Open wound

Wrote a ditty for a little missy,
She wasn’t impressed and said:

Too much blood, too much pain,
Find hope, laugh again…

Had it all, I say,
In buckets and spades,
Then cashed it in for a spin.

Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,
It all seemed so cool.
Took it to the limit,
Played the perfect fool.

Got off the ride, paid the ticket price,
Stupor wore off,
Time to take stock.

People destroyed – check.
Self contorted – check.
Health destroyed – check.
Reality distorted – check.

Suffer the rule: did the crime, do the time

My life is now an open wound.

My world, Brand calls it

So you win some and you’re winsome.
Then, it’s all a bit ‘Shameless’ and you’re Frank the Plank.
Got a call from Russell Brand. This is how he called it:
“What I’ve learnt, to my cost, is that people will put up with all manner of bad behaviour so long as you’re giving them what they want.
“They will laugh and get into it and enjoy the anecdotes and the craziness and the mayhem, as long as you’re doing your job well.
“But, the minute you’re not, you’re fucked.
“They’ll wipe their hands of you without a second glance.”

Bzzzzzzzp...

As black holes go, the most crippling is the one where you realise you are now not worthy of any emotive indulgence.
Not worthy of happiness or joy, satisfaction or accomplishment, peace or anger.
Your emotional rights as an individual are sucked into oblivion by the black hole of self-recrimination.
Self-recrimination. That’s the toughest jury; Borne out of true self-inquest, devoid of distraction and sleight of heart, or mind.
Like black holes in space, we know they exist and what they do, but there is little fuss about the exact moment of contact with one.
Just a bzzzzzp.
Gone.

Time for a good ramble

The spirit is broken, the body is weak, flailing in the face of self-inflicted agony.
All knowing is unknowed, all belief a sham.
Faced with self, the biggest demon of them all, I cannot beat the odds.
To dig deep within, is to climb Everest… to win an Ironman.
The lust of sensous satisfaction is overpowering, like a drug it wills you into the lowest common denominator of existence.
Sleep offers the only chance of escape.
The chance to dream, again.
To awaken is to be compressed into the gas chamber of reality.
Fumes of integrity suffocating. Killing. Dying.

So...

So, Charlie Sheen is no more news. And neither am I. Which means, he has probably cleaned up. As have I.
Which means, he can get back to acting. As can… no, I can get back to writing.
I’m just back from India – where the nation I once knew as a pimply 13-year old is now a blossoming 16-year old. Full of verve, vitality, passion, hormones and a conscience at crossroads.
I left it all behind. As I did my wife and kids. As I did my dreams and attachments. As I did my desires and weaknesses.
I’m back.

Pyrrhic victory

Life destroys, decimates, dismembers, disavows.
I mortally fear time.
It scathes, scalps, scythes and seethes.
While you spent your life getting a life, I spent mine, pissing it away.
And now I stand (or sit, mostly), quarter of half the man I used to be.
And that vision comes back: of the knight on a battlefield;
Carnage all around, bodies littered, blood splattered.
The knight stands alone and as the mist lifts, he looks around.
Has he won? If he is standing, he must have.
Except, all the dead are his. His own. His people.
Pyrrhic, pyrrhic, pyrrhic.

Is this the end?

I feel like time is up for this blog. It needs to evolve now and move on. When I was working for a print publication writing a blog seemed a novelty.
Now, I work for a website and working as I do, 24/7 online, writing online does not seem such a novelty.
Also, my life is going through its ‘shedding of skin’ phase. Like a snake, every five years my life sheds its skin and starts anew.
In the midst of all this, I just am struggling to write regularly.
Am I being lazy or is this the end?

I just don't get it!

Sometimes, I just don’t get it. The stuff I don’t get is often considered classic, cult or genius.
It’s pretty scary to stand up and say, ‘You know what, I thought Easy Rider was a gigantic fucking waste of time. I just don’t get it.’
Dennis Hopper’s passing away brought Easy Rider back into the mainstream of my consciousness. I had hidden it away, in the ‘Don’t-get-it-but-embarrassed –to-say-so’ box.
I also don’t get Henry Miller’s ‘Tropics’. I mean, are you kidding me??!! Really?!! Was there some genius involved there?!! Maybe it’s me. But hey, I just don’t get it.

Ain't that a kick in the balls!

Have you ever set yourself up for the biggest kick in the balls ever? I’m talking way beyond going out on a limb, eggs in one basket, bridges burning and the kitchen sink flying through the air.
I’m talking about living in such denial of an event eventually happening, that when it does, it’s like… you have no reaction because it was just, so, not in your sphere of reality. There is no point of reference to have any comprehension or reaction.
I should be bent over gasping for breath, in pain. But I just do not get it.

Back! But only just...

I’ve been away on jury duty. I was called to judge my own conscience. Ever a tricky thing, hence the time off. Conscience was on trial for justifying my choice of getting wasted on my son’s birthday, after having taken a decision to stop drinking.
It was a hung jury. Not as hung over as I was, but the court adjourned and gave everyone the week off.
Yesterday, Conscience was given a suspended sentence pending my behaviour and choices on the next big occasion.
Which should be this weekend. Nickelback and Status Quo in concert is ideal testing ground.

Goaaaah!

I’m in a Bill Cosby zone. Kids, kids, kids and they are making me say the darndest things.
Which is why I actually backed off from writing everyday.
That tide is about to change. I’m off to my motherland; from where all the women in my life come from. Whether they like it or not (that’s for being in my life).
Often, my only prayer is that Goa be in my future. It’s where I want to live... soon. Until then, I will simply enjoy doing these hits and runs. Live in Goa, die in Pune. That’s the future.

Me, and my views

The big debate is if IPL and T20 are hurting Indian cricket.
My view is: screw cricket, play football.

I was pretty nervous as Sania Mirza reached the semis of the Japan Open. Then she lost.
My view is: she should retire now while she is still the sexiest woman sportsperson out there.

I lined up Winehouse, Duffy, Lilly Allen and Corrine Bailey Rae. Then I lined up Norah Jones, Sade, Diana Krall and Dido.
My view is: I hate the divas (Whitney, Mariah, Dion and the like)

Finally, I can only be at peace with very little money.

Camera shy

I have never been a big fan of photographs. I like to look at them, love to have mine taken, but hate to use a camera.
I don’t own a camera of any sort. When I travel I don’t use one either.
So, I don’t have a trail of snaps to chart the course of my eventful life until now.
I much rather enjoy the moment, totally immersed in its absurdity, perversity, joyousness, stupidity, grandiosity or whatever, rather than be capturing it from behind a lens.
The best memories are etched in the heart. And there they live forever.

Would you pay for an accurate prediction?

If there was some way I could have a predictometer running on this blog here it would be great. We could all see just how accurate my predictions are. And then perhaps, really spread the word about a new online soothsayer who can write a word or two.
For the times I get them wrong, which will be rare, we could actually charge a refund. Oh, did I neglect to mention that we could charge for site visits, given such accurate predictions.
Take this prediction made maybe a month ago: Sania needs to retire before she embarrasses herself anymore.

I am fatal

I am not the tsunami that will destroy you.
I am not the accident that will maim you.
I am not the bad news that will shatter you.
I am not the twist of fate that will derange you.

I am an infection you catch, unnoticed.
Slowly, I will spread and before you know it, I will be fatal.
I am the addiction you indulge, unnoticed.
Slowly, I will consume you and before you know it, I will be fatal.
I am the curse of all things human – you never see me,
And, unnoticed, I will be fatal.

A true story

I went hunting as a child, was a sergeant in the National Cadet Corp in school and left home five times as a youth. However, as middle age beckons I find that the great outdoors are great as long as their outdoor and I’m in door.
So a recent office desert camp out found me accompanying some serious outdoorsmen to a mega hardware store. One turns to me and says, ‘This is the men’s version of a woman in the lingerie section’. I looked around – hammers, knives, tool-kits, axes, – ‘I prefer the women’s lingerie section’, I told him.

The lost decade

Forgive the constant context of the world economy right now, given that it is big news and only bigger in my world, because a business publication employs me.
One of the several buzz words to emerge is the ‘lost decade’, with reference to Japan. Word is, from 1990 to 2000, the economy in Japan basically got screwed and a whole ten years was lost, monetarily.
I look back at this past decade, given there is a year to go, and wonder, if in terms of an achievement-to- potential ratio, 2000-2010 will be the lost decade for me? Monetarily.

Waltz in, waltz out

I truly want to be the Rick Rubin of whatever I’m doing. Rubin is the go-to guy, the guru, the mac-daddy, the genius of the music business. All he does though, is listen to your song, tell you what’s right, or wrong, what needs to be done and then you pay him a million dollars or more, and he leaves.
Rick does not do: production schedules, appraisals, productivity charts, year-end reports, year-ahead planners… Rick does not do the nitty gritty of success.
I too want to waltz in, paint the broad strokes, and waltz out.

What if?

What if?, can be a potent weapon of self-introspection and, as I have discovered in my fight against insomnia, the creative man’s way of ‘counting sheep’.
I have cut back my hour of going to sleep from 5 am to 2 am now. Not drinking is a key, but the ‘what if’ question might well steal the thunder from my noble giving up of bacchanalia. I simply imagine a scenario – What if I won $5 million dollars - is my favourite. And then, close my eyes to construct an entire life. I am usually asleep in an hour.

Thank god u didn't get this in one of those chain mails

Stuff that struck me over the past few days:
* Barrack Obama will have to beat Sarah Palin not McCain to be President.
* Pune may be the safest metro in India right now. Especially if your Christian.
* The human capacity for forgiveness is vast. Only outdone by human capacity for meanness.
* Ray Charles and Willie Nelson singing Seven Spanish Angels can make me cry (not because they are bad, of course).
* If I am truly free, it also means that I am truly dead.
* It’s good to get drunk after a long dry spell.