Friday, August 22, 2008

For me who loves this garden:

For me the beautiful garden is real. It’s not imagination.

For me watching the beautiful wisteria first thing in the morning is magical.

For me waking up on a rainy day is peaceful.

For me imagining blossoms on the bare cherry blossom is easy.

For me the Christmas cactus is snow.

For me the Gooseberry is drama.

For me the spring is life.

For me being laid back is being purposeful.

For me the clouds and the gloom is sleep.

For me being an idiot is being home.

For me being nothing is being me.

For me being me is being worthwhile.

Monday, August 18, 2008

love

What are we supposed to do
After all that we've been through
When everything that felt so right is wrong
Now that the love is gone ?

love is gone

What are we supposed to do
After all that we've been through
When everything that felt so right is wrong
Now that the love is gone ?
There is nothing left to prove
No use to deny this simple truth
Can't find the reason to keep holding on
Now that the love is gone, love is gone

Now that the love is gone, what felt so right's so wrong
Now that the love is gone

I feel so hurt inside, feel so hurt inside, got to find the reason

What are we supposed to do
After all that we've been through
When everything that felt so right is wrong
Now that the love is gone ?
There is nothing left to prove
No use to deny this simple truth
Can't find the reason to keep holding on
Now that the love is gone, love is gone

Got to find a reason, got to find a reason,
Got to find a reason to hold !

Love, there's nothing left for us to say, yeah !
Love, why can't we turn and walk away ?

What are we supposed to do
After all that we've been through
When everything that felt so right is wrong
Now that the love is gone ?
There is nothing left to prove
No use to deny this simple truth
Can't find the reason to keep holding on
Now that the love is gone, love is gone

Love is gone !



couples dance to this in gurgaon.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Cowasjee

it was a joke when zubin dara cowasjee ran his car into a cow.

in the wake of the great real estate boom, the farms in gurgaon had turned to vast wastelands punctuated by giant yellow machines, giant embryos of rusty rod and concrete and roads.

the roads were beautiful - large, steeled miles of flashing concrete befitting the superstructures they were access to.

it was all so beautiful.

not for the cows, though. the cows got jacked. the new roadmap failed to register in gurgaon's thick bovine mindset. bessy, martha and june would cross the wastelands to the roads, their minds, given a genetic conditioning that had come to pass over the last three hundred years or so, would register 'cool shade of a tree next to acres of wheat crops' and they would sit. the concrete, burnt white by the sun, would scald them, there would be horns, traffic blockages and the occasional violent driver, but to them these were just hallucinations, paranormal intrusions into their conception of reality, material for a bovine x files.

therefore, for the cow that zubin's car ran into this would have been a UFO attacking.

for zubin, on the other hand, it meant 5 lacs in dead loss. the car had just been bought a couple of days ago. even the license plate said a/f. and then there were the jokes, how cow had gotten a cow, instead of the much deserved (in zubin's opinion that is) motions of pity, sympathy and offering to help with the dead loss.

the event, like all such events, was forgotten. buried by the cumulative of his first lay, promotions, new cars, children and a new cupboard for the living room. then, there was also the invasion.

the z'entradi invaded earth in large airborne fire spitting spaceships.

'we've persevered worse', said president obama, now serving his fifth re-election, 'we had to beat the apes and we invented fire, we had to beat the neanderthal and we invented the wheel, we had to beat the romans, and we invented the huns, we had to beat the british, we invented industry, we had to beat the soviets, we invented hollywood, we had to beat the orientals, and we invented globalistion. now it's all a question of waiting till we invent something to beat these guys.'

that was three seconds before a z'entradi footsoldier pushed a little yellow button and destroyed all of america.

the rest of the world quickly surrendered.

the z'entradi wanted slaves and land for industry. all of humankind, therefore, found itself gainfully employed, and all of earth found itself industrialised. outsourcing entered its intergalactic age.

