Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 
And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing: 
I have come after them and made repair 
Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 
No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there. 
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; 
And on a day we meet to walk the line 
And set the wall between us once again. 
We keep the wall between us as we go. 
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 
We have to use a spell to make them balance: 
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ 
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 
Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 
One on a side. It comes to little more.

There where it is we do not need the wall: 
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 
My apple trees will never get across 
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’. 
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 
If I could put a notion in his head: 
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 
Where there are cows?’ 
But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out, 
And to whom I was like to give offence. 
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, 
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather 
He said it for himself. I see him there 
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me - 
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 
He will not go behind his father’s saying, 
And he likes having thought of it so well 
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

 - Robert Frost

One of my favourite poems as I was growing up. “What was I walling in, or walling out”. 

This has always been my favourite line in the poem. If we were to just put it to a today’s context… What are these boundaries that we have drawn around ourselves? Is there something we want to hide from the man on the other side of this wall?

TVCs and Elections

On flipping channels during elections, you’d always find some coverage or the other of the elections on news channels, or have tickers running on news channels giving updates on the elections. This year, it’s a little different. There’s dramatic advertisements of the two big parties contesting in the elections. There’s the good old right-wing BJP and the not-so-right-wing Congress. I was watching some film on TV when I came across the TV commercial (TVC) that BJP had launched as part of their election campaign.

It was a dramatic display of power and empowerment. The voiceover (VO) that ran throughout was a heavy male voice speaking in very rigid and pure Hindi. The gist of this VO was to spread a message encouraging the people to wake up and realise what’s going wrong around them. Of all the things that were going wrong, one of the most striking was a line that went ‘yeh kiske haath dor hai (who’s puling the strings)’. The visual supporting this line was that of two politicians as puppets hanging lifelessly. The camera slowly pans up to show a woman in a sari (face not shown) holding the strings. And if this isn’t blatantly indicative of the BJP’s hatred for the Congress and Sonia Gandhi, I don’t know what is.

There was something else that really caught my eye. The advertisement had a montage with quick cuts of people’s profiles. And the BJP was so kind and inclusive to show a Muslim woman as part of the Indian populace. Well, obviously, on a regular day she wouldn’t be part of anything. But since it’s election time and it’s absolutely pertinent that you show a Muslim and say “Oh! We’re the secular Gods of this nation!” and crap like that. Sure… go ahead! This sort of pseudo-secularism just adds to the humour. I think everybody now knows that the elections are a race for power, rather than a rush for responsibility. So what the hell, right? We may as well be pseudo-secularists. After that them Muslims can fight for their lives every single moment under a right-wing rule. Who cares about them anyway, right?

And of course, the most amazing part of the advertisement was the fact that it was completely in black and white save for the orange and the green of the BJP flag and our dear friend Mr. L.K. Advani – the light at the end of the tunnel. Pah!

These are some of the comments I came across while surfing youtube for this TVC:

“One of the most amazing videos i have seen in a long time….the passion and to the point message has made a mark in my mind for sure….”

“Now that is what I call a NO BULLSHIT and straight TO THE POINT add. My appeal to first time voters, please don’t get bogged down by our masala news channels and their pseudo secular anti bjp propaganda. If you are voting BJP, you are thinking, if not you are loosing.”

“Great Video. Effective lyric and very well choreographed. Let us all contribute and spread the message to make sure that Shri Advani Ji succeeds the ( Effete Prime Minion of Sonia ‘Maino Gandhi) as next PM – India needs”

Any views on the TVC if you guys saw it? I haven’t seen the Congress TVC too often, but the one time I saw it, it seemed equally ridiculous if not more. Any thoughts?

“Haraami hai woh”

It’s been a good two days. I met an old friend from Delhi last night at Bandstand and another friend at Marine Drive. A nice nostalgic trip happened in my head. Meeting Fuzzy and Dodo just took me back to good ol’ days in Delhi, sitting and chilling at the Nescafe joint at IIT, or sitting outside college waiting for the clock to strike a decent enough hour that says ‘not too early to go home’. But it’s all alright, this nostalgic trip, till you realise how disconnected nostalgia gets you from everything going on around you.

I had one big reality check today. So Dodo and I were sitting at Marine Drive clicking photos like there’s no tomorrow. And I feel something tug at my t-shirt. So I look left and there’s a boy about 8 or 10 years of age kicking around a piece of paper. He looked at me and said, “Didi, ise laat maro (Kick this)”. I looked down at the piece of paper and saw the photo of a woman with some text printed on it. So I asked the boy, “Yeh kaun hai? (Who is this?)”. To which he promptly replied, “Didi, haraami hai woh. Isko vote mat dena” (She’s a bastard. Don’t vote for her). I looked down at the paper and it read the contents. It was a little pamphlet of one of the independent candidates representing the South Mumbai constituency. 

