Murmurs of a Massacre.

Being a part of this country was a matter of pride. We grew up with dreams to take part in the nation's development with devotion and sincerity as our forefathers did. Be it in the field of education, sports, politics or defence. We were glad as everybody thought we were successful in achieving our goals.

But things have changed steadily for years now. We feel being subjected to persecution, prejudice and discrimination almost on a daily basis. We feel as if there is always somebody mapping out a plan to attack us?

You feel as if the state has totally abandoned you. As if the security forces are facilitating your murderers. As if the media is mocking your death. As if the human rights organisations are turning a blind eye on your genocide. And worst of all, as if your fellow countrymen are celebrating your death.

 You are afraid of a policeman, afraid of any armed man. We don’t even trust the  Army, top judiciary … almost nobody. Because nobody has ever heard your voice over so many years. You are afraid of going to university because somebody is lying in wait to kill you.

You can’t even escape. You need a passport for that. But you feel you’ll be murdered if you go to the passport office. You can’t go to any office for that matter because you will be identified, chased and finally shot in the head.

You feel that even your neighbours are annoyed by your screaming and want you to stop shouting.”

Don’t let your fears about your neighbours stop you, my good friend. Or we’ll be left with no hope at all...


P.S : Thoughts of a man,as rumors of genocide swirl outside.

Off with his head!

“Game of Thrones’” Joffrey Baratheon   looks like he could be in a boy band. His blond hair is brushed forward over his forehead, in the current Justin Bieber-inspired, fear-of-the-forehead style. His deep-set, hooded eyes and fair skin give him that sleepy, growing-is-exhausting, pillowcase-still-imprinted-on-the-cheek look of late adolescence.

His anodyne features, bunched a little too closely around his snub nose, could easily make him the third-cutest member of a group featured in a boy band poster.

Except for the small fact that he’s TV’s most noxious, unredeemable villain, and if he belongs on any poster, it’s a Most Wanted one, preferably defaced with devil’s horns, an eye patch, nasty scars, boogers, fangs, drool, and then — why stop there — ripped to shreds. And I have done just that, hey Photoshop does come in handy sometimes!

When “Game of Thrones” began, Joffrey was a sniveling brat, the heir to the throne and scion of incest, a distasteful, spiteful, whiny character, dangerous in his weakness, but one who did the bidding of others.

That all changed when Joffrey became the king of Westeros and ordered Ned Stark decapitated in a show of authority that was his coming-out party as the worst person on your television. Since then, Joffrey has done one sadistic, vile thing after another: He forced his fiancée Sansa to stare at her father’s head on a spike, had her smacked around, arranged duels to the death for his pleasure, and showed a willingness to kill a man by forcing wine down his throat until he exploded.

In Tyrion’s words “We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings...but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!”

As a product of Incest,The king who raised him as his son never had much time for him. His mother is a self-serving bitch who spoiled, coddled and manipulated him, giving him a hugely inflated sense of self and none of the basic ethics or self-reliance to do things well or right.

From the most sympathetic angle, Joffrey is the nightmare-inducing result of helicopter parenting gone not just wrong, but psychotic.

What I love about the series is that “Game” consistently encourages its viewers to adopt the mentality of its characters. It chops off heroes’ heads so we, too, harden our hearts and learn to prize cagey realism over something more noble.

It shows blood, guts and bones until we too become insensible to them. It puts a maniacal sadist on the throne, so we too wish someone, anyone, would take it from him, and are ready to punch, slash, find a dragon or birth a smoke monster — or at least condone such behavior — to make it so

If and when Joffrey gets what’s coming to him, I’ll probably stand on the couch and cheer, cackling over the painful death of a psychologically disturbed and dangerous teenager. When the rush passes, unlike the characters on “Game of Thrones,” I’ll have time to worry about exactly what that means.

Gaga over Goldspot

If The Beatles and Coldplay had a lovechild, they name it Goldspot. Now, now before you get the knives out and accuse me of blasphemy, do give them a listen and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Goldspot is one of those bands, who you always keep nearby to call on for good times or for comfort on those crappy days when everything seems to be falling apart. Siddhartha Khosla’s clear, sweet voice, a broad vocal range, and music that’s a masterfully produced pop blend of psychedelic Beatles (think Lucy in the sky with diamonds or George Harrison after his exposure to Indian traditional music), the endless summer sounds of the Beach Boys, and just the right amount of Bollywood musical makes for an infectious combination that inevitably finds me singing along every time I listen to their songs.

