Archive for 2012

The tall tale of our beloved men


“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough"  
 ~Germaine Geer


We have heard and seen enough cases of the oppressive man in the progressive society. The latest story  The Guwahati incident. Enough has been said and shown about it already. The videos are viral. So whatever opinion I would state won't be anything new. Whenever there's an issue, there'll be a heated discussion about it and a lot of people will have a lot to say and your Facebook newsfeed would be flooded.
Educate men. Respect women. Women's rights. Stringent laws. And more blah.

Oddly enough those ideas can never be incorporated. Ever heard of anti-rape each one teach one ?
Enumerating some pretty basic facts ::
1. As long as there's white and black, yin and yang, men will objectify women and there's absolutely nothing one can do about it. 
2. People package and brand this very concept and sell it in the movies. So people emulate it all the more. Changing the word 'rape' to 'sexual assault' won't change a thing.
News channels are the only entities that get benefitted in the form of ‘breaking news’. 
All of the women have been subjected to a certain degree of harassment at some or the other point of their lives be it in a bus, a train, on the road or even in a temple !!  You always have to be alert and suspicious at all times, you have to avoid deserted roads, you have to dress according to a certain sensibility unless you want the Rowdy Rapists to pounce on you, you need to do a double check at every step to check if someone’s following you, every car that slows down beside you, you need to be careful to retract.
In spite of being super careful, things will happen. A man will scan you from  the tip of your head to the tip of your toe, a man will give you his set of lewd looks, a man will come up to you and ask you what's a dildo, a man will turn into Pee Wee Herman if there’s an opportunity on a lonely road, a man will grope you in the darkness of the bus, a man will grope you in the brightness of a crowded temple for that matter, a man will pass obscene comments, a man will corner you and go around you with his motorcycle and I can go on and on. 
A friend suggests pepper spray. Trust me friend, there’s never the time to rummage through your big bag, find that bottle and spray, spray, spray. All you can possibly think of at the time is to run, run, run and never look back.
Depending on your degree of luck, you either come out of the situation physically unscathed or you don’t. Either ways the damage is more on the psychological front.  Every time a certain incident happens you start questioning the integrity of your creation. Gradually you become this epitome of stoicism and learn to be comfortably numb with these encounters accepting it as a way of life. You cannot fight the thought process, you cannot fight the man with all his physical strength, you can only succumb. Such is the sorry state of females. There's no such thing as equality of men and women and can never be. The male species have their vested interests in every aspect of the equality banter so please don't take it seriously. Workplace diversity is a farce to keep the men engaged. Office would be such a bummer with no femme fatales in it !!
At the end of the day, women are physically weak, emotionally creeper-like and subject to objectification.
Now the feminists might think I am crazy but I am in fact a hardcore feminist myself. It’s just that I am not delusional. I am just being practical here. Rape or sexual assault or anything in between will keep happening. All that the fairer sex can possibly do is stay vigilant and careful at all times.
As they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Disclaimer: Certain keywords hurt the Oriya sensibility and I know the quintessential Oriya girl is not supposed to say them out loud, more so publish it online :P

Mere ramblings, no apologies ;)

