Pointless Rhetoric

There have been so many moments down the years when frustration dominated my very existence. I am generally pissed off at the system in place. It’s just so ridiculously repressive in a extremely unpretentious way that it silently murders the already weakened optimist maybe forever. It then watches in glee from side stands as hapless unsuspecting victims bite the dust.And another one. And another one. Brethren, this is a foolproof system that has been in place through the echelons of history and it has, to unrestrained dismay of the general, withered the coldness of time to reinforce itself with our psyche. Beneath it lay crushed the many dreams nurtured over a life time and from the grey ashes emerge lifeless zombies with their hollow eyes eating into us. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to live for. Why cant we make this cease? Has it not sucked the essence dry already? Did we twist and break the rod after all? I think we did.

Back in Black!!!

Its been a while since I last wrote. I think I lost my way and found myself out of the zone temporarily. The zone is a writer's holy grail and once you’re out of it the creative ensuing's cease and a blanket clouds your mind . For me this is how it has been like forever. I’m a on-off writer. I have these rather random very spaced out moments of creativity when I almost touch prolific levels. Shortly afterwards follows a depression where the barrenness extends endlessly. And I've resigned to the fact that however hard i try this how it will be for me.

Things have been decent around here for a change. I'm speaking local of course and not about the country in general which by the way is reeling thanks to the ever rising terrorism all over the place. These are days when every single one of us have wondered at some point or the other whether we would reach home in one piece. I every now and then wonder what drives these people. Perspectives bleared out miserably that the divide between the rational and plain old insanity doesn’t exist anymore. I believe in the freedom of expression. These guys have every right to blow themselves up since they've proved beyond and morsel of a doubt that they are the bane of this soil. But the problem lies in these gentlemen ending it all for a whole lot of other people who have dreams to live out , boundaries to cross and families to go home to ..seriously this has to stop. I don’t know how or when!! But it has to!!

Lets get back to how things have been around here. Like I was saying everything’s been OK(I kinda rephrased that a bit. After all its my damn blog) these last few weeks. Whitesugar was in hibernate mode for the past few weeks. Our bassy left us citing some pretty lame reasons and we were pretty much broken. It couldn’t have come at a worser time than this. Everything went haywire and things were not looking good for us. Musicians don’t exactly jump at you from every corner in Kerala. We are a steadily dying species. Then Gil called up his old friend Nijo. Gil and Nijo go way back. He’s a fantastic bass guitarist whos done time with the pros and knows the scene. Welcome Nijo!!!enter the Jungle. which brings things back to normal i presume. Meanwhile we won a competition at Kollam. An appetizer if you will. I realize how much I miss the smoke, the sweat, the unscientific power lights, the crappy sound. I have some positive vibes about this lineup and I dare to dream about big things to come, boundaries to break, pockets being filled. Feels good to be back. Feels good to be BACK IN BLACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I propose it all ends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not very inspired these days really. No particular reason though I would care to mention the general spirit of apathy that seems to permeate into everyday being. I am not gonna start on how the entire scene is falling apart these days. That topic has already been done to death a million times over. I don’t really want to sound pessimistic here but maybe this is the big climax. Like the Big Bang which started off the show. Let’s call it the Big Fizz. Life mirrors Art in that it’s a cycle. At some point things must start all over. This is the Creator’s way of maintaining integrity. Just our luck that we’re feeling the heat this time round.

In other news, things have been lukewarm around here and my sister had one of the worst b’days of her 19 years of existence/living. Viral Fever!!!!!!! Plus Dad was away on an official tour (they’re really close). She was pretty low the previous day but brightened up when she saw her b’day gift - a brand new Nokia 3500c. The gang showed up in the evening and there was some partial fun happening. Partial because the next day happened to be a working day. Meanwhile I decided to pull my shorts up and get down to some serious guitar practicing as the edge was missing these days. I looked up all my fav videos on youtube especially the one in which a juvenile 2 piece band from Argentina does a raw cover of Sepultura’s ‘Refuse Resist’. Those guys are destined for great things provided they are given the time. I think the viral fever is the prelude to an impending epidemic cause half the people I know have caught it. Ive also noticed that my general fitness level has taken a heavy toll owing to my slothful lifestyle and I along with a few friends decided to start playing badminton and realized on a scale of 1 to 10 im a 1\2 when it comes to stamina.

