Diary

As the numbness of winter slowly disappears ceding its place to a readily perceptible warmth in the air, her heart fills with hope for a change with a change of seasons.
The woolen clothes and soft comforters are packed off neatly in bags and stacked away in that corner of the wardrobe farthest from one's reach, waiting to be brought out again next year. Lush green leaflets sprout from branches that previously appeared dead, heralding the advent of another spring.
But to her dismay, the yellowish food stains keep making appearances on her little girl's uniform on alternate school days. The neighbor utters almost the same string of profanities every time his dog relieves itself on one of his favorite potted plants. The same old faces in her neighborhood are seen walking across the street from her balcony, going back and forth from work.

In the end everything remains the same under the guise of a change, she muses. Or perhaps everything changes while giving off an illusion of permanence. She does not feel sure about either theory.

But then why does she still feel as nauseous as she had felt the first time she caught a whiff of the unfamiliar scent of shampoo emanating from her husband's scalp? The sweet, flowery fragrance still makes her stomach churn violently.
The way he offers half-baked and vague responses to her queries, does not change either.
Weary of waiting for changes that never materialize she has sought solace in something else.
On those sombre nights he does not return home on the pretext of work and her chest feels all constricted, she lets her pen move freely on the pages of a diary she keeps skillfully hidden from everyone else.

Under the dim light of the lampshade in the living room, she writes away all that she can never say out aloud or let show. She writes all that she longs for but cannot have. She writes about all the tears she refuses to cry in fear of never being able to stop.
And somewhere deep down she wills herself to believe that she, too, has the right to break away, to change, to dream, to forsake that which has already withered away like dry leaves in autumn. And to begin anew.
But she knows she can't. At least not tonight, when her little girl is sleeping with such a peaceful expression on her face, perhaps lost blissfully in the land of beautiful princesses and giant chocolate ice-cream cones.
For now, she is more than willing to give up her own dreams in exchange for hers to come true.
And so she keeps on writing.

___

Image courtesy :oxfordmedic.blog.com

Simply Hate

Owing to the mass unpopularity of open letters in recent times, I'm ditching the plan of writing one and embracing the idea of launching into a full-fledged rant instead.
Hate is a popular trend of our times. By hate I don't mean a Communist's trademark 'We hate America and capitalism' kind of hate. 'Hating on' Justin Bieber for example, for crooning in that semi-childlike-semi-effeminate voice of his, and making hormonal teenage girls invent creepiest of hashtags to trend on twitter-if #HornyforJustin isn't creepy, then nothing else is. (Please to note, that 'hating on' is technically incorrect English but that's what 13-year old Americans write.)
Hating latest SRK/Salman movie. And so on. There are countless items on this list.

Now when I say this kind of typical hate-mongering is

Image source: last.fm

fashionable, I mean that there are a few of us who have just jumped on the 'hate' bandwagon, supposedly because 'hating' is cool. It shows you're putting up a stubborn resistance against the viral marketing tactics and publicity stunts you're being subjected to on a daily basis via all media channels. And the minute you openly proclaim your disdain for one of these over-hyped, below-par, but well-marketed products on Twitter or Facebook, you automatically acquire taste.
Okay enough of the self-referential humor. A majority of haters are genuine haters. After reading three of C-Bag's books I decided I wasn't going to read any more of his masala-lathered stories and waste time by writing reviews trashing them. If you have time enough to do all that, go read an actual book and stop making a fool out of yourself.
Now let me state the real purpose of this post. Just recently, I came across a few promotional videos of a new reality show named 'Love 2 Hate You' on Star World - the format of the show specifies that a 'super star' meet up with his/her 'biggest haters' and do god knows what. Whether they will spar verbally, or with a couple of swords or have a tete-a-tete over coffee is best known to the makers. My best guess is something along the lines of this. Also I'm not sure about who these 'super stars' are. But this is what I want to say to them.
Dear all 'hated' ones and the makers of this innovative, new tv series, please don't flatter yourselves into thinking that we 'love 2 hate'.
We hate. Just that.
We don't experience some form of vicarious thrill by dissing over-rated actors, music artists, writers and other celebrities. Social media has given us the opportunity of getting to know actual facts and not distorted versions of reality, made interactions with individuals all over the world possible with the click of a mouse, helped dispel a lot of popular misconceptions. And it is because these social networks have given us a platform where we can write opinions freely and be read in turn, we can call a spade a spade. Please don't insult our intelligence by deriving reality show ideas out of our new-found power of expression. We don't do this for fun or to get noticed or to get our 15 minutes of fame.
I have never written a tweet full of hate or in abusive language and tagged a celebrity's handle in it. I have no desire of trolling anyone. But I have every right of posting my honest view of a book I've read or a movie I've watched. Which code of conduct in the world states that we are only entitled to lavish praise on an actor and keep negative criticism aside? If you're being hated by a group of individuals for the work you do, please stop saying 'they're jealous of my stardom' or 'I earned crores in profit and people love me.' in your defense. I mean, in what parallel universe does that make any iota of sense? We're also consumers here, and steadily running out of options while choosing products from the market because you are flooding it with your shit encased in glittery packages. Books with awkward English sentences, incorrect grammar get published all the time - 3 pages into it and you start regretting having faith in the publisher's aesthetic sense. So you'll excuse us if we feel the need to give vent to our frustration somewhere.
Instead of producing more fake reality tv shows and using sneaky marketing tactics while pandering to the tastes of a certain kind of consumer base, put your heads together to make something worthwhile. There was a time when youngsters in our country read Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan and grew up watching School Days and Hip Hip Hurray. Now they read Chetan Bhagat and watch Mtv Roadies. Or better still, Bigg Boss.
Commercial doesn't automatically translate into asinine or a mish-mash of anything low-brow. Commercial can also be meaningful, devoid of cliches, characterized by sensitivity, depth, heart-felt emotions, unique/familiar stories and closer to reality. Remember all the popular tv shows of 80s-90s? - Dekh bhai Dekh, Nukkad, Humlog, Mahabharat, Chandrakanta, Malgudi Days and the likes?

Image source: abhisays.com

They were liked by one and all. Young and old. Literate and the illiterate. Not only were they a hit with the masses but they also managed to keep the viewers with refined taste, interested throughout their runs.
Bring back that era when better sense still prevailed with our entertainment industry.
Or else prepare to keep being 'hated'.

Norwegian Wood

Sadness is indeed a very complicated emotion. It has the uncanny ability of dissolving the edges of reality surrounding you and immersing you completely in an alternate world, where only you and that feeling exist together in complete harmony. And nothing else matters. You luxuriate in the richness of its beauty and marvel at the tranquility it offers you.
Haruki Murakami's, Norwegian Wood evokes exactly similar kind of emotions in the reader.

There are some books you read, which leave you with stories-bitter, exciting, adrenaline-driven, romantic, depressing or grisly. And then there are books which leave you with feelings. Norwegian Wood, most definitely, belongs to the second category.
And in my opinion, it is infinitely easier to deconstruct a story in a review rather than the feeling it leaves you with. But here's an attempt anyway.

Norwegian Wood is a beautifully sad yet incredibly sensual tale of unfulfilled love where the central characters are, in all essence, broken individuals.
In a most indolent manner, the book begins with our narrator Toru Watanabe, catching the strains of an orchestral version of The Beatles' 'Norwegian wood' on a flight to Hamburg and beginning to reminisce about a certain girl named Naoko, from the days of his youth in Tokyo. From hereon, the story is told as a flashback, as a sliver of memory that the 37-year old Toru has carefully preserved or perhaps is struggling not to forget.
Majorly the story revolves around the trials and tribulations of the 3 key characters - Toru, Naoko and Midori.

Toru, a reserved young college student, is shown to be somewhat anti-social, not quite opening up to others as easily as others open up to him. There is a sense of profound sadness about him hidden skilfully under a veneer of indifference, probably arising out of losing his childhood friend Kizuki, who committed suicide at 17. While Naoko, Kizuki's first and only girlfriend, is a beautiful and emotionally fragile being who has been unable to grapple with the tragedy of Kizuki's untimely death. Still in mourning, bound by a mutual feeling of isolation, Toru and Naoko, forge an unnatural connection of sorts, when they cross each other's paths years later in Tokyo. Toru falls in love right away and even she feels something love-like for him, but sadly enough it is not enough to heal them both. Soon the emotionally unstable Naoko recedes to a sanatorium in mountainous Kyoto while Toru tries to continue with his life as an unremarkable university student, seeking comfort in sleeping with random women. In Naoko's continued absence from his life, he makes friends with the bright, sassy, sexually liberated Midori Kobayashi, who has had her fair share of tragedies too but still manages to be optimistic. An unlikely friendship with Midori, helps dissipate some of the darkness in Toru's life but he is still unable to get Naoko off his mind and keeps writing her letters irrespective of whether she sends a reply or not. The rest of the book details Toru's dilemma as he is torn between these two women, never too sure of whether to shun his troubled past and embrace reality as it comes or keep waiting for Naoko to fully recover from her festering psychological wounds.

Written in a lucid language, the book is full of metaphors usually represented by the description of natural scenery. Murakami's obsession with western classics and music is reflected in the countless references to Beatles numbers like "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Something", Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti and literary works of Joseph Conrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx and so on.

The brief overview of the plot does not, in any way, do justice to the story. For a book like Norwegian Wood cannot be summarized.
It is about human relationships which cannot be given a name or a clear definition. It is about the ghastly spectre of death and the way the people who are no longer with us, sometimes leave us in a permanent state of damage. It is about friendship and love and sexuality. And most important of all, it is about sadness. In its cruelest yet most beautiful form. The inherent dreariness of the book gets to you at some point or the other, but Murakami's compelling story-telling ways, make sure you keep reading till the very end.

P.S:- Despite being a Japan buff, I came to know about Haruki Murakami, quite recently while reading an article on his latest work 1Q84. He has been hailed as one of the world's greatest living novelists, and is one of the finest Japanese writers of our times. 

The ones who choose not to

A recently released UN report on world health, states that there will be an estimated 4% increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition in the African continent by 2014. Not only that, due to global warming and other environmental hazards, the climate will continue to be unpredictable and food production will considerably lessen in the coming years.
It is nothing out of the ordinary to be greeted with bad news early in the morning these days, but the thought of starving infants in some corner of the world, forces you to eye your breakfast with a sense of profound guilt. Just when you and me are busy planning another vacation in the Maldives or thinking of getting some elite club membership, there are people out there who are fighting for a morsel of food in unimaginably adverse conditions.
This led me to wonder. Why do parents bring children into the world they cannot feed?
Why is the population of the world growing at an exponential rate when we are running out of valuable resources at an equally alarming rate? Why do people still make a big deal out of a woman who doesn't have a child?

Since the dawn of civilization, we've been entrusted with the task of devising ways to carry our races forward and ensure the survival of our species.
Get married. Have kids. And when your kids grow up, make it your first and foremost duty to pester them into getting married and have kids in turn.

Image Courtesy : Zazzle.com

I don't know if I'm venturing into uncharted territory by questioning accepted social institutions, but shouldn't marriage be an individual choice and not a compulsion? Shouldn't the question of having children, also be given a lot of thought?

I remember a teacher from my high school, who had a perfectly blissful marital life. She was above 40 at the time I was in the 7th grade and still childless. She was also glamorous and accomplished.
We came to know much later that she and her husband had mutually decided that they would not have any children. Now I don't understand why others (like the opinionated parents of many of my classmates) had to worry their heads over the whys and why-nots of this or concoct cock-and-bull stories about my teacher's 'infertility'. Can't remaining childless be a conscious decision on someone's part?

Quite recently I came across the information (all thanks to an amazing Korean drama) that a child born to parents who have both crossed the age of 35 is at a higher risk of having Down's Syndrome. It's not like I'm judging those who become parents at an older age than most. But do people ever pause to think about the repercussions of raising a child who may not have the same cognitive abilities as the rest, who maybe at the receiving end of everyone's sympathy for the rest of his/her life?

I have no idea whatsoever about how parenthood might feel like, but when I think about it from a rational point of view and observe so many people around me, I realize not everyone is made out to be a good father or a good mother. Giving birth to a healthy, normal baby may keep gossiping neighbors and nagging parents/in-laws at bay and end your fears of dying childless. But then it also marks the beginning of a perilous new journey fraught with more difficult hurdles. Bringing up a child is not the same as raising a Labrador puppy.
That is why we need to think a million times before judging a couple who do not have a child. Or a person who has not married or is reluctant to start a family.
More important than just adding one more to the ever-expanding sea of humans, is to inculcate good values in your young one, so that one day he/she can contribute positively towards building a better world and a society where dichotomous opinions may co-exist in harmony, where people learn to take responsibility for their own actions and those who choose to defy established norms are not frowned upon by the rest.