Hey Ram

All I can do is call his name out in vain. The world is moving towards a dark corner. I want to shake away the tab of a liberal mongrel and want to don the tab of a Hindu who wants his religion to stand up to be counted. The more i read, the more i realize that Hindus have never stood together as a community bound by the boundaries of a religion. There has been so much of in- fighting over the years and the Hindu takes it lying down. I dont know what I am trying to say. I am trying to say that it is time we all respected our religion and gave it the due respect it deserves. It is time that all Hindus stand together and create a bandwidth of people that truly believe, uphold and promote their religion. Promote their religion and its strength within the community. It is time we all stand up, hold on and be sure of our backgrounds to ensure that the world notices us and to make sure that it is given its due place for now, before and forever. We are a good set of people who mind our own business and our religion is more a way of life than a religion with binding laws and mindless rationale. Please stand up to be counted. Please unite oh Brahmin, Shudra and Vyshya.

Why do i write?

I write because i am scared of losing my command over the english language. I work in a business environment and come across self absorbed and ignorant morons whose only objective is to slit your throat when you are not looking and make a run with the money. I am scared of losing touch with my human side. I am scared of losing the elitist view to things. Good or bad, prejudiced or humble. Atleast, i have the cohonas to think and to be critical of things. All of us need to do as we please and explore possibilities. We need to explore our strengths and weaknesses and we need to express them. I am trying even though i go through it in bouts where i am the king of the world on one day and on the other i am scum. What you perceive of yourself is what you are. I would presume that it is not rocket science but a well known fact.
Who art thou? Just a speck of dust. What art thou? Just a speck of dust.

Back

I am back after a long hiatus with laziness and lack of motivation. It is a cold winter night in a sleep dreary town called Bloomfield. I live in an apartment complex where there is constant silence disturbed by the buzzing of an aircraft here and there from the nearby Newark liberty airport. I love the silence and i love the fact that I have a golf course in my backyard. I also have a bar a mile from my apartment which I frequent pretty often. I have a number of pals out there which is testament to me either being an alcoholic or me being a nice guy.
I like where I live right now better than where I used to live. I lived in a noisy town earlier where I had children achieving puberty living upstairs. They had all the classic symptoms of teen aged kids who had no bloody clue as to their very existence on this earth and all this lead me to hate the place with great passion. For some reason, I don’t seem to be comfortable writing right now and feel that i am making tons of grammatical mistakes.
I will continue to write and maybe the rust will wear off and soon my jump shots will actually start falling into the hoop. I have been giving a lot of thought off late about becoming a sports writer. I would love to write about basketball, but the sad part is I don’t know much about it pre 2001. I have been in touch with the game since than and it has quietly taken over my ex passion which was cricket. I still feel that I am making mistakes with the tenses. I just switched off the TV. Maybe I cannot multitask. There are times when you can and there are certain times when you can’t. Sometimes, you need undivided attention and focus towards a certain task at hand and today I need that focus to be understood by myself and my readers.
Death- Is it that scary? I have come to accept the fact that it cannot be avoided. It might be postponed, but cannot be avoided. We are all mere souls using the body as a tool to express feel and riot. I am a big propagator of the fact that the body will come and go but the soul will live on. I look at black, white, red, brown and albino, its all the same. We are all a bunch of souls practicing life either by our own means or by certain rules that have been present for eons. Is there a need for religion? Is there a need for friction when it comes to religion? I wish everyone who was carried away with their radical, hardcore thoughts and ideals would slow down and think about their bodies as just mere instruments occupying space for the time being in this great plethora of time. We all have to remember that we have to do good.
What else can I write about? I am planning on writing a book of short stories. I have been thinking of it only off late. I read Jhumpa lahiri's short stories and wasn’t very much impressed with her writing skills. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it and certainly not strong enough to be on the Pulitzer list.
The idea is to write a book which involves the world that we live in right now. To imbibe memories, nostalgia, deja-vu, regret etc. As we grow older, the bag we carry on our shoulder gets heavier and the main aim is to bring the load down so that we can make clear and present decisions. I am getting sidetracked again. I want to write a book that involves good, bad and god. I want to write about innocence, lust and blasphemy. A writer is only as good as what he/she has seen in life. There was a satirical touch to every story of hers and i didn’t like it. Can someone please write something that is fun, up lifting and positive? Can someone write with the mentioned characteristics and still be branded as present day liberal writer with good insight into life and its nuances? I would assume that it is possible. Everything in this god damn world doesn’t need to have a twist to it.
It has been 6 long years in this country and this is the longest i have ever stayed in one place all my life. My memories go back to the streets of Jipmer campus in Pondycherry and then bounces off to the hot desert city of Kano in Nigeria and then bounces to the small rural town of Tumkur and then jumps right into the heartland of modern India- Bangalore and then to probably the prettiest part of my life to Lusaka, Zambia and then finally to New Jersey. It has been a solid ride for me. It has been an amazing journey taking bits and pieces of different cultures into my heart and finally right now turning into me for the time being. As many have said, change is the only constant in all our lives. Change and do whatever the hell you want, but always remember the basic, - be good.
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