At least you are you

"I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time' so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance."

You never know when you should stop doing what you’re doing, if it feels good. Some day, the things you do, provided they feel good, will grab you by the balls, and rip them right off. But then, not doing what feels good only delays that. So why fight it? We’re all the walking dead. Let’s indulge ourselves.

The good part about having this basic philosophy thoroughly carved into my brain, is that it allows me to function. To elaborate, it allows me to overcome everyday nuisances like other people. Had I been one step below where I am mentally today, I would have been in an insane asylum, with the rest of mediocrity. Because that is where mediocrity thrives, and only there. Society only has room for the superior, and the inferior. Grey is an abstract, that is not allowed to exist. And rightfully so, because when someone is bat shit insane, who the fuck wants to have to deal with that on top of the every day inferiority we already have to suffer on a nearly constant basis?

I can suffer said inferiority, for very simple reasons. I am great, and everyone else sucks. Now, this may seem contradictory to my goal of enduring other people, but think about it. I may have to crawl through the bleak horrid miasma of their existence, and their relentless recital of such, but the light at the end of the bog, or around the edges if you will, is that I don’t have to suffer being them.

At first, I would long for inferiority. Hell, even the lure of a padded cell seemed tempting. Some times, knowing a lot is not knowing a lot. It is knowing too much. But, as you allow some, though not all, of certain prominent historical philosophers, to bury itself and meld with your mindset, you rise above that. And I do mean rise above it. Make no mistake, it will make you a conceited, arrogant fuck head. But at least you are not them.

At least you are you.

Arguing with Myself

And So My Saturday Starts

Square Your Deeds with Virtue

The Mason’s square doth clear the air of folly and deception

The rule is straight, the angle clear, for greatness has direction

By the compasses abide the points within so far and wide

No pleasure sway nor profit tempt these bounds of Mason pride

Greatness, what your virtues are good deeds practiced wide and far

And that secret of Masonic love is learning who you really are

For the great Book knows what man can’t hide

A life that’s measured from inside

And on that book

That oath we took

And we will break it never

But stand by this (Compasses), and this (Square), and this (VSL)

Forever and forever

Its just Commercial

I never realized how badly I needed a new washing machine until the sexy girl with the enormously titillating personality in a washing machine ad told me so; I was unaware of the importance of moisturizers in my life until a girl with the perfect pair of big round eyes in a commercial reminded me of it; I never thought lime-scented mosquito repellents completed me until  a lady with two massive mosquito bites in an advertisement told me so. However, when I found myself trying on ladies’ innerwear after watching a lingerie ad I considered that maybe, just maybe, advertising had the power to wreck your mind and was in fact the root of all things evil and demonic. 

Advertising has imparted four fundamental rules to human society-four rules which we hold close to our hearts like you holding this magazine. Rule one: People who can’t afford expensive commodities are equal to assorted pellets of monkey crap. Rule Two: Unbelievably attractive women who look like supermodels will choose you over filthy, rich body-building giants provided you use a certain brand of toothpaste or chew a certain kind of gum. Rule Three: You will be the most popular person in the world if you trust everything that you read, see, or hear around you. Rule Four: The world is a beautiful place as long as you keep buying stuff. 

Despite being tagged evil by most people with a functional brain, advertising does have a compassionate side to it as well. For instance, the world chooses to ignore poor people. Advertising, on the other hand, uses them. However useless the product might be or however terrible the concept of the ad might be, once you show the sad, emaciated face of a poor person and a rich guy helping him out by giving him two bucks, followed by the name of the useless product, it’ll seep into the barely active minds of the unsuspecting consumers and appear as worthy of being purchased. Advertising also has the big-heartedness to never ignore the unfortunate ones amongst us; those given the short end of the stick by fate; those stepped on and spat on by God himself. I’m, of course, talking about those of us who have been cursed with dark skin, pimples, freckles, dry hair, bad hair, no hair and teeth that aren’t as white as a polar bear’s butt. The panache with which such people are shown by advertisers can only be topped by the subtlety with which they portray women as sexual objects. 

