Life after 100

Well it’s been just over a year. My bikes’ crossed the 10000 km mark during the first week of December this year while riding back from Hypnos with Chris. The best part is that it has blossomed into one of the finest machines I’ve had the privilege of using. It seems to get better with age like wine. And to top it off I’m getting a little cocky on the roads these days. I wouldn’t be too far off the mark by bragging that my skills have vastly improved from the nervous-wreck glancing furtively every time a vehicle comes too close to the more laid-back what-the-fuck come-what-may mofo that I’ve become. Ain’t no two ways about it!

Looking back, there are lots of little incidents that took place during this one year span. I remember the time, about eight months back, when I went to an underground party with Steve. It was around 2am in the morning on Hosur Road. There was a bye-lane that we needed to take in order to get to our destination and we ended up crossing it by around 20 odd meters. We had to backtrack coz there was no way to get to the other side of the road. So we ended up backtracking the way we came, in the wrong direction of traffic flow. I dimmed my lights to just the parking lights reasoning to myself that the truck-drivers roaring down from the opposite direction won’t get disoriented and drive the metal beasts down our throats! Big mistake! There were no other lights in our immediate surroundings. So I ended up not noticing the deep ditch on our side of the road. Eventually while trying to stick to the side of the road, the front wheel slipped at the edge and we tipped over. It was, in retrospect, not much of a fall and we were not hurt either coz we were riding really slow. But the handle-bar ended up getting twisted to an impossible angle. That, more than anything else, freaked me out. You would understand what I had felt then if the ZMA was the first bike you’ve ever had and that too for less than 2 months.

A couple of weeks back, I rode to Ramnagar with Karthik and co for a bout of rock climbing and stuff. There were a couple of Royal Enfield Thunderbirds giving company to my ZMA at an average speed of around 110 to 120 kmph on the Mysore Road. We had an unhindered view of the open blue skies with the sun perched comfortably over our heads, the black tarmac screaming past under the wheels and the wind whistling a tune that can be heard only at such speeds. You have to experience it to know what I mean when I use the word “breathtaking” in this context. There was not a single four-wheeled contraption on that highway that came anywhere near to the speeds we were hitting and the sight of us smoking all those Marutis, Toyotas and Mitsubishis made the ride even more sweet. There is an altogether different way of life existing on the other side of that 100kmph mark and you’ll never experience it in the cocoon of your four-wheeled tin-can my friend!

Christmas Eve at Ramnagar

December 24, 2005. Ramnagar, Karnataka. Tumbling over the face of the rock, I had a fleeting glimpse of what might be described in simple terms as "the end". The thought did not last very long as everything just froze in my head. For the first time in my life my mind was unconditionally clear as the body clinging to it raced to meet the earth 40 feet below from where it was stationed while rappelling down the face of the rock. My vision was a maddening amalgam of the sky, the rock and the earth all overlapped into each other like a nightmare envisioned by a crazed artist high on absinthe. And then with a thud I landed on my back next to a tree trunk with my eyes still open.

For what seemed an eternity I just lay there. The only indication I had that I was still alive was my heaving chest and my burning hand. I could hear Karthik yelling something from way up high on the rock but I was still in a shocked state to make any sense of it. Mahesh came running up and stopped well short off me. Emotions rolled off his face that included shock and relief and he seemed to be finding trouble putting words together. Not that I was doing any better.

Surprisingly, I could not feel any other pain except for the burning sensation on my left hand which started getting agonising by the second. I got up on my feet gingerly with Mahesh's help and was further amazed to find that I didnt feel any broken bones anywhere. Mahesh started yelling to Karthik that I had fallen and that he should pack up the ropes and equipment and get down asap to get me to a hospital. I told Mahesh that I was okay except for my hand. Examining it I found that most of the skin and flesh had been ripped off while trying to hold on to the rope during the free-fall.

Karthik came bounding down eventually. But the wait was unbearable as my hand started throbbing with excruciating pain. I started cussing but it didnt help much. To get my mind off of it I talked with Mahesh and we ended up agreeing that it was a close shave indeed. I realized that if I had worn a glove on my left hand I would have come out of this incident totally unscathed. But be that as it may, the realization that eventually dawned on me was that for the briefest of moments I was knocking on Grim Reaper's door. Not a pleasant thought. But in the months that followed it certainly reaffirmed my belief that life should never be taken for granted. Live it!

