We have screwed ourselves

I break down
My knees buckle under my own weight
But I gotta keep going on
Its not about looking good anymore
Its not even about living
Its about staying alive
About surviving

The will to live surpasses all else
But this urge doesn’t numb the pain
It just makes it easier to live with

Cry out for help
But none comes
Reach out in despair
But there’s nothing out there
To hold on to
As you find yourself sinking
Into this quagmire

You gotta run as fast as you can
To stay in the same place
They say
The “they” is the omnipresent collective
They tell you what to do
What is right and what’s not
They dictate your life
They own your soul

There are those who crumble
They turn to drugs
They fall apart
And sink into oblivion
They are the ones who
Are inherently weak
They are the ones who
Nevermind…

It’s a dog-eat-dog world
It’s a rat race
Its almost like saying
We are all dogs in a rat race
No wonder the world is such
A messed up place
For dogs do not belong
In an event meant for rats
Yet they are thrust into it
Like square pegs in round holes
Or round pegs in square holes
No matter how you put it
It makes no bloody sense

Re-enforce your knees with steel
You’ll need it to bear the pressure
Of a million dreams that do not belong to you
Weighing down upon your shoulders
On second thought
Re-enforce every load bearing joint
Your shoulders, spine, ankles and all
Lest you fall under the pressure
And get crushed by the dreams
That weren’t yours to begin with

One hears the adages
About dogs and rats
And one begins to wish
That one were a dog or a rat
For their lives seem far more uncomplicated
Compared to ours

We were meant to live
But we make do with existing
I have no idea what’s wrong with us
But something definitely is wrong

“Screw the world”
One is forced to shout
But that is hardly possible
For we need the world to survive
And the world ain’t to blame for this
Sorry state of ours
It is us
We are the ones who have
Confined ourselves in this metal coffin
And unlike wood,
One can’t even claw one’s way out of it
There’s only one conclusion to draw from this:

We have screwed ourselves,
And who can “unscrew” us?
We.

Taare Zameen Par

Up until now I have commented only on the film industry. I have berated it and the movies coming out of it at a pretty harsh degree. But this time, for the first time I feel compelled to write about a movie I have seen. The name of this movie is “Taare Zameen Par” which loosely translates into “Stars on the Ground”. This movie was produced and directed by Aamir Khan, he also acted in it. The lead character is a eight to nine year old dyslexic boy who has been in the notorious Indian system of education which shuns everything except the robotic pursuit of “perfection” that is displayed by the majority of the masses. In short, it is a system that ignores genius and harbors mediocrity.

Darsheel Safary plays a young boy by the name of Ishan Awasthi who suffers from the rare and often misunderstood disability known as dyslexia. Dyslexia is characterized by an abject impairment in the ability of a person to read or write as a result of not being able to identify the characters of the alphabet. As a result of this condition, the boy is ridiculed, insulted by almost everyone except his parents and sibling and labeled as an unintelligent, lethargic, good-for-nothing boy. The father is in fact so vexed by what he sees as his son’s unruliness that he packs him off to a boarding school. There too, the teachers treat him in the same way that the teachers treated him in his previous day-school. But then, a chance encounter with a substitute art teacher (played by Aamir Khan) changes his life and brings out the genius in him when he ends up winning a painting competition.

The acting in this movie was superb. Each emotion and feeling, so clearly and lucidly portrayed that anyone in the audience could feel the most subtle emotional undertone. But by far the best thing about this movie was the way in which the subject of dyslexia and the mystery surrounding it has been dealt with; mystery in the sense that not many know of the existence of such a disability. Most people in India recognize only two types of people: normal and retarded. The idea that an intelligent person and a possible genius could suffer due to a debilitating disability is virtually unheard of. I applaud the maturity, subtlety, artfullness and sensitivity with which this was portrayed in the movie.

Two of the more laudable sections of the movie were the two parts where the art teacher confronts the parents. The first part being where the teacher tells both the parents about dyslexia and how it doesn’t imply unintelligence; the second part is where he tells the father the difference between mechanically bring up a child and making the child feel loved and cared for without hurting his ego or treading on his toes.

If it were up to me, I would hail this movie as a masterpiece of Indian cinema.

Banality, Thy name is Tollywood.

The first few days of the Telugu film industry were great. The movies that were made were either based on the great epics (vis-à-vis Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc), or on wonderful Telugu plays. They were truly artistic films and people enjoyed watching them. Those were the days of great thespians who were highly skilled in the art of dialogue delivery. They could fit into any character, any role seemingly effortlessly. The only thing is since they were theatre artists before joining the film industry, their actions were a little over-emphasized. The entire country has come out of that mould. I do not think anyone is making “pauranic” films anymore. But that doesn’t mean that the quality has stayed the same. In the transition from pauranic to modern, the movies that roll out of the film industry have lost all sense of originality, they have become completely banal.