These being the only bright spots as things are pretty sick nowadays and leaves you with nothing special to look forward to. I just can’t help but notice the fatalist in me rearing its ugly head. I was scared at first because it’s mostly not a good thing but in retrospect I realized that I just cannot help it. Optimism crumbles under the onslaught of reality that given time you do not even bat an eyelid while watching your biggest fears unfurl right before your eyes. The feeling of hopelessness is all pervading. And I let it be. These are choices we always wish we had. But then that would have made things perfect. I’m someone who revels in imperfection which in a way transcends perfection a lot more than perfection ever will.

Be The Change...Yeaahh Right!!!!!!

Whitesugar was screwing around with an idea for a song the other day. Gil is a particularly enthusiastic guy and has his own Oh-I'm-So-right perspective on most things on planet earth. This is an excerpt from the brainstorming session that took place that day at our practice pad.

Scene1 (the only scene): WS Practice Pad. During daily load shedding.

Gil: Machane. We have to write a song and try and get it recorded. The theme is ‘Be the change’. It might be our big thing.

S: Yeah right. Just what the world needs. Another song on change. Half the worlds working on such stuff man.

Gil: Aliya. We need change man. The govt sucks. The road sucks. My job sucks. Our life reminds me of the market at Kaloor. It stinks to high heavens.

S: So what you’re saying is that we write a song about change when everything else is basically stagnant and stinking and not gonna change in a long long time.

JP: that’s cos I farted.

S: No you moron. I was speaking generally. Your fart just about sums it all up. Machane. Nothings gonna change man. For a long time.

We all need Change! Change from what? I for one, am sure I don’t want most of the things to change around here. Maybe I could really use some decent roads around here (roads in Kerala are a farce). Maybe a lesser degree of inflation would be real nice too. But that’s about it for me. We all think we want change. But if the change we were hoping for did happen, a lot of us would be kicked out of our comfort zones and we would be UNCOMFORTABLE.

Every other politician who’s worth his salt keeps piping about change. Its become a staple on every political agenda.Maybe it’s Change that the miserable social diseases who call themselves Bajrang Dal had in mind when they went on a death roll tearing apart a thousand dreams built over a lifetime. Blood all over the place. Families broken beyond repair. Maybe the CEO, who was mauled to death the other day, wanted Change as well. He probably felt that the workers were to blame for business lows and not some idiotic policy he came up with. Moral of the story: Change for the sake of change can friggin kill ya.

Deep down none of us really want change. We fool ourselves into thinking we need it. Change is never nice and easy. It carries with a lot of uncertainties, a lot of confusion and its almost a 100 % certainty that we’ll end up with something we hadn’t bargained for. And we might have to live the rest of our lives with that. I was watching this movie the other day ‘Pay It Forward’. In it the child who’s the protagonist comes up with this idea which he hopes will change the world. After he gets the picture there’s a line in which he says ‘People don’t wanna change. Cos they’re afraid’. That’s the whole idea. If we want some decent change, a change that might in some little way better the quality of life, WE must have the balls to change. And its hard and most certainly will mess you up big time. Are you ready to CHANGE??I still dunno.

Fraanship........Part 3

Okay I think its time to unveil the final part of the fraanship series. I like to think that my blog gets a minimum of 1000 hits daily and hence will write with that sort of a perspective. Reality check: no one EVER visits this blog. That’s not gonna keep me from posting though because the eternal optimist in me just wont let that happen. The better portion of humanity( me included) has not encountered the double edged sword that is fame to truly appreciate simple anonymity. Totally love that line in the academy award winning movie Chicago-‘If you cant be famous. Be infamous’ That’s just about how ridiculously simple things are which however does not imply that we don’t need our legal 15 minutes. Serioulsy!a little limelight never did hurt anyone right??right..

