Heal the World..Kill the Phonies!

haa hee hoo!

2007-07-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

havent written since long.
may be i didnt barge into many phonies, or may be there are way too many in number for me to even register.

ok, but, i will register. so well..

at the risk of sounding extremely judgemental and inappropriate, (i dont care, dont like it, dont read it, but i know u will, coz somewhere even u identify, with the being phoney urself or with me).

we in here operate on the presumption that i am not phoney, if u beg to differ, beg on ur own blog. thank you.

and so i thought i would write and write and write about people i sneer at everyday.
but alas the words didnt flow.

i tried again, and nada, nothing. why cant i pen what i dissaprove in my mind so often. why cant i pen what affects my world view, what makes me detest it and withdraw from it.

no, its not vague, for i know i sneer, and i sneer coz i know i dissprove of it.

then why, why cant i pen the abundance of phoneyness i find around me.

i thought, i think..and realize something i dont want to pen, but i should.

may its coz i myself cant decide where i end and phoney starts.

may be i cant decide if i am one or all are it.

may u dont need to know. for u might dissaprove of it one moment, do the same another moment.

it might be called convenience but then, doesnt convenience mean making life easier and thats what most of us want to do.

but then here, i myself am forgetting, the reason why i started writing. it was because phoneyness affected me. and so,it is important to pen what affects me.

i shall. soon. when i can.

Happiness blah blah!

2007-02-04T10:17:00.000-08:00

That’s the ideal end to all. To a situation, to an hour, to a day, to a month, a year and well a life. We live our lives to find that happiness. An infant cries out, for he has needs, and when those needs are fulfilled, he finds his happiness. Slowly, just about fulfilling of needs stops making us happy, for the understanding of needs changes. Then you have desires. And desires are indefinable and unfathomable.
If an unfathomable thing makes us happy, can we ever be happy?
I am not happy. I donot think I can ever be happy. Coz my desires are unfathomable. Coz everybody’s desires are unfathomable. So nobody is happy. When nobody is happy, how can we know what happiness is? Further, how do we know it exists? Is happiness just an illusion? Can anybody be happy? If can, please let me know how it looks like.
If happiness does not exist, then me sulking the day I got my job and crying my eyes out the next day, mean I am unhappy? If happiness does not exist, then how can unhappiness exist? Then me sulking and crying is not unhappiness? Then what is it? Am I just doomed to sulk and cry? Should I stop investigating further coz the thread of deductions just breaks there? Does the thread of deduction ever break? It can, or it can never? A theorem at the end of a deduction breaks the thread, trying to deduct the exact value of pi does not? So is that the sulking and crying is like a theorem at the end of a deduction or is the unending value of pi? Should I just consider the sulking and crying as the end to a series of happening? Or should I consider it a part of a series of unfortunate moments in my life? Will I call these unhappy moments or just moments? Does the word ‘moment’ encapsulate the unhappiness or happiness in the moment? Is the word moment positive or negative? It should be neither considering there is nothing called happiness, or thus unhappiness. At the end of the day, its all in the mind.

PS – Crying cleans up eyes, is a destresser and a great motivator.

Of Emotions and non-emotization

2006-09-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

Emotions are we, we feel and thus we emote. However, I believe there is a stark difference between ‘having of emotions’ (I am consciously avoiding using the term emotional) and emoting. Having emotions is human, however display of the same, emoting, is loserly. I call the process of emoting; emotization.

Emotization is show of weakness. It is gendered for women emote, but further, as power is masculine, powerful women donot emote. Logical deduction would mean men in general donot emote, further, powerful men never emote.

What did Akbar of Mughal-e-Azam have in common with, Hitler, further have in common with, closer home Indira Gandhi. These were the most powerful people of their times, and were known for their stoic bland expressions in times of adversity. So averse was Indira Gandhi to emoting she was rarely found wet eyed even on the sudden demise of her younger son. That was the reason why Hitler’s lovelife is such a big deal, for it is very difficult to fathom this guy to be emotional. Imagine, Hitler, with tears in his eyes, saying I Love You to his loved one. There’s where the dichotomy lay, for this guy did have emotions, for he was in love, but what is difficult to digest is that he expressed that emotion too. Akbar loved his son, but failed at emoting any such emotion.

Further on a lay man level, my everyday observation is that emoting is uncool, for it ‘nakidifies’ your inner, true self. Now why would that be shameful for some is another issue to ponder upon.

