A Clarification of the Events that Transpired on Sunday, 19th August 2007

I have been called a liar before, though without the understanding that this cursed gift of mine is pathological, biological and not-so-chlorophyll-laden environmental.

My mate H loves records. I personally want to smash them over smooth pates as I scream that I shall have another platinum hit one of these days; but he loves listening to them.

The most natural thing in the world it was for him to buy a book case to put them in. More so to call me over to assemble it.

It was a solid piece of furniture - pressed wood that was relatively sturdy and made to be put together easily.

With the parts lying on the floor, I was about to pick up the leaflet of instruction when I saw something that chilled me to the bone.

Please allow me to brake the flow of this linear narrative for some background information. My mate H is a planner - a black Protestant intellectual who despises labels almost as much as I. He is a thinker, an architect of sorts. We work well as a team because I am a ruthless gorilla, who is so far outside the box that I am either in a tower with a gun or underneath the streets with a bomb strapped to my chest.

There H sat on the floor, a side of pressed wood in each of his hands, his gaze shifting from one to another and then back. For a moment he pondered the edge on one of the boards; and then he looked at the other.

I had seen that gaze before. It was H's over-thinking gaze, a sure indication that he was going to measure each plank three times at leas before we even started.

Panicked that this endeavor would last longer than the time taken to build the pyramids, I reached for the closest plank. Grabbing a wooden stake, I started to bang the thing into a plank that looked like the one one in the leaflet instruction.

"Are you sure that goes there?"

The question irked me because we were working from a bloody leaflet - a two-sided instructions thingy that was not exactly that complicated.

"Of course."

"Umm...no. I think it goes here."

By this time both stakes had been pounded well into the plank, so when H showed me on the instructions where it said otherwise, I was momentarily infuriated.

"Hrrnh." It was a tiny whimper; a sigh that meant that he was concerned. I had heard that sigh before too. It meant that he was trying to think of a way to save this project.

It occurred to me that I had never seen him ever not think up an idea in such situations. What would happene if he could not find a way? Would he lose his hyper-organized mind?

I decided not to wait. Looking at him right in the eyes to force him to stop the now-burning gears in his mind, I told him to get me some pliers. We had both by this time tried the pull the stakes out to no avail.

As he ran to get the pliers, I attempted to get the damn things out with my teeth, but failed.

Pliers now in hand, I got one of the stakes out, though it got warped as I did so.

The other one broke off in the hole it had been put in.

As I thought about creating more space within the now-shut hole, I became acutely aware that H was staring at the plank as if I were holding his dearest closest friend who had died in my arms.

Would he actually lose his mind? This project was to take 30 minutes. I would now have to tell him it would take longer, and that would set his carefully-planned schedule in disarray. He may decide to terminate the project, and me with it. I had experienced the deep psychosis of an absessive-compulsive before, and knew it could be scary. Luckily, I believed the experience had taught me well.

"Mate, relax. We're going to Home Depot. We'll get more stakes, OK? And I'll just hammer a nail into the blocked hole and open it up."

"OK." He was not breathing heavily - a good sign.

Our trip to Home Depot was uneventful until I addressed his panic. I laughed about it uneasily, until he joined in, whereupon I was more candid about the matter.

I told him about what had made me pick up the hammer, and recommended that he not over-think or at least read into my own thoughts which tend to panic at the sight of his over-thought.

"So you want me to over-think your over-thinking?"

"Yes."

It seemed pretty plain to me.

He almost crashed his car into another one as we parked. I thank God he did not, for I would have had to take the brunt of the blame for that unnecessary trip.

Perhaps I am confusing H with my father in that.

A gay Home Depot worker, a cute girl, and an absentee windows and doors specialist later, we had the stakes.

The stakes fit, but the hole remained a gross problem.

"You're a typical man, trying to force wood into any tight hole you can find."

I ignored the quip, and concentrated all my might on creating a hole through the blocked one, and was soon successful. The screw went in, but stuck out a little.

I knew H would never let me forget that 1/2 inch jutt.

Just as they didn't when they arrested Dutt.

Hosting a Poker Tourney for Grandma's Boy

The jealous sound, it is, when I see people capable of making real films.

The Host. Love the Japanese and their fascination for silence, mysticism and government hegemony. The little sewage monster in all of us is going to engulf all of it unless that poor girl is sacrificed to it's hungry jaws, only to be regurgiated at will.

If only I could live in the world that Grandma's Boy takes place in. I would be so happy...and immensely high. Monkeys with red belts, grown men calling their parents their room-mates, blood on the dance-floor. My friend A noticed how any real game designer would have the code for his video game i.e. it does not exist merely on one disk. Leaving such fallacies aside, I tore my disk laughing at the villain, a callous rogue of Matrixian proportions. The good guy is better than Adamn Sandler, that unfunny sack of odd-curls.

