Saturday, April 29, 2006

Who Is The Prince Now? Who? Who? Hu! Hu!

The same nightmare again last night. Dreamt we will rule the world. I'm scared. Poor world.

-- The Diary, May 14 496 BC

All of Brownistan is agog, or so The Hindu tells me. Of course, The Hindu does not use the word agog, because agog is, after all, my favourite word, not The Hindu's. The Hindu is a bunch of dead pinkos who probably don't even have a favourite word. I, on the other hand, am a regular dude, and I do have favourite words, and agog is one of them. Therefore I say agog whenever I can say agog because I like to say agog.

But I digress. As I was saying, all of Brownistan is agog. You might wonder why. I do not; because I have noticed that Brownistan has lately developed the tiresome habit of being constantly agog. A resident native tells me, by way of explanation, that Brownistanis are feeling more and more positive about the state of their nation. They feel that they are the wave of the future, the coming superpower. They believe that they will whip the white man's ass, slip past the Chinese, murder all the Mussalmans and establish Rama Rajya all over the world. Isn't it true, after all, that only 26.15% of Brownistan is now below the poverty line, a sharp drop from 26.17% as of last year? Out goes the cry in Jharkand: The Brown Man Cometh.

All of which only goes to show that the the brown man's stupidity is even greater than his megalomania. As all thinking men know, brown people lack the three qualities that any great people must have, namely

1. Short names,
2. The habit of photographing everything they see, and
3. A fixation on the question of who is allowed to have sex with what.

Walk down this list, gentle reader, and you'll see why slit-eyed, flat-nosed, yellow-faced people with funny accents are taking over the world.

Greatness Condition 1: Not so long ago, Brownistanis used to name themselves after their Gods. Better sense has since prevailed, and now they take their dogs' names instead. Thus, they have achieved considerable pith--I know brown people called Pimmy, Shiny and Happy. Alas, they still fall far short of the world's best. Take, for instance, the great Richard Cheney, de facto Emperor of the Universe. Rather than bear his longish original name, the man voluntarily lets everyone call him Dick. Yet, for all this heroic determination, the White Man is still not numero uno in the matter of nominal brevity. He only has a fetish for short names. The Yellow Man, on the other hand, has flair for them. For instance, my yellow friend Ho calls me Mr. Shanghai, not only because of my stunning good looks, but also because my first name has enough syllables in it to name everyone in the city of Shanghai. Indeed, as Che Lai sings in celebration of the Chinese Tao,

Pa Li's name is Fa Li,
And Ma Li is named Mi Li,
The brat is called Jo Li,
What a JoLi Fa-Mi-Li!

Note further that the Yellow Man's name is just a specific instance of his calculated suppression of information. Allah's bearded warriors can stop the US in its tracks by killing Emperor Dick, but they find themselves helpless against the cunning Yellow Man: As a recent world-wide survey found, only three people, all named Yi, could correctly answer the question : "Hu is the Chinese President?" (Hint: It is a trick question. The answer is yes.) Hu, I ask, can stand in the way of such a subtle race, full of strategems, treasons and micronames?

Greatness Condition 2: Brown people from Gujarat, it is true, go to far-flung places just to stand near sign posts and get their photos taken. While admirable, they are, alas, far from good enough, for they go only where the path is easy, and the reward sure. The White Man, on the other hand, values Art for Art's sake.

It is rumoured that Da Vinci's masterpice, The Mona Lisa hangs on a large wall in the Renaissance Hall of the Louvres. Nobody knows for sure, because the damn thing is always surrounded by giant white people, and it is impossible for a normal-sized man to get a dekko. One summer afternoon, I stood there, sulking with my fellow wimps, when a somewhat small giant approached the throng, missus in tow. He surveyed the scene, closed his eyes, and with an air of resolve lifted the missus and shoved her through the thicket. When she had gotten close to the painting, she turned to him and beamed. Evidently she had detected a family resemblance between La Giaconde and herself. He photographed her triumph, and he dragged her out. Then, as Hercules must have done after his third task, he shrugged. He wiped his brow, and resolutely elbowed his way toward l'objet d'art. He put his paw near it, exactly as if he were showing off a recently netted bass. He tittered. She clicked. He fought, he emerged, and they talked.