Thus one way of towering over another person is by foregoing emoting, by proving ones strength by withstanding the outburst of emotions.

Although I definitely believe that even those who donot emote for want of superficial of power, stature etc., donot necessarily lack the emotions. However, in the whole process of suppressing emotions and being unemotive, they somewhere start belying the existence of such emotions. And that is how inhuman acts are conceived, in a cold cemetery of emotions.

Thus the emotive being becomes a weak being, implying a humane being becomes a weak being. No wonder its an ugly world!!

Real and unphony and scary…

2006-05-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

I do not take anything lying down, but at my hostel in Bombay I am this meek kid without a tongue, who does what I am asked to do. I am not being this way, willingly, but I guess, the hostel and its inmates are just too real and scary for me. Not scary in the you-can-hurt-me type sense, but scary in the what-if-I-end up-like-them sense. The reality of the lives in the hostel scares me.

Some 5 of us are watching TV, some scary Aahat type serial, and are nearing the end. Most of us are on the edge of our seats, when this really fat, middle aged woman comes, switches channel, puts some saas bahu thing and starts watching it. I hear some meek protests, but she sits in the centre of the TV room like a don, and says how she is been living in this hostel for the past 4 years, and nobody had dared to change her routine of watching the serial, and that she will see to it that nobody is able to. She was so loud, and I doubt I would’ve ever taken such shit, but I didn’t want to react. I didn’t feel any anger towards her, for I pitied her, as she was so powerless in her world, that she reassured herself by elucidating her power this way. She is a known yeller, yes, that’s the word for her, for she never speaks, she yells.

Yesterday, I wanted to watch friends that comes at 7 on star world. So I went to the TV room at 6, so that, I am able to ‘catch the TV’ for another hour. Just when I was about to beam with pride, when the clock struck 7 and I found myself alone in the TV room, I find this woman with short cropped hair walk in, pencil thin, without any trace of any curves, in any part of her body, and with the most dead pan face, that I have ever seen, and switch channels. I am aghast, and she looks at me, with the same dead look and says, I always watch ‘Mamta’ at 7. Mamta, it is associated with some emotions I guess, and looking at her, I could not stop wondering, where was that last spec of emotion left in her.

This hostel is their life. They can’t live anywhere else, for nowhere else can they boost their non-existent self worth, the way it is possible in this microcosm of loserness. It scares me, coz someday the bubble might burst for them, or may be it bursts everyday for them, and then they yell or bully people around, to sew it and inflate it again!! And I guess life goes on…

This hostel sometimes brings me face to face with the most unphony faces of life.
I was supposed to expect a roommate yesterday. At around 8, while I was having dinner, a middle aged woman, with half burnt face, walks in, with a bag. A chill went down my spine, I couldn’t chew the morsel that was in my mouth and I had to force myself from staring at her. I picked up my plate and went to put it away and when I turned back after filling my bottle of water, I could not see her. I was scared that she must’ve gone to the room upstairs. I cant explain how I felt, I had to force myself to go to my room, and when I reached my room , and I found the room locked, I don’t think I had sighed such a relief in my entire life. I had absolutely freaked out by the very idea of sharing a room with a woman who looked like that.

I am so ashamed of myself. I mean the only thing I should be scared of staying in a hostel, is well, the safety of my belongings. If I keep everything under lock n key, I needn’t worry about that too, and I definitely had no right or intentions of drawing a judgment that the woman would steal my stuff.

Then why did I freak out, just because she looked that way? I gave it a thought and realized that I haven’t seen the real world, the unphony world, the world without cover ups. It will be ugly, it will be freakish, but it is real and all of us have to accept it and deal with it, coz its our world, however much we deny it, anything can happen to anybody.

The Bombay Poverty

2006-05-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

It’s been 4 days in Bombay. The last time I was here, fortunately I did not have time to look around, explore and grasp the place. This time I have all the time, and whatever I have grasped in the 4 days has been anything but pleasant. And everything was unphony. There was no pretence, no cover up, plain and bare truth.
It was poverty, quite obviously, it was the contrast of lives, for Bombay is home to the most ostentatious rich and well the most visible poor. Suketu Mehta deals with this contrast quite well in his book ‘Maximum City; Bombay Lost and Found’.
Its not that I have been some ignorant citizen, who has turned a blind eye to the realities of an Indian ‘non middle and above class’ life. But the poor and poverty of Bombay is different. Its in your face, its visible even to the most blind, and it cannot be ignored. It’s omnipresent, and it can be felt even where you donot even see a beggar. It is true and it is unphony.
The other parts of India, it seems, are ashamed of the poor, and are tucked away in some part of the town/city, where they are not visible. The poverty in other parts of India is the invisible truth. The most visible truth of Bombay is poverty. Bombay does not hide the poor, I donot know if that is out of choice or the sheer magnitude makes it impossible. Also this is one place where the ‘below poverty line’ method of measuring poverty fails miserably. Even Sen’s ‘capability development’ principle, which I believe to be one of the tools to account for poverty, does not seem to fit in. The Bombay Poverty is indefinable, unaccountable and somewhere, un-alleviatable. It is inherent to Bombay, and I donot think anybody can fathom Bombay without it.
A trip down the suburban roads will familiarize you with it, and then after spending some time walking down the roads, you internalize it. And then it hits you. If you stay long enough, then like any other pain, felt over a long period of time, you become numb to it.
This familiarization happened in the last trip to Bombay six months back, when I saw, two storied slum shacks, not higher than 5 feet from the ground, skirting the road from I don’t know where, till where the town started. I could not take my eyes off it, for I had seen the beggars, I had heard my sweeperess tell me about her miserable life, I am a socially aware being, I read newspapers and know what’s happening in famine and drought infested areas of Orissa etc, but nothing had prepared me to not notice, to the extent of getting entrenched in my mind, the face of the Bombay Poverty.
I walk down the roads of Nariman point, on my way to marine drive everyday for morning walk, and I see people sleeping off the road, the most sound sleep, as if there is nothing wrong with their lives. I agree somewhere they have accepted their circumstances, not out of choice, but the sheer acceptance of this poverty, of this life, is, according to my guesses, extremely peculiar to Bombay.
The sheer number of people living off the road in Bombay, apart, the reason for this peculiarity, according to my observations, is the satisfaction of being a Bombaiyaa.
Nobody wants to leave this city, nobody wants to go back and or look for other avenues. They consider this city to be the be all and end all. If life will provide something to them, it will be here, and so they give up their lives to the destiny and to the mercy of the City. This makes them the hopefuls, and this makes them not hate their poverty, for there is hope and they become the backbone of the city, and this unables the City to hide its poverty, for only in this city, the poverty inflicted are not poor but hopefuls.
Hats off to the city of contradictions. For in Mehta’s book, somebody says nobody dies hungry here. For people tell me this is the safest of the Metropolises in India, and for the time being, I agree (with my fingers crossed). For the Mumbaiyyaa I met on the train said this city is cheaper than the small town of Himachal Pradesh. For even after seeing the face of the city, the slum shacks and the like, there are hordes of trains filled with young men and women coming to this city to get lost in the crowd and be the part of the Bombay Poverty.
I for one, haven’t been able to decide whether I like it or not. There is nothing that attracts me here, for even though my rational mind says, this is the most convenient city, most amenities at stone-throw distance, this is the city best for professional considerations, but my heart says this is the city for hordes, for dreamers, and not for me who does not lives dreams but vision. My vision cannot fathom myself being a part of this hugeness, and the Bombay Poverty scares me. Its hit me bad and I guess if I want make this city my home, I will have to force myself to live here long enough, to become numb to this omnipresent spectacle, as well as the contradictions.

(written on 12/05/06)

doubting my own mean self...

2006-04-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

I have come to realize that I am a good person. I got slotched..ok not slotched..slightly high and then referred to the yuckiest person in the world as a sweetheart. I was jumping and hopping around, smiling to all and sundry. Ok this is weird for me coz I am rude and obnoxious to ppl I donot like and am cold to ppl in general.
I donot understand my other self, the drunk self. Is this real, or is my drunk self real.Am I pretending to be a bitch, am I PHONEYYY!!!....

to be or not to be..

2006-04-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

.. an individual..for if you are..you are going against the flow..u are hurting the majority..for if you are not..you are a part of the millions who live and die everyday with nothing significant in their existence.

is phoneyness and facades a part of our lives..is it possible to shunt them out of our lives..
will doing such a thing make you a mentally disturbed person..
or are 'mentally disturbed ppl', the only 'individuals' ard..

Food of thought..

