The Road Trip

I wasn't out on the road for the speed, or the thrill or even to travel. Or to meet new people, take part in their lives or simply to enjoy the moment, alone on my own. I didn't yet know why I was out for the almost three days now. Maybe to belong, maybe to un-belong. I didn't know.

The past two days were just the same, long winding roads, green all around, occasional people crossing my path, occasional cars overtaking me, occasional rains that I always missed. Nothing new, nothing unusual. Yes I was on a road trip, but I was alone. I was out to meet someone, someone who lived far, someone who used to be mine, someone who had moved on.

It drizzled as I started my third and the last day. I had originally planned to drive through the night and reach the end early in the morning, but then I saw the sand dunes and decided to camp. It was nothing like I had ever experienced before. I drove into the dunes and went as far away from the road as possible, trying to disappear, half hoping to lose my sense of bearings and get lost in these ever changing waves of sand. A sudden stillness around made me stop and look up, and look at the stars. The sky was clear now, despite the clouds and mild rains in the afternoon. I came out of the car and without even realising, screamed at the glittering sonsofbitches. They didn't flinch, and I screamed even more, never realising how tears flowed ever time I screamed.

Tired and drenched in my sweat and tears, I slept in the car itself, never bothering to camp, or look at the bright dark blue sky and the stars. All I felt was the hollowness around me, a complete lack of feelings, an absence of emotions. There was smoke, smoke of my own making. It overwhelmed me.

Morning came easily and without even thinking I went back to the road and continued driving. When rains came once again I stopped, and decided to get drenched finally. I didn't know if I would do it again today, or ever. But I couldn't feel the rain, I didn't feel anything, at all. How can things be so empty, how can I be so lost? I knew there was little meaning in going forward, and even lesser in taking the road back. The road didn't take me anywhere, anymore. Suddenly I was free of any questions, and my mind sought no answers.

I knew nothing, yet my mind and heart told me that I knew it all. There was immense knowledge in not knowing, and accepting that this was how things were always meant to be. Why seek answers, when there were none? At least none for me.

I didn't survive. I didn't exist anymore. I was dead. Finally.


Epilogue: The body of a dead man was found a days later and a few miles from the highway, rotting inside the car, stranded in the desert. The cause of death was confirmed to be Carbon Monoxide poisoning inside the locked car.




Thanks to Tej for the illustration, read and know more about him here and here.

The guilt lives on, so does inaction

Sometimes I feel that the guilt from inaction (or rather very late action) by the Allied forces against the fascists, who almost completely exterminated the Jewish population of Europe and blotted the history of mankind with irreparable damage, lives on. Britain decided to enter the war only when it reached its own shore, perhaps the wounds from the first catastrophic war were not yet healed and the country wasn't willing to get into another phase of death and destruction. United Sates also entered the war, only when its own shores (read Pearl Harbor) came under Japanese attack.

Auschwitz Concentration camp

The war ended, United Nations formed and the world promised to never ever let another Holocaust happen. But history repeats itself, and in this case it repeated over and over again as the two world powers fought for hegemony. Genocides happened all over the world, and often we looked the other way.

Abandoned Darfur village

The bloody modern history of Africa is perhaps the most obvious example, as factions fought, governments killed, raped and maimed its own population and democracy replaced by autocracy, the world body looked helplessly. Of course there have been numerous peace keeping missions and I believe that saved many lives from  getting lost, but most of this action was an afterthought, when things were almost out of hand and water was again nearing the head.

Afghanistan

Many such genocides were perhaps never even reported, or just took a small space on the inside pages of the popular newspapers we read. Only a few followed these news, and even fewer perhaps cared. The correction/ proactive action by United States (most likely to meet its own ends) in Afghanistan and Iraq have been severely criticized and have apparently done much less good than originally promised.

Libya

Overthrowing a regime (popular or otherwise) is risky business. As French Air Force pounds Gaddafi's forces, this comes to my mind often. Should we as people sit back and let a government kill its own people (labeled rebels) or get our acts together and take some proactive action (something on the lines of what is going on right now) ? So was the war in Afghanistan too justified? Even if United States had its own agenda, the end was an end of the Taliban era (though not completely) and the so called liberation of people. Should we have done the same in Egypt as well? The list could be endless, and its weird why sometimes we chose to intervene and often chose to ignore.

So what next? Do we keep pounding Libya (and possibly kill some civilians as collateral damage) or the strategy should be different, something more intelligent than air strikes? Have we learnt something in the last six plus decades after the Second World War ended? How does the world move forward?

A client in US has graciously decided to sponsor this blog post. A link to who they are and what they do is included here. Do check it out - online paralegal certification.


Images references:
     www.awesomestories.com
     www.bbc.co.uk
     www.boston.com
     www.guardian.co.uk

To my death...

I sit and I cry,
till the tears stop falling and the ones on me are dry.
I close my eyes and fall into the soothing dark,
yet struggle with it when my senses are back.
Its the only friend I ever had, my only confidant,
yet I am scared to confess my sins anymore,
despite the closeness, we have grown too distant.

I still feed myself to you, hoping to be consumed like this,
the darkness, however, only grows even more.
What ecstasy the end would bring me!
but the road to my destruction is hard, so long.

I walk still, into the smoke, into further darkness.
As the black engulfs me with its tight arms, I finally let go.
I have reached my end, with even nothing to give me solace,
with my eyes closed, I stop breathing, and we finally become one.

A full night of kinky ecstasy...