Arctic Dreams

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

--Barry Lopez

Fight Club

This is one movie that just engulfed me, held me in a vice-like grip and at the end of it all the only word that escaped my mouth was "Shit!". Same reaction... every single time I see it. Hell, I'd say that this is one of the most quotable movies of all time and these are some of my favourites.


"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"And I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct... the people i know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue. You buy furniture... you tell yourself, this is the last sofa i will ever need in my life... buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled... then the right set of dishes... then the perfect bed... the drapes... the rug... then you're trapped in your lovely nest, the things you used to own, now they own you."

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."

"She was like the crack at the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop licking it... but u can't!"

"It's a bridesmaid's dress. Someone loved it intensely for one day. Then, tossed it... like a Christmas tree. So special, then bam!!... it's on the side of the road... tinsel still clinging to it... like a sex crime victim... underwear inside out... bound with electrical tape."

"We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need."

"I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may. "

"And then... something happened... I let go... lost in oblivion... dark and silent and complete... I found freedom... loosing all hope is freedom!"

Adaptable philosophy

If a couple of thousand years are not suddenly sliced away for men and this bridge demolished in order to teach men to begin with the problems of actual life and existence, everything is unhinged. We confuse the existential problem itself with its reflex in the consciousness of all the generations of the learned. The main issue in regard to every existential problem is its significance to me; after that I can see whether or not I am fit to discuss it learnedly.

Soren Kierkegaard.
Journals & Papers, Vol.1 [p453],tr. Hong & Hong, Indiana U.P. 1967.

All I need

agony my friend
i wither in your arms
here i am again
entwined with the dragons in their fiery dance

i stand at the shores
reaching out to the shadows hovering above
mellow rhythms and bells
whistling through wind and snow

O dear time wont you stay with me
sway with me under the moon-lit sky
on the jagged rocks the jagged pill
sending me into raptures, soaring high

Just like perfection... flawless... absolutely flawless!

There's this movie called "The Gods must be crazy". For the uninitiated, the lives of a tribe of bushmen living in the Kalahari desert are depicted in this movie. They are totally isolated from the rest of the world for the simple reason of having adapted to conditions that are otherwise insufferable. The Kalahari desert extending to some 900,000 square kilometres in southern Africa is bone-dry throughout the year and only the bushmen have the physical abilities as well as the knowledge to survive here.

In their tiny society, there is no concept of ownership. They do not own any artifacts. They do not own ornaments. They do not own anybody or anything. For what they get comes from nature and that is the only thing they understand and respect. Simple lives. Simple objectives, but always relevant to their existence, is what defines them. Sounds like paradise! The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the rest of the "civilized world". How the hell did we lose it?

This tribe is a relic of our past. We all started out like them. But somewhere along the line a handful of people or less started questioning why they cannot keep what they find in nature for themselves. And that, I believe, was the birth of the idea of ownership, of society. That was the point where respect for life was lost. And chaos reared its ugly head in the world of Man. He formed societies, civilizations and nations all based on innumerable rules to rein in chaos. It was like trying to pour kerosene on an already raging fire. What did he achieve .... conflicts!

Money, being an off-shoot of this concept of ownership, is not the root of all evil after all! Turning back time, all the way from the Roman Empire to the modern day issues in the Gaza strip it has always been about ownership and the rules that would naturally arise out of that concept. I am your parent so you live by my rules. I am your husband so you live by my rules. I am your country so you live by my rules. I am stronger than you so you live by my rules. Leave alone the religious cliche of "God having created man"; science teaches man that he can trace his genealogy all the way to the first single-celled organism which in turn came into being due to the right chemical compounds have been at the right place, the right conditions and the right time. Man, in other words, is a freak of nature, and he claims to be the master of the planet. Haaaa... right! Its like claiming that my foot owns the ground its tread on! When will we learn?

Mary's poem

once i moved about like the wind
in the desert without any water
now they kiss my skull and bones
at your president's alma mater

The eternal diatribe

"Why do you abandon the open path to take this narrow and rough road? Do you really know, little girl, where you're taking yourself? It just might end up that you'll find yourself in some unfathomable abyss. No one, not even the smugglers, dare to venture down it. Stay on the wide, spacious road that everyone else walks down, why don't you? Stay on the cared for and mile-marked path, with its signs and directions. It's so comfortable and pleasant to stroll along it!"