as it worked itself out, earth found itself divided into large industrial sectors - factories the size of countries, connected by superhighways to ports where spaceships would fly to the z'entradi homeplanet with the produce. mankind resolved itself to slums around these roads.

in a little shack by one of these roads lived the cowasjees.

zubin, wrinkled, hunched and old, had been put in a closet. he had been driven to madness by the destruction of his house (while his wife was still in it) by the z'entradi. it was nothing personal, the aliens were just working on the superhighway, the cowasjee residence had been one of the thousands destroyed on that particular drive.

an asylum was now a luxury. and zubin was too much of an embarrassment to be kept in the room. so he knocked, cried and hawed in there while the others got used to it.

one day, zubin was unusually silent.

'is he dead?', asked young nauzer.

'my god', said zenobia, 'he's gone.'

the house hadn't in fact been destroyed, thought zubin as he tramped through the slums, this is all a big ploy to trick me.

he walked discreetly through the slums.

this is devendar vihar, sushant lok 4 should be a couple of miles in that direction.

the people looked at the old man strangely. there was something weird about him and someone ought to have stopped him and reported him to the marshals. people, however, are busy.

barack's going to be the first black american president, thought cowasjee, the world's going to the dogs. he wondered how his nephew in california was. he wondered whether he might go visit him.

suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks.

he saw his wife in the garden, putting out his clothes to dry.

with whatever life was left in him, he ran.

she spotted him and smiled. she dropped the clothes and ran to the gate.

he leapt forward, when suddenly he felt the soles of his feet melting. in the minute of sanity that pain affords, the heat on the z'entradi superhighway jolted zubin out of his delusion. the house and his wife faded. he saw himself in the middle of a great road. he sank on his haunches, trying to bring back the house, trying to bring back his wife.

he sat there, praying for an illusion.

he sat there, waiting.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Zombie Zoo

Zombie Zoo

By Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne

All down the street they're standin' in line
With white lipstick and one thing on their mind
Hey little freak with the lunch pail purse
Underneath the paint you're just a little girl

Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo, dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all you wanna do
Is dance down at the Zombie Zoo

Cute little dropout, how come you pack a rod
Is your mother in a clinic? has your father got no job?
Sometimes you're so impulsive,
You shaved off all your hair
You look like Boris Karloff and you don't even care

You're dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo
Painted in a corner and all you wanna do is dance down at the
Zombie Zoo

She disappears at sunrise, I wonder where
She goes until
The night comes fallin' down again she shows
Up with her friends half-alive

You can make a big impression or
Go through life unseen
You might wind up restricted and over seventeen
It's so hard to be careful, so easy to be led
Somewhere beyond the pavement
you'll find the living dead

Friday, August 1, 2008

dejavu too

...and as if that weren't enough six years after they blurred the line between noise and alternative and a catchy tune the white stripes were driven into the streets bloodsucked and betrayed by the indie crowd which had nurtured them.

the verve put their soul out to dry. but the neighbours kept stealing little bits of it. everyone who missed the total compete pain in the bittersweet symphony video which is everyone at the time period can hold themselves responsible. but its ok. no one's coming to collect.

and somewhere between these two events chris martin delivered the most honest line of his career. revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate. he knew.

Fiction

my mum tells me a story.

if it were yours, she says, the girl would end up raped and dead.

in terms of the fiction’s semantics, i’m holding a gun to the face of the happy ending. the happy ending, wearing a tropical Hawiaan shirt is pointing a gun back at me. also pointing a .45 at the happy ending is roger ebert, film critic for the chicago times.

me: Now I'm thinkin', it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or is could by you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

(puts the gun down on the table)

to the tune of a dejavu

michael stipe’s excursion for resonance was successful. and its importance in a dissonant world will go unsung. and he will fade away. while britney spears and jay z will represent our time.

while thom yorke sings karma police and quietly starts a revolution on his laptop between playing ball with his son and taking him out to a natural history museum. his rebellion will be marlowe to a hip hop shakespeare.

the alternative space is no space. history says ‘all or nothing’, always.