One can easily surmise the story of almost all the new movies coming out: boy meets girl, they fall in love, calamity strikes either boy or girl or both, boy and girl overcome calamity individually or together, boy and girl are either shown getting married or engaged, boy and girl live happily ever after.

And invariably almost always the boy and girl are in college. Any deviation from this scenario is so subtle that it almost escapes ones attention. Even the name of the industry “Tollywood” stinks of banality. The Hindi film industry is called Bollywood (I am not a fan of this moniker either) in an imitation of “Hollywood”; the B being a reference to “Bombay” which is the old name of the city of Mumbai where the Hindi film industry is situated. And imitating that, the Telugu film Industry has been named Tollywood.

Despite its shortcomings, Bollywood has managed to produce impressive and path breaking movies such as Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par, Lage Raho Munnabhai that are capable of touching an emotional/patriotic chord in the heart of the audiences. The Telugu film industry on the other hand seems content making superficial movies that leave the audience completely dissatisfied.

Frankly, it seems as if the imagination of the film artists of the Telugu world has gone dry.

Metal

Rock sets you free
Metal is all about ecstasy
Classical is all about the soul
Music makes you a complete whole

Rock is all about pleasure and pain
Metal sets you on a higher plane
Rock makes you open your mind
And makes you forget the daily grind
Metal fills up your senses
And neither of the two has ever been
About false pretences

Classical connects with your soul
It gives you the gift of happiness
Metal too connects with your soul
But it takes you to a darker place
That is if you associate
Carnality with darkness

Metal and classical both
Enable one to tap one’s own
Primal energy
Its an energy that nature’s provided
To every beast it has spawned
It is something primordial
It is something spiritual
And it brings out the animal
In people

I see no difference
Between metal and classical
To me metal
Is just a more aggressive version
Of classical
For both these styles of music
Transcend your physical being
And touch the life force inside

To me metal is more than just music
It is a portal
A portal that takes me to a place
Where everything is the way I need it to be
According to my specifications
A place where I can think
A place where I can meditate
And conceptualize
And develop a better understanding
Of life
Metal and classical both
Put a lot of power in your hands
And that power
Is yours to channelize

You can use it to better your life
You can use it to ruin your life
You can use it to control your mind
The choice is yours
And that is the way it ought to be
For, of what use is it to be alive
When you don’t have charge of your life?
But a catch in that there is
For, to have charge of your life
You need to be able and wise
Or you might take your life
With your own hands
Crush it into oblivion

This is a power that can’t be explained
By science or any known knowledge
Except by the ancient wisdom that
Has been passed down to us through generations.
Immaterial of where you have originated from
Your folklore is filled with such things

This power can’t be otherwise explained
And that which can’t be explained
Cannot be controlled
And it is the neo-human nature
To fear that which cannot be controlled
And that is why metal has been deemed as evil

Many have taken advantage of this
And written blood-curdling lyrics
To metal songs
But
This music has always existed
In places of worship
It has been used to draw your concentration
“Dhyaana” as it is known
Towards the deity being worshiped
It is just the modern open-mindedness
That has brought this musical style
Out of the temple
And into the studio
And given it a name,
Metal.

Rock sends you
Soaring across the sky
Metal sets you
On an orgasmic high
And that empowers you
It can enslave you
But you have to make it
Empower you
You have to be its master
It should not be yours
You should tap all its power
And make that power yours.

The Indian National Flag

Certain people, out of ignorance or otherwise have read a communalist meaning into the Indian National Flag, i.e. they have wrongly said that the Indian National Flag or some part of it refers to one community or another. That is not true.

My idol, the great Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishna said the following about the Indian National Flag in his address to the Constituent Assembly:

"Bhagwa or the saffron color denotes renunciation of disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work. The white in the centre is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The green shows our relation to soil, our relation to the plant life here on which all other life depends. The Ashoka Wheel in the centre of the white is the wheel of the law of dharma. Truth or satya, dharma or virtue ought to be the controlling principles of those who work under this flag. Again, the wheel denotes motion. There is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. India should no more resist change, it must move and go forward. The wheel represents the dynamism of a peaceful change."

The official website of the High Commission of India in London states "The saffron stands for courage, sacrifice and the spirit of renunciation; the white, for purity and truth; and the green for faith and fertility.

In a nutshell, the meaning behind the Indian National Flag is:

Saffron: Courage, Sacrifice and the Spirit of Renunciation;

White: Purity and Truth

Green: Faith and Fertility

Ashoka Chakra (Wheel): The wheel of the law of Dharma.

“Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work.”

That was the sentiment of the people who helped build this country. Nowadays, it is far from the truth. I hope some day we can realize that dream.

Courtesy: CRW Flags Online Cagalogue