A cynic’s take on all things fun


As a kid, life is all about unconditional happiness, school, bicycle, fighting with friends over an eraser, homework, birthday parties, naivety, chocolates, sunshine and butterflies.  There’s no self realization, there's no self pity, there's no self loathing, there's no cynicism, there's no arrogance, there's no heartbreak, there's no resentment, there's no remorse, there's no regret. Life’s one big party and it’s all about spontaneity.
Watching a kid hold her dad’s hand and walking happily down the road, unaware of the vagaries of life that lies ahead of her made me realize how amazing it was to be a kid. As we grow up, all that tends to change and life is all about the ‘pay package’, the ‘branded car’, the ‘luxury apartment’, the ‘trophy husband’ and so on.
The basic question is: Did we all readily sign up for it or is it a forced entity ?
Some like predictable monotonous way of living.
Some seek thrills every single day. Be it cheap or otherwise :P
To each his own.
 Life as a whole is a pretty overrated concept if you come to think of it. We never asked for it. But we still have to live, survive and move ahead.  So why not soak in the sun, lie like a log, eat like a pig, watch the grass grow, admire the sea with its set of unending possibilities, jump around, love someone whole heartedly, sing our guts out and dance  like no one’s watching J
Coming back.
This post is about all things overrated in and around us. A few observations basically.
1.       Happy Birthdays:
We were born on a particular day. What is the big deal about it? If by being alive we are contributing anything for the benefit of others, it’s something worth celebrating. Otherwise it’s not. One fine day, out of the blue, you are obliged to have ‘fun’, smile all day, receive calls from long lost people whom u talk to only on your birthday or their birthday :\ , fake laughs and waste shit loads of cash treating different set of friends (in expectation of a proper gift obviously..barter system you see :D) all because of your birthday..!!
(Mine is on 17th of April btw, in case u want me to have ‘fun’, send me gifts….I love anything for free :P)


2.       Weekends:
Following the league of having ‘fun’ comes yet another hit phenomenon of the contemporary world…Weekends. When you slog the whole week, logically you would want to just sleep and while your time away. But the element of ‘fun’ will haunt you even then because ideally ‘having fun’ is what you are supposed to do on a weekend..!! I wish someone could define ‘fun’ for me. Standing in long queues waiting for food cuz all the good places are crowded is not fun. Drooling over a doughnut all week to find it all sold out by the time you reach the counter is again no fun. Neither is the unavailability of  tickets cuz everyone wants to watch an anticipated movie in its first week of release any fun.
Most people I know booze their weekends out or do some similar random shit. (Cobra venom is the new ecstasy for those who didn’t know..!!)
So I’ll never understand the hype about weekends.


3.       The Oscars :
Recent event.
Too much hoopla.
Who wore what, who exposed what body part etc. etc. I have seen The Descendents and The Artist. None of which is as big a deal as they claim it to be. The interesting thing about Hollywood is that a lot of interpretation is left for the audience to ponder over, be it the metaphorical representations, the reading between the lines, the storyline or the intricate thought process of the writer. But I still feel it gets an undue share of limelight year after year since Americans are such experts at marketing and branding.

4.       Facebook :
America’s gift to the world, revenue for its own coffers and the power of information at their mercy has been blown out of proportion in such a way that it has become an integral part of almost everyone’s lives except the Chinese. A basic look at a person’s FB profile gives an approximate idea about the person in general, the likes, the dislikes, command over the English language, their party circuit, the clothes in their closet, their friends, their GPS co-ordinates everything..!! A stalker’s delight, Facebook is creepily getting more popular with each passing day. I don’t know whether it’s good, bad, ugly or evil but it’s quite an overrated way of the social and the anti-social mingling on a common platform.  

5.       Kolaveri Di :
Mere mention of the song and my ears start bleeding. It’s just a gimmicky song. Why the fuss ? I was in Kerala when the song started creating ripples first and then waves..!! I was having a mini sabbatical from FB-land but when I returned, all I could see is Kolaveri, Kolaveri and more Kolaveri which left me wondering…Why this why this Kolaveri Di…???!!
I sit in an auto, the auto guy is suddenly singing it out loud, kids when asked to sing a song starting singing Kolaveri when it is not even a song..!! It’s more like a nursery rhyme. Maybe the closet-bathroom-singers finally felt emancipated and the soup song became such a rage.

Anyhoo my cynical eyes will be scanning for more such worldwide spread entities that are overrated, over-hyped and over-the-top. I love Vidya Balan for being crass with such elan. Obscenity was never this hot. But her overdose on tv these days is getting my goat and one fine day she might end up featuring in my overrated list..!!
Or I am just being air-headed :P

Either ways, mere ramblings…no apologies :D