viral fever

As I am engulfed by an avalanche of mucus and antibiotics, I come up for a short breath of life, an attempt to sustain myself long enough in the conscious world, for the monsters of my unconscious to disappear. The shadow creatures melt in the first light of dawn, but I know that when I lay my head to sleep, they will return, with twice the anger and hatred. My dreams, the stuff of unimaginable nightmares, reality twisted and twisted into cords of mind-bending psychosis. I stand on a fence and every way I look is the same. The dividing line is a blur and suddenly divides nothing but itself. As you can see, sickness has really affected me. But one thing did stick out from all that madness. I remember thinking to myself about blogs:

"How can we pluck so many thoughts,
From so many different men...
Without breaking at least some of them."

Help... I'm falling in love!

Once the car started to fill with gas, he had experienced the obligatory flashback of his life to date. It turned out to be a short, unedifying viewing experience, low on entertainment value, the metaphysical equivalent of the Queen's Speech.... He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas present-- early, and the same as everyone else's.

There are writers and then there are writers. I can't help but fall in love with Zadie Smith. It's as if she sat down one day to write just for me, to touch chords that've never been touched before.

turn turn turn

Was rereading chandybass's arguments against my post on IT. Dredged up an old poem that I wrote in a state of mine (or for the non taaq-fans, state of mind) similar to the one that gave birth to the post. It's called turn turn turn.

For forty years,
I turned forever to the left.
But people died, when rains failed
and bridges collapsed. All the while,
The big folk slept well and ate cake—
The little folk had not even bread.

So last year, I turned to the right,
And people still fell dead.
We couldn’t keep our swords sheathed,
And our tridents needed the use.
The big folk built fortresses, and hired guards—
The little folk burnt well, like dung cakes.

How many times must I keep turning?
Every way I flip the coin, it burns holes
in hearts and in pockets.
There are more of us now than before,
And yet we can do so little.
Which way should I turn?

Insomnia aka silent night

The city never sleeps. That tired cliche never applied here. But there are times when she just won't shut up. Here inside my cozy little home, however, there is a silence except for the clatter of my keyboard as I interface with the world again. By day, I am content in my solitude, basking in the warmth of thoughts that I need share with no one. By night, I trawl the blogosphere, seeking something I cannot put my finger on. I know it isn't human contact, I get more than I can handle in the brick and mortar world. This is something more intangible, a certain feeling perhaps, a sense of belonging, but not in the sense of being among others who think and act the way I do. No. It is something bigger than that trivial desire to socialise. In a sense, I want to know that I belong to the human race, perhaps find a greater pattern to it all. And so I read random blogs and sift through layers of pornography (it exists here in significant proportions) and boring pre-pubescent chatter, but always come up empty-handed. And I go to work the next day, bleary-eyed and dull-headed, looking forward to nothing but the chance to find it at last, that elusive thing that will help me make sense of my life. But maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe I'm just crazy and all this lack of sleep makes me throw out random thoughts that I would never consider after a good night's sleep.

The urban middle class and their corporate demi-gods

It pains me to see Bangalore's middle class worship Narayan Murthy and his ilk. By the middle class, of course, I mean the primarily English-speaking section of the population, the native Kannadigas have thankfully retained their pragmatism towards this media-managed 'development' fiasco.

As someone who sees through their facade, I take it on myself to deconstruct the myths they have spread about themselves.

1) IT companies have brought jobs to the city: If you analyse a cross-section of employees of IT companies, you will find that most of these jobs are taken by candidates hired from other states. There are a number of factors that prove this point, such as the scarcity of individuals speaking kannada in IT companies, the number of PGs sprouting all over the city, and so on. I'm not a pro-kannada activist, but I do wish to point out that hardly any of these IT jobs have benefitted people from this state. You might argue that a trickle down effect has benefitted other sectors, but in the last ten years, there has been an alarming decline in the number of small and medium scale industries in the city, as have the PSUs.

2) They've put us on the global map: And what has it earned us? A reputation throughout the world for a penchant for stealing jobs from good, hard-working middle class citizens of other countries. Bad roads and overburdened infrastructure. Traffic congestion, highly polluted air, e-waste and rising mounds of garbage, a future where almost half of Bangalore will be waterless, rising cost of living, rising property rates, elimination of local agriculture. The list goes on and on.

3) They've brought ultra-modern facilities to Bangalore: What? The forum? Hah don't make me laugh. It is telling that the Devanahalli airport seems not to have progressed at all despite the big daddy of IT, NM being on the board of BHIAL.

4) They contribute to our GDP significantly: It is a primary problem of economists that numbers cloud their brains so that they cannot even see reality. Despite our GDP growing by the year, we have more people dying of malnutrition, more disease, more poverty, and more of every other problem you can think of. Once again, you will claim that we pay taxes to the government to handle all of those problems. The government is not without fault. But one must really ask how much these companies contribute when they threaten to move to another city or country unless the government gives them unheard of tax breaks. Today's primarily private-sector economies have one thing in common all over the world. The rich get more breaks while the poor take the brunt of everything. And here in the city, while people drown in waves of sewage and rainwater, every IT employee cribs because his hyper smooth ride from the airport is marred by a couple of potholes.

The government has made mistakes, yes. But the biggest one they made was rolling out the red carpet and letting IT walk all over them.