"Because I'm sick of the suffocating dust, sick of the route the rest follow; sick of the slow drivers and the rushing walkers. I'm tired of the monotony of the main drags, the horns on the cars and the trees that line the streets like soldiers. I want to breathe freely, to breathe as I please, to live my own life."

"You'll never manage to live your own life, poor girl. It's a chimera. The passing years will cure you soon enough of that desire. We always live in some way for other people, and they, in turn, live, to a certain extent, for us. He who plants wheat is not the same that makes bread. And the miner is not the one who drives the train. Life in society is an ensemble of very complicated human machinery, the functioning of which requires a great deal of vigilance, and demands numerous concessions and infinite attention.Think of the chaos which would come of it if everyone wanted to live their own life! It'd be just like hell if everyone went down that road that no traveler visits, where bad weeds grow tangled, and which leads no one knows where."

"Oh, old man! It's the over-complication of life in society that horrifies me. I'm shocked by the obligation to be dependent on the person next to me, an obligation that I feel weighing more heavily each day on my being, on my desire to live my own way. And I lose heart when faced with the idea of living the lives of others, of living for them; I want to be able to bite into clean mouthfuls without finding myself considered a glutton or a spoiled brat. I want to be able to lay down and stretch out on the grassy meadows, without fear of any guards or police. I love the roots, the trees, and the forest's creatures, the brambles and blackberry bushes of this path with no exit; what do I care about the gilded bread and palaces in the company of which I feel only disgust? Why should I care where I'm going? I live for today, and I'm indifferent to tomorrow."

"Oh young girl! Others before you have spoken the same words, and they, like you, have gone towards the unknown. They never ended up coming back from that voyage. A long time after, on those paths, smoothed over now, and on those summits now cleared of underbrush, little mountains of bones have been found, here and there -- that's all that's left of them. Without a doubt, they lived their own lives, but at what cost? And for how long? Think about those tall towers these thick clouds of smoke without end come from. They are the chimneys of the grandiose factories that humankind has erected --there, millions of men, on those whitewashed, spacious, and well ventilated premises, are working those marvelous machines that dispense to us humans the most necessary articles. And when night comes, these simple people, satisfied with a day's work well done, conscious of the daily bread they win with the sweat of their brows, come home singing to their humble homes where their loved ones await. Look over there at that rectangular building, with its large halls and its ample windows; that is the school, where selfless teachers prepare little beings like you to overcome life's challenges; little creatures who only find advantage in schooling -- can't you hear the sweet sound of those little voices repeating the lessons that yesterday they were told to memorize? The ringing of those military-like bells and those measured steps, which will soon walk the twists and turns of the road before them, is there for you, to bring forth a troop of boys and girls marching with the flag held high before them, children who are kept in the schools for a certain period of time in order to teach them how to efficiently defend their fatherland, their nation, if any new menace rears its head. Don't you see that that's the way men evolve towards Progress, each of them working in their own specialization and according to their own capacities? There are, without any doubt, courtrooms and jails, but those are for the malcontents, for the few undisciplined ones who make them necessary. Regardless of its defects, the implantation of such a state of things has taken centuries. It is our civilization --imperfect, but perfectible -- from whose influence you will never be able to escape unless you sink to who knows what depths."

"In those vast factories and workshops I see no more than flocks of slaves, executing monotonously, as if they were religious rites, the same gestures in front of the same machines, slaves who have lost all initiative and whose individual energy is decreased more and more every day, since every day it seems less and less true to me that these risks are part of the necessary conditions of human existence. From top to bottom, in the administrative hierarchies, only one watchword can be heard -- drown individual initiative. Oh yes, certainly, when the night comes I can hear your workers singing, but with bitter voices, and only after they've stopped in at least one of the innumerable taverns set up around the factories. The voices that come from your schools are the little voices of sad, bored children who can hardly keep down their desire to run, to leap the fences and walls, to climb the trees. Beneath the uniforms of your soldiers I only see beings who have had every sentiment of individual dignity annihilated in them. To discipline will, to kill energy, to restrain initiative -- these are the imperatives of your society, these are the things people suffer so that your society might subsist. And you fear those who don't want to adapt to this so greatly that you seclude them in the somber darkness of jail cells. Between your "civilized man" of the twentieth century, whose only preoccupation seems to be avoiding the necessary effort for sustaining his existence, and the man "dressed in animal skins", which wins out? The latter did not fear danger; he did not know the factory nor the barracks, the tavern nor the brothel, nor jail nor school. You have conserved, modifying them only in appearance, the superstitions and prejudices of these people you'd call "savage". But you lack their energy, you lack their valor, and you lack their frankness."