He : "What's the fuss anyway? The chicks in the other paintings are hotter."
She: "Honey! You know like nothing about art. The hot chicks are done by a guy called Tit Ian. He was like a specialist in chicks. This da Vinci dude was gay. He does naked men well. Anyway, we got a photo of this thing. It is, like, world famous." [beg pardon for obscure joke. please google 1. Titian, 2. Vitruvian man]

They walked away, and I stood shaken, for I had realized just how far Brownistan is from greatness. We brown people have snaps of ourselves in front of the Niagara Falls and the White House, and we guffaw in pride. Laa-dee-dah, says the White Man, for he has venied all over the world, and while he has no clue exactly what he has vidied, he has videos of himself vici-ing it nevertheless.

And yet the White Man is but a minor deity, a roadside Ayyanar. The One True God of pointless photography is not he, but the Yellow Man, as I realized on a rainy Friday afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum o' Fart, New York. The Met, as it is called, is basically an asylum for doodlings by poor half-wits from across the globe. One of its proud exhibits is a 6'1'' X 4'2'' oil on canvas named White Light. It looks like the piece of paper my niece once took from me, saying "Mama, Naa draw panren, nee watch pannu. Sariyaa?" She took it, and she scratched on it vigorously with all the colours she had, made two holes in the center, and put her eyes through them. Then she asked us to hide because "Naan baby illa. Naan big maamster, sariya?" I still have that piece of paper and I swear it looks exactly like White Light, except that it is smaller, and a little cleaner. My poor niece, alas, only got scolded by her mother for making a mess. The creator of White Light, I'm sure, made a few million.

Most importantly, since White Light was kept in a respected museum by respected people, it won, well, respect. My friend and I stood in front of it, looking upon it reverently. We shifted here and there to view it from different angles, hoping that something would cast some light on it, and make us view it in a different light. We were just discussing its Ethereal Irreference to SpatioTemporal Isness when up walked a Yellow Man. He glanced at it. He turned to us, asked us to move and took a photo of it. He then gave us the camera and asked to us take a photo of him with it. Then he took the camera and zoomed in on the title card and took a photo of it. Then he checked to see he had got all three photos, and he walked past us to repeat the routine with the next painting. Not a look at the painting, not a care for what it was, not a word of appreciation or criticism. Just click, click, click.

I salute him. He has understood Modern Art; I have not. His children will inherit the Earth and photograph themselves ruling it, and mine will write software and watch in open-mouthed awe.

The brown man might as well stop being agog and face the truth: The Yellow Man is Prince. He is not yet King, because he has not yet grappled with the all-important question alluded to above: Who can have sex with what? But he is getting there. It'll take a while, but he will catch up eventually. The White Man is King because he is a past master of that question. He revels and frolics in it, the way a pig might in a sewer. He has found some answers, but is still digging around for more. You are, I'm sure, eager to hear more about it. But gentle reader, there's only so long an intelligent man can talk to an unmitigated imbecile like you. Let me refresh myself. When I come back, I'll enlighten you, if you somehow manage to stay out of jail in the meantime.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

An Argument

Attachment, Bhikku, will necessarily bring pain with it. But sometimes, I wonder if it's worth it after all.

-- The Diary, Spring 511 BC

"I have been thinking about him a lot lately", she said. He was driving. He turned to glance at her sideways.
"Hmm."
"Relax. I'm over it now, completely. And don't try to be sensitive. You look like a dead fish."
"Yeah, whatever. So?"
"Don't so me. There's nothing really. Last week, I had gone camping with some friends. And I was thinking of the times we all used to go camp together. He was the one who started me up on it, you know? You remember the time he tried to build a fire to cook pasta, and got only smoke, but still soaked the pasta in water for half an hour and said it was cooked? And then, we were singing on this trip last week. I sang a song he used to like."
"Which one?"
"You won't know. You are an uncultured brute. OK, don't sulk. Suttum Vizhi chudar Thaan, it is a song by a guy called Bharatiyar. Everytime after I sang that, he would go quiet for a while, and keep looking at me longingly like some teenage Romeo. Makes a woman happy, you know?"
"Whatever. Some senti girl stuff."

"Anyway, things like that. It is almost like I'm reaching into a box full of my childhood toys. Everytime I come up with some such old relic, I feel like I'm living it again. That it will all happen again tomorrow. And yet I know that it was not all love-love and kiss-kiss. Through all this, there was also jealousy and possessiveness and impatience and mostly just routine nothing. Strangely, I don't think of those. Everytime I talk to him now, we are friendly and cheerful and nice and boring. And after every one of these calls, I could kill him for his breeziness. It feels like I'm reliving the highlights of the past, and he's just forgotten it all. I would have been happy even if he had at least remembered our quarrels, and been nasty."
"Well. It was as much your decision as his, remember?"
"Ouch! Maybe you should be sensitive after all."
"No, you fool. What I meant was that I'm sure you'll find your new box or whatever with someone else, and soon too."
"That's precisely what bothers me. I liked him as much as anyone liked anyone else. And I'm sure he did the same. But he has found the same liking for someone else, and I'm sure I will too. So what is this love stuff? Just that you like somebody because they like you, and you just go on finding greater and greater delights in some mutual idiosyncracies. I mean, that's just sentimentality, right? Looking back at our time together, all that I can come up with are some vague cute-sounding details, nothing that really has anything to do with me or him. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of deep intellectual connection or some such fancy thing?