It was quite weird to hear a boy merely 8-10 years of age talking about elections and voting and who one should or should not vote for. He then looked at me and said, “Didi, aap Congress ko vote karna. (Vote for Congress)”. I was quite taken aback, so I asked him, “Yeh tumhe kisne sikhaya? (Who taught you this?). The boy quickly picked the paper up off the ground and tore it in extreme anger and replied, “Kisi ne nahin sikhaya. Woh kaun the… uhmmm… Jawaharlal Nehru. Wohi the na Congress mein? Woh bahut achhe the. Congress ko vote dene se sab theek ho jaayega. (Nobody taught me. Who’s that guy… uhmm.. Jawaharlal Nehru. He was in the Congress, right? He was very good. Giving vote to the Congress will set everything right). 

I decided to ask him what he thought of the BJP and why he didn’t support the BJP. He replied saying that BJP is not good and causes a lot of fights in society. Then I asked what he thought of the Shiv Sena. All he said was, “Jai Maharashtra (Victory to Maharashtra)”, with a big smile on his face. It was weird, I thought, that the BJP came across as villians, whereas the Shiv Sena, another party governed by extreme Right-Wing ideologies, was a saviour of sorts for him. I looked up to smile at Dodo who was very busy taking photographs. I wonder if he was listening to the conversation. I was just so taken aback at how a little kid just knew so much about elections, in his own distorted manner, and enough to form such a strong opinion that he’d be kicking around pamphlets of first-timers in the election race. 

It was also a reality check for me on how disconnected I was with the whole election process, myself. So much, that I didn’t have my voting card in place, nor did I know what party or what ideology I wanted to support. As he was getting up to leave, the boy looked at me and said, “Didi, main bada hokar Congress ko vote karoonga. Aap bhi karna, theek hai? (When I grow up I’m going to vote for the Congress. You also vote for the Congress, ok?)”. He then walked off, leaving me completely blank and dazed!

Locked out!

It’s a monday morning that feels like a sunday, so I’m sitting at home and chilling. Listening to music, catching up with old friends from Delhi. So my phone rang and I got up to answer it, following which I heard the voice of the neighbour’s kids right outside the door. So I opened the door and stepped out and the damn door shut behind my back. Now getting locked out of the house on an unsupported, unchappaled hot morning is not the nicest thing. And to walk to the ends of the earth to find a guy who’d make you a key so you can get into the house. Sheesh! What a start to the day.. :P

God bless the neighbour for lending me her chappals! :)

It’s all in the wind. The winds of torture have begun. The heat, the unemployment, the homelessness. It’s all begun. The wind brings news of it all. Every small event is a metaphor for the larger reality. Will someone employ me? :)

Auto-manic

On my way to the station in the evening. Traffic jams and autos… :)

Happy Easter! :)

This year Easter was a little different. Had a lovely Easter lunch with family. And caught some nice moments. Missed you there, kaddooo! :)

 

Save Energy

The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors

This concept was first brought to the attention of Heap Media by a blog post, which estimated that Google could save 750.0 megawatt-hours a year by utilizing it for CRT screens.

The homepage of Blackle provides a count of the number of megawatt-hours that have supposedly been saved by enabling this concept.

- courtesy wikipedia

Use www.blackle.com for searches. It gaves the same results and saves a lot of energy. 

Thank you!

 

Happy Evening!

Nice evening with that little bundle of energy, a fat nose, Revolting Rhymes and Phantom Cigarettes! :)

Evening Trip

Just one evening when I was sitting alone at home listening to music. I came out and saw this.. :)

What I learnt in class today…

It’s funny how education has the ability to throw you like a ping-pong ball from one end of the table to another. And what’s funnier is that you’ve no other choice. You’re stuck between those two ends of the table and compelled to go from one end to another till you keep getting hit around. 

We were studying Fundamental Concepts in Communication for our exams and studied all about propanganda in the media, about neo-colonialism through development programmes, about advertising as a social evil that conveys insidiously some of the values in our society that we would want to do away with. How everything driven by this obsessive profit motive seems to be so materialistic that it surpasses all levels of atrocity and has no semblance of humanity in it. The same day, we had our advertising paper and the day after that we had our corporate commnications paper, both of which focus on a very different aspect of media and communication. The study material talks of the elements PR comprises of as the ‘armoury’ of corporate communication. What are we compelled to think of the kind of material and content we’re being made to study? Is there a bias where I’m studying? It would be easier to just operate in an atmosphere that was completely socialist and focused entirely on ‘doing the right things’ in media, putting things to use and all of that. 

Maybe it was an attempt to put down every other activity propagandist in nature? I don’t know, but that’s what it seems like to me. Even though I don’t agree with a lot of things about PR and Advertising, I still wish I could respect them as much as I did the other fields. I wish the course would teach you to respect them despite what they do, because they seem to be very clear about their goal and very honest about it! :)

Well.. Step 1 of my attempt at trying to break out of this thinking pattern that I’ve been put into, begins now!