Futility

This was something I had written a while ago, when I was feeling (a bit) melancholic, it certainly does NOT reflect my current state of mind, hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

His mind was black and cold, for he had lost everything and felt utterly numb. There was nothing he could say or do, he had lost all that mattered, it was gone. Just like that, like some sort of cruel prank that fate played on him.

His home was full of things his wife used to own. Her jewelry, her perfume, the 1948 Bordeaux that she had got from their trip to France, the bags of scented materials, the mural of an unmarked grave, her mind numbing scent, but her soul had gone. The sweat on her forehead was still fresh, even though, strangely, she was cold to touch. She was still smiling, but all he could think while touching her was how empty it felt. How hollow and fucking empty it felt. He then touched her stomach, which held the child he so loved. He often thought how strange it was to be so in love with someone whom he hadn’t even met or seen. Such was the strength, he assumed, of love. Some people are meant to be loved, and some aren’t, but now his wife had die. She had ceased to exist and so did his beloved child. Did that mean that he didn’t love them anymore? Was it possible to love someone or something that didn’t exist? No sooner did that thought enter his mind, than he crumbled under it. He felt sickened of the whole world except the two people he so loved and himself, but now he felt sickened of himself too.

There were no feelings like the ones he felt at that very moment. It was dry as a funeral drum and yet,  violent as a tempest. He tried to cry, but just couldn’t. He tried to stand up and pour himself a drink, but he just didn’t feel like it. This was the most withdrawn he had ever been, simply because the only people whom he loved and cherished had suddenly ceased to exist and he couldn’t take the shock of it. He couldn’t hold a thought in his mind, and at the same time couldn’t stop the tempest of chaos either. All he wanted to do was lie there, and hope that it wasn’t all lost, but he knew in his heart that it was gone, dead, and that his world was empty now.

They had gone, disappeared, left him for dead in this apocryphal hell, but wait, maybe he could meet them once again, maybe he can hug his wife, kiss her and smell her hair, maybe he can see his daughter being born, maybe he can hold her in her arms while she squeezes his finger with her soft angelic hands, maybe, just maybe, he can feel love again.

This sparked hope in him, maybe there was an afterlife, maybe there was meaning to life, and maybe there was a God after all. Its strange that in his weakest moment, he was somehow spiritually stronger than he ever was. He suddenly got up from the sofa. His mind was dead silent and black. His heart pumped all the blood he bloody well wanted. He went to the kitchen and almost instinctively reached for the knife in the drawer, not even noticing the mural that his wife thought to be so surreal. He looked at his wife and baby, smiled, and stabbed himself in the heart, and that was it. It was over.

Now he could finally see his wife and see his daughter bloom in the afterlife. He waited with a beaming smile on his face, but there was nothing. There was just blackness and deafening silence. He tried to look around, but couldn’t. He tried to talk, but couldn’t. He couldn’t even cry at the decision he had

taken. He could feel, but somehow, there was nothing around him, there was no HIM. All doubts he had about the existence or non-existence of a loving God and an afterlife now disappeared, for there was no doubt – there is no God. There is nothing beyond this sad pathetic life and there is nothing for us in this desperate and lonely life either, because nothing is yours, because once you take your last breath, its all gone. Everything. Including yourself, but the plethora of feelings he felt in those few minutes was worth a lifetime. The love he felt for his wife and daughter was worth any price that can ever be named. These few minutes when he thought he was going to see his family again were worth EVERYTHING to him and he sighed and smiled at his situation and how futile and helpless his life was.

Bridging the Gap

Tonight, I will be milking the cow with the biggest bosoms ever, this article is about cultural differences that Indians may or may not feel, I say this, because I haven’t been anywhere outside India other than Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and even there, I didn’t do much to experience their culture, in other words, I didn’t speak to anybody who wasn’t brown and didn’t have big noses and regular eyes. So yes, this is going to be another one of the many blog entries that people make about things that they don’t really know much about, simply because it’s a lot of fun knowing that people will read whatever they have to say. It’s the same reason why debating initially appealed to me, people just have to shut up and listen to all the things you have to say, even if it is a narcissistic drone like this article. Secondly, what I know about American culture is simply what I’ve seen in movies or read in books. Since I haven’t lived there, you may say that I have no idea, and as I have said, and I will not hold anything against you if you do.

OK, so here I am in my room, typing this from a country that is supposed to be one of the most culturally rich countries, a country to which people from all over the world come to “discover” themselves, sadly though, it seems like they are the only ones who are doing any soul searching or whatever, because, if you wiki India and read the article, the other name that India has is Hindustan, yes boys and girls, it is one of those countries in which a large portion of the population is deeply, profoundly, and, in many cases, falsely religious. In fact, One popular priest who has his own sparkly TV show even suggested that Sri Lanka was NOT the place referred to in Ramayana as ‘Lanka’, but that it was actually Australia, yes, this happened, you can’t make this stuff up. Don’t get me wrong, there are many pious people who are earnest, honest, principled and genuine, but, it is undeniable that there is a large generation gap between these earnest folk and the people who are in their pre mid-life now. Again, there are many people of this age group who are genuinely very religious in an honest way, but really, as far as I know, none of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting are religious people, hell, I bet there are some people who are unaware about many things that is common knowledge, like where the war in Maha-Bharatha took place.

Now, I have established (very weakly) that the current bar-hopping, clubbing, girlfriend having,  ganja-smoking (well, this can’t really be called non-religious, legend says that, when Amrutha was being churned, a drop of it fell on the ground and it grew into marijuana, and it is also written in many scriptures that Shiva, the God of death, smoked a lot of marijuana), cigarette smoking, causeless generation have become the way that they are simply because of the advent of mass communication, because of the fusion of so many cultures, of which, the western culture stands tall.

This can be viewed as being a positive or a negative thing. The main negative reasons being that, slowly, the original culture of people seems to be vanishing, and everybody is slowly, but surely progressing to a common state, which is far from how the world was when people whose teachings the previous generation and those before them are/were so religiously following. And the main positive reason is latter half of the negative one. While it is very important to hold on to our own culture and our principles in a world where originality is becoming extremely scarce, one thing we must realize is that when the principles that people follow were propounded, people were absolutely unaware of any region that is beyond the ocean, and even if they did, there is no possible way anybody can logically conclude that one day, a bunch of people with funny accents and fair skin would colonize their land. We must realize that eventually, there is only one way we can truly classify people, which is, being morally good or bad. It is as simple as that. For example, a guy who drinks socially cannot be viewed as a blasphemer if he is the head of a charity organization. We must also realize that crossing the ocean is not really that big a deal now, well, maybe George Bush will refute this, because he thought that oceans could protect the US from terrorists. Since it isn't difficult to cross them anymore, it becomes pretty hard to say that the whole planet is becoming a single entity. It is obvious that there are many differences of opinion when it comes to people of different cultures, and that there will always be a small amount people who will be against globalization, but there is also so much friendship, admiration and also, many common objectives and thoughts.

So, in essence, what I am saying is that we, as people who live on planet earth, have to work past the cultural differences simply because it is inevitable, and it’s hard to imagine life without heavy metal or football and that it is also of paramount importance to cling to the culture that we were brought up in.  So, if you live abroad, go and eat some local cuisine, drink some of the local hooch and mingle.

PS.  Some people maintain that I have a stunted sense of sarcasm, but I don’t think that’s the case, so if any parts of this post seems obscene, you can just go ahead and assume that it’s because of my poor understanding of sarcasm and subtlety.

Strange Thoughts

It’s been too long since I last blogged, and I am too lazy to look it up and tell you how long, just scroll down, or, if you are reading this as a standalone article, go to the blog home page and see for yourself. This is a random rant about how shitty things can be in the style of Mark Haddon, you can read it and laugh about it. Here it is:

Sometimes,  I find it extremely hard to just sit on the couch and let a sigh out, to exhale and oust all the worries away. Actually, this is the case all the time, it’s a similar predicament I experience when I’m running and somehow, it feels unnatural to suddenly stop, I guess it has something to do with inertia or whatever, but really, all I want to do is come to my room, sit and just, well, exhale, I want to be able to take all the thoughts, all the worries, troubles, sadness, guilt, happiness, everything away, just unplug and exhale and be able to keep my shoulders low and close my eyes and think of absolutely nothing, which is just impossible for me to do.

There’s always some annoying shitty thing on my stupid mind, all I want to do Is , as I’ve said twice now, Is to relax, is to not think about how MS word changes the small I to the capital I but doesn’t do the opposite when I go back and change the I to an is, but I can’t do that unless I erase the I and type is, but apparently, I’d much rather type a sentence about it, and think about it for no bloody reason for many minutes. Maybe this makes me crazy, but I guess that’s just who I am. Syd Barrett, the lead singer of Pink Floyd was said to be crazy, what many people today would call bi-polar, but he created some of the most amazing music and inspired many people to be original, and laid the groundwork for much of Pink Floyd’s later work.

My name is Srikanth, I may have OCD, but I do not live in the US of frikkin A, so nobody goes around telling me that I have OCD, and that I need to go on pills to alter my mind and get me to what the society deems as a normal state of mind, fuck society, I want to be me, not what people think I should be. Maybe that makes me weird, yes, I asked many questions in time classes, but its only because it was a different atmosphere, and it felt comfortable, for some reason, I feel extremely un comfortable about asking questions or being in the spotlight for even a millisecond, again, that’s just me I guess, this has been a problem since the 3^rd grade I think, when I asked what was apparently a stupid question, “why do potatoes grow underground?”, and everybody laughed at me because they didn’t know why and it didn’t bother them.

That’s another thing, I hate not knowing things, which is why when somebody suddenly changes lanes on traffic I almost feel betrayed, because I wasn’t told, it’s the same case when I make plans and people cancel on me, yes, you know who you are, don’t do that again, I want to be kept in the loop, if you want to play football, tell me and play, and I won’t freak out and write a paragraph about it in my stupid lame blog that nobody reads.


Thank you for reading this irrelevant, incoherent article, this will just be a spec in the spectrum that is your mind, your memory. So, I’m sorry for peeing all over one atto-meter-squared area of your mind.