"But...Basically...Well, see! It seems to me that those details are the beauty of the thing. If you take away the little details, what is left in life, or art, or music, or all the other high-sounding stuff you are talking about? It is not all linear, boring intellectual connection, is it?"

"Don't talk nonsense. I never said a couple should sit and discuss philosophy all the time. But how can it be that the details override everything else? It is almost as if it doesn't matter who the two people concerned are. They'll just drown each other in an orgy of mutual liking, which is really nothing more than animal instinct."

"But that's precisely my point, that the beauty of the thing is beyond individuality. This whole "mere animal instinct" that you are talking about is really life, or god, or whatever you want to call it. It is proof that life is bigger than you and your silly notions about how things should be. In fact, I'd say it's the highest, most creative, most universal instinct there is in humanity."

"Come on, that's just sentimental crap. If you can love everybody, then you really love nobody except yourself. And going by your logic, I should elevate nationalism, casteism, love of Allah and every other stupid self-loving sentimental bull to some kind of divine Life Force thing. If it is OK for me to love my man just because he happens to be my man, why isn't it OK for me to love my country just because it is my country? And yet don't you agree that this jingoism is repulsive and vulgar?"

"Well. I don't know about nationalism and moral behaviour and all that, and I don't care. I'm not talking about some faceless comman man, I'm talking about you. And I still say that what you call sentimentality is really the essence and the beauty of the thing. In fact, I'll say that without this so-called sentimentality, even your so-called intellectual compatibility will come to nothing. Take this converastion: there is nothing even remotely personal here, you and I are just talking about some vague ideas. Yet you cannot have this conversation with anyone except me. Though you know lots of people who are more intelligent than me. What is this then?"

"See, you have always been a goody-goody oh-so-popular boy. You're just projecting your own everybody-loves-everybody stuff onto others. What about real sentimentality and real pettiness? Are you just going to say they are part of your life force too?"

"I don't know. And if the fact that I've been fortunate makes me less typical, so what? Maybe being fortunate is the right way. Maybe all the rest of you are wrong, because you've had it bad."

They were silent for a while. They were both peeved, as people always are after an argument. But they went back a long way. They had sown trust and reaped the knack of hitting the right note at the right time. This time, she did it first.

"So you think I'm love with you and only you, huh?"
"Well, for your sake, I hope not. I want a 36-24-36 jhakkas maal, not an ugly chick like you."
"Which jhakkas maal will go for you? You'll come back to me begging, and I'll refuse."
"I won't come to you, and even if I do, you won't refuse. You can't."
"Is that a bet?"
"It is."

They shook hands. She turned on the CD player, and slowly drifted off to sleep. He glanced at her, and felt a sharp stab of tenderness. They were just right now, far enough apart that the winds of heaven could breeze between them, but close enough that it carried her voice to him. Some day they'll grow more distant and her words will be muffled by the distance. He wanted to store the tenderness of this moment to remember her by. But he knew he couldn't. His memory was slave to his moods, and this moment's beauty alone will not protect it from oblivion. But it will be in there somewhere, he thought. Better, it will spread out thinly over his entire being and make him kinder, nobler, gentler in ways he himself didn't know. And if that isn't reason enough to love and be loved, what is?

He switched off the CD player. Music was OK, but he preferred silence.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Nature, and Why I Watch It On Discovery Channel

So, bhikku! I hear you want to be one with Nature. It's easy. Just go into the wild. Nature will take care of the rest.

-- The Diary, Winter 516 BC

Even a confirmed jackass like you, gentle reader, cannot help but notice that this urban life is a sordid mess. First, there is the noise and the pollution. Then there's the crowd: all through the day, one is plagued by vile reptiles from management and marketing. Worse, when these leave one alone, one has to deal with brown people, a most revolting bunch who spend all their time discussing the Aryan invasion theory and cheap telephone deals to Brownistan. Out in the country, one can at least feel like a Real Man by beating one's wife. But in the city, wife-beating is unfashionable, and one is forced to watch football instead.