Trust me on this; you can always count on man ( or woman in this case) to, every now and then, take something pristine as friendship and somehow distort it into static that is way beyond any real recognition. I never did understand ‘transitions’ among friends or for that matter ‘part time friends’ . How the hell can you be friends one day and not even acknowledge each other’s existence the next. But obviously these kinda things are the norm these days which sheds some light on how messed up our little worlds actually are. Friendship is like a little yellow flower( baah.. cliché). It need a lot of care and nourishment and a little manure( read ‘shit’) as well to blossom. Nowadays all you hear is‘fast’ fast- fast marriages, fast education, fast bucks, fast kids…you get the picture? There just doesn’t seem to be any time for the simple joys of life. Certainly not for those that are not about YOU. The mantra is ‘Instant’. And that’s exactly how long things last.

I did my graduation in Industrial Chemistry and even now don’t have a clue as to what the hell was I thinking. But Heaven smiled upon me and I managed to scrape through. Barely. But all those hours of sweat and tears apparently didn’t register and guess what? I decided I am doing my Masters as well. And of all subjects in the planet. in Chemistry! My classmates were really brainy but nonetheless fun loving folks. God bless them all. If it’s a class it is imperative that there be a gang. And so it was. I had a gang of 6. Me (he he) and 5 girls. I loved all of them but was especially close to (or so I thought) T and M with whom I shared almost all my deepest secrets (not the disgustingly filthy ones. But nonetheless pretty close). It felt like our friendship was one of those things that were just meant to be. We just loved being with each other, talking crap and all that jazz. Those times were just so beautiful that I woke up everyday with bugs in my stomach praying it would never end. My brethren, spring does not last forever and shortly arrives the cold desolation of winter. Deep down in me, I knew all of this couldn’t last forever but never in my wildest dreams expected it to end on such a miserable note.

It started when I had to temporarily shift my base to the flat for a couple of months owing to a few domestic issues. I have no idea what got into me but I guess the long, solitary hours spent in the flat with combined with an inherent tendency to lapse into depression brought about a not-so-great shift in my personality. Those days were sick man. Couldn’t laugh, couldn’t talk, couldn’t that, couldn’t this. It was a hell ride of couldn’t’s. M normally used to call me every other day and would occasionally demand that I sing for her. People listening to us over the phone could have easily mistaken us for lovers. Even she thought I was avoiding her and hence reacted in the same way- she totally cut me out. I tried hard to come out of this but somehow didnt. It was as if I had been chained to the confines of my own mind. I tried hard to talk and have fun like before but it seemed very plastic. Things worsened everyday. At last I decided to return home and things began returning to normal once I was back in familiar territory. I began to think a lot more clearly and decided to own up to my gang. I knew they would understand. After all it’s nothing a little round table conference and a round of teas at the coffee shop can’t solve right?? Wrong!! Very very VERY Wrong. I apologized to them and admitted to everything. But their reaction was one resounding slap that rings even now. I was ridiculed , mocked at by my ‘best friends’. Apparently from the words of T, they weren’t puppets (whatever the hell that meant.) The 5 of them ganged upon me and broke me. Not pretty at all.

All of this helped me reassess things and the essence of true friendship revealed itself. Fun times are a given really but the day you find you’re not alone in shit be assured you have a friend. I tried really hard to hate but somehow just couldn’t. I think its because I’m a decent human being. I’m restating something I said earlier-Maybe we were just not meant to be. I would’ve loved for things to be different. But I’ve moved on. And I’m sure they have too. Once in a while my gang comes into my thoughts. M really loved the song’ I don’t wanna miss a thing’ by Aerosmith. When I sing that song these days it sounds very different, very familiar. And very painful. I always miss out on the words because my thoughts begin to wander. So I tore off that page from my diary and have never sung that song since.