This is one for the high pile. Love poker. Wish I would play the players and not the hand. The hand merely holds the bird as the ones in the bush mock me with cunning silence.

Squiggle Part 2

So here I am, moving, probably being followed, and unsure where to go from here.

Someone somewhere once told me that plasma could travel faster than light. Or was that sub-plasmic particles? Or were there no particles involved at all - don't waves trump particles in speed tests?

I can see the edge.

How horrid if it would turn out to be the edge. I am hopeful nevertheless, moving with the same speed to where I can see something other than a horizon. This is fluffier than a horizon. Loose material, all white and powdery, blows up now and then.

It must be the edge.

My heart is weightless at the prospect of leaving this odd somethingscape that I've been wandering around for what must be centuries now.

Relief is it? A bit of apprehension. Anything would be better than wandering on like this.

The same person, or at least her voice, had told him that those who wandered did so because they did not want to take measure of their deeds. They acted and left, never wanting to see the consequences of their actions. Seeing these results would make them have to confront what they were.

Why was this woman a credible expert? Her forte was neithr physics nor clinical psychology.

The edge was real. It was coming up to me quickly, or rather, I was coming upon it too quickly. Movement is hard to acertain with just two objects invloved.

At the last moment, I pull away and curve away from what could have been.

It could have been the end.

Alarmed, I realise that I am exactly where I started, at the beginning of the grey line.

Squiggle Part1

I start out in an unusual place, in the middle of white nowhere. If I were religious I would call this purgatory, a blank nothingness where there simply is nothing - no blithe nor material matter for me to touch and distract myself.

Once, I was what you could call religious. Church once a week. Green notes in a deep plastic bucket with several other bills and a few rebellious coins. Mother said that only those who wanted the sting of hell's flames would crumple their notes.

This can't be purgatory, for I am moving. No longer suspended over the white nothingness, I am moving forth like a general triumphantly returning from battle to glorious Rome.

Alas, I am black, and not wily like Aaron upon the moor, nor brave like the Black Prince Edward.

Not black, but the darkest grey, like coal. Is there really any black? Mother said only Negroes had really black hair; mine is brown. Not grey, but brown.

The white earth is spoilt by the grey.

I am being followed.

They must be tyre tracks behind me. I can see their grey marks.

I want to speed up, but I have no control.

What do I do? My heart wants to sink. In the midst of it all, I don't feel as scared as I should. Something tells me this is all normal.

White all around, as far as the eye can see. There is not horizon. Why is there no horizon?

Chile Stunners

When a game is so good that I am willing to watch it from the dentist's chair, you know it's one for the books.

Chile have been the team to watch from my point of view in the U20s. They're weren't grand or immensely built up, but just made up of damn good, learning players.

That is the key. I've seen the Chileans improve by bounds as the tournament progressed. Even with the scuffle that led to a few cracked buses, those lad were getting white hot as they played more and mroe matches.

To the point that the third place Chile vs. Austria (1-0) match was far better than the Czech Republic vs. Argentina final (1-2).

Not that the final was terrible, but there were far too many yellow cards being handed out for my liking. You know why - the little Argentinians tried to get the ref sympathetic to their plight at the hands of the gargantuan Czechs.

One of my colleagues is Slovakian - he is the tallest man I have ever met.

Anyway, the Czechs fought back and feighned death almost as many times as those "Damned over-dramatic Argentinians," as my mate K calls them.

You have to love Canadians; I could hear fans' boos directed at every fallen player on the pitch, genuine and otherwise.

Back to Chile, I cannot help but recall that old football question:

Why would anyone want to be a goalkeeper?

Certainly, most club owners are all about buying and selling the poor bastards - read the "Goalkeeper's Revenge" if you don't believe me.

That day was an excellent one to be a goalkeeper, if you were Chilean, that is. This fellow, Toselli, is the one to watch in the next few years of deensive play. He was everywhere, willing to die to keep the ball out of the goal. At one point he stopped the ball and then flung forward to stop it again, and looked like he tore his leg in half.

The moment of the match was a final minute save Toselli made when he jumped backward and slapped away the ball in mid-air as it was on the goal-line.

My heart literally skipped on that one. The Austrians had begun to celebrate the supposed goal until it was discovered that Toselli had dashed their hopes for a penalty shoot-out.

I mean, that leap could have ended with the poor fellow breaking his neck. He literally had no landing plan, and indeed ended up falling on one of his defenders.

