Narasimha Parvatha

I didn't realise that Chai had turned from a mumbling-bumbling simpleton with chronic foot-in-the-mouth disease to this wisecracking smart-aleck. I should pay more attention to my friends.

Chai on the mountain 


Dragon fly on Narasimha Parvatha 

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Still obsessed with Miller

"When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New york makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold,glittering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. STupendous. Bizarre. Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated."

He could have very well been talking about Bangalore. And no more is the frenzy more visible than on Hosur Road. With all the Computer Engineers driving into their cubbyholes. Most of them with bloated egos. Fed on compliments served by their kin with small expectations. "He's the first in the family to leave the shores of this country". "He earns more than his dad". "He owns a flat already". And each looking for contentment in the meaningless shit they do for ten hours a day. "Systems programming is my passion". "We provide support to almost all the fortune 500 companies"."We made the world's smallest projector". Unfortunately for me, unlike the management of my company have me believe they do, I don't share the enthusiasm for the firm's vision; to make enterprise mobility ubiquitous. Why the hell are we so keen on complicating our lives?

Miller !

Few books have stirred a ferment in my head like Tropic of Cancer. Living in a middle class south Indian society for 26 years is enough to put a thick shell of righteousness around you, and it's not easy not to squirm, when the words "cunt" and "woman" are used interchangeably! But after the first dozen pages had shocked and chased away the prude in me, reading the book was an experience I've never known before, and one that I can never forget. I remembered a quote by Emerson that I read on the very first page of the book "... if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experience that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly". And Miller has done it so extra-ordinarily. The awareness of all the moral,ethical and social tensions that chain me down, progressively became real and tangible. And it's a funny feeling that followed, a medley of happy and depressing thoughts. Happiness in the enlightenment. Depression in the awareness of the chains. Stifling chains. Living, clawing, cajoling chains. All the while etching on the fabric of your brain, till you can no longer remember the time when there were no chains. Replacing the fundamental realities with useless crusades. Killing your appetites and planting perversions in their place. Puke!