Eine Exkursion in die Kindheit

Es ist immer schwer nach einer Party aufzuräumen. Der achte Geburtstag von Sid war keine Ausnahme. Als die Sonne begann unterzugehen, gingen die jungen Partygäste nach Hause. Sie alle hatten viel Spaß. Sid war sehr müde, und ging früh ins Bett. Die schwierige Aufgabe, mussten Heike und Udo, die jungen Eltern vom 8-jährigen Sid erledigen. Den Garten sauber machen: Konfetti, buntes Papier, Glitter, Pappteller und Comics waren auf dem ganzen Picknick-Tisch verstreut. Plastik Möbel waren im ganzen Garten verteilt. Während Udo die Möbel und alles was auf dem Boden lag einzusammeln, konzentrierte sich Heike auf das was auf dem Tisch lag.

„Es war eine schreckliche Idee, die Kinder mit den Fingern malen zu lassen. Oh Gott!! Was für ein Chaos!“ dachte sie und suchte die Kappen von den kleinen Farbeflaschen. Während sie suchte, wurden ihre Finger grün gefärbt. Schnell fand sie ein Papier um die Farbe weg zu wischen. Während sie wischte, bemerkte sie etwas auf dem Papier. Im Licht der Dämmerung, schien die Farbe hell und ähnelt der Form einer Frau. War das das Glas Wein, dass sie getrunken hatten bevor sie mit dem Aufräumen begonnen hatten?  Fast unbewusst, fügte sie mehrere Details zu dem Gemälde hinzu, mit ihren Fingern. Sie freut sich das Bild zu malen und sie verlor sich in ihrer Zeichnung.

Udo kam zum Tisch um sich eine Erfrischung als Belohnung für den fast aufgeräumten Garten zu holen und sah wie Heike mit Papier und Farben spielte. Er ging zu ihr und hielt freundlich ihren Hand. Sie erschrak, als sie aus dem Trance aufwachte. Willkommen zurück im Erwachsenenalter!!

„Könntest du mir bitte die Flasche Wein geben, Schatz?“ fragt er und sie griff nach der Flasche. Aber ihre Hand war rutschig wegen der Farbe, und die Flasche rutschte aus ihrer Hand, fiel auf den Boden und zerbracht.

„Noch mehr Arbeit für mich!“ dachte Udo und ging ins Haus, um einen Besen zu holen.

All Hail the Chinese Democracy!!!!

"and when I get excited,
my little China girl says
Oh Baby just you shut your mouth"
crooned David Bowie some 34 years back. Strangely it seems that many in India have taken a shining to the China Girl..well almost to her. 
I cannot comment whether they are infatuated with Chinese girls or girls that are as fragile as precious china, but one thing that I can say is that they have fallen for China hook, line and sinker.And by "they" I refer to the people running the show called India...the politicians, the officials, and most importantly the judges.
There are many reasons for falling in love with China, she is rich, successful, vibrant, extrovert and ebulient, efficient and meticulous in her endeavors, does not carry a lot of baggage, reaching out to her is easy, she smiles generously upon the indigent and welcomes one and all with open arms. And she is a control freak. She makes the rules and draws the lines, cross them and she is a cruel mistress.
That last part is what has captured the imagination of the Indian authority figures. The sheer fetish of being able to control, to enslave and to dominate is what turns them on.
The recent statements from a Judge in Delhi HC, the musings of the Science and Technology minister corroborate the above mentioned statement.
First came the vitriol from our honorable Science & Technology minister who had probably first stumbled across the internet by accident and upon seeing some objectionable content on some sites decided to go all Tom Cruise-Minority Report style by summoning the top Internet start-up executives and telling them to "pre-screen" content. Such dedication to the sycophantic cause was received by criticism from all quarters of educated and over-educated people, twitter nerds went all Tom Cruise-Top Gun style and catapulted #idiotkapilsibal to most trending for some time, a surge that minister saab does not enjoy even in polls. After  dropping the $35 Aakash tab, hiss highness the honorable minister has gone into stealth mode and has called in his legions of mandarins to wage low intensity skirmishes.
And now this. For the "care to click" impaired a Delhi High Court judge said "Like China, we can block all such websites (who don't comply). But let us not go to that situation"

Just when I thought the courts were the last bastions for defending the freedom of expression of the people, statements like these well do cast a doubt on the way things might go down in Chinatown(bad pun intended).