"The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness" - Jean Cocteau

Much to my relief somebody called Jeffrey Young said "You can't buy cool with a bunch of Seattle-centric, flannel-shirted mini-Bills driving new Ford Expeditions, wallowing in their overheated stock options and soaring sense of self-worth. World-class creativity requires more than rational thinking. It takes a certain madness."

groupism...

2006-03-26T11:17:00.000-08:00

I think one of the sources of phoniness is groupism, it makes you want to 'fit in' and in the process takes you away from what you are. Groupism is something worse than peer pressure, for the latter affects your public life like academics/profession, but groupism affects you as a person for it embodies friendship. groupism is worse for it is all pervasive, it ruins the individuality on the pretext of loyalty...
US has become what it is, because it could divide the world into groups. So we became the third world, and the group of the great 8 became our caretakers, even though they sucked their resources from us.
Nearer home, britishers ate into the vitals of our society by selling groupism to us. so some became moderates and the other extremists. some gandhians and others violent revolutionaries.
I am not including groupism on the basis of religion/caste/region etc., stuff we are born with, coz those may be called camaraderie..or whatever. although even this is groupism for me, and thus also, a source of phoniness. Come to think of it, the various interpretations of koran to justify Jehad, which most of the times are contradictory, is an example of phoneyness that groupism breeds. it makes you defend your stance as a part of the group irrespective of what 'logic' or 'reason' says.
Being a groupie makes life easier, you have people to stand by you, you buy loyalty by selling yours.Its the best way to escape criticism. Thus there is no place for ethics and morality in groupism, it is, simply put, an agreement, of convenience and by convenience and for convenience. Thus it leads to shallow thinking and living.
It might sound cynical, but pure logic says that groupism can be dangerous. without ethics and morality as benchmarks, and reason and logic becoming immaterial for 'loyalty', it sure can lead to and has lead to disasters.
Jehad is one example, for there is no specific aim or ideology to back it. theres only the loyalty factor, groupie factor. so jehadis of hamas will support kashmiri militia for the reason as 'heavy' as loyalty to cause of killing in the name of Islam.
USA and Britain are groupies, are able to legitimize mass killings by signing the pact of loyalty to each other's misdemeanors.
sometimes groupism is harmful because it might suppress the opposing individual voices. such oppostions are inherent to a democratic world and suppression of the same can be extremely harmful. During freedom struggle, such a part was played by the Indian National Congress, which even though, had innocent intentions, became such a powerful group, that it drowned the alternate views. somewhere, formation of the muslim league and turning of the tide for jhinna can be attributed to this congress groupies.
Groupism, which means, to the exclusion of others is extremely sick in its very concept. It thrives specially in a competitive environment, where the reassurance of being good and being cajoled is seeked by many. Although groupism provides this kind of reassurance, because of the pact, that i talked about,it leads to wastage of talent, for it kills true competition. it leads people to believe in a safe and unadventurous life, for it makes them believe they are good enough, and all that is fake, for the reassurances are fake. it gives ppl false impression of success and contentment and makes them complacent and unadventurous and wary of treading and exploring challenging grounds.
But the sad part is, you never realize that you are a groupie. its become so inherent to our lives, that non-groupies are tagged as loners/non-conformists/aberrations. But we fail to realize what most people who stand out in the world, who make a mark for themselves..are...they are non-conformists, they are non-groupies.
also they are loners, for the place at the top, is only for The One.

just to clarify...

2006-03-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

I believe in non-violence, although not a Gandhian, I would not give my other cheek for another slap, but I would just hold the slapping hand, all filmi style, till the point the other person cools down... the mention of killing in the caption...well its metaphorical..to kill the phoney mentality!!

Want the world to know u sneezed....ORKUUT!!