The Wizard of TVM

The species Homo Sapiens ie you and me, has for time immemorial been intrigued by anything that defies its intellect. Like someone once said, there lives a child in all of us who with his wide eyed stare, exhibits unabashed admiration stares gawkily when things go out of the routine; a post modern Mr. Hyde sort of phenomenon. (Mr Hyde being mostly a good thing). This curiosity and marvel at the extraordinary, something that sans age or gender, pops up throughout our life cycle and can most likely be traced to the times when we were on all fours living the fun life. However present times have turned the majority of us into a phony who revels in the common sham notion that he is Superman even when he cant even spell ‘Clark Kent’. And as we carry on this flavorless lifestyle ; reveling in a juxtaposition of passive insipidness and total, sweet denial that something happens or someone comes by who catches you by the neck and shakes you so hard that you are forced back into that wide starry eyed look. Yup. the child in us has woken up and is bawling his head off.(at least the child in me). Am I going off on another one of my pointless rants. Maybe. Maybe not. This is but a rant with a higher purpose. The lazy, procrastinating musician that is me has had that smug grin slapped right off his face. And he’s not pissed period. What it provoked out of him was a long due analysis of where he stood at the moment as opposed to where he would’ve wanted to stand…mmmmmm..just a few hundred miles apart.i think??

Independence Day puts a big grin on most Indian faces. Not because our hearts are swelling with patriotic fervor but because we get a day off; a true godsend. Plus it adds up with the weekend. Sweet!!. I guess you’ve made the most of it and slept a good three days off( we mostly don’t have a party culture here so..). For Catholics, Independence day coincides with the feast of Ascension which means that attending mass is mandatory. That being the highlight of the day which had some other random happenings which don’t make the cut to be mentioned. By the time I came to my senses on Saturday, everybody had left for work and other matters that concern them and to top it up it was raining like shit. At around 10 one of the guys from my locality rang up. He wanted to check out a guitar. I was listening to some Alice in Chains and was temporarily thinking grunge. Grunge is basically a middle finger at everything that is establishmentarian. Which kinda inspired me to put on my dirtiest tee and go out, brave the rains and craters on the god forsaken roads of Kerala and get a guitar ( a pretty neat piece I should say) and then somehow manage to get back home in one piece. And friggin’ soaking wet. Come Sunday it was one of my friends betrothal. I had written the script for the function and was a bit anxious as to how the emcees would pull it off. They were 2 cuties. One of them had obviously done this before while the other simply just went through the motions and pretty much ruined a decent script.
Evening came and along with it the highlight of the week, maybe even the month. There was a piano recital by child prodigy Julian Clef at C.A.C , an arts institution nearby. Now I’ve heard big things about this dude. I happened to hear a recording sometime back, when he was about 16 and my shattered ego had me seriously contemplating leaving the scene for good. Such was the staggering level of musical brilliance and mindblowing virtuosity that saying I felt ashamed of myself would be the mother of all understatements. I remember hearing his version of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromtu in C#minor and wondering how on mother earth could a person come up with such a piece with let alone play it. And it was composed at the spur of the moment. Why God whaayyy!!!! How could you do this to meeeee??????( Joey from F.R.I.E.N.D.S).Anyhoo Ad, Harry, Me, 810 and Dags managed to get to CAC in time to catch some nice seats. The maestro himself had arrived sometime back- An unassuming boy with a lopsided style of walking who looked like someone nobody would ever take a second look at. In the meantime I engaged myself in some random socializing with the music fraternity to partly kill time and partly to renew old contacts. In music it’s all about building and maintaining your contacts. Contacts matter and hence I’m suffering. After a while I got back to my seat and Anoop and his sister Anu showed up. Anoop and me go back to my schooldays and he’s a music lover and I told him he’d better not miss this.