"Well, I agree that in the panorama of our present society there are some dark shadows. But there are generous men who have tried and still try to introduce greater equity and justice to its functioning.They are recruiting partisans, and perhaps tomorrow they will be their resistible majority. Don't go down these out-of-the-way paths --instead, hold to good principles, follow a method. Believe me, I'm an experienced old man; success doesn't tend to accompany those who don't systematically pursue it. Science teaches that it is necessary to regulate life. Hygienists, biologists, and doctors will supply you in its name with the necessary formulas for its prolongation and for your happiness. To lack authority, principles, discipline, and a plan is the worst of incoherencies."

"I do not need, nor do I want your discipline. With regards to my experiences, I want to have them for myself. It is from them, and not from you, that I will draw my rules of conduct. I want to live my own life. Slaves and lackeys terrify me. I hate those who dominate, and I am sickened by those who let themselves be dominated. He who bends before the whip is worth no more than he who wields it. I love danger, and the unknown, the uncertain, seduces me. I'm filled with a desire for adventure, and I don't give a damn for success. I hate your society of bureaucrats and administrators, millionaires and beggars. I don't want to adapt to your hypocritical customs nor to your false courtesies. I want to live out my enthusiasms in the pure, fresh air of freedom. Your streets, drafted according to plan, torture my gaze, and your uniform buildings make the blood in my veins boil with impatience. And that's enough for me. I'm going to follow my own path, according to my passions, changing myself ceaselessly, and I don't want to be the same tomorrow as I am today.I stroll along and I don't let my wings be clipped by the scissors of any one person. I am amoral. I am going forth, eternally passionate and burning with the desire to give myself to the world, to the first real person that approaches me, to the ragged trousered traveler, but never to the grave and conceited wise-men who would regulate the length of my stride. Nor to the doctrinaire who would like to clutter my mind with formulas and rules. I am no intellectual, I am a human being -- a woman who feels a great vibration within herself before the impulses of nature and amorous words. I hate every chain, every hindrance; I love to walk along, nude, letting the rays of the voluptuous sun caress my flesh. And, oh, old man! I will care so very little when your society breaks into a thousand pieces and I can finally, fully, live my own life."

"Who are you, little girl, fascinating like a mystery and savage like instinct?"

"I am Anarchy."



This post is basically an essay "Realism and Idealism Mixed" by Emile Armand, translated from "Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Camaraderie" and published by the International Library, Paris, 1926. Upon reflection, I find it bizarre how much my mental constitution in my teen years resembled the little girl in the passage, that of working class radicals and sans-culottes during and following the French Revolution. Bizarre... but not unexpected! Evolution always has the final say... I guess!

Cafeteria Blues!

Well, the day started off all normal and stuff till I entered the premises of my company cafeteria for my usual breakfast of a couple of idli’s (rice cakes?) and one vada (Indian version of a donut!). I was standing in line letting my eyes wander lazily over the floor, scoping out an empty table where I can have my breakfast in relative peace and quiet, when I spotted a flash of pink and white on the periphery of my vision.

“Next!” cried the man behind the service counter and my attention was drawn to the plate that he was holding “Oh… umm… one plate idli vada please!” I turned back to check out the pink and white thing, out of curiosity, but I didn’t find anything. It was while I was returning my gaze back to the counter that the overenthusiastic dude in the white apron thrust the plate at my face so fast like something from a kung-fu movie. Even Neo (Matrix fame), who spends most of his waking hours dodging bullets, would have had a hard time in dodging that plate. As it were, my reflexes kicked in and my head snapped back hitting the guy behind me square on the nose. “Owwwwww!” he screamed into my ears. That was when my reflexes went haywire and my right hand swung backwards and hit the guy behind me full on the crotch “Aiyeeeeeeee…..!”. I turned back to find him clutching at his crotch as if it was gonna fall off .... "This is no time for sarcasm" I thought to myself.