2006-03-19T04:09:00.000-08:00

I agree its a good thing to keep in touch, for we are emotional beings and get attached to people/places. Also the idea of meeting the long lost has been romanticized so greatly that a site like orkut becomes like a magnet for the unloved(read people suffering from the attention deficiency syndrome). It allows them to tell people they exist, want to exist for them, let them know their conquests(read the relationship status, professional profile, but also books and passion can be worth a read to understand the conquests). And well then there are the testimonials, testimonial of the fact how many people love them, adore them. Oh yes, not to forget the fan list, and the unending endeavour to make it as long as any one in your friends list or your friend's friend's list!!
Anybody with a slightly sane mind (read unphony) and decent power of observation will be able to guess that both the above are the results of (to put it in less derogatory words) mutual admirations. I agree to the mutual bit of it, for there seems to an unsaid understanding that I will raise you to the pedestal of the fan list god, and the receiver of unaccounted 'honey sweet and adorable testimonials' if you do the same for me. For this reason, I quite dispute the genuine existence of admiration, anyways thats immaterial as long as there is the long fan list and testi list.
And then there is the photo album, that is a pictorial account of the conquests. So there will be your photo, in the best of pose that your unshapely body could strike, at an angle that nobody will be able to notice that bulge or crooked features. And picasa is always there to add the much needed effect. Then there's another one with your partner, and the rest of that conference you attended, that trip to singapore/any phoren land, and any other pic that makes you look like a cousin of bipasha/john.
If the above are not sufficient to open your life like a 'khulli kitab' to the entire world, much to your excitement, there is the very public scrap book. Well the purpose was, to write scarps in it, but as it turns out, its the best forum to make public all that has not been made...so there are most personal stuff written and so wantingly made public, it being the next best forum to carry on the mutual admiration.
But one positive aspect of orkut, which I have figured out after much delibertation is that it promotes world peace. I was, very obviously, the high headed snobbish bitch in school, I think am still in law school, but a reclusive version of the same. And here I was on orkut, replying to people with honey sweet hiiis, how r us'...to people i never bothered to speak to even in school.
So well, even though it aids to spread the plague of phoneyness, atleast theres love for the unloved and desperate souls. Good going..keep orkutting!!

something i cant ever forget...

2006-03-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

One of my friends, a hindu, in absolute sense of the term, said once, when I started with my 'oh..so juvenile' views on communal riots...

'u cant understand this..u have lived all ur life in a place where religion has been a non issue...ne ways..u are far from being a hindu..u chant hanuman chalisa on diwali for godsake..but i believe Godhra happened for good...these muslims had to be told things and get issues straight'...

all my arguments on being human and sensitive and on non-violence were dismissed off as I am, according to her, politically illiterate...for she is born n brought up in UP ..n well...me in a wannabe cosmo town Chandigarh.

Even if agreeing to my illiteracy and wannabeness...am I still juvenile in saying....plz dont KILL!!

Me...here and very sad

2006-03-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

I came back from dinner, disgusted at, well guess, PHONINESS. I am not much of a controversy seeker and I try not to be rude (i do try, seriuosly) . So well I just threw my plate off..not literally..I love food..and came back. Will write later what happened, before that something about me..

I am a self-proclaimed capitalist and I define capitalism not according to the leftist definition but in my own terms. Those terms and their modalities are under consideration right now. I say leftist and not Marx, coz I think he has been misunderstood and painfully twisted to suit all situations...well this is also for later.
I am on my way to become a good hearted, and concerned capitalist. I wish to change things, I wish to be aware and a complete human being. I believe, living in my small microcosm, mainly consisting of me, my thoughts and my readings, that all human beings are sensitive basically, its life that pushes them to the fringes of cruelty and forces them to indulge in acts that vary from being rude to being dastardly.

However, I have come to realize that the world outside has belied my beliefs. I was wrong in considering Holden Caufield to be just a teenage reck, I think his was a fight against what we have come to be:phonies, hypocrites, selfish junglees. I might sound paranoid, but I genuinely donot understand if there is any kind of justification, be it legal/illegal, humanly/unhumanly, any justification for such madness. Nobody gains from this idiotic stupidity.

And I say all this coz at the dinner table, at India's leading institution for legal education, where people swear by rights/duties blah blah, people who intend not to sell their souls to corporates and want to 'work for the masses'.. meaning do a course of Human rights from Harvard/Michigan blah blah, say
- I am tolerant to gays!!!(sweetie...they dnt want u to tolerate them, they want u to leave them unnoticed..as u would leave any other human being unnoticed)
-Apart from political correctness, its a fact, two guys kissing is disgusting and the first reaction will be yuck!!!(mine too...but it'll be for u and ur bf kissing also)

These ppl then put forward the argument that its non-conformist and if u do nething like that, like walking naked, it will attract chhii thuus...i have no hassle with somebody putting forward this argument, but what disgusts me is what followed. When I questioned whether these chii and thuus would follow a disabled, somebody with no hands...guess the reaction..it was a unanimous...'OBVIOUSLY...look at those beggers..chhii thuuu'

At last, while 'throwing my plate', I said its an arguement against insensitivity..the future legal eagles of India said....shrugging their shoulders...TOO BAD!

Indeed..really bad...and very sad!