Katrina

I have been following the trail of destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina with a growing sense of dread and sadness. The fury she unleashed on the hapless costal towns on the Gulf of Mexico is something that will be etched in our minds forever. What makes the images shown even more disturbing to me is that I recently visited New Orleans. A charming city, extremely laid back and with a character of its own. I could identify the downtown area from the images and to think we indulged in such revelry just a couple of months ago in what is now an uninhabitable landmass inudundated with sea water and strewn with floating bodies makes me shudder.

It's been a truly trying time for the rest of the American people as well, having to cope with a disaster so close to home. Or has it?? Personally, I find the reaction of the people and the media quite perplexing. Yesterday, a newscaster, I think he was from CNN, was quizzing the Governor of Lousiana on the tragedy. Pretty routine questions, until he came up with this stinker, " So tell us Governor, even two hundred years from now are we going to be at the mercy of elements of
nature like this? Are we going to remain as inept as a third-world country like Bangladesh?"
What the fuck does that mean boyo?? That you don't really care about Bangladeshi people drowning in floods? That 200 years from now, Bangladeshis can drown but Americans must be saved? To me that statement represents the American attitude :we can conquer all and while we are at it damn the rest of the world to hell!Tell me Mr. Newscaster, don't pain and suffering transcend countries? Isn't every life worth the same, be it American, Swedish or Sri Lankan? Isn't compassion universal?

"This is our Tsunami", claims the mayor of Mississipi. To me that's rather like a teacher comparing unfavorably, to his face, the mental ability of a dyslexic kid to the brightest student in the class. Somehow, one just gets the feeling that the American media is looking for a disaster to call their own, to claim that they have been victimized as much as the "Third-World" countries.Tell me Mr. Mayor, what purpose did that statement serve other than bring back painful memories everyone is trying to leave behind?

Grow up! Take a leaf out of the book of all those who up gave so much of theirs to people half world away. Learn to love. Religion divides, boundaries divide, languages divide. But life is one...I will weep for every American who died as I will for every Indian or every Bangladeshi.

OZZFEST ...BLOODY OZZFEST

Was at Ozzfest on Sunday. We drove to Selma, TX, which is about an hour from here. Though the show starts at 8:00 AM, we left (due to a variety of reasons) only at 10:00 AM. The better bands don't go on stage till later, so we were hoping we hadn't missed anything special.

We got there around 11:00 AM and found to our utter disgust, that ARCH ENEMY was the first fuckin band on stage. Now, that's really crappy scheduling. These guys have atleast six records to their name and have been around for close to a decade. What' s more..they kick fuckin ass and their frontwoman growls and screeches like she dosen't give a shit about being alive for the next song. What probably worked against them is fact that they aren't an American band and don't play mainstream death/thrash metal. Consequently, they have to play before bands like Wicked Wisdom that have a following as big as the population of Corsicana, TX. And we thought atleast metal was free from politics....

Befoe this starts sounding like a mundane review, that millions can write.........

I love going to these concerts for two reasons. The first, of course, is the music. The second is the sheer intensity of it all. It's the closest that I have come to feeling like I was going to crash headlong into a wall. And, I don't fuckin care.... Living in a cocoon of security where life is reasonably orderly and people don't jump at us from out of the darkness with scythes in their hands, where we get to satisfy most of of our primal urges with a fair degree of convenience, it's the closest we can get to mayhem..albeit controlled.

When Rob Zombie belts out 'Living dead girl', when Soilwork performs 'As we speak we turn to stone', and I am up near the stage, close to the moshpit, headbanging away, the 100F sun is burning into my eyes, the guards are hosing me down with water , my neck hurts becase of the sprain from yesterday, I break my 100 buck Oakley glasses, ...Who gives a FUCK!!!!!!!....I swear to god, it is one of the most exhilirating experiences. To let yourself go.....

And the best part is that , rather anticlimactically , you can always snap back to reality, to the dull drab world where people seem to speak in hushed whispers, to a world where the word motherfucker draws not roars but gasps of dismay.

When the adrenalin stops pumping, it leaves you drained. But happy.....and relieved...because you have seen the hidden demon, not just in yourself but in the thousands around you.....and he's alive and kicking.

HAIL OZZY.......the ass-flasher from HELL!!!!

on a lighter note

Disclaimer: Something else that I wrote a while back, when I was fond of big words (an artefact of my GRE prep).

THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DILLI

One of the Chennai bound trains from New Delhi departs at the rather convenient (or inconvenient depending on your inclinations) hour of 22:30 hrs .I rather despondently made my way to the platform and spent some forgettable minutes waiting for the carriages to arrive. And finally, after what seemed like ages, made my way to my allotted compartment. At the door, the extremely pleasing sight of a 'maal-chick' greeted me. I gave her the expert once over, of course, being as unobtrusive and about it as possible. Not thinking much of the indubitably unusual sight I clambered onto my compartment, secured my precious luggage. And promptly clambered out. Remembering that I hadn’t brought any of the life saving liquid a.k.a water(before you start to get other ideas) I sauntered off in the general direction of a stall.

I boarded the train just as it started to move armed with a bottle of Paras-supposed-mineral- water (the seller made a special point to remind me). Making my way to my seat, I experienced what can best be described as a jolt (totally independent of the motion of the train), for the very girl I alluded to above was sitting right in front of it. I murmured a silent prayer to lord Ganapthy (after maybe 2 yrs), put on my “I rule the world” look and strode towards it (the seat). Upon finding myself at the destination, I put on a “what the bloody hell” look and made a big deal of fiddling with my luggage. To my disconcertment the object of my attention serenely continued to read a book, the title of which I was too preoccupied to notice. I extracted a Booker prize wining novel which I have been trying to read for the past year and turned to page 5 and read with what should have seemed like extreme relish and concentration for half an hour. After approximately the aforesaid interval of time, she asked me, ‘How do u manage to read such intellectual stuff?’ I made what I hoped passed for one of those modestly nonchalant gestures, and murmured some crap, that even I couldn’t quite make out. The ice broken, we got chatty, the mundane details of which I will not bore you with. We finally parted at Chennai.

It is here that I must disappoint a few of those readers who expect the proverbial Twist in the Tale. Before we parted company she made the all too important gesture of handing me her phone number. As Sigmund Freud once never said ‘dreams on trains seem to come true more often.’ Anyway, I must scoot now . She just hates me to be late on a date.

ODE

As she lay on her bed,
I gazed into those lovely eyes.
So full of pain, so full of dread,
Uttering unspoken, wrenching cries.

I looked into them again,
But all I saw was naked pain.
I hoped to see joy and zest,
Which had never failed to warm my breast.

She raised her pale and tortured face,
Imploring me to let her go.
Oh! My desires are so base,
Even demons would be loath to know.

I could not talk, I could not speak,
I would not cry, I would not weep.
When I held her shriveled, wasted hand,
I cursed god, I cursed this land.

I sat for hours in the dark,
There was not a mote of hope.
The desolate future empty and stark,
Till my death I can but grope.

Black slowly turned to gray,
And took her battered soul away.
It was fitting, she went at dawn,
In every day she lives on.

crap

These days I feel the need to be in constant motion. I feel this need for fluidity in all my actions, I feel the urge to simplify things, actions, feelings, crap I don’t really care about. Amid all my artificiality and of those that surround me, I yearn for that spark of genuineness. And when I see it, in myself, or in others, I feel overcome by gratitude. Towards whom, I don’t know. Even as write this, I am conscious of these urges. It makes me stutter. When you try too hard to simplify, to be genuine, it just gets more complicated, you become a phony. See, this seems too damn fucking contorted already. Rather like a drunk trying too hard to walk in a straight line, but tripping over himself instead. Maybe he is better off staggering along: at least he gets somewhere that way. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s better of lying in his own reeking stench until someone shakes him awake. And he can continue the stagger towards his end. And we are like drunks on the road of life, staggering along, waiting for the prod that will keep us going, at the same time dreading it. In our hearts we want to just lie in our own pool of filth, immobile, incapacitated and indecisive.

It always amazes me how people manage to fill whole books with words of their won creation, while it takes me hours to fill up a couple of pages. The reason is deeper than lack of talent or vocabulary. Vocabulary is a Thesaurus away and talent never did much for anyone anyway. I guess it has more to do with thoughts and experiences that feed these thoughts. Experiences are the key. D.H. Lawrence locked up in a cell since the time he was born couldn’t have written Rainbow. Imagination is fertile, but the seeds need to be sown and the shit has to be thrown in.