“Dude, I am so sorry man! It wasn’t me. It’s Jet Li behind the counter who…” and I stopped… the words frozen in my mouth. The guy, still not letting go off his crotch, had bent over his knees in pain and that was when I saw the pink and white vision again. Oh yes! A vision…. indeed! A chick (read that as hot babe), in her early twenties wearing a pink top and white trousers, stood behind the guy writhing in pain on the floor. I literally drooled… and the poor sod on the floor was at the receiving end of my drool. “What the…?!!” I heard a muffled cry from the floor. Quickly, regaining my infallible wit, I made a quick dash for the empty table I’d spotted earlier, away from any further embarrassment to self.

Once seated, I attacked the idli’s like a possessed man, tearing off a chunk here, tearing off one there with my spoon and drowning it in hot sambar. I stole a quick glance in the general direction of where the recent embarrassing episode took place. Nope! No sign of the crotch grabbing moron or the chick! I turned my attention to the tortured idli chunk ensconced in my spoon and gave it an evil grin. Bringing it closer and closer to my wide grinning mouth, I kept trying to picture the look of terror on its “face”. While in this trance-like state, my eyes happened to fall on the table opposite me. There she was … just sitting there, staring at me and shaking her head obviously disapproving my antics.

“Uh-oh! …. think, think, think … there’s gotta be a way outta this!” Next thing I knew, my hands flew to my trouser pockets and pulled out my cell phone and put on a serious face while speaking into the phone aloud, “Yes! ……Ohhh! That is despicable. Can’t you guys do anything right?!! I’m on my way!”. Pocketing the phone, I shrugged my shoulders at the chick who was still staring at me and mouthed the words “Gotta go!” at which her left eyebrow rose a notch higher than the other. I got the message and made a dash for the elevators. These days I wear a skull-cap and dark shades whenever I hit the cafeteria.

Hi! My name is...

... Legion, for I am many. I was at a point in time, one individual, one entity. But you changed all that. You look at me and judge me with your trying eyes. Hypocrite! I can read your expressions of love, hate, anger, lust and fear even as the motions of your mouth convey another language. I was naive once and it was then that I used to wonder at the mixed reactions registered on your face plain as daylight and how much appearances matter to you, non-contextual though they were.

I created all these masks for you coz you want me to appear "normal" and your definition of normal is as varied as the societies, institutes, laws and countries that you have contrived. Be that as it may, I dont know who I am anymore. I look in the mirror hoping to get a clue but all I see are my eyes, a distant flame burning somewhere in their depths. My name is Legion for I am many and if you are looking at me then you are looking at something that I want you to see. The real beast lurks within!

David Gale's lecture

From Lacan’s point of view, fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek you don’t / can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. Its not the “it” that you want it’s the fantasy of “it”. So desire supports crazy fantasies.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happenings or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill or be careful of what you wish for, not because you will get it but because you are doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is that living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you have attained in terms of your desires, but by those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality even self-sacrifice because in the end, the only way we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.

Rest-room theories

I do not know why but I always get inspirational thoughts when I use the rest room. Today I was taking a shower when my mind wandered to the concept of life from a purely scientific perspective. This is weird so let me start by putting together a couple of modern day theories and then I'll expound on my thoughts.

Big Bang Theory:
The whole universe came into being from a gigantic explosion (ala BIG BANG) that took place some gazillion years ago wherein a highly dense ball of fire just exploded and spewed matter of all sorts that ended up as galaxies, stars, planets and stuff: the galaxies drifting further and further away from each other due to the force of the explosion.

My theory:
That big ball of dense matter that exploded was a fertilized egg that just started multiplying into the billions of tiny cells that constitute a living being. In other words, what we call our galaxies constitute a gigantic living organism. The drifting away of galaxies could signify the actual physical growth of the organism. If this is true then the probability that there are other similar gigantic organisms existing on its scale is very high.

Many Worlds Interpretation (Parallel Universes):
The universal state is a quantum superposition of several, possibly infinitely many, states of identical non-communicating parallel universes. A parallel universe or alternate reality in science fiction and fantasy is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with our own. This separate reality can range in size from a small geographic region to an entire new universe, or several universes forming a Multiverse.

My theory:
If we look into our own bodies among the billions of red blood cells moving around or the tissue cells floating in it, it is highly likely that there will be at least one cell, which when stripped down to its constituent atoms, will contain at least one constituent atom which in turn when stripped down to its constituent subatomic particles, will contain at least one subatomic particle that hosts life (intelligent or otherwise). This is a universe parallel to ours on a lower scale. And the gigantic organism of which our galaxy is a part of belongs to a parallel universe adjacent to ours on a higher scale.