It is, you will agree, a most unwholesome state of affairs. Of course, the poor don't have time to bother about all this, because being miserable is a full-time job. At any rate, the poor aren't educated and they know nothing about anything. But you and I, gentle reader, are enlightened types who read and write blogs. We go to Art of Living classes, and we've learned terms like Stress Management, All-round Personality Development and Quality Time. So we know that we need a break from our daily travails. And since we can afford it, we go off into Nature for reflection and renewal. We are children of a Brave New World, one that sees no reason to bow to season. If we want to vacation in winter, we will use snowbikes; and if they disturb wildlife, what of it? We want to be one with Nature, and it is but fair that we go some distance for it and make Nature travel the rest.

Which is all very well.

Except that Nature is always trying to bite, scratch, poison, piss on, cripple, torture, maim or murder those who seek to commune with her. It is nothing personal, mind you. It is just Nature's nature.

Having narrowly escaped Nature on many an occasion, I write here a lament and a warning. I will probably not survive my next camping trip; but I hope, gentle reader, that for a long time to come, these portentous words will protect Nature and you from from each other. Remember, the common man only enjoys other people's suffering. But the wise man also learns from it.

Adios.

Memories Of A Retreat

Corporate games I had played,
And ruthless cunning displayed.
I was master of free trade,
A huge stash o' cash I'd made.

But the city ate my soul,
It's a vile festering hole.
In each lane, 'neath ev'ry pole,
Lurks a foul stinkin' asshole.

For peace and quiet I pined,
To many a cove I whined.
One such cove, P of keen mind,
The way out wisely divined.

"My boy, we can't take the grind,
We are just way too refined.
So leys leave the mob behind.
Solace in Nature we'll find."

P's intellect is renowned.
Legends of his beans abound.
The answer he'd surely found,
So jungleward we were bound.

It was a loverly spring morn,
And before the crack of dawn,
Ere yet the day was full born,
To wilderness' heart we'd gone.

Cooed we in poetic delight,
"Do you smell that pink sunlight?"
"The roses, they sound just right"
"And yon crows' song feels so bright."

The musical crows then grouped,
Up they soared and down they swooped,
And on our heads they poooped.
Our spirits, they slightly drooped.

"Here's water. Wash up!", piped P.
"For wee pee, be not weepy.
Rolling stones, my man, let's be.
I'm told they gather no pee."

What a wonderful calm head!
Wiser words have not been said,
We had a long path to tread,
Aye, 'twas time to march ahead.

We'd walked awhile when I spied,
A lovely bird, Nature's pride.
"Ahoy! Bird ahead", I cried.
"Look, right there, by the trailside."

Before he could get a view,
Into the thicket it flew.
We scampered after it too,
As all real men would do.

"There, see it? It is a finch"
"No, a lark. It is a cinch."
"Oh! come on! don't be a grinch"
"That's you, not me. Hey, don't pinch"

Twasn't a pinch, but a sting.
A wasp, bee or some such thing.
Out we ran, like Milkha Singh,
Nay faster: we'd bugs chasing.

Then he spake, P, wise teacher,
"B., my boy! This is nature.
This bug's really a feature.
Remember! It's God's creature!"

Thusly went the entire day,
Oft we bled; our nerves did fray,
But we kept Nature at bay.
'Twas heroic, I must say.

'Neath fiery sun did we tramp,
And at dusk, we set up camp.
Then Nature sent rain (the vamp),
Leaving the tent rather damp.

Nature thought rain would nettle,
Ha! She knew us but little.
We are men of great mettle,
Strapping lads, in fine fettle.

Said we, "How hard Nature tries"
And smiling, we shut our eyes.
Then, Nature threw her last dice,
She'd tried heat, now she tried ice.

Dante, who's admired a lot,
Declares, "Hell is very hot"
If I may say so, that's rot.
I've camped in cold, he has not.

Better verse Dante may write,
But he's wrong, and I am right:
Fire is cool, and pain is trite,
The real deal's a cold night.

Though P has a ghastly mug,
Some chaps might, with a cool shrug,
Have given him a tight hug,
Just to be a bit more snug.

But I'm as straight as a log.
Anyway, after the day's slog,
The man stank like a damn bog.
I'd rather have snogged a hog.

We broke camp just before dawn,
It was a loverly spring morn,
Ere yet the day was full born,
Back into town we had gone.

It is true: Nature can thrill,
And the city's a dunghill,
But I'll take the city still,
At least, the city doesn't kill.