Who's Your Daddy?

From a 1939 Kane and Finger Batman story.

Chicken!

The Advantages of being a Non-Vegetarian
Or
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
Or
What Came First - the Egg or the Chicken?

Hen
Laid golden eggs

Greedy man
Cut it up, found nothing.

Moral of story
Today’s special: Butter Chicken Masala

(c) Anshumani Ruddra, 2005

The Gospel According to Saint Ruddra

* Have you ever been in the presence of a woman, who is so beautiful, it hurts every time you look at her. And when words start pouring out of her mouth, every other sound in this world becomes part of a rich background musical theme which is being composed real-time (by Mozart, Alan Silvestri and John Williams all together) just for the two of you. When she walks into a room, every heart skips a beat and your heart actually stops working. You are dead even before your body hits the ground. But there is a smile on your face – the smile of contentment. You just died a very happy man – having seen the most enchanting creature on the face of this magnificent earth. Instant Nirvana!

Now you are thinking – ‘Next he is going to tell us about this woman. He is going to brag about how he sees her everyday, dies and comes back to life to see her all over again’

Naah! Suckers!

I am going to tell you this – I know two such women and I see both of them almost everyday. And each time I see them I worry about my heart – erratic heart-rate would lead to my death one of these days. There are days when I meet both of them. It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!

Between these two women, I think I have understood the entire gamut of feminine emotions and thinking patterns (at least of the ones who make your jaw drop to the floor and your tongue to roll out like a red carpet). Though both of them have the same effect on me (and when I say me, I mean my heart), they are poles apart and screw with my mind in completely different ways. But before I expound further on this matter here is the greatest pain-in-the-arse bitch-slapping who’s-your-daddy truth about life –

All the really really hot girls are dating complete losers-morons-mean-sons-of-warthogs who should drown themselves in small unassuming puddles of muck. And if they are not, that means they just broke up with one such guy and are waiting for another one of them to come along.

You beg to differ, do you? You know some really amazing woman who is not dating some, for the lack of a more appropriate word, chutiya. Then my dear friend, you have just witnessed a miracle of celestial proportions. Birds have crapped on me more than a dozen times, two coconuts have fallen on my back, a rock the size of a football has missed my face by a few inches on the Himalayas, and yet I have never witnessed this miracle.

Ok! I give up. I lied! I have witnessed it a few times (Hell! Some amazing women have dated me in the past), but it should be happening all the time. These women deserve much better men. Do you know why they never get them – because all us mature-brain-the-size-of-a-football-field-sensitive-caring types never approach them. We are either shy or lack confidence or have bad timing or are just plain old unlucky (like yours truly). And the scum of our kind approaches these women and whisks them away while we sit in front of computer screens and rant about it ceaselessly.

Back to the two women in my life (Ah! How I wish one of them actually was in my life). Though both are equally gorgeous, one knows it and the other doesn’t. The first one, let me call her Aphrodite, has probably dated a lot of losers. She is single now, but hurt and vulnerable. So she puts on a strong front and avoids all advances. She doesn’t want to get hurt again. She knows men look at her and fantasize. So she plays with them, tries to get her back. The foolish child wants to be in love but hates everyone who wants to be in love with her. I can understand what dear old Keats was thinking when he wrote – La belle dame sans merci – a beautiful woman with no mercy. I worry about her – engrossed all the time in work, no personal life. I have tried breaking her defences but failed.

The second one, I’ll call her Venus, does not yet know how beautiful she is. She is a little naïve and is still dating a loser who treats her miserably. She wants to break free but can’t. She can’t face the insecurity of not being in a relationship. As time will go by she’ll keep getting hurt, eventually becoming Aphrodite. I shed a tear each time I think of that.

I am trying to be a good friend to both of them – though Aphrodite keeps me at bay, where as Venus loves spending time with me. And I have a policy (a strange one, but I have adhered by it for a long time) – I never date buddies - too complicated; destroys friendships. My head hurts when I think of the whole situation. Even I don’t have the answers to everything.

Was there a point to all this – I am afraid not.

