Really?

Are they real? Your smiles
Infinite list of friends
Myriad photo albums
Of strange lands
Colours of market places
The freedom in your outstretched arms
The mirth in your eye
The wanderlust sprinkled Liberally in your tag line
Are they deep? Impactful?
Life changing?
Or a facade That you desperately cling to
Or a mirage of ever youthful hope that you create
So you can run away from reality
The grimness
The grind of a village of minds
Millions of thoughts
Jostling for space
Pushing you
Shaping you
They say a traveller goes far and wide searching for truth
And returns to find it in their backyard
Is the footloose rush constant?
Do you tire not of searching?
Searching for all that you crave
Probably placed tantalizingly close
By the same wind that teases you on
Move it says crave
Be blind to all that is granted to you right here
Get swept up in my dizzying arms
Wander.

Clouds

You drift by
Your skirts billowing
A puff of white and blue
A rind of grey
Pale but present
Gossamer sheen
Serene you seem
Implacable almost
Truer wisdom there hasn't been
Carrying mournful sighs and
Squeals of young joy
In your bosom
You wait not
You want not
When your heart is full
You pause to cry a little cry
Tears of silver sequin
On a heaving carpet of parasols
Your work done
Sniffing in the afterglow of your outburst
You turn into a wisp
And leave us
Glimmering in the brightness
Where once your silken shade fell
A wee bird tweets on a green arm
Mourning you
Wanting you
If people could speak your tongue
They could learn much
Of how we are all mere travellers
Constant upon the breath of the wind
Our work done
We must leave
The tweeting bird us to mourn.

You know you are really really lazy when..

You know you are officially a lazy bum if you do any of the following:

1. Watch torturous non-music shows on music channels ( case in point : MTV Style Check) because that is easier than limping to the PC to play songs that you'd have to choose.

2. Eat the last five chips in the bag even when you are near-pukey full because that is easier than looking for a rubberband that you'd have to then wrestle around the mangy plastic chip bag neck. And of course it would snap. Then you'd have to look for another. You get the picture.

3. Eat chips for lunch.

3. Eat breakfast cereal for lunch.

4. Talk your friends into emailing you 75 photos from the birthday dinner the night before, as it is too much work to get them on a pen drive, which then you must plug into that wonderfully awkward USB slot at the dusty back of the PC. The PC, then of course, shall refuse to 'recognise' the hardware. Further pen drive jiggling and stabs of pain in lower back from bending over the CPU shall ensue. Just gmail them already. It only takes like what 3 hours?

5. Further talk your friends into bringing their digicams along to dinner parties so that it saves you the trouble of uploading and emailing photos to a billion other lazy bum friends. Plus you get to be in all the photos.

6. Wait right until the point where you really really have to pee.

7. Claim to be paying Rock a tribute to explain your (3rd time in the week) crinkly unironed black tee.

8. Prefer using the 'Channel Up/ Down' function over punching the channel numbers on the remote control.

9. Prefer using the backspace key to correct a typo as rewriting the word is somehow less work than taking the cursor back to the exact letter which needs correction.

10. Wait till the very last 'Low Battery' sign comes on the screen before putting the cell phone on charging mode.

P.S.: MTV Style Check is one of many cloyingly perky shows on music channels which have NOTHING to do with music. Note to all VJs: Please, for the love of all things good, lose the accents. Brit twangs and Southern drawls get old. Really quickly.

Why?

Why did you not teach me the ways of the world? Of the intricate and delicate web of human relationships? Of the ways of the family? Of that every interaction is a transaction outside of that one person who is your all? Of the seamless flow of cold hard worldliness into the warm circle of hearts? Why did you make cynism cool?

Why does elusive self knowledge dissolve into numbness? Why is the journey towards exploration of my own heart littered with withered enthusiasm?

Why did you take the best parts of me with you? Why my sprightliness? My faith? My joy? My energy? Why did you leave behind charred remains of loss, fear, regret and an aching want? An aching want for you? For our conversations? For your being?

Why did you leave me behind? Friendless? Blinded? Hurt? Lost?

Love songs.

I miss love songs. They are like hugs in sound form.

I miss the shiver down my spine I got when 'd hear the first few strains of a well loved ballad on air. I miss my heart soaring at the lurch of the melody.

I miss tearing up on a wintry morning moved by the sheer depth of the power of a good love song pulsing through my ear phones on the dark still staircase in college. I miss the warmth that the feeling gave me.

'Unchained Melody' by the Righteous Brothers was an anthem at one point in time.

Did I just grow out of them? Get tired of all the sentimentality? Or was it deeper than that?

Like we forget the charm of fairy tales, do we also forget the magic of love songs? In the slightly greying adult years with men and mortgages swirling in our heads, do we stop opening our hearts to love songs, our companions through our teens, our friends even lovers on lonely nights?

Do we stop humming them as we fry an egg or fold up the washing or log on to the internet? Do we stop smiling to ourselves as we recall them in our heads while shopping for groceries or taking a break at work? Do we stop pausing for the last instrumental bit as they are played out on the radio?

As we pass through life, do most of us lose that moisture in our spirit to appreciate a heartfelt ballad? Is that why nostalgia hits us so hard because we are so far removed from our younger, more trusting selves?

'Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs', McCartney wrote. I hope some of those people are still around toasting their souls against the warmth of a good love song, keeping out the frost of 'growing up'. Keeping out the hot drying winds of cynicism.

R.I.P. Britanny Murphy

Just stumbled upon the following article and blinked sixteen times before I could take it all in. It is incredible how resilient the human mind can be, no matter how many you see or hear about someone passing away, I always have that moment when time stands still for a moment and I can almost hear the hum of mortality, of a force bigger than us, outside of us. Brittany Murphy died yesterday of cardiac arrest. She was 32.
http://www.ctv.ca/gallery/html/ent_brittany_murphy_20091220/index_.html

I loved her girl woman persona in the film Uptown Girls where she starred alongside Dakota Fanning as her nanny and eventually best friend. Her striking raspy voice was the power behind Gloria the Penguin in 'Happy Feet'. Raspy voiced, ditzy Britanny you will be missed. R.I.P.

The culture of superlatives.

The No. 1 spectacle lens in the world. The winner of the "Car of the year" three years in a row. The quickest drying ink in the world. Best Student of the Year. The largest supplier of dentistry tools in India. The fastest selling computers on the market. Today's is a fast paced almost blurry world of superlatives.

There was a time when the three degrees of comparison were good, better and the best. Today we only have time and attention for the last one.Whatever happened to being good and being better? How in the world did those two sterling terms get classed with mediocrity, being sub standard and just not 'good' enough?

My parents taught me leading by example of being good. Being good was the highest virtue. Things were simpler when I was 7 years old. It is wrong to steal. It is wrong to lie. It is right to put back what does not belong to you. It is right to tell the truth. And follow the rules. It is right to be nice. To be polite.

Being better came by, once school level competitions became du jour. Got to be faster. Draw straighter lines. Balance the lemon in the spoon longer. Put up your hand quicker in a pop quiz. Finish the paper quicker and lessen errors. Play better volleyball. Write better essays. Speak better in elocution contests. Dress better.

And then, one day, one inconsequential everyday day, better just failed to make the cut. The highest score in Maths. The cleanest diagrams in Geometry. The most important notes in Science. The best coaching classes in the city. It was all about chasing the fickle zenith of perfection.

Today, it is everywhere. This disease of the superlative. In the wild eyed captains of industry, stock traders, multinational corporations, teachers, parents, students, food chains. Everywhere. And it is eating away at the very roots of our world. This illness that is so dangerously pervasive has turned the world and its hapless leaders almost blind to the consequences of their superlative gathering blitzkrieg.

One glaring example is that of the recently concluded Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The UN led conference which was hyped to be a common meeting ground for heads of state from 115 countries of the world to tackle head on, the gargantuan crisis of global warming, has now been pronounced a dismal failure. Simply put, the newly signed accord directs the developed countries of the world to pay money (Money!? You cannot buy out Global Warming Inc. just like everything else you know!!!) to the developing countries to 'adapt to climate change' all the while leaving the developed countries' own carbon emission levels largely untouched. One shudders at the extent of the denial of whole countries to this potentially end-the-planet-in-massive-implosion-caused-by-hysterical-CO2 levels situation.

But maybe that is the point after all. If we are to destroy the world, why not do it in the worst, most painful, most unfair, most damaging, most irreversible and most catastrophic fashion possible? Why not compete with other countries by producing the highest and most poisonous carbon emission levels? Why not have the highest death toll caused by climactic disturbances? Why not have the highest incidence of student suicides caused by a rotting education system?

After all, it IS a world of superlatives. And never has this attempt to make everything look bigger than it is or better than it is or truer than it is been this pathetic. Or this dangerous.