Upbeat melodies and quirky, innocent lyrics—and I’m talking of “pair of 14-year-olds holding hands in the sun” innocent here—I’m left with a smile on my face and a little extra bounce in my step. This is basically identical to how my body reacts to an encounter with a little Whiskey, so I think I may have just stumbled upon a way to brighten even the darkest day without Liver damage.

It’s probably true that Khosla went through some difficult times while writing these songs and he pours his absolute everything into the pieces. Images of his struggles run throughout the music and lyrics, both of which are direct and so honest they make it impossible to feel any sense of shame or embarrassment in hearing about his dreams, hopes, and losses or in remembering one’s own. (I know I did)

But what sets Goldspot apart is their ability to channel this pain into a sense of unbridled joy, I don’t know of any other band that can have me singing lyrics like, “Oh why is this damn life so hard / We spend out time filling the holes in our hearts,” and still feel a sense of hope and optimism.

The songs keeps me swinging back and forth between hard-bitten cynicism and untarnished idealism but ultimately leaves me a believer, if not in the real possibility of untainted love then at least in the importance of always keeping within ourselves somewhere a sense of innocence. And that’s always a nice feeling

Being El Nino.

Football can be cruel. In the sense that just when you think you have it all figured out, and you go running through the side lines like a bullet out of (now a little rusty) gun, receiving with élan, and passing with precision, and smiling like a fool, even planning to dare some stepovers and dummies, and trying to be modest reacting to the applause the roaring spectators. And then, the very next moment, you get a very long ball, which is the perfect cross pass, and you are supposed to receive it as if you were born to receive crosses, and you miss the cue like a fool, and the beloved football that made your dreams jump up and down with acrobatic ecstasy, quietly passes through you and bounces lazily away and out of the pitch.

And then, madness starts.

Suddenly, each defender that comes by your way, big or small, seems like Achilles brandishing his cross bow, and you keep crashing against them. Almost as if you have forgotten what you are playing, making it look like a very confused rugby game. And then suddenly you see a group of people approaching the ground for the first time in their entire excel sheet filling lives, to witness the clash of the titans in the finale. The pressure mounts...

Another pass you humbly present to the opposition, who by now think that you have a short term memory loss or something, and you avoid looking at the faces of your team members. You start thinking that it’s time to pull up socks and introspect. And then you realize that while doing that, you have already missed your marker, who went ahead and scored the goal that he might remember to tell his grandchild, and you shudder to imagine the role you would play in that story. So you give in, and when your captain asks you for a substitution, you quietly nod, and shake hands with the smirking substitute. You look at the brighter side, that at least you can introspect in peace, and your marker won’t even care. And you wish that the ground would just open up, and swallow you whole.

The crowd chants “what a waste of money” and I can’t help but helping that my team mates agree with them.

Being Mallu

As a child, I’d spend summer vacations with my grandparents in Kerala. Later, when I was  in Madras, I’d visit Kerala during my breaks. I loved taking the night train, leaving the heat and arid landscape of Chennai and crossing through a pass in the Western Ghats, the mountain range that segments off Kerala from the rest of the country. Rocked to sleep on the hard wooden third-class berth, I’d awake at daybreak to find my train as if by magic transported to another country, another continent even, one with a lush green landscape, waterlogged paddy fields, rivers and streams, coconut palms clogging the horizon.




On a map the narrow strip of land that is my Kerala — just 360 miles long — seems mortared like an emerald to the southwest coast of India. The Western Ghats have historically buffered us Keralites from whatever is fermenting and boiling over in the rest of India. On the slopes of these mountains, pepper, tea, rubber, cardamom and coffee grow in estates, and then the land meets the Arabian Sea in a latticework of lagoons and extensive backwaters that allow for an elegant network of boat and barge transportation up and down the state. 