* In a few days time I’ll turn 23 (a prime number I like a lot; favourite of course is the greatest of all primes – 37). Between these two primes is a life I have yet to discover. This blog turned two (the first prime) a few days back. Around 50 posts, 40,000 words and over 25,000 hits. One of these days I should sit and read all the previous posts – see how my life has changed.

The Unusually Usual Report

* They are all leaving, going away to that far off country – where the people are so dumb that George Bush got elected twice. We are all chasing our dreams, or in certain cases are being chased by our dreams (like yours truly). The Red-haired one left a few days back. The last Horror will soon leave. The final vestiges of any relationship with IIT will soon vanish. ‘Depressing’ is an understatement. But hey! As the cliché goes – life must go on. Adding salt to the wounds is the fact that I am finding it really difficult to make new friends – I am trying, but it simply isn’t working. Everyone likes me, or at least they used to. Now I just get on everyone’s nerves. Perhaps I am growing old and whatever charm I had is slowly fading away. The thought of not being surrounded by friends is painful. Then again, I can always turn to my dreams; it’s just that I don’t want to any more.

* I simply don’t know when to give up. I should learn to take a hint. Never been given a cold shoulder before (it’s happened once earlier, but that was just pathetic). The weird thing is, I don’t feel hurt – I just feel odd. Pride and arrogance tell me that there is no possible reason for anyone to ignore me. Or is there?

This is my punishment for being so easily amused and cheerful all the time – a good solid dose of depression. It’s definitely not helping the cause of writing. Neither is continuously thinking about the gorgeous older brunette.

* Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is releasing this Friday. I am so excited that I keep humming John Williams' background score after every five minutes. I am looking forward to the light-saber duels and the star-ship dogfights. And Yoda will fight again! Yippee!

Depression and excitement can go together – I am a stinking potpourri of emotions these days. I make myself sick.

Butter Chicken for the Allergic Soul

* I love chicken. I can eat it thirty-two times a day and still have space for some more. But my love for blood, murder, predatory appetite and primal savagery only extends to chicken. I cannot take pork, beef, lamb and I hate (that’s an understatement) sea food. Just think about this for a minute - where do fish crap? - In the water. Where do they live? - In the same freaking water. How can you eat something which lives along with its own crap? Ok! Ok! I know I am being biased, but I have a reason.

The reason, for one, is my ignorance and two, the following - Any of various marine cephalopod mollusks of the genus Loligo and related genera, having a usually elongated body, ten arms surrounding the mouth, a vestigial internal shell, and a pair of triangular or rounded fins.

If you are still guessing, here is a picture:

Even the fungus growing under the flower-pot in my balcony could have told me that I should stay away from anything which looks like that, has ten arms surrounding its mouth and is called SQUID. Yeah! You heard it - I ate squid and those Italians whom I love so much tricked me. How you ask? They couldn’t call the dish they prepared from this freak of nature - ‘Stay Quarantined Until It Disappears’. No! They had to call it bloody Calamari - such a harmless sounding name - people would have said in Hindi - ‘Kiski Mari! Calamari! Kiski Mari! Calamari!’ Well now they can shout out loud -‘Kiski Mari! Anshu Ki Mari! Kiski Mari! Anshu Ki Mari!’

I spent the third most uncomfortable night of my life after eating that crap. My face and body were so badly swollen that it looked like somebody with a real grudge had used a sledge-hammer on me.

Can’t you write on the menu that this dish is prepared from an organism which can grow anywhere between 5 centimetre and 18 metre (Yeah! Go check the encyclopaedia). Had you told me, I would have run so freaking fast that Forrest would have been proud of me (Little girl - Run Forrest! Run!).

Resolution: Stay away from sea food.

Observation: Yahoo! I finally have an allergy! I am so proud of myself! (You freak!)

* She doesn’t like movies! The moment I heard this, it felt as if the entire weight of the Himalayas had fallen on me. The world stood still and the next one second took a thousand years to pass. I, Anshumani Ruddra, had fallen for someone who doesn’t like movies. Disaster! Irony! The universe mocked me! My entire life flashed in front of my eyes.

And then, she smiled. Ah! That smile.

Who cares about the movies? It is the occupation of the bloody bourgeoisie. People have other hobbies. You will survive. She has so many more interesting things to say. She is so beautiful. She is so spirited. You are a pathetic sell-out. So what? When she laughs gravity disappears - you believe you are a bird - better still, you believe you are a Lockheed Martin SR - 71 Blackbird.

Hmmm ... Just because she dislikes motion pictures doesn’t mean you have to stop watching them. It’s just that your favourite topic of discussion no longer exists. You have other interesting things to say. There is more to you than just movies (Is there? Let me think - I am choking! * Al Pacino voice* - When the shit hits the fan, some people run and some people watch movies. Oh shut up!)

Final Analysis: The world doesn’t revolve around film aficionados. There still exist interesting people in this world who don’t like movies (from Ridley’s Believe It Or Not).

* I love poetry. I love reading it out loud. I love performing it. I love quoting it to others. I even like writing it. But here comes the problem - I suck at writing poetry. But hey, this is my blog! I can put up whatever I want. Read and weep, suckers!

This was written in 2 minutes 44 seconds in an on the spot writing exercise. The theme was - ‘One Way Ticket’

The Poet finally decided to call it quits.
His patience after all had been tested to the hilt.

He could not take this sundry life no more,
The whole bloody thing was such a bore.

The poison and the railway track did not work,
So he kissed the village nurse who was a complete dork.

He died of common cold the next day
Thus buying a one way ticket to hell, oh yay!

A Question of Age

It’s happening all around me. I think about it in great detail and then try and forget about the whole shebang. But it comes back. What is ‘It’? ‘It’ is this sudden urge in guys I know to fall in love with women who are older than them. My position on this issue till a few weeks back was that of indifferent neutrality; not any more.

Let me quickly put down the few arguments which people give against this age disparity in love. Women mature faster both physically and mentally than men. Women start looking older much earlier than men as time progresses. These are the two most common arguments given by wiser, older and more experienced people in favour of the woman being a few years younger than the man in a relationship. Though the arguments are highly generalized they do make a lot of sense at a certain level and probably apply to the lowest common denominator in our species. But what if we are dealing with above average, well rounded and mature men and women? Age suddenly becomes irrelevant.

The rule-followers will now argue that a few months here and there may be alright but not more than that. So what age gap is acceptable? Few months, one year, less than three years, five years, ten years? Frankly, I don’t know. It depends on the guy and the girl in question. The only chink in the armour I can see is this – Companionship is about experiencing life together as a journey. A much older woman, (man single, 25; woman divorced, mother of one, 32) would have already completed a part of this ‘Journey’ and learnt valuable lessons from it. Agreed that every relationship is unique in itself, but still the joy of experiencing new things together is lost if one partner has already gone down that road before (sex is just a trivial issue here you perverts, ok it’s important but not that important).

I was recently responsible for convincing the parents of the 25 year old to marry him to the 32 year old. Guess what argument I used – They both really love each other, your son is a useless chap whereas she is a highly paid executive in a MNC, and your son is most probably impotent and will never be able to have children – this way you get a readymade grandson who will love you oldies a lot and if the couple is lucky you might be blessed with another grandchild. My powers of persuasion were probably at their best because they bought the whole thing.

It’s easier to argue for or against when one is an uninvolved observer. But what if one is involved? What if I, an intelligent, creative, mature and level-headed 22 year old writer, have a crush on a beautiful (read hot), talented and spirited 24 year old journalist? Now that, would be interesting!

Closer

I am going to discuss the movie ‘Closer’ in detail, so all those who haven’t yet seen the movie and would like to see it, please avoid reading the following blog post. The movie raised a lot of questions in my mind. I tried searching the net for some answers but that wasn’t very helpful. I have tried to answer some of those questions here on my own.

What I understood of the movie:

The Characters:

Dan (Jude Law)

Beginning: Has a girlfriend called Ruth who is not shown throughout the film. Writes the obituary page in the newspaper and hates his work. Wants to become a writer but doesn’t know what to write about.
Middle: Writes a book called ‘The Aquarium’ which fails. The book is inspired by the life of Alice but according to Alice it is not the complete truth.
End: Becomes editor of the obituary page after the death of the editor. The editor is most probably his own father. In the beginning he says his mom died when he was a kid and his dad is just hanging on to dear life. In the end he says he sat next to the editor in the hospital for many days before he died. So I am guessing the editor was his father.

