Some time at last to post...

That seems more like it. It looks like another age and era when I used to post regularly. It looks like another millennium since I posted anything worth-while. School's really hectic. It doesn't give much time for intellectual existence. You're always preparing or correcting something or making someone regurgitate things from those CBSE books. Poooh! Shithole existence.

Nevertheless, I have accumulated like another dozen fiction, a handful of scripts for both mainstream and adults... and another shelf full of classic dvds of movies from before 70s. Some interesting Charlie Chaplin and Ingmar Bergman collection. Besides, recent European movies. And I am back at my long-forlorn-into-extended gestating novel - DARKEST BEFORE DAWN! It has taken a new avatar and has started sputtering and staggering to a re-start. Some improvements to the plot. I am not sure I will post any more on the web. I don't want to be pointed fingers at for plagiarising my own stuff at any point of history in the name of someone else's work! I am giving myself another year before I am going to approach a publisher with some serious aspirations to becoming yet another Indian writer in english!

In the meanwhile, we (Masquerade) have finished premiering 3 productions and played 13 shows in a space of 5 weeks between the first night of NIB and the last night of Dystopia. Three new artistic directors - that's exciting. Even more exciting, I am not pressed to churning out shows to keep up the annual 4 shows from our stables. Come to think of it, after Jigsaw early this year, the next event I was involved was recently the launch of the CHENNAI DEBATING FORUM at the Oxford Bookstores on 26th Sept. That was fun. We performed some story telling - subverting and repackaging Indian mythology in contemporary terms, read some steamy Roald Dahl for adolescents and Carol Ann Duffy. At the end of it all, 8 people debated in a combination of Worlds and BP style about "The Need for Reinventing, Rediscovering and Repackaging Culture". Not too many people in the audience. About 15 people at the small Cha Bar beside the Masquerade and MYT people. So it looked like about 50 people. Though... the floor debate we generated at the end of the speaker debate was like 100 participants. Quite interesting. We have quite a lot of interested people wanting to be part of the Chennai Debating Forum and we meet again on October 24 - 4.30 pm to 6.30 p.m at the same Oxford Bookstores, Haddows Road, Chennai.

I have been reading heckuva lot. There's a performed reading of all 6 short-list nominees on the eve of The Man Booker 2009 at the British Council. Of course, we are reading on Oct. 10, while the winner would be announced on the night of Oct 6th. So, we would really be reading from 5 nominees and THE WINNER. I am in the middle of two books. The other 4 I would have read before 10th. So, lot of work happening. No complaints. Or perhaps... one: not able to sit and put that pen to the paper and post some articles. Hopefully this should leave a hangover and I should post one tonight later or tomorrow latest!

Crusade, Spiritual Counseling and being Born Again

Ruminations - 2

Am I I? Or who am I? What is my identity? Is Identity a requisite? Does identity matter? Why then are there so many questions on identity in the first part of any application form? One thing is certain. This is a short paragraph, relatively speaking.

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Ruminations - 1

This is India. I mean, we are supposed to be Indians, from the country founded and raised originally on the banks of Sindh River and spread to occupy the sub-continent. May by the use of that word "occupy" is significant. May be not. I am not commenting. All is conjecture. Then again, Sindh, Inde, India, Hind all point to one thing: this is Hindu country. At least, twas! And yet, when I look around, what do I see. Three out of ten neighbours in every neighbourhood is likely to be a non-Hindu. Frequently there is bound to be a Muslim in this list and two out of every seven can be born-again Christians or within 500 meters there is bound to be an Islamic, if not, definitely a Christian worship place, a Fancy Goods Store or a Departmental or Provision store of the local variety run by a Muslim or Christian; to add to it, in certain localities, there may even be a Dhabba and some Tibetian or North-east student community presence indicating Sikh and/or Buddhist ilk. Yet, we are shouting about Hindu and anti-Hindu sentiments; and yet further, Hinduism is termed as a trampling religion that is non-secular. Parties are being accused of being fundamental and Hindu right-wing. The Prime Minister of this country is a Sikh. The person who ramrods the President and Prima Minsiter is a Christian. More unequivocally put, comes from the proximity of Vatican. The erst-while President was a Muslim gentleman. The current incumbent is a champion of underpriveleged; by which is meant the Dah-lits. Aren't they all? And yet this is called Hindu country and being Hindu has come to mean anti-secular... because, secularism aims at vernicht-ing that so-called Hindu identity in order to bring about a certain state of multi-religious, multi-sectarian society so that people are kept divided along religious, casteist, sectarian and yes, sexarian. I refuse to call it sexist, for often, again and unabashedly, in a very partisan and polarised way, that is equated to chauvinism, as though one can't be a female sexist. You see, you can't even say feminist as the antonym of chauvinist, like you can't call Christianity or Islam or Zorastrianism the antonym of Hinduism. Now of course, Sikhism or Buddhism are excluded conveniently because they are really the elite and ignorable minority. The antonym of Hinduism is the priveleged domain of Da-lits these days, like sexism equals chauvinism and feminism is a redemtive word for rallying for a noble cause. For: anything originally allegedly suppressed or underpriveleged or opportunity-denied has come to become elite, positive, inclusive, and hence minority. Very confusing? Imagine my confusion and visualise the lines of chaos running on my visage early in the morning (if you consider 6.30 a.m early enough!) when I pick my customary The Hindu and shake the inevitable supplementary sections and daily appendages of ink on sundry newsprint to shake off the trojans and backdoors that come stuffed like lettuce in a burger. What befalls? A handfull of 70gsm Christian literature falls out! Well, I always thought these sundry lettuce stuffings only take the form of fliers for furnitures and mosquito nettings and Reliance Fresh. But no! Conversion attempts begin at 4 a.m in the morning when they get lettuced into newspapers and fall out of the bread of commode-reading habit around 7 p.m at the latest. And yet this is Hindu country. And yet Da-lits are rallying for more and more minority status. And yet a Sikh is a Prime Minister of this country. You see, this is Congress country. Every party that can threaten their stay at top would be non-secularised, every society that can undermine their peaceful non-co-existence will be campaigned un-democratic or non-socialist friendly. The commies are the exception,being a law unto themselves. As useless and un-country-friendly. The commies don't know what they want. They neither can become majority, nor can reach consensus within themselves, or can successfully divide the bread between the monkeys. And yet, they rule the people who rule the man who rules the country. So who rules the country, what country are we in, what are our guiding principles, what is our religious or secular, democratic or fundamental status? Are we being secularised or vaticanised? Are we being made minority or majority? Is minority the majority or majority the minority? Are we being subverted or converted? Do people who talk of revolution or taking over of India by the military as the only purgative, laxative, whatever-ative realise it is not even working in the proverbial "hatti" called Pakistan, India itself being the Kabab of the sub-continental spread (after all, Pak-stan was a Pak-stance of Jinnah from pre-partition India). Is it better to be isolated from the main-land sub-continent, courtesy waters of Indian Ocean, like Sri Lanka? Is this blog about religion, politics or our country? Do we even have a single identity? Is it even possible to think of a physically undivided India since we are mentally so divided? Would anyone have the sanity to take the double-barrel and blow the heads of the dynastic party that rules this country who is in turn ruled by a 'woman' who is rank-outsider even in her country of origin? Would it really be the panacea for the common good of the people of this country if the figure-heads are wiped out? Or do we need to overhaul the nomenclatures of the political offices? Why are we even made aware of these differences? While we are going over this, hundreds of infants are dying, girls are being raped, boys are being kidnapped, women are being raped on the highways of Delhi, Noida or Gurgaon in the backseats of cars and SUVs. We remain indifferent because the 24 hour newschannels have benumbed our sensibilities to horrors by packaging them for their own TRPs. Gone are the days when newspapers use to carry news. There are only olds, thanks to live newschannels. Good news are no more news. Bollywood and ramps are the only celebrative affairs worth beaming as good news, else all news is blood, gore, or al-gore or bush. Only one thing is certain. This is a very very very long paragraph.