My ebook: Journeys with the caterpillar

My ebook
"
Journeys with the caterpillar: Travelling through the islands of Flores
and Sumba, Indonesia
" is available at
this link


Saturday, March 06, 2010

Rambling on a weekend

The compulsion of having a great weekend is imposed by the questions over the following Monday in office that demand you to speak for at least two minutes in response. That is of course unless you can claim to have been working over the weekend which relieves you from the social pressure of having a great weekend and shifts the onus to the disinterested inquirer to sympathise with you as if you have lost all your family members in a tsunami. Little does he know that opening a Russian doll one by one made me feel symbolic for a while. Another massive incident at the Kardashians demanded my attention while channel surfing during the advertisements revealed a tsunami in Chile. Tsunamis and 80’s fashion are the in-thing. Add to that a bit of China bashing.


Bills get opened one by one. They care for me. They have sent several colourful pamphlets along with their bills and envelopes marked “Postage paid by Addressee”. They care for me. What percentage of my life is spent cleaning floors and washing clothes? Only cosmic dust is glorified. And then what percentage of my life is spent in the search for food? How many epic journeys are launched every minute to satisfy the tongue for ten minutes? The spices ensured that the Americas were discovered.


There are probably more magazines on tigers than there are tigers in the world. One would probably have to keep on reading for a year if he decided to read every word in a weekend newspaper. They are handy though as weights for muscle building. The market for books on the economic crisis is surely showing signs of overheating.


With so many news alerts, I am running out of topics for conversation. With every issue too big to be solved in our lifetime, I am running out of topics for conversation. With analysts for everything, I have rid myself of the onus of forming opinions. It will be an abuse to freedom of expression if even topics like stock markets, property prices, and traffic congestion are taken away from us. How long can I just discuss Avatar? The rest of the world is adapting with intelligent status updates on facebook informing their 500 friends, I can’t think of any.


An evening stroll by the park with snake like winding lanes to create kilometres out of a small oasis of greenery in between high rise apartments all named after sea views. The parks are infested with people moving around with children in perambulators; life probably ends after child birth. The male black widow spider need not have been humiliated twice; the species could just have been called black spider. Children in school uniforms are asking for donations for some charity as a part of their school project. The world forces many to be nice. Will these kids ever have a discussion on whether Bukharin was right about Trotsky?


Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” is gathering dust. What eventually happened to Kate Perry after she kissed a girl and liked it? I am worried; so many musicians have died at the prime of their lives. Cobain, Shannon Hoon, Esbjorn Svensson, Coltrane, Layne Staley, Pastorius, Andrew Wood, Jeff Buckley, Randy Rhoads, D. Boon...... Counting every second is the only to live life to the fullest. That leaves little time for anything else.

2 comments:

Basant Singh said...

'Postage paid by Addressee',' social pressure of having a great weekend'...small things. Remarkable observation. You are different. Liked it.

Regina said...

Another interesting post. It's a rambling indeed - totally random! But it has a very reflective tone that has the underlying coherent tone of your jaded perception of life and of your well-informed nature.