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.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
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.
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.
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