My two bit take on the statement is - Mi Laard...please get yourself acquainted with how the Internet works.

I am pretty sure that the googler-lawyer, facebooker-attorney and the other websiter-defenders have driven home the fact that online content censorship(especially not hosted on their site) is as feasible like turning literal shit into metallic gold or for the mechanical engineering inspired a 100 percent efficient heat engine.

Sure the images of Her Highness, the Empress of India photoshopped on Katrina Kaif/Sunny Leon etc are pretty disturbing and offensive(for the actresses) and also the occasional pondy clips coming up on the profiles of morons who click on links like " OMG Real video of Kareena Kapoor and Pappu Pager doing it" and yeah some dumb bastard puts bikinis on Lakshmi ji, but hey you always have a mark as spam, report video/image/post etc. If in some remote part of the world some guy wears a T-shirt with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis:Bold as Love cover design on it can a ban on T shirts in India be justified?...taking this a bit further suppose his friend decides to photograph him and share the pic via FB, and somehow the pic goes viral (probably our subject is non other than Rajnikant) would this amount to ethnic cleansing of Jimi Hendrix fans in India, or would Trimurti's wrath ravage the believers and non believers alike??

But again national security & integrity is a cause of concern for us all, Pakistan and China are no fiends as compared to these objectionable websites. With organisations and Individuals like the MNS, Shiv Sena, Dar-ul-uloom, Shri Ram Sene, Huriyat, Congress, SP, BSP, RJD, Lalu, Paswaan, Mulayam, Thakre's,  Mayawati and their type working round the clock to preserve the Union of India acting as vangaurds of internal peace and stability. How dare these foreign tech startups, these new media steam roll in and turn the magnum opus of these political luminaries into mere dust and grime. How dare these nimble, fast and creative agencies empower commoners when we had promised an empowered tomorrow, 60 years back (it is not our fault that tomorrow never comes!!), how dare they provide opportunities to bright minds to reach their potential by providing avenues for  education and employment and how dare these companies provide these inept, unruly commoners a platform to voice dissent and question authority??!!!!

Blasphemy!!!!!!

Heresy!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn these internet companies to the seventh circle...it is because of them that we are having so many problems!!!

Off with their heads!!!!!

(thank you!!! come again!! with more investments!!!!)


Orwell will be rolling on the ground somewhere laughing and saying "I told you so"

Horny 72 Virgins Waiting for you!!!!!

..meanwhile in some remote corner of Pakistan…..

Fidayeen 1: So the day has come when our rigorous training has come to an end, we have mastered every weapon known to man and have eschewed fear of death….it is time fellow brother that we strike down the heathen and unfaithful with the full fury of God’s Justice…..

Fidayeen2: what?? Training over!!! So soon….man..we are so hard-core!!!...so now what??

Fidayeen1: Now it’s time we receive glory…..tell me dear brother on which shores should we be martyred….Should it be the country of the Zionists who have long oppressed our brothers in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria…or should we avenge the cowards who murdered our brothers in Bosnia & Kosovo, or should we strike the weakened puppet states of the great Satan….or should I dare say we take on the Great Satan itself on its homeland….muahahahahaha…!!!!!

Fidayeen2: Have you completely lost it Fidayeen1 or playing stupid to piss me off.., when you have oppressed Kashmiris in your backyard and trains to take you to the heart of the infidel state, why are you thinking of a logistical nightmare??.....Let’s go and detonate some IEDs and go on a shooting spree in India…..if we get away with it we score major brownie points here…..if we get caught we get to wine and dine your entire life on Indian taxpayer money…get celebrity status… get clemency in the near future…probably get returned in exchange for rich honeymooners..let’s catch the morning train…Fidayeens need not buy tickets….we’ll get the fidayeen quota seats in first class…

Fidayeen1: are you shitting me…..C’mon..that is for losers…what about the martyrdom…the 72 virgins…the grace of the lord and the whole ninety-nine yards…did you bunk the “martyrs with benefits” educational film??

