Of Money and Violence

“I am the only kid who steals dollar bills from his mom’s wallet”, he proudly claimed. When I asked why he said, “So that I can buy a lot of violent toys. I keep collecting lots of dollar bills so that I can buy loads of violent toys with them”.
Earlier that day his mum asked him what ‘violent’ means. “Fighting and bashing up”, he replied promptly with a big smile on his face.

It was at that point that I was wondering how creepy it is. If it were just that once that he’d mentioned the ‘violent toys’, I guess I wouldn’t have been that freaked out. The whole day, he kept harping about violent toys and how he loves fighting and making his toys fight. So I asked him, “What about stuff like Lego? Don’t you like playing with Lego?”  His reply pleased me till he actually went on to elaborate on it. “Of course,” he said. “I love playing with Lego. But only the fighting figures – the guns and stuff. The other stuff is really boring”.

We try so hard to keep our kids away from ‘bad company’ and buy them toys so they can pass their time, as opposed to ‘mingling with the wrong crowd’. But the violence does seep in somehow, doesn’t it? Especially at a time like today where we find ourselves surrounded by in-your-face terror attacks. It’s all the more reason to unaccustom the children to the violence, I thought. But obviously, that’s not so. With toys and games aiming at an obsessive destruction, we’re making violence an everyday event.Maybe it’s just my paranoia that sees it as such a big problem, but the ‘fight’ bit of things just finds its way everywhere, especially in the lives of children. From cartoons to toys to glorification of victorious war stories in history books.

Television content is just so violent for children. It’s amazing to see small children glued to television watching something that defines a hero who readily bashes up the bad guy. The ‘hero’ is obviously stronger and armed with the better weapons, or equipped with better super powers. The bad guy is bad because he has a gun. But the good guy is better because he has a bigger gun to kill the bad guy with. What kind of twisted logic is that? If I were to merely transport this logic into the context of today, does it translate to ‘the guys with the ak-47s and grenades are bad, but the ones with the nuclear weapons are good’… So what if both are weapons of destruction!

We were heading back home and I took the stairs. He was waiting for the elevator – he had just begun to go in an elevator all by himself and jumped at any opportunity to use the elevator. The elevator was taking pretty long to come down and he was getting a little restless and impatient. He started kicking the wall and punching the elevator switch saying, “So you think you’re pretty strong, eh!” I was completely taken aback.

I guess it was partly because I’d been thinking about it all day yesterday. But it’s not completely untrue, right? After all, he’s just 6 years old!

Flights and Karma

Flights have this tendency to get delayed. This delay is often conspiratorially proportional to your urgency – the bigger the urgency, the more the delay.

My previous episode of a delayed flight timed itself such that at every stage of progress towards home, there was a postponement that kept telling me, “You should’ve just taken a train to Delhi”. Now I’m all set to rush to Bombay for a meeting on Thursday evening and I say, “Ok. Let’s not rush this one, and I’ll reach Bombay on Wednesday night”. But delay jumped out from behind the corner at a time when the flight was just about to take off. We moved from the bay to the runway and a while after waiting to take off, we find ourselves heading back to bay. A few minutes later, the ground staff is seen flashing lights at the wing of the airplane. And the stewardess announces,”Kingfisher regrets the delay caused. One of the passengers has spotted birds in the wing of the airplane and we had to head back to bay”.

I guess it doesn’t matter what airlines you take. Last time it was Indigo and this time it was Kingfisher. It’s just luck that determines how late you’re going to get. Maybe there’s some karmic understanding between the urgency and the delay which translates itself into flight schedules. Who knows!

But at least this delay was for a good cause. And the birds flew happily ever after.

Good Morning!

The last 2-3 days, Aj and I were busy clicking photographs at home with some really good results!

Images and Words

And when I ask him why he likes the song so much, he just looks at me and says there’s something about it. I look back at him and ask, “It’s me, isn’t it? The girl in the song reminds you of me, doesn’t she?”

One step back and a step down, right foot forward and just zoom ahead. A step back up, one right and one forward. The right foot goes forward again, and you zoom ahead. It’s easy to just ram the accelerator and drive past everything, drive away from everything.

Back.
Right.
U.
Straight.
Right.
Left… and straight ahead.

I’m away from it. By now I’m zipping past everything on the fourth gear in my little 4-wheeler. Everything beside me zips past in a blur. The camera tries to focus on one object but the motion is too fast to allow the cameraman to focus on one particular object. Distances are changing. Focuses are changing. Before I know it, I’m 3 kms away from where I started. I look at my watch and it’s been a mere 2 mins ago that I was struggling to get rid of the brakes and just zip forward.

But where have I come? It’s not unknown territory. I’ve come here before. I come here everyday and look at the grey walls that run along it. The grey walls with the glass pieces so nobody gets in, or maybe so that nobody gets out. Barriers, security, blocks… It’s at every opening. But I’ve come here before. I come here everyday. It’s the farthest I’ve gotten. It’s the room I’ve locked myself in, to block out everything else that disturbs me. But I didn’t build this grey wall. It was already there. I didn’t put the pieces of broken glass there. They’ve been there since I knew it. Somewhere Poiccard was running saying he chose nothingness. Did I choose grief?

I found myself seated at a table this afternoon. I wasn’t alone. The sound of the piano was continuously playing in my head… “water can’t cover her memories, and ashes can’t answer her pain…” sang LaBrie to the notes of the piano.

I asked him why he likes the song so much, he just looks at me and says there’s something about it. I look back at him and ask, “It’s me, isn’t it? The girl in the song reminds you of me, doesn’t she?”

