Writer's Block

When you find yourself staring at the page in front of you, and keep on making typos and spelling mistakes, one comes to know, that one has Writer's Block. It is the time when all stuff that you write seem shit. Yes, I can feel the difficulty right in this post.
I know I haven't posted in a while, but now you know why. I haven't really been able to write much in these past months; mostly because of tight schedules, and secondly, because of several hindrances in my life. I had been in a crisis for some long duration of time, and indeed I am in one right now; I had decided to drop the veil of Picaro, and just be me. But you see, I realized that I was fooling myself. I am after all me, and cannot hide from myself.

I am in between two stories right now, along with several unfinished ones ready at my side for my attention. I am so deep in my block, that right now I am searching the web for stock characters, and so far it has helped a little. However, insightful characters are never created this way. Also, I needed some specific ones, not your average Joe type characters, but some really strong ones. I would suggest people read Nisio Isin's Bakemonogatari, or watch it perhaps, as it is also an anime.

So I guess I shall write later. 

I am getting into the groove, so maybe if I start reading Quantum Mech, I will get some more ideas of a scary High School Ghost Story!

After three days which passed like a gale of cool air blasting across the countryside in the summer, I have begun to feel a kind of tone-down affecting my behaviour. Yes, three days at the Cool Japan Festival was completely, and in short, awesome. I will never forget my participation, and the memories it had. Too bad I couldn't still sell any of my own ideas, but I could interact with companies like Bandai and BushiRoad, and understand a bit about the market that is India. Yes, Yes, I know. I sound kinda fake.I wished to have interacted more, but I could not. And it was far from a proper Anime Conference a la SakuraCon. Nonetheless, the Festival brought me lots of positives. For one, I saw a Maiko (her name was Korin) for the first time in my life. And, I couldn't believe how beautiful she was, and that too she was 17 years old! I got myself a Vanguard deck. I just need to find out a little bit more, and I hope i will represent India in the battling scenes soon enough. It was a bit too costly as a souvenir, but, I am glad to be a possessor of a brand new trial deck. I hope Bushi Road has got a distributor, otherwise I will try to find them a new one. But, most importantly, I made loads of new friends! But now, I need to go back to my thoughtful and pensive self. Art is done in solitude, and displayed in public!

Wake....

I don't know why exactly I start over again. There is a gaping discontinuity that I gaze over. After a very long soirée do I take up a pen again to write. Yes, the break was an enforced one. It is not daily that a Writer writes his own thoughts. Sometimes, he lets his mind wonder, and drift along with the clouds in the scary blue sky... Hmmm..' *yawn* Yes, I sleepy now, and my brain is justifying a closure on all things taking up space in the mind. I will now continue to post the daily happenings of mine, such trifles in front of the grand-canonicals of the Universe. But, I know about it, and therefore it is beneficial to me.

Lethargy

Somehow, today I don't feel moving.

My body has become sodden, and my mind is now in a quagmire. I have heavy cough, and slight fever, and my body aches to move. I have brushed today at one o'clock in the afternoon, and missed most, nay, all of my classes.

What is it that ties us to these states of unyielding languor? Is it complacency? Is it lack of motivation? Is it just plain laziness?

But I don't feel good at all. I feel like, well, shit.

I think it is lack of drive, lack of motivation of course. But I have so much to do, so much to think. Then why?

Ah!
That is then. It is just me trying to question this lethargy. The only way to defeat it, is to do.

Let's do it.

Anna Hazare and Corruption: Afew different aspects

Is Anna Hazare’s tirade against corruption justified? I think yes. He has helped ignite all the repressed ire of the middle class workers in India, and as is given his movement’s backbone lies in the strength of unity amongst these middle-class people, who are frustrated, disgusted, and plain fed-up of the prevailing system of bribery. It might, and then again might not, sound strange: in India, the system of bribery is an accepted part of any government office; it is as if you are expected to pay up to them for any job, which may just be his regular duty.

Anna Hazare says stop this! This is enough! You cannot go on giving out bribes to everyone, for this system will just go on and on, and it would act like a whirlpool of illegality and stupidity, and at last would not justify having any system at all.
I respect his views, but my brother pointed out a complex problem: why do people ask for bribes?

I do not think that all big, fat people sitting behind a desk in India are greedy, or that an epidemic of avarice has gone on spreading faster that malaria. I agree, most of the people taking bribes are slobs, who just want more comforts out of their life, and some are plain weirdoes. But a slight majority of them are small level officials, or perhaps rank lower down in hierarchy. Why? They don’t get paid enough.

A traffic constable stands on the street for about 5-hours, continuously, on roads on two separate shifts, including night, for India suffers sufficiently from a shortage of people (yeah, seriously) in the traffic police in some places. And for all this hard work, they hardly get Rs. 5000 a month. That is like $100. What if he tries to earn a few more thousand for himself, and in the process try to extract some bribes? According to my brother, he would gladly give some money to the constables, and perhaps even some to the peons, who are, if you don’t know, unskilled workers doing odd jobs in an office. And, mind you, they work harder than sloths like me. My brother says, giving some rewards, perhaps even voluntarily, is good.

But the sad reality is, even though their numbers are more, and they only take Rs. 100 or Rs, 20 from you, the amount of money they take shirks away shamefully in front of the sums that the infamous baboos take from you. Sadly, there are high ranking officials in India, including the ministers who actually take bribes whose amount stretches well into the millions of dollars.

My father is a minor government official, and though we aren’t affluent, what I am proud of is that I can walk with my head held high and proud, abreast with my father. He doesn’t take bribes, and I know that: he has been in troubles with his seniors in his office when he has reportedly and reputedly denied taking bribes from contractors, thus not favouring any of them. He tells me the actual reason behind all of this.

People want more: and this reason inadvertently asks them to indulge in anything and everything in order to earn more money. As long as this want exists, corruption will be there. We will corrupt our ways to earn more. That is but human tendency, and only people who have not surrendered to this desire, can truly be called elevated people.

In the end, everyone is now frustrated, mostly with the stinking government, and everyone, including the ones who take bribe out survival value, want this tradition to be gone. People in general have come to understand, that one way or the other, this system only benefits the powerful; the less powerful constable cannot now bear the shame or extracting that measly little more to gift his three kids some early presents. No, bribes are now frustrating.

If only, oh! If only, the people could understand that more is not the answer on the materialistic side, it is only on the spiritual side that they should ask more! If the government assures some standard living conditions for these poor constables, of whom, in Mumbai, over half live in the slums littered around this gigantic city. But, now, it is the time of the people.

People it seems have now taken the summary of Lincoln by word, and their uniting force is Anna Hazare. How true it is to the spirit of democracy, is a question that would be answered later. For now, only action is important.

The Song of Music

There is no magic yet, which is as beautiful, as mystical and as enchanted as music. For whatever reason, and I don’t know what it exactly is, humans find themselves inexorably entangled with the powers of music; it is a nature, as latent and ingrained within us as a snail is in its shell. We are drawn to strains from afar, and to us all it appears a little different, yet unexplainably wonderful. To weary travelers, the song of a bird brings joys in gloomy roads, while the gyrating tunes revels in the nightclubs of the cities, but wherever music is being played it invariably is important as a carrier of the essence and atmosphere of the place.
Whatever the case, music is as omnipotent as the variety of human beings who inhabit this earth. For wherever humanity has gone, it has carried music with it; wherever culture has proceeded, there is a particular way in music which it propagates and plays. Music is extensively varied in its tastes and flavors, but whatever it is, it is just magical when everybody joins in and flows in its endless streams. And this magic takes us to lands and countries heretofore unseen, unheard, but gradually understood in its chords, pitches and tunes.
In our hostel, we had a session of this breathtaking drug, and what shall I say of it? It was wonderful.

We huddled on a staircase, and Mr. Zeeshan Khan, with his guitar on his thigh, and with Mr. Subhro Ganguly, with his enchanting vocals, started the proceedings in which we all chimed in together. We followed the course set up by the strings and the rhythms, and tousled over with them along the length of the scales. Surprisingly, most of cannot sing well, and yet we all joined in. It was wonderful, it was magical.

It has the most tremendous powers of all on this planet earth. May we make some more, and continue the magic that we have got from our forefathers. May it always continue.

It is 2.30 in the morning, and my eyelids continue to droop precariously over my eyes, and i do not know how much longer i can stay awake. I have been away for too long a time to realise, but I have come back, and come back to thinking for good.

I am sure I didn't see the glacial ice heading towards me, but consciously or not, it froze within a bubble of air, and I got trapped in the jumble of the clog wheels of the world. I could hardly recollect anything that I saw: they were mostly fuzzy pictures; I could not make sense of any of them. After this, there was momentary silence, and a dark hollow began creeping upon my back. I felt cold for the first time, and it was numbing. Now there was no pain, there was no feeling. I was dead; at least that was what it felt like.

Suddenly, this blur of images subsided, and I had in front of me a little song, which had broken through the barriers of this frozen ice. My body, unaccustomedly, started twitching to its graceful strain. It filled my body with vigour and warmth. and to this tune I danced, how so ever i could. Suddenly, the ice shattered open, and I was to see the most beautiful spring ever unfolded before my eyes.

Yes, I have come back. I have come back with a determination!