Although I played defence for the most part, I have played goalie on occassion and I know that it takes far more than what I have to give up life and limb for that ball in a position that brings little accolades and much stigma with it. Few people other than goalies know what it means to be the final line of defence.

Big up to Toselli; I wish him the very best for the future.

Misfortune Needs No Soprano

I'm sitting and watching, and seeing that life is indeed not as plain as it seemed when I was a child. It's too complex for even university profs, who commit suicide in scores as if to compete with Indian medical students.

Scoring pot has become a dangerous and, more disruptively, odious chore because of the types involved.

Placed diagonally the sword is bound to pinch the most delicate of clavicles.

Why did they not listen, and do such things with what could be the very mirror we need? Something tells me that it is a mirror that we can live without if necessary. Someone will take us all out, us heathen marketers who dare to subvert truth...for silvered golden paths. Isn't urine golden?

A night in white satin armour we need, I call all cars to bring to me. A season so steeped in foreshadowed remains is a better alternative to the ghosts that are yet to come. Every Christian name amongst them cannot hide the darkest blood of all; they are the scumbag of the world, our creations from millions of years of bandied thought unmodulated by the future.

To have an Uncle Pussy.

(Image source: HBO)

You don't Want to Know the Vaastav

In 1999 a group of Hindi film-makers chose to put together something very different in regards to gangland cinema. Mahesh Manjrekar takes the helm as director and writer, with the help of veteran writer ImtiazHussain, and creates a film that looks at the Mumbai criminal underworld in a brand new, eclectic way.

The result, Vaastav, which means The Truth, is to this day the measuring stick for Hindi mob movies. Sanjay Dutt fits like a glove intohis role as Raghunath Namdev Shivalkar, called Raghu by his friends and suffering parents. Growing up in the slums, he starts out as a layabout who cares little for work or anything that involves responsibility. His days are spent with his similarly carefree friends, doing close to nothing as the days go by.

If anything, Dutt creates an almost too lazy portrait of Raghu, around whom the film revolves. With his sleepy eyes and drawling speech, Dutt looks more like a drunk than a lafangha (layabout), as his father callshim. Also the actor looks a tad too old to play the youth at the beginning of the movie, being well into his forties.

This wanton and somewhat unbelievable life changes in one short but intense scene, where Dutt slips into the role he was born to play with ease. When his friend Shorty is attacked by a group of small-time gangsters, Raghu strikes at the man with a cast-iron skillet, and asecond later his assailant lies dead in front of him.

From here begins Raghu’s unstoppable rise to the top of the Mumbia criminal world, leaving in his wake a trail of bodies that at first seem a necessity but quickly become a business. On his way he is protected by a state minister who wants to use him to strong-arm political opponents and really anyone who wants to try and create stability in the socio-religious quagmire that is Mumbai.

Manjrekar’s work does not preach a Robin Hood moral, which is the short-fall of most such endeavours where the heroic mob boss is also greatly loved by his community, which in turn he protects and loves. Raghu kills with impunity people like religious-political preachers who want to bring tolerance to the state political system, but also kills the men who try to harass his sister-inlaw. He visits brothels, but marries the prostitute bearing his child. He is hence not loveable or heroic, but definitely human, and therefore relatable.

Manjrekar shows that the world, encased in Mumbai’s slums, is not one where one can distinguish black and white, but only the controllers and the controlled. Raghu, dressed in opulent silk salwaar and gold chains, tries to control the world around him as much as he can. Unfortunately, the entire mechanism is set against him because he is not rich or well-bred; he always must return to the dark grimy slums he came from. The honour of true control is reserved solely for people like the minister, who drops Raghu like anout-of-style hat when the don brings too much police attention upon himself.

Ultimately Vaastav can be looked as a story of economic stagnation. Raghu simply wants to control his life after a childhood spent in the slums. Being a part of the lower class, he can do nothing to get to that level except fight his way in. Even when he finally can just touch the sky, he must invent his own niche because the middle and upper classes will never let him exist on their level. Irreverent of the fact that he can have almost anyone in Mumbia killed, he is of the criminal class and never the middle or upper classes.

In a quest to control his life, Raghu tries to control the very environment around him. He launches a campaign against the middle and upper classes, and that is one that he cannot win.

Manjrekar outlines Raghu’s rise and fall so quickly that one is left breathless at the end of the movie. The don’s life is barely a flicker in the blaze engulfing the slums. After his quest for control, Raghu is the victim of a society that will not let the hierarchy change, a patsy for a power-hungry politician. Ultimately the ruling classes take back any real controlhe wrested from them, and the world’s largest and most powerful gang, the police, finish him off for their patrons.

(Image Source: Adishakti Films)