She got up with and came towards him, curling up her upper lip and suggestively playing with the rope in her hands. This was new, she had never done this before and his pulse ran high with anticipation. There were sweat beads on his head, which she casually wiped off with the soft cotton rope, which in turn gave him numerous goose bumps...

This wasn't the first time they were trying something new together, it was only a week back when she had insisted on trying food on bed, a suggestion he jumped at. However, the evening ended with lots of food and wine on bed but nothing else followed. They were too drunk by the time they finished and slept off in the different corners of the bed; it was only in the morning that they realised that there was food all over the bed and on them. They decided to call it a failed experiment, and vowed never to repeat it!

Not that today was risk-free, there was a high probability that he might just end up dead after this new round of experimentation. He had never seen her with a rope before, and wasn't quite sure if the complicated knot she was trying to tie around his neck would work out exactly as she thought it would. There was something child-like about her, her innocence and of course, her laughter. For a second he forgot that it wasn't Sheila, but someone else with her.

She was successful in tying the knot around his neck, only to realise that it was his hands that she had originally intended to tie. Not the one give up, as all attempts to loosen the knot failed, she went around looking for scissors, failing which the search for the knife started. And there it was, the jet black and shining knife, clutched solidly in her left hand (her right had still had the leather hunter, to be used with better results later), looking vicious at me and ready to strike. Sheila was still hopeful of salvaging the night and refused to free her right hand, the hunter continued to dangle seductively. The knife went to work, and as expected, chipped off a piece of his neck along with the rope. There was a little blood but for them it just added to the kink. Almost on cue, the hunter came hard on him and more noises of ecstasy followed.

However, they failed to stop the flow of blood from the neck, a fact they initially found very funny. They laughed together, but by the time he choked laughing, there was blood all over the bed and smeared on their bodies. She laughed more, thinking about the food and red wine on them last week, while he stared at her with glazed eyes. They were blissfully happy for the hour, and he, dead thereafter.

I almost died, but was saved by the phone call!

I am not convinced that I shall not die today, at least not so early. As per Muzayun, I will die earlier than her. But then she is likely to live for many many years. The oil from the Kashmiri walnuts apparently ensure a long life, plus the years of all the animals that you eat also get added to your life. But, of course, if you live in Kashmir things change. Bullets often negate any positive impact of the local walnuts, something seen repeatedly in the past three months.

Coming back to my original conviction of dying today, well, it was based on some solid foundation. I had body ache and I missed both the major meals today. Plus I slept like a log in the evening, completely unconvinced that I shall wake up ever again. Or maybe I was dreaming of that. My phone spoiled my fantastic imagination, which in itself was a very vivid visualization of my own death. It was heartbreaking and even I was moved by it.

I found it cruel to be told on the phone that I won't be dying today, what about all the tears that I shed for my death? It was also suggested that I should postpone it to a later date when it's more convenient for my near and dear ones to come and talk about my apparent greatness, perhaps a weekend towards the end of this month. Isn't is preposterous to insist that a dying man die at a later date? I was highly offended and sulked for a while.

But eventually I did agree to the weird demand, and so I am not dying tonight. The dying symptoms continue, but death has been sent to the gallows, at least for now.

Fly

Fly. I believe I can fly. Well, this sounds cliché.

Fly is the phone brand I previously owned. And I enjoyed using it thoroughly, for whatever time we spent together. It's still with me, and every time I look at it, it asks me a BIG why? I believe it asks me the reason for my sudden shift of loyalties to Samsung. I do not have the heart to tell my fly that it had stopped satisfying my needs a while back and hence the replacement. And so I just look at it mournfully, while its questions remain unanswered.

I saw a Fly phone for the first time a long long time back with Muzayun in Bangalore. It was the apple of her eye, while I always thought it was odd. I remember once I tried using to take pictures at the Leela Palace, and the results were less than satisfactory. In fact I couldn't use it at all without a stylus, it wasn't meant for my fat fingers I guess. But there was nothing I liked about the phone, even the color black was not a savior. But somehow Muzayun was absolutely convinced that hers was the best phone (despite the INR 14,000 price tag)! And despite the fact that she was working for Nokia then and her brand loyalties were completely wedged with a sword. It was an absolutely hilarious Nokia Vs Fly tie, we all enjoyed it back then.

I surprised myself when I bought a Fly last year, this was necessary as my happening Motorola couldn't survive the Italy trip. And I flew with the Fly, it was absolutely cheap and worked amazingly well. However, after our short fling, it met with a mini accident and stopped performing well enough. I kept using it for a while still, refusing to give it up though I knew we were not meant for each other anymore. Weirdly the moment I had another opportunity to shift back to a touch phone, I dumped my dear old Fly (I already had a long association with the brand) and shifted loyalties!

Muzayun still lives with her Fly (2008 onwards, if I am not wrong). But the Fly is dying and needs help. My initial thought was to set up a fund in its name, The Dying Mobile Fund for Muzayun's Fly (TDMFMF), but dropped the idea considering the complicated name and un-kararjohar like acronym appeal. The time is now running out fast. My sincere request to all is to contribute directly to this dying phone to keep it alive on life support. Science and Technology are yet to advance to a level where this dear old fly can be given a new lease of life. We can hope for a miracle. Or a replacement.

Amen.

Death of a dead phone!

My beloved (despite many people hating the phone, but loving the ring tone) Motorokr died late this June at approximately this time.

This video shows how to kill an already dead mobile.



This was shot after office hours and under strict supervision of experts. It is, however, strongly recommended that one should repeat this at home and share the results here. A few disastrous examples could even be featured here.


p.s. Its actually long and demented and almost senseless!