At 6:30, after the mandatory speeches and felicitations, a staple of any function here, Julian went to the piano and sat down to do his thing. From the moment he laid his fingers on the keys the whole of CAC was teleported to an entirely different world-one alien to every single soul gathered there- our own little Narnias’. His touch echoed tremendous power yet restraint; a powerful style of expression which bordered on the better side of drama avoiding anything melodramatic. This coupled with a polished and professional attitude and a deep bond with the instrument which belied his age convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was in the presence of a genius. I especially loved the way he acknowledged the appreciation of the crowd with a little bow and smile after reach piece. Though every piece was brilliant I especially loved his intense rendering of the Appassionata from Sonata No 27 by Beethoven. This piece had the audience on their feet whooping and cheering as though they were at a Metallica concert. Obviously we had to be reminded of the fact that we were still in kerala by a powercut which disrupted the recital during the 2nd piece just when it was heading into its climax. Some jokers came expecting a circus or something and it was good they left quickly before they could spread their joy around the place. The recital went on for about an hour and a half –a hour and half undeniably spent well. Judging from the jaws touching the floor especially from a previously cocky girl sitting a few seats away from me I was sure that the rest of the folks there were having feelings along the same lines. We were all talking about it the whole of that day and the rest of the week and will probably talk about it many more times to come- the day when we more or less blundered our way into the lair of a wizard. and of all places, in Kerala that deserves less. The world is a lot less negative when people like Julian walk its face. He gives us that much needed reassurance that good things can actually happen here. An assurance we all desperately need. On a 24/7 basis.

Fraanships.The good, the bad and the eXXtremely ugly!!part 2

Every now and then life decides to play some sick game with you and brings in some fabulous actors who play their parts incredibly well and make sure you’re on a joy ride to relationship hell. You have this bogus illusion that these people are in fact your BEST FRIENDS EVER and are so blessed and all that to have such great people around you, who love you and listen your songs and other crap and in some strange way there is a small voice in some distant corner of you that says-‘dude! this is too good to be true. Will it last man?’. And prada!. These very people, your ostensibly best buds, will in time take out their knives and shred your little bubble and leave you feeling like a loser 10 times over. Bottom-line-Instant friendships don’t really sustain because deep down its one big, black fathomless pit of nothingness and that lovely paint that blankets the exterior will seep away once the rains come.

That being some weird intro that did not end up as I expected to this is what I actually wanted to say on this post.(you’ll get your answers to the intro on my next post). I’ve read somewhere that we of superior intellect and inferior virtues, on a conscious or subconscious level arrange our friends in concentric circles.( at this moment you might feel that ive gone hopelessly off track. Please stay with me for a little bit longer, you lovely thing) Let me expand on that statement.

At the border we have our general circle of friends who make the cut because they are not our enemies and the chances of them taking out their shacks and sticking us first chance they get, are pretty low. These are the people we meet every random day because they happened to be in the neighborhood ( thank you Spiderman!) and they have a hi-bye relationship with us. Still we don’t want them very close because they’re in fact either extremely boring or are extremely competitive that they knock you out of your limelight. But its good keeping tabs on these people because you never know when these connections might come in handy. It might even save your life( Moment of poignant contemplation). Allrighty then!.

In the 2nd circle are those friends who are pretty close but for some reason didn’t take it to the next step. These are the people whom you are pretty comfortable with having around and invariably get invited to all the parties u host etc etc. They, more often than not, have a vague picture of what’s happening in your life and you can tell them almost everything. They will back almost all of your crazy ideas though they know it will land you in a bigger shithole than the one you’re already in just because they don’t want to lose your friendship and your parties rock! Great food, great music, hardly any chicks because chicks are a theoretical concept as far as the domestic party circuit in Kerala goes.

Then there’s the innermost circle. Only the elite make it this far and once they do the do they’re staying there probably till you’re up there kissing the daisies. These are the people who know you inside out; people you’ve bared your confused soul to. And the funny thing is they are not repulsed or bored by it because of one simple reason. They Love You. And this is is the real deal my brethren (not the kind of slush they dish out each day on the media). They probably said no to a lot of your idiocy because they knew that you would end up with your tail behind your legs and you hated them for that. At least temporarily. However thats all it is..Temporary and next day, a nice treat at the Coffee shop later, we’re back baby!!!!haha. Personally these are the people I see dreams about getting old together and laughing listening to stories. stories that are being scripted right now. Like I said this is the real deal.

I’ll continue this next time at let me give you a hint-Its not gonna be as pretty as Barbie!!!!!whatever!!