Black ants and red ants
It’s difficult to ascertain whether men are from Mars or women are from Venus. However, one can safely believe that men are more obsessed with sex. Women tend to seek intimacy more than pleasure. On the other hand, men have not only let their genitals occupy their heads — no pun intended here — but also carved out a world that pays obeisance to phallic figures (bread, building, bullet, etc.). According to a recent study, men think about sex about once every 50 minutes. That’s more than 24 times a day, considering the in/coherent nature of thinking. Anyway, I wonder what figures second on this list of thoughts. I don’t know about you but I can tell you that for me, thinking about this statistic would be it.
After moving down to Mangalore, I’ve realized why electricity and wifi are the two greatest essentials of modern life. It’s been close to three weeks of transition and we still can’t use our washing machine in this apartment because every time we turn it on, the power trips. Similarly, during daytime, the power goes on and off at will. And on Wednesday, load shedding takes place for hours, leaving me desperately tied to my phone’s hotspot. The situation can feel dire but when I am in the middle of it, I try to tell myself that AQI in Gurgaon is 219 whereas it’s about 30 here. Of course, it doesn’t help because you can’t really think straight when you are sweating without getting the benefits of working for Apple.
Speaking of wifi, I dream of a world where the internet never goes off. Like oxygen. It’s always there no matter how shitty the weather is. I also dream of a world where Pakalu Papito has more followers than Donald Trump. In retrospect, Trump went to the extent of becoming the POTUS so that he may have a tremendous Twitter following. Anyhow, I dream of a world where it’d be OK for somebody like Ricky Gervais or Bill Burr to host the Oscars. I also dream of a world where “sorry very much” is as common as “thank you very much”. I dream of a world where there are no more football transfer rumours. As if footballers weren’t enough, the media has started spinning plots around manager transfers too. Last but not the least, I dream of a world where Dadar station is declared an independent country.
One of the few elements common to childhood and adulthood is the likelihood of fantasy. As kids, we fantasized about relatively innocuous possibilities. After growing up, we upgraded those fantasies to more worldly terrains (career, partner, wealth, etc.). Since I grew up in a Bombay chawl with pluralism at its heart, we kids had the randomest ideas about the world around us. For instance, we firmly believed that white folks are somewhat gods. If this belief system stemmed amongst only fellow Hindu kids, it’d have still made sense but no. Our circle had a perfect mix of different religions although poverty was the bottomline. Maybe because of our wall-less background — most houses didn’t have walls back then as we shared tin sheets, which got unbearably hot during summer — we could create this tiny microcosm for ourselves where we made up stuff and marinated in it. My all-time favourite childhood fiction was deciding that black ants were Hindu and red ants were Muslims. Why? Because the former was mostly found in temples and the latter found hovering over Thursday niyaz. Nothing to do with the ant’s ability to harm us.
Now that we’ve mentioned ants, have you watched Antz (1998)? If yes, I know the exact moment your mind melted while watching that movie. It was when tired ants grab a droplet of water in their twiggy hands and suck on it. As the water disappears into their little mouths, you were like — “WOW, I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY!” I know this feeling. That’s why animation movies are so damn necessary, especially for kids. They provide shapes to our imagination. Be it Pixar or Ghibli, the core of animation lies in imitation and being living creatures, we seek life in almost everything.
In 2013, something strange happened in the field of journalism. For the first time in 35 years, no Pulitzer prize was given for fiction. Yup. Back then, the folks responsible for handing out this prize simply raised their hands and conceded that they just couldn’t find a worthy candidate or body of work — incredulous as it may sound now. Regardless of whatever their intentions were back then, it’s quite telling that they couldn’t find fiction in a world fast moving towards fake news. Now, is this fact worth pondering over?
He is not really a romantic person but he is certainly a storyteller and is always knee-deep in poetry. If he likes you already, he’ll grow impatient with silence. If he loves you, you will never have a dull moment. Very few things charm him as the idea of lying down under the open sky with breeze caressing you. Let’s say you find yourself with him on the hillside, you two will be staring at the sky and he will be telling you a random tale from years beyond, and as the yarn gets thicker, he will fall asleep in the middle. That story will remain incomplete. Just like you. At that instance.
My friend Pranav was absolutely correct when he suggested that Lucky Ali’s name is a paradox. Although we are ones who should be called lucky for getting to hear his songs, he is the one who is named Lucky. His 1998 album Sifar was my earliest introduction to philosophy. I was in class seventh back then and all the 10 songs on that gorgeous album collectively pulled me out of my narrow kaleidoscope. I’ve been listening to those ballads and many more since, and still, the tremble in his voice and the depth of his lyrics have always transported me to a gentler world. If you were to boil down the essence of his music to one word, it’d be hope. And having heard every single song (not just Hindi) by Ali, I can safely conclude that he has never sung a bad song. So much so if you go on Twitter and search for “worst song by lucky ali”, you will not find not one tweet. Given the nasty nature of Twitter, that says a lot about the greatness of this singer who preferred to call himself a farmer in 2012 when I interviewed him for mid-day.
You might be young but you are not beholden to youth. You don’t have to let others tell you, either through words or channels, what to do or how to think. This universe is much bigger than any of us and it’s wide enough to encapsulate our flaws as well as our skills. We may never know why we were put on this planet but we must know — before it’s too late — we have only one life. Even if you believe in the theory of reincarnation, you must concede that without dying, we’ll never get to know for certain. And that’s a huge price to pay for a reckoning. All these confusions could only lead us to our inward path: to the person we really are.
A couple of weeks ago, I had blogged about words that need to retire on their own. It’s high time we stopped using words that have turned hollow. Obviously, this doesn’t discount the several hollower millennial words that keep jumping up the timeline. But I take great offence (and I rarely take offence) when somebody uses the term ‘high poetry’ to distinguish between folk and refined poems. In all fairness, there is no such reality as high poetry. If anything, it’s a sign of imperial hangover where a small group designates itself as better (read: higher) than the rest (read: lower). Poetry is poetry. That’s where it begins and ends. To assume that the technical aspects of a poem makes one leaner and meaner and cleaner than the other is nothing but a facile attempt at corroding language. Let’s not forget that there is poetry without language but there is no language without poetry. Also, we must accept by now that language doesn’t flow like a river because there is no sea to empty into. It thrives on its banks and mutates and creates newer excuses to build the bridge between two strangers.
I’ve been actively blogging since July of 2007. After spending over 10 years on Blogger, I finally moved to Medium in 2017. Now, my blog is in the middle of its next evolution. And here is where things get a bit sticky for you, my lovely readers. I may have a few thousands of followers here but I have only a few hundreds of dedicated readers. All these years, I’d kept my blog free of commerce, which effectively translated to zero penny for me as a writer. I write because I enjoy musing about random topics and finding connections and patterns in human behaviour. But if I truly wish to become a full-time writer someday soon, it’s important (for me) to know where I stand, commercially. After all, the books won’t buy themselves. If my readers aren’t willing to pay a minimal charge for my blog content via subscription program, then how can I expect them to pay for my book someday? All these conclusions have encouraged me to move my blog from Medium to either Substack or Scrollstack, depending on which one suits me better.
Until then, enjoy your time here.