If we extrapolate this on both sides of the scale that I am talking about, you get infinite parallel universes. Well that's a mind-numbing thought if ever there was one and I am guessing that further enlightenment is just a poop away.

The Pianist

I was on a movie marathon yesterday. I saw four movies back to back, prior to the start of “The Pianist”. This was my way of dealing with depression… getting engrossed in the innate thoughts of the less-minded screenplay writers and moviemakers. But there are occasions when a beacon of light stands out in all the muck and mire of Hollywood movies. “The Pianist” was one such. Adrian Brody’s brilliance in his characterization of Wladyslaw Szpilman brought back hope inside me and lifted my hitherto sagging spirit.



Made by Roman Polanski, the movie is based on the true story of Szpilman, a pianist who lived in Warsaw and his struggle to survive against all odds. For the uninitiated, the Historical Background section on this site http://www.thepianist-themovie.com/pianist.htm will give you a good insight into the life and times of the holocaust victims in Warsaw.

A couple of hours later the movie got over and a brief glance at the clock told me that it was 3:30am. I turned off the lights in an attempt to get some shuteye. But as was the case when I saw a war movie, the images kept running through my head endlessly.

Bodies were scattered everywhere… women, children, helpless old men. All dead…all of them were dead, their faces frozen in a nameless fear. “O what has befallen man! Why has he turned against his own kind? Why?!” But the soldiers never stopped shooting. It was not their place to think. Some of them had hearts and in some remote way they felt sorry for the people they were shooting down. Wrong. So very wrong! But their fingers kept squeezing the trigger, pumping bullets into helpless men, women and children. Chests and heads were exploding, chunks of flesh and bone ripped up and torn out of their bodies... how can they stop? That was unthinkable. To go against the Fuhrer! Unthinkable! They were the superior race! They were not at the other end of the gun barrel!

I got up, went to the kitchen and had a glass of water. Walking back to the bed, I rubbed the back of my neck. The clock read 4:45am. The light switch going off sounded like gunfire.

A woman running down the street gets shot in the back by a Nazi soldier. She falls down on her knees… slowly, ever so slowly… an unuttered cry caught in her throat, dead in its cradle! She bends over until her forehead touches the cold cobblestones and there she stayed as if bowing down to the ruthlessness of the unseen forces that brought such persecution and pain to her and her people.

Szpilman who after surviving the guns of the Nazi soldiers gets caught in another war altogether, the private war that he wages while he hides from the Nazis! Hunger can break a man where guns cannot. The dull ache in the pit of the stomach eventually stops and then comes back again but this time around your head starts throbbing too. That can drive a perfectly sane man to the other side! But what was Szpilman’s secret? How could he survive his mental anguish for years... till the Russians marched into town and drove the Nazis out? And that’s when I see the answer in the form of Szpilman sitting in that dark gloomy room, guns sounding in the distance, a calm serene look on his face as his fingers dance in the air as if floating on piano keys, the notes playing in his head, the rhythm guiding his soul, soothing it. His life, his passion… his comfort!

I looked at the sunlight filtering in through my bedroom window, faintly at first but gaining in strength as the seconds ticked by. The holocaust was a tragedy of monumental proportions, a scar… a blemish on the face of the entire human race. One would think that such a scar would cause us to smarten up, pick up our act and learn from our mistakes. But … look around you… the world has almost but forgotten the screams, the pain… for here we are … at it again… spiraling into yet another tragedy. Its five minutes past six and I could hear the Pianist playing ... the notes swirling through my mind like a whirlwind as I fall into a deep sleep.

Smells like Teen Spirit!

Wild angry guitars were strumming in my ears while Kurt Cobain’s voice swam in my head:

With the lights out it’s less dangerous,
Here we are now, entertain us.
I feel stupid and contagious,
Here we are now, entertain us.

Nirvana: arguably one of the best rock bands that ever came out and that too at a time (the 90’s) when there was a serious dearth in musical talent as far as this particular genre of music was concerned. They had a unique sound that the so-called music industry experts in all their wisdom described as being “grunge”. Although what “grunge” means is, at best, anybody’s guess! What distinguished Nirvana was the voice that sang out the mood of a whole generation:

Here we are now, entertain us… [politicians]!!
Here we are now, entertain us… [shrieking teachers]!
Here we are now, entertain us… [false prophets]!
…
Hello, hello, hello, how low!…
O well, whatever, Nevermind!