Anna (Julia Roberts)
Beginning: Married to someone but unhappy. She is a professional photographer who has read the manuscript of Dan’s book.
Middle: Becomes a successful photographer with her most famous work being the picture of Alice – London girl.
End: Is married to Larry and is probably happy. But we don’t know how long this happiness will last.

Larry (Clive Owen)
Beginning: Dermatologist working in a hospital.
Middle: Meets Alice and is the only character to whom she tells her real identity but he doesn’t believe it.
End: Has a private practice and is married to Anna. Has sex outside of marriage and still gets away with it because Anna cannot complain.

Alice (Natalie Portman)
Beginning: Stripper from New York who comes to London and changes her identity.
Middle: Goes back to her original identity and works in a club.
End: Goes back to New York but again changes herself.

The Plot Details:

The real Alice: Her real name is Jane Rachel Jones as shown on her passport. She tells Dan that he can never see her passport because then he’ll know her true identity. When Larry asks for her real name repeatedly in the strip joint she tells him the truth each time. When Dan leaves her the first time and asks her what she will do, she says she will disappear. She takes the name Alice Ayers from the porcelain plaque when she and Dan walk through Postman’s Park in the beginning of the movie. The plaque says the following –

“Alice Ayers. Daughter of a bricklayer's labourer who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street Borough at the cost of her own young life. April 24 1885."

This is exactly what Alice does in the movie. She is compared again and again to an angel by Dan and Larry. She is responsible for saving the other three characters in some way or the other. At the end they are all in a better state then what they were in the beginning of the movie. In the original play on which this movie is based, Alice dies in the end. In the movie the ending is more open – she might meet another stranger in New York, fall in love with him and be completely devoted to him or she may die. I would like to believe that she lives.

Larry the Caveman: For someone who talks about being a caveman and not being very refined, Larry is really smart and a good observer of human nature. He manipulates Dan twice. Even though both the women prefer Dan in bed, Anna still ends up with him. Larry likes to dominate women and treat them like whores. In Anna he has found a woman who likes to be dominated and because of her inherent inability to be happy she will keep coming back to him. He makes Anna tell him all the details about Dan. Anna’s indiscretion is very puzzling and she is perhaps the quintessential bitch.

Art: Alice’s description of art is an amazing statement and is almost a reflection of the movie itself. Anna’s photographs have captured the sadness of people and yet are beautiful. But this beauty itself will bring joy to others and hence the art is justified. Dan’s book on the other hand was also about Alice but failed to capture the truth (her sadness). This is perhaps why the book failed. The movie is about four sad and emotionally challenged characters and yet it is made beautifully.

Dan and Anna’s search for something better: Alice unconditionally loves Dan. Still Dan falls for Anna simply because he feels Alice is dependant on him and Anna is an independent woman. In reality, Anna likes to be dominated by others. Why else would she go out with a creep like Larry, who chats on sex sites and only has sex on his mind 24/7. Dan and Anna will never be happy because happiness freaks them out and they run away from it. Somehow they remind me of Sisyphus – that guy who used to push a boulder up a hill and then it would fall back and he’ll do it all over again.

Why I am freaked out after watching Closer:

Some bits here are redundant because I wrote this before the previous part.
There are some works of fiction (books/movies) which leave a deep impression on us. This has happened a number of times to me with books but not too often with movies (probably because I see so many of them). The last time I spent many sleepless nights because of a movie was when I saw ‘Requiem for a Dream’. Yesterday I saw ‘Closer’, twice, and I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for the next few days.

They say reality starts following fiction after a while. I believe that, is always the case. Yet, I have never identified myself to such a large extent with any one particular character in a book or a movie (not the way every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks that Howard Roark’s life is their own or Salinger was telling their story). Not until I saw Jude Law’s character - Dan yesterday in Closer.

Dan is an obituary writer. I have been secretly obsessed with obituaries for ages. The guy wants to be a writer at the beginning of the movie and eventually becomes a failed writer by the end. I am an optimist, so that probably wouldn’t happen to me but I am currently writing about a character who is trying to write the perfect obituary for himself. Creepy!

Dan asks Anna (Julia Roberts) to lie to him because he is frustrated with the truth and thinks lies make life so much easier. Dan also is a proficient liar himself with an imagination working on overdrive (he goes on a sex site and pretends to be Anna and chats with Larry (Clive Owen), I haven’t done that but I am very much capable of doing it – it’s just that I hate chatting on the net). Yet, he contradicts himself in the end by asking Alice (Natalie Portman) to tell him the truth and stresses the importance of truth. His selfishness and failure to recognize love is all too familiar. I better go out and party a little or I’ll go crazy.

Listening to:

Closer Soundtrack – The Blower’s Daughter Artist: Damien Rice

Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?

I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new

Sex, Mike and Brassiere Measurements

* Disclaimer for female readers: Relax! I am not trying to objectify the female form. I think being a woman is a tough thing and I respect women a lot. Whew!

Creating new characters for my books is a lot of fun. But sometimes it can be a pain in the buttocks. Currently my protagonist is an eight-month-pregnant woman. To flesh out her character in greater details I have been doing a lot of research on pregnancy. My mind is reeling under pressure with 10 centimetre dilations, water breaking, swelling of mammary glands, etcetera etcetera. No wonder my attention span has reduced to 300 milliseconds. Man! There is a lot of stuff out there about pregnancy.

Information overload!

All systems down!

Luckily this character works for a fashion house which makes lingerie (India’s equivalent of Victoria’s Secret). So I have been happy digging facts about lingerie. I am astounded by the simplicity yet effectiveness of bras sizing. Here is a small primer for all patrons on all those terms we never understood – 36 D, 34 C (As a kid I used to think they were bus numbers, serious!). I am attempting to go where a lot of men have gone before and failed miserably (did you know that there are almost a dozen different ways in which bras are hooked – back, front, sides, neck …). They should have taught us all these things in school.

There are two variables which need to be calculated to determine the bras size - Band size and cup size. The band size is always an even number (according to international standards). The cup size is an alphabet like A, B, C, etc. So a typical bras size would look like - 34 C or 36 D.

Measurement of band size: A tape measure (inch) is used to measure around the rib cage directly under the breasts. The number 5 is then added to this number and it is rounded off to the nearest even number.

Measurement of cup size: The next measurement goes around the chest over and including the fullest part of the bust (usually at the level of the nipples). The band size is then subtracted from this measurement. The cup size is then determined using the following table -

Half inch AA
One inch A
Two inches B
Three inches C
Four inches D
Five inches DD or E
Six inches DDD or F
Seven inches G

Example - Suppose the measurement below the breasts is 30 inches. Adding 5 to that we get 35. Rounding it to the nearest even number we get 36. So the band size is 36. Now suppose the measurement over the breasts is 40 inches. 40 - 36 = 4 inches. So cup size from the table is D. Therefore, the bras size is 36 D.

* A few days back I was discussing with some fellow writers how Indian writers are pathetic at writing convincing love making scenes. All of us are working on a collaborative project and most of the stories have couples in them. Yet, very few of us wanted to go down that path where we would have to write about the couple making out. As a challenge I have decided to include a hot and steamy sex scene in my story. The first draft will be put up here for everyone’s inspection in a few days.

* Fans of PhD Comics the world over are waiting with bated breaths as Mike Slackenerny prepares for his thesis defence. Will he finally earn his PhD? Only time will tell. The man who has been rumoured to be around the Stanford campus since the 70s (parents of some recent grad students were students along with him) has been a source of inspiration for graduate students the world over. Procrastinator extraordinaire, Mike is adored by the Horrors for his love of food and sleep. If Mike gets a PhD I hope he joins the faculty at Stanford. Phdcomics wouldn’t be same without him. I can already see Babe (also known as Death and Research Boy in certain quarters) getting his doctorate in a few years. My boy is all grown up. Sniff sniff.

* Back to watching 10 movies and reading 3 books a week. Life is bliss. Saw ‘Finding Neverland’ yesterday and am still lost in the beauty of the film. Magical!!

* Thinking about –

I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know, to make up for empty areas in life.

- Woody Allen in Annie Hall

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

It’s happened to all of us. Well at least it’s happened to those of us who don’t have anonymous blogs. How do you write about someone who reads your blog and knows you well? How do you write about your secret desires when you know they would no longer remain secret once they are published here?

I firmly believe that every thought, which remains trapped in the deep recesses of the mind, dies a premature death. Every thought has a life cycle – it is born, it grows up and then it dies. But its purpose is only fulfilled if it gives birth to another thought. A nascent thought needs to be translated into words (written or spoken) for it to mature. It dies if it isn’t heard or read. Yet there are things whose beauty lies in their being not spoken and kept a mystery. But if they are not projected outwards, they start haunting you (especially when you have an over active imagination like mine). This blog has always helped me exorcise those ghosts. But it fails when these thoughts are about real people who are close to me or know of me. I could cover those thoughts in a veil of fiction and write them here as I have done on a number of occasions in the past. But sometimes you wish to retain their purity. You store them away safely, to look at them when you are feeling low and need inspiration. They haunt you though – night and day – when you least expect. You might have a brain the size of a football field, but your referees cannot control every player on it. Life would have been bliss if you were born a vegetable. Then again, maybe not!

If you are wondering what the title has to do with this post – I saw the movie a few weeks back and loved it.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

- From the poem ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ by Alexander Pope

A Day in the Life of the Poet and the Raven

The Raven and the Poet had been in the depths of Valhalla for more than an eon now. After an initial period of strife and animosity they both realised that in this place they had no one else for company and hence it would be better to forge a friendship. And as time went by these two became inseparable – the Raven teaching the Poet the fine art of warfare and the Poet teaching the Raven the intricacies of poetry.

Then arrived Phantasos (the worthy son of Somnus and brother of Morpheus; an exchange student from Olympus) and the three together formed an organisation which was to cause a major stir in the world of the Gods as well as us puny humans. This was the Dream Poets Inc., headquartered in Valhalla. But why talk of the Future when the Present is trying to scuttle past us.

Here we find the Poet - lost in the space-time continuum, thinking of his past sins - generally feeling like scum. The Raven on the other hand is smitten with the 5-7-5 syllable simplicity of the haiku and is composing his epic - Haikus from Eden.

R:
Said Adam one day -
No apple for me today,
Eve has a headache.

So, my friend, what do you think of my masterpiece?

P:
Hmmm. Hmmm. Mumble mumble grumble grumble. You have the structure, but where is the mention of the season and the two contrasting thoughts related to the same subject. My dear friend! You must follow the rules of poetry. Otherwise, the critics will slam your work as being pretentious and uninspired.

R:
Critics!? What critics? I am writing these haikus for my own pleasure not for some blasted critic. Counting the syllables and maintaining the symmetry of the haikus has a soothing effect on my nerves. I don’t care if no one ever reads my work, except you, of course.

P:
Ah! But what is writing, if it isn’t read. The triumph of the writer is in extracting a response from the reader – doesn’t matter whether they love it or hate it. You are right about the critics though. I hate them in equal, if not more, measure. But you must write as if your work is going to be read by millions. We both know there is no one else here other than the two of us. But one never knows.

Little did the Poet and the Raven know that in the next few years with the help of Phantasos (whose work it is to create all the inanimate objects in dreams) they would be able to broadcast their work all over the world in people’s dreams.

R:
You are probably right my friend. Tell me, why you look so morose? Has someone broken your heart?

P:
Ah! It would have been so much better had that happened. The pain of heartbreak is like manna for my soul. What I suffer from is guilt, my brother. All those broken hearts I left behind as I moved from shore to shore in search of fulfilment are tearing at my conscience. So many times have I been loved – deeply and unquestionably – and I have thrown it all away for my own selfish motives. And what have I achieved? I rot here, in this Scandinavian hell, for eternity.

R:
Hmmm! But you have me for company!

P:
True! True! So let’s hear some more haikus.

R:
What is for dinner?
- Said Adam one day to Eve.
Apple pie and tea!

An apple a day
Keeps eve a little away.
Now for the doctor …