“She stares at the ceiling
And tries not to think
And pictures the chain
Shes been trying to link again
But the feeling is gone”

Wait for Sleep – Dream Theater

Randomity revisited

I’m enjoying at home with the family. Mom and I were going through some old photographs the other day, and I found some photographs that I really liked. So here’s me back then!
It’s been 21 years, and I guess I’m still as random and pointless as ever!!

Randomly fooling around with my brother…

 

Being daddy’s sweet little daughter…

 

Being mom’s little happy soul…

 

There’s so much to take back to Bombay when I leave! Photographs are one thing… I want my mom and dad. I really wish I wasn’t 21 and could throw tantrums and get everything I wanted… :)

Sigh.. Wishful thinking is exactly what that is!

The Homecoming

It just gets better everytime! I get to see things that I miss seeing in Bombay…

The confused look on my nana’s face when he saw me enter the room with a camera covering my face…

Mom avoiding the camera in the funniest ways.

My niece and nephew being silly in the cutest possible way!

Thatha smiling and talking, making the best of all that he can hear!

The romantic discourse between my grandparents!

Apu agreeing to drink milk after much coaxing.

Thatha slowly tearing the paper off a chocolate bar…

I’m now counting my days in Delhi with mom and dad and the rest of my family, and hoping against hope that my stay extends longer!

The Need to Blog

Blogging becomes an addiction once you actually get into it. This would be a normal conversation in the life of a regular blogger…

Random Arbitrary Person in the Background: Oi! Whatup? What’re you doing on the comp abhi? At such a bizarre hour?

Blogger with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (now) for Blogging: I’m blogging.

Random Arbitrary Person in the Background #2: Blogging? At this time of the day? Oh c’mon, man.. You can do this whenever, later!

Blogger with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (now) for Blogging: No, man. I just feel the need to blog so badly. There’s this thought… and I like totally totally have to blog it.

Random Arbitrary Person in the Background: But thoughts are like always there. If you’re thinking about it so hard, it’s not like they’re gonna ditch you and run away or something.

Blogger with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (now) for Blogging: (now throwing random blogging philosophies in the air) You see… Thoughts are like a train. It’s there at a particular moment. If you leave it at that moment, it never comes back in time for you to use it when you want to. Of course, they’re not like the local trains in Mumbai because the same train always comes very frequently at your convenience. That’s a good thing the government has done. But then again, the government doesn’t really symbolise thought.

What the Blogger with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (now) for Blogging doesn’t realise that his/her audience has now absconded (to be read abscondified because that word sounds better) themselves to a place secure from the Blogger with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (now) for Blogging’s constant rants.

But yea.. Coming back to why I wanted to blog. It’s often seen, and also evident from this post, the kind of trash that people can come up with through their ‘NEED to blog’. So then is it a need to blog or a need to get an obscene number of ratings by advertising to the world that you’ve put up on your blog so that everyone goes to read it (what’s interesting here is the fact that nobody really is told of the quality of the posts since it’s from the blogger with obsessive compulsive disorder (now) for blogging – note the lack of capitals because it is now a generalisation of the creatures of this unique species – and is obviously then a biased opinion)?

Now look at me… Why am I blogging? Maybe it’s because I have nothing better to do and a stubborn mind that refuses to do the assignments dumped on me (and the rest of my class – jeez! how can I not be inclusive?).

But yes… I think at this point my audience (or rather patient readers) might just about be ready to pull out their hair (or hunt me down to pull out mine) for my incessant and pointless rant. 

Toodles!

*written sometime last year…

The Warmest Welcome Home

 

Home at last! It’s been a crazy four days – between staying at home with mum and dad, driving, friends and this godforsaken heat. But it feels amazing to be back in Delhi. At this point, it just can’t get any better than this.

I went to my aunt’s house yesterday to meet my grandparents and meeting them was like the cherry on top. Every time I’d get back home, I would get a zillion watt smile for a hello from my grandad. That would just make my day and cure me of all the fatigue that I dragged home with me. This time it was the best welcome anybody could get, that I got from him.  I entered the room where my grandad was sitting. He immediately got up and felt my face. Suddenly he said, “Let me check. Am I dreaming?” 

And I was fully at home then. I love my grandad! :)

24th May and Airplanes – Part 2

So that was done. I got up from where I was sitting that evening around 8pm and went towards the security check booth. All was good and the only thing driving me crazy was my camera on the conveyor belt at the checking counter. A very paranoid I kept looking towards the X-ray machine while my camera was  on the conveyor belt. As soon as the woman at the booth was done frisking me, I ran towards my camera and took it with me.

All this while, I had been sitting and writing some kind of script that seemed to start forming in my head. So I thought I’d sit down and finish that. I found a place right in front of a display board at the waiting lounge of the airport. At around 8.15pm, there was an announcement that an Indigo flight was delayed to 10.30pm. I checked the display board to verify what I’d heard and heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that my flight was on time.

At around quarter to nine, I went to the gate and asked when the boarding for the flight was to happen and I was told that the flight is delayed to 10.30! I could’ve whacked somebody then and there. The poor flight attendant really got yelled at by me and a lot of other passengers when the boarding finally started. As if this delay wasn’t bad enough, when I entered the aircraft I heard the air hostess telling somebody that we’re not going to take off before 11pm because there was no captain.

Oh! How I just wanted to burn the entire Indigo staff alive and roast them to a crisp! The fools don’t serve food on the flight either, apart from their overpriced pieces of shit that the supposedly pretty air hostesses take around on a trolley. The flight finally took off at 11.30pm without any apologies or any food compensation.

What a terrible day! I don’t know if it was the day that was terrible or Indigo itself. One thing’s for sure, they didn’t make my experience even the teeniest bit better…

Lizzie again!

And she’s got a roommate too!