Fidayeen2: you see that is the problem with you, It seems in addition to being an uneducated horny adolescent you are unaware of concepts of management..this is the new age ..we only talk win-win, Getting Blown away, or riddled with heathen bullets will land you in God Heaven with 72 (assuming female)Virgins and a glowing Martyr status back in Pakistan. Getting caught will land us in the Heathen Heaven where with the right connections one can enjoy free food drink and even more than 72 confirmed females although not virgins per se...while the faithful back home ennoble us in lore..so in a way you can have your Pheerni and it it too. And if any one of them conservative Indian sonsofbitches try to expedite our trials we will have big intellectuals to gaurd our Human Rights.

Fidayeen1: Human Rights? Intellectuals?!! what are these!!!

Fidayeen2: Never mind, they are our pals in heathen country..

Fidayeen1: as usual brother you have convinced me, you have led me back from the strayed path....let us go avenge some of our dear kashmiri brothers..and think Win-Win....yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Winds of the Maghreb

1960's America saw the youth discovering Cannabis, LSD and a whole panoply of abbreviations that blasted away the mind to far off galaxies in one hit, compounded with the "Niggers" asking for their rights as equal citizens of USA and the fast snowballing situation in Vietnam set ablaze a whole new cultural phenomenon that challenged the post war dream of the mighty Allies. And it wasn't limited to just the US...the whole western block was affected by the infectious ideas, the music, the sex, the culture and the "youth in revolt"........

Gloss over the momentous falls of walls, toppling of statues and a few grisly wars to the present and you find a similar fire raging just East of the Atlantic...what started by the self immolation of a fruit seller has gripped asbestos nations in its contagion....gone are the rock songs the free sex and psychedelics, gone are the celebrities and the rush to milk the phenomenon....and gone are the days of Flower Power....what remains are the long lip-serviced ideas of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, what remains is a deep rooted anger frustration and cynicism for The Man..what remains are chants, social network activity, sarcasm and general vitriol aimed at The Man...what remains is a leaderless mob that is not afraid of shedding blood of its own as well as the enemy...what remains is a beast in a fragile, weary cage...

At the risk of being labelled Naive, what has instilled a sense of Optimism in the recent developments of the Arab Spring  is the absolute leaderless protest of its people. Their is no "Leader of the Opposition" for the establishment to talk to, to Bribe, to Entice or to Coerce...the Angry Mob is as individualistic in the same way that they are in the social network sphere..Each profile disseminating its own idea but creating a social network which more and more people are free to join. The Objectives are pretty clear, the means engaged  are improvised and the determination resolute as ever....but with only one difference:  if "the beasts of England" are able to chase out the Farmer, it is pretty clear that even Napoleon and his ilk will not have their say for a long time if they keep doing their shenanigans

In less Animal Farm terms :- Even if in Egypt and Tunisia and the other states where the overthrow and the process of democratization gets underway & western fears of a hardline Islamist government taking charge becomes a reality, one should be rest assured that the hardliners would probably fail and be deposed in a similar manner by a big angry mob if they fail to serve the mandate of the people....as now the powers that be are face to face with the people..because the Big Angry mob is leaderless...they are driven by hunger of their bellies, knowledge of their intellect and the countless binary signals emitting out of wall sockets and towers..the nervous geek, the blue collared construction worker & the kindergarten teacher has teamed up..no mullah or ummah or priest or pontiff can fool them....demands of roti, kapda and makaan is followed by bandwidth and good governance.

As the winds of Inquilab move over the Maghreb, it blows north, it blows east, no Himalayas, Urals or Alps to check it.....Discontent and Disgruntlement is rife...and it does not have a face...

Monday Morning Blues

zzzzzzzzzzzz........The buzzer goes off, it's 9'o' clock in the morning & am awoken by the rather unpleasant ring of my trusted alarm clock.

As the world of my room swims into my senses slowly, I am overtaken by a sense of loss, am being deprived of a basic human comfort, a feeling of disenchantment from the present state of affairs, a sense of being amputated from a well-nourished body.

A desperate urge to bury myself deep within the sheets takes over my fragile saturnine mind...job, responsibilities, boss, clients, team...to the devil with all of them. While I remain lying in a state of semi consciousness...a plane between stupor and awakening incredible visions race through my mind. A free exchange of conscious and unconscious thought, memories, reality, semi processed facts conjuring up a vivid, detailed, nonsensical flow of ideas. The movie plays on in the theatre of my saturnine psyche.........

I remained ensconced in the fantastic world with no hunger, no friction, no recession, no -isms, no AIDS, no commitments, no work schedules, no taxes, no bills, no anger, no politics.....I keep falling down Alice's Rabbit Hole...with no end in sight

And then the snooze alarms go off.......chasing away the phantoms of my imagination.....the Magic Show ends and am thrown upon the jagged shores of reality!!!

DIARY OF EVIL MEDIOCRITY!!!!

Bob Dylan has been given permission to perform in China, but he has to stay off the harder stuff(political songs: blowin' in the wind, times they are a changin', maggie's farm is a strict no-no).

I can imagine(oops another no-no) some chinki from the Chinese ministry of culture has been given an assignment to listen to all Bob Dylan songs and to see which have a political tinge in them(wish I had that job). I think his job would be made easier if he wikis Bob Dylan still The song censor would be one piece of art, I mean he has to

• Understand English
• Interpret the song lyrics
• Be a pig and strike them down

And still there might be a song that might get interpreted differently by some people like

• Tangled up in blue
• It's all over now
• Like a Rolling Stone etc etc etc

At any rate does'nt it seem like a lot of fuss??!! If China had free speech none of this would be needed.Bob Dylan and his creed have been writing protest songs and still nothing has gotten rosier, In fact Dylan quit doing folk rock because he was sick of record companies exploiting his protest songs to make money!!!!

Now I am not one-of-those-tree-huggers who yell FREE SPEECH/ FREE TIBET/STOP GLOBAL WARMING but going by the "free world" standards this is how I feel represion can be effectively done:

• Give your citizens free speech and fundamental rights and democracy, see as after the initial euphoria the value of free speech come down like Enron stocks(as your citizens would start saying "talk is cheap")
• Create an American/Indian dream so your citizens can chase it without even paying heed to country,society, family or morals & values. Remeber the awesom-er the dream the more un-cohesive the society. Lesser chances of a big angry mob staging a Tahrir Square
• Use free speech to pump in MTV/ POP music/ Justin Beiber/Reality TV/IPL/NASCAR down the throats of a whole generation of adoloscents effectively killing any non-conformity, imagination and unconventionality(but at the same time teach them some archaic traditions in the name of culture and national pride)
• Oh by the way keep the pressure on the generation of adoloscents to chase the dream(call it your dream & look at them go) so they do NOT snap out of the dream.
• There will be brilliant people emerging but they soon will be part of your socio-economic murder machine..the ones that do not sell-out get killed at any rate and get deleted from public memory as fast as data on a RAM chip.
• Not to mention stay in power by creating your own national democratic party, get your relatives and pals in, Keep the bankers and businessmen in the boat. Hell, create an opposition party to with some of your frat buddies, that way even if you lose in the elections still you call the shots. Breed like hell and send them to the best and iviest of ivy league schools. Coz they are the future and should be nurtured
• DO NOT SCREW UP THE ECONOMY...let everyone make money with the dream of getting more money(even if it means nothing coz the inflation screws them)..hell get into free trade alliances, capitalism is here to stay!!!!

NOW You have got yourself a perpetual repression machine...Repress to your heart's content...murder rape & pillage just like the good old days but it has become more hip cool & snazzy !!!!

Remember a Distracted & Fractious Population is a Represseble Population!!!!!