I would love going to the temple in the evening for the Deeparadhana ceremony,where Lamps would be lit,drums would be played and horns would echo out into the evening sky.




The temple itself was stunning, with a long passage flanked by 365 granite columns and many elaborate wooden carvings. The deity housed at the center is the massive 18-foot long Vishnu, who reclined on the serpent Ananda. One can only view the deity in sections, at very specific times, and I was fortunate enough to be in a throng allowed to peek through one door when it was opened for a few minutes. I saw the hand and thigh of Vishnu. 


The sight would give me goose bumps. It was not just the glimpse into this sanctum sanctorum, or the passion of my fellow worshipers that moved me, but something immediate, something I had experienced in other temples: the sense that the deity actually resides there, resting in its gilded lair, hidden by doors through which mortals occasionally get a glimpse. 


This was no celestial God whom one invoked while sending up incense and prayers; this God was right there, and we were in the divine presence at the heart of the heart of the faith. As I stood barefoot and bare-chested on stone weathered by the feet of millions of believers, shoulder to shoulder with people who looked like me, I felt this faith too was also my heritage


As hundreds of lamps lit up the temple complex,I began to think what it was to be a Malayalee.I was born in Chennai,but have lived most of my life in Dubai. Even though people may tell you that the "Gelf" is just a part of Kerala that broke away and drifted west,it is different. Or at least i felt that way.


I haven't been to Kerala,since 2006.But when i do come home next time,I will be grasping for that sense of home, seeking blessings and absolution, seeking inspiration, looking to study again the ancestral rites, visit the very hearth fires where my grandmother had turned out such magnificent dishes. I shall try to break down the anatomy of my grandparents’ homes, study the wood and laterite walls, take apart the wooden rafters, trace the filigree carvings in the wood frame under the eaves, all to be able to reconstruct a house again in words.

Bubbles.

In the hills,anything is possible. Given enough alcohol and people looking for a change in location and lifestyle.


That was probably how I met Eva,oh Eva.Eva was tall and slim, with sun-browned skin, raven black hair, and a slightly clumsy gait. When she laughed, her smile bloomed back from the corners of her mouth, crinkling her nose and narrowing her eyes into quivering, blue-flecked slits.


She was here,wherever here was,to attend a meditation course,to learn to cook momo's and generally to find herself again.We spent our days like an affectionate middle-aged couple, silently reading books at waterfall, or walking to the open-air market in the town center to buy ingredients for dinner.


Around a week later,Eva told me it was time for her to move on: She didn’t want to spend the rest of her holiday in a sleepy little hill town, she said, and she had longstanding plans to explore the snowy north before she went home . I responded with a whimsical rundown of reasons to stay (We can take up spear fishing! You can learn to kickbox!), more for the chance to watch her nose-crinkling laugh than for the conviction that I could change her mind.


Later  on that afternoon,we walked to the bustop. I told I’d miss her, and she responded in kind. She didn’t invite me to come with her.


I spent long portions of each day alone, inside my head. Eva’s presence had proved to be a welcome distraction: She was pretty, and she had an understated, mischievous sense of humor. She wasn’t talkative, and we shared our silences comfortably. At a time of focused self-isolation, when I went for days without speaking to anyone, she made me feel less lonesome. I fell for her with a suddenness that made me feel a bit juvenile.


One day,I woke up early with a scowl on my face,I am as most of my friends know prone to mood swings.I was irritable and kept muttering under my breath as I watched the sun come up from behind the mountains.As I sat and glowered at a squirrel on the tree outside, a bubble floated over my shoulder and popped in front of my face. I turned to see Eva padding around the room, naked, dipping a small plastic wand into the bottle of bubble soap she’d bought at the market.


But the bubbles weren’t for my benefit; Eva paid me little mind as she meandered across the room, sleepy-eyed, entranced by her task. Her long-legged steps, which in hiking shorts looked gawky, gave her nudity a lithe elegance. I’m not sure how long I sat and watched this vision before she glanced over and bade me good morning. I told her I had never in my life seen anything so beautiful. Sometime in the far future, I knew when I was lying on my deathbed, this was the moment I wanted to remember...


Somethings stay in the memory forever,fleeting glimpses of what was.Oh Eva..