying to be patriotic or jingoistic here, but that is the truth. The onus is now on us to prevent the moral degradation of our society similar to what happened to the west. That can only be done by accepting the modern and retaining the traditional and finding the right balance between the two. For now I must get back to playing Contra.

Bitter Sweet Symphony

As I sit facing my computer screen, listening to the Bitter Sweet Symphony by the Verve, the outside world slowly descends into darkness. The low level stratocumulus clouds are posing a challenge to the mighty sun. I step outside for a glimpse of the sky and feel the first drops of rain on my palms. Just then U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name begins in the background. Nostalgia takes over and lulls me into a deep hypnotic trance. This place, these people will just become memories in a few days. The golden years of my life have just slipped by and all that remains are memories. Vanessa Mae’s rendition of Bach’s Street Prelude has just started in the background and gives me hope, short-lived though it is, it is enough.

It has started raining very heavily now. My friends who were playing football till now have switched over to rugby (or some very weird form of it) in the mud. Half the guys have taken their shirts off to differentiate between the two teams. The game is just an excuse for them. An excuse to remember all the good times spent together. They are just running and passing and tackling and having fun. This is what life is all about: semi nude men playing in the mud? No. Life is about young boys living together and sharing an adventure, a dream and going out into the big world as men. The game of rugby was just an excuse to tell the rest of the world: We are on our way. Get ready.

In a few days it will be time for goodbyes and farewells. I might not see these people again, ever and this thought saddens me. I am too old to make new friends now. I have been doing it for the last 21 years with great ease and have always looked forward to meeting new people and making friends. When you have studied in nine different educational institutions and lived all over the country, making new friends becomes detrimental to your survival. But I was always good at it. Now I am not sure whether I’ll be able to do the whole charade all over again. Judging peoples’ characters, finding the right set of people who are emotionally and mentally compatible with you, I don’t think I can do it now. Perhaps I can still do it, but I don’t have the energy or the inclination to do it. I think I have become a little too secure in my life and don’t want to leave this comfort zone.

Life seems to be following a predetermined course and I feel like a mere spectator, seeing my own life pass by. My reserve of stored optimism is slowly drying out. I just hope that my decision to take a year off will be helpful in the long run. Shocking as it may sound to most of my friends and well wishers, I have never been more convinced about anything in my entire life. There are these very small, trivial things which I want to pursue in this one year. Trivial they may sound, but they are very important to me. I don’t want to turn forty and regret not having done all these things. It’s now or never. Every day I sit and add to this ever growing list of things to be done in the next one year. If I am able to accomplish even half of them, I’ll die a very happy man. Top of my list is getting myself educated: educated in the study of life, something which cannot be taught in any school or college. There is writing, music, books, travel, cooking, French, philosophy, religion and a host of other things in this list. Bungee jumping! How could I forget that?

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
Your a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you
to the places where all the things meet yeah