Advertising boasts of being the breeding ground of geniuses. But then again, even Hitler was considered a genius by some people. With advertising, the best works are often deemed absurd. Commoners who do not have a sharp intellect like the industry people often fail to make sense out of really brilliant ads; they do not understand why an alien drinks soft drinks; they struggle to comprehend why a chimp playing bongos sells chocolates; it’s beyond them why a condom ad has a salamander in it or why a salamander ad has a condom in it. But they all make sense to the industry people. 

Advertising, if done the right way, has the power to sell even new inventions. I have come up with a very innovative idea that I believe would take the world by storm. My idea is to create shoes with in-built socks. Think about it; no more searching for matching socks, no more taking the shoes off and then the socks off. It’s all taken care of in one quick motion. I haven’t yet figured out a way to advertise it yet but I’m pretty sure I would find a way to sock it you. 

Ask Pachas Paisa #3 (or 50 Cent)

Just a few weeks ago my life seemed perfect

Loved to live, never wanted to forfeit

Never thought about death or about my coffin

But I’m popping pills and spending my time coughin’

In my twenty five years I’ve never felt like I lacked an answer

Until the moment when I was told I’m being attacked by cancer

My family’s devastated and my life has come to a halt

Am I to blame God? With who am I supposed to find fault

All that I ever lived for has suddenly just slipped out

I’ve been reduced to nothing; I’m totally insane and flipped out

I wish God would just tell me what I did to deserve this fate

I have only loved and never ever worked to serve hate

It feels like hell when I’m awake and hell when I’m sleeping

All the people I love are either pitiful or weeping

Screw all the morals and principles I lived by

I’m through with abhorring sins; I’m left with no alibi

There is nothing in front except a void

I’m filled with a disrespect I can’t avoid

Will God tell me what I did to receive this?

I look around and see happy cheats and deceivers

Walking around enjoying life with no diseases

I’m left with a crying wife whose life is split into pieces

My heart is bleeding and my pain never ceases

Thwarted breathing, why can’t you save me oh Jesus?

My treatment is just for some time, say all of the doctors

I’ll be soon rendered helpless, why does death have to mock us?

An unhindered life needs only very little time to shock us

We can never predict what is there in store for us

But I know for a fact that life is indeed torturous

Could be even tomorrow that I end up in a mortuary

When I was young I thought there was a burning torch for me

But now it’s been put out yet the infernal heat is scorching me

All this undeserved pain and shattered dreams I could have endured

Why is my family too being battered and deeply injured?

If only God had let me know this two years ago

My lovely wife wouldn’t have been fated to shed tears alone

My heart breaks further when I think of my mother and father

Two people who thought I’d reach greatness and even farther

Here I am now sobbing and counting my days

The cancer in me robbing the sun’s rays

I’m now convinced destiny has nothing to do with one’s ways

It doesn’t matter if you’re into peace or into gunplay

Some are forced to leave and some to just stay

Life will slip from you whether you cuss or pray

Nothing’s left for me except pain and dismay

I wish I was never born in the first place

I’m going to die clueless in this deathly maze
Death awaits me around the corner with a cold gaze
As a child I never thought I’d never see old age
I’m about to leave this book of life like a torn page
I placed in God all my trust to ensure my safety
Not knowing in my case he would be so hasty
He didn’t even let me know of my purpose
Instead left me to suffer like a rotten carcass
My heart beats no more and there remains a cold sore
People like fishes swimming to the ocean’s roars
I’ll soon be buried unnoticed in the depths of the muddy shores.

No Hope, Bombay.

Dr. 50 paise replies:

I won’t try to sound absurd by saying I know what you’re feeling

We all have experienced hard times when our lives were reeling

But what you’re going through right now is far too personal

For anybody to demand that you be calm and act rational

Cancer is doubtlessly one of the world’s biggest curses

Into dejection and misery its victims it immerses

Life suddenly twists contrary to what one rehearses

Shattering dreams and the lives that each person nurses

But God is not unfair and he’s not a punisher

He’s the loving father and not a cruel admonisher

Difficulties come our way as little tests of faith

Life for everyone is a fierce struggle with fate

Cancer however can’t be termed as just another hurdle

It scars one’s vision with pits and blurred hills

It’s unknown to this world the plans that the Lord makes

But he has a reason for every single life that he takes

Everything around may seem it has changed for the worst

But a strong heart filled with faith should replace the outbursts

Prayers have been proved to create great miracles

Sincere pleