A guest for you

Have you met Lit Pet, yet?

Meet Lit Pet here.

Here is a guest post from our dear friend, Lit Pet. 

 

Boww…wooww….I stood by a telephone booth, half expecting someone to pick me up. The day before yesterday, the day of my birth, I realized that the world is a hard place to get on with. Therefore, I decided to find a way to get connected with the inner me, the self. You might think I want to achieve some self-realization. Hell, no! Boww..woowww….The only way I could tolerate the hideousness of this world is through finding something else to look at and focus. It helps in diverting my attention. A great deal of diversion was music. Then, occasionally, I listened to Adale, and started crying. That was why I decided to find something else. Well, so I searched and wandered the streets.

Up the northern side, near the thattukada, was a telephone booth. A left turn from that telephone booth could lead you to the ‘police ground’. There was no police there, when I reached there. Instead, I found a circus company. I cannot write its name here. They have eyes looking everywhere, suing everyone for using names and all. Boww….wooowww…So I went inside. No tickets, if you ask me. But they would make you take one anyway. However, the one advantage of being a dog is that you don’t need to take tickets where a human being is at the ticker counter. Moron.

That’s where I heard a nerd talk about this. Stephen King is up to something different, from his usual scary paranormal stuff.

The bestselling author of Carry and It has come up with a piece of crime thriller—Joyland.

 

In a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.

Here is an excerpt from the book:http://www.npr.org/books/titles/184825518/joyland#excerpt

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Inauguration Monsoon

Image Courtesy: Google

Hi,

It’s Monsoon season; authentic, natural and purifying shower of heavenly life. The rain symbolizes life and creativity. During the pagan past, people worshiped rain as a demigod. In literature, writers wrote about rain in half astonishment and half reverence. This reverence and astonishment sometimes, gave way to fear and uncertainty. This perhaps, is the reason why rain becomes the background for so many action sequences and mysteries, in movies, and sorrowful events, of course. In our current social life, we pretend to heed not the charm and mystery of this companion phenomenon. However, with an occasional whip-lashing  it rains down and washes away shacks among abodes and skyscrapers alike. At that point, at least, we do the proper service at the altar of attentiveness, on the arrival of this heavenly phenomenon.

I decided officially to inaugurate monsoon, to respect, to admire, and to observe, this manna of earthly resurrection. I wish if all my readers could say with me for ten seconds, the following lines, in the inaugural ceremony of Monsoon, June 2013.

O, watery substance,

That fills the oceans,

O, undeniable presence,

That blows soul into sleeping seeds

O, reluctant pacifist of delicate design,

O, fundamental sign of growth, and desire,

O, rational being of the fantastical realm,

O, penetrating passion of the silent skies,

O, poison weed of summer heat,

O, naïve child,

Of naked mother,

We see you,

We respect you,

We drink from you.

In the auspices of all your dignified presences, I hereby inaugurate Monsoon, June 2013.

Let the rain drench us all.

Image Courtesy: Google

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Akram Bakram

Warning:  

Preferable only for 18+ readers. Explicit language used; readers discretion advised. 

Image Courtesy: Flickr.com

Something is not right. Monsoon had already blessed Kerala, but load shedding is still on, saying the dams, which produce electricity have not enough water level. A serious case of fever, with names including dengue and malaria and rat fever is sweeping the land, killing people, already slaughtered by the price hikes in rice and fuel.

There was only one hope; Sreesanth, but he is in jail, for charges in spot fixing.

Every street, village, and city is populated by waste, dumped from factories and butcher houses. When it rains, the rainwater washes the rubbish from roadsides to the main streets and chunks of shit reach your toes, touching them, flowing away, touching them, flowing away again.

 

Image Courtesy: Google

In news channels, all the interesting news has given way to Narandra Modi and BJP. Some channels do make it a point that the fever issues are duly addressed. Again, the news becomes no news, but a routine, from the second day onwards. So is the case with the fever news, only the death toll changes each time. Five, ten, twenty, four hundred.  

Admission in schools get damn competitive and students balance between suicide and contentment. Once you are denied admission for your twelfth class, what else is an option other than suicide, if your family status does not support you going to a parallel college for higher education? Sounds like a fucking passive sentence in a neat paragraph of simple sentences. Not just in schools. The admission process is in full throttle in colleges too. Long lines of people, waiting hopefully for some information about their daughters’ or sons’ admission in college is a regular scene in early June.

Image Courtesy: Google

If they want to get back home a bit early in the evening in the Monsoon, with some hot pakodas, samoosa, ulli vada, undakkai, bonda or puffs, from the nearby thattukada, a street food stall, the busy traffic holds them on the way. By the time, the poor working class, bourgeois, the super rich and the dreamers reach their respective homes, it would be eight in the evening. Samoosa, ullivada and pakodas, all would be cold and stale, by that time.

Akram, bakram, shukram, pakram. Gili…gili…gili…gili…shooo….

I am trying a spell, to make this all damn right. What do you say?

Image Courtesy: Google

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Bradley Manning, a Victim?

Air Strikes in Iraq
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In 2010, a young soldier decided he should do something about the war. Many of the powerful nations on the earth were in Iraq, making it even with another murderer. The nations that were at war included his nation too, The Unites States of America. Many people were murdering many others in the name of justice, punishment, and sovereignty. Nevertheless, nothing made sense when he saw what the war led them to.

Prison cells were teaming with humans without cloths, food, water, and dignity. When the cells were full, they shot some of them, not just, because the budget for ammunitions was large enough to afford it, but also to make more room in prisons. Many lost their lives this way. Many were still alive in the hope that one day their religious leaders would negotiate for their lives. When no one came for them, they all lost hope and turned insane. There were others, who held on. However, they did not get fair trials. Finally, they shot them too.  

A naked soldier was tied up in chains to a wall and three or four other soldiers pissed at the soldier in chains. The soldiers, who were urinating, thought if the barbarians had captured them, they would have beheaded them, without even asking their last wish. At least, that was not happening here. Pissing and shitting was much humanitarian.

Bradley Edward Manning was his name. A young soldier, from Crescent, Oklahoma, US, he was arrested in May 2010, under charges of passing classified information to WikiLeaks. Through the information that Bradley Manning allegedly handed over to the website, the world saw a war ripped off from all the Hollywood masala, naked and vulgar. That was not just prison cells, but much more. How can one ignore the airstrike video that in the cable television, those guys celebrated?

On one hand, Bradley Manning can be justified in helping humanity see through the vagueness of politics and blindness of battles. His courage is remarkable. However, on the other hand, he compromised his nation’s interests. What his nation wanted to be protected and hidden, he revealed, in an act of disrespectful honesty. The stand of the US government in this matter is in this light and is deserving respect as well.

The victim here is neither Bradley Manning nor Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the Millennial Gandhi, but the United States itself. After the attack on the World Trade Centre, the US proclaimed that she would not let this happen one more time; no enemy would attack the nation upon her soil again. In the solemn pledge the United States undertook for its citizens’ safety, she failed. The name of that failure is Bradley Manning.

Bradley Manning
Image Courtesy: Google

Islamic terror came inside the fortified walls of ideas and political propagandas and pulled the young US soldier into the abyss of hell, with the help of the same democracy, the same system, the terrorists want to destroy. A US citizen will lose his normal life in the name of ‘national interest’, why? Because he sympathized with his enemies.

War atrocities would be present on both sides. A war qualifies the presence of cruelty at all levels. Bradley Manning had empathy for one side, as you may think from the videos. By arresting Manning, the US is cornering its own citizen, a soldier, thus appearing unjustifiable, cruel, and ruthless. Who is the winner in this game of crime and punishment? Who is laughing?

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Spot Fixing and Champion’s Trophy

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Inthe morning, I had some ideas about what should appear in this article. But as the day wore on, night came and I felt spent and tired, unable to move on a centimeter. Writing requires tremendous energy, especially when it is about such a hot topic as ‘spot fixing’. As usual, I should warn you from misunderstanding the article to be a piece of investigative-gossip journalism or a piece of shitty morality.

From whatever I understand, as much as I try, there appears a limit in knowing what takes place behind the closed doors of the police quarters where Sreesanth and other players “were played” against themselves. Who knows what happened. The latest news surprised us, Keralites, to a very humongous extent. They took our Sreesanth to Tihar Jail!

“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.” *

Delhi Police validated the case against Sreesanth by playing with the deluge of evidences, the whole world watched on Television. No one took such an imperative for Vindu Dara Singh or Sakshi Dhoni, who was with Vindu Dara Singh, as the television cameras showed us, during an IPL cricket match!

The blame game now rests upon the BCCI Chief and things in this direction seem very foggy, as well. From the apparent lethargy the system seems to work with, in the investigation after the evidence of the involvement of the fat cats started appearing in the media, it is natural to ask; why is Sreesanth alone in jail? 

No one would give you the answer, though. The answer is evident and clear to you, without any engraved or taped proof. It is time to find a culprit and walk him stripped on the streets, uplifting the morals of the nation, and shouting out ‘hail truth’.

Let us surmise the situation by reminding ourselves of some age-old adages: “there won’t be smoke until there is fire”; “if you ran, you should sweat.”

Until this point, it is OK, all natural moralizing crap. Look at what is going to happen next; Champion’s Trophy, the One-Day international cricket tournament. There is no problem in playing cricket, but when you play cricket under the veil of silence to questions like is it a ‘sport’ itself or just a show like the WWE, ugliness crawls in. The Indian Cricket team and the authorities, (the people who manage this entire bat and ball business) should declare the nature this sport in India holds, before the commencement of the Champion’s Trophy.

Image Courtesy: Google

If Indian cricket were an ‘arrangement’, still the lovers of this game in India would be happy to watch and cheer for their team like anything. It is there in this culture—servitude to the tyranny of emotions. An “arranged cricket” with its shouting, dancing, and screaming hulks, is in no way lesser than the IPL or the One-Day matches (with no internal arrangement of who must fail and who must win). But, only if they let us know.  

*Stephen King, The Stand

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Can You Find the Place?

Here is a challenge for you; Find the place. Your time starts now!

 

Image Courtesy: Google

Where in summer they always tell you there is no water left in the dams to produce enough electricity;

Where they urge you to control your electricity usage, due to the above mentioned reason;

Where they show ads with film stars and sportsmen, before and after the national news broadcast, about the necessity of saving electricity and controlling population growth;

Where the bureaucracy that controls electricity has no limitation in using and misusing it;

Where every individual pays more than he earns, on food;

Where after every rain, the roads disappear into ponds and puddles, and every sewage overflows;

Where every government employee is part of one or another political party and work for the benefit only of the members of the party;

Where every politician holds the reputation of doing nothing remarkable to the development of the country, but tightening his or her own wallets with bundles of cash;

Where every government addresses the question of reducing the price of cell phones and cars, but forgets about the poor and destitute;

Where strikes are reality shows; and schools and colleges are breeding grounds of political goons;

Where every boy or girl dreams of becoming doctors and engineers;

Where art means political adjustment and drinking toddy and wandering the frontiers;

Where during summer time, water comes in tanker-trucks, but the government plans to arrange laser shows for tourists;

The name of which is derived from the name of a tree;

Where cutting trees and cleaning up the remaining greenery is the ultimate meaning of development;

Find the place; you win nothing!

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The Ranjini Haridas Phenomenon

Ranjini
Image Courtesy: Google

Miss. Ranjini Haridas, you are not alone.

No, you are not, any more.

There has been serious gossip mongering against Raniji Haridas, the TV anchor in Kerala. Although, media is a major culprit in bring about cultural changes, positive and negative, some symbols, or icons keep our minds engaged and give us food for talk. Always, a talk is positive act. The more we spend our time to talk during the power-cut time, the more our minds grow. By the way, did I mention to my international readers that in Kerala we have a standard power-cut half an hour each night and one hour during daytime? Almost like the District 12 in The Hunger Games.

In this turmoil of lacks and shortcomings, Ranjini Haridas rose into conversations as a television anchor. She was the witch of Portobello in Kerala and many a cultural dictators fancies of burning her on a stake. Reason? She is ‘arrogant’.

If someone says, Oprah Winfrey is arrogant on TV; one can only suppose that the person who made that comment is a naïve. The show demands you to appear in one way or the other and people misunderstand you to be that very person you see on the picture box.

Never before, had such a mass hysteria about an anchor in Kerala come to my notice. Perhaps, the society is growing back into naivety or intolerance is the latest currency of regionalism. Either way, it sounds dangerous. If you can criticize Ranjini Haridas, you can earn your prominence in cultural meetings and local teashops. Ranjini stands as a stalwart threat to the native culture. In some people’s eyes, she is a comet that appeared in the sky to ravish their Garden of Eden. When Ranjini wears a sari, it becomes a controversy. Her laughter is controversial. Her language is too provocative, because according some people; she does not know much Malayalam and resorts to English during her shows, which flies across the globe to the households of NRIs and people of other nationalities.

The list of Ranjini Haridas’ 'sins' is long. However, here is a thought provoking comment made by one of my readers, here in The Indian Commentator. Perhaps the person does not want to reveal name on a widely circulated platform like this blog. So let us call the person Mr. Anonymous.

Mr. Anonymous made this comment on the sports article titled “S. Sreesanth will come out?” The comment touches many issues of national and local merit and is remarkable in its brevity as well, considering how much in depth analysis the writer has done with the limited space.

Below are his words. You can also read it here. "Anonymous Said..."

Image Courtesy: Moddb.com

I may agree with the conclusion and enjoyed the bitter satire also. But I have some differences with some ideas expressed, and also how Malayalies responded. Except Shashi Tharoor, and Srishanth's family, nobody openely or indirectly supported him during his bad days, because it is in the blood of malayalies to feel jealous in the success of others. We never encourage individual success, whether it is Srisanth, or Prithviraj or Ranjini Haridas. These are the common targets of the virtual malayali, see FB posts about them. What they did wrong? They know what they are, what they want, how they can get it and that they have the ability to get it. It means Confidence, but Mallus( of course not Malayalis) consider it arrogance. I didn't react to the arrest od Sreesanth in the beginning time, but had doubt. Still I had doubt. I don't know whether he is engaged in the crime. If yes, hang him, no objection. But criticising him for conducting Thulabhara in Guruvayour, for wearing some "sacred threads" in the hand, and criticising his mother for conducting poojas when he played in the matches are irrelevant things to be talked about. As if, none of the Malayalis go to Guruvayur and do Thulabhara. Those who come to Guruvayur are from other planets. As if those who visit Shabari Mala are not at all Mallus. As is the one who conduct Poomoodal is not a Progressive Politician, as if the Mosque which is built for honouring the hair of the prophet is not in Kerala. If these things are done by the virtual Mallu alone, it can be forgiven, but the so called "revamped" police also doing the same thing. Evidences given to the press: Condom( as if having safe sex is bad), Ladies were with him ( as if it is a punishable crime to be with ladies), laptop ( as if only Sreesanth is having it), Smartphone( as if he is the one who invented it), money( he is a beggar arrested from the street), and hotel rooms allegedly booked in metros( oh my god) and he is said to have connections with the all powerful Davood (The Maharastrian Messiah of Indian cricket Almighty Sarath Pawar haven't even heard of Davood), and that too without evidence. So, Sreesanth is arrested, and then "evidences" are found, not in the other way, that too the POlice have been observing Sreesanth and his company from the beginning of the IPL( and now they got condoms, so what, you may say). And tell me, if I feel Sreesanth is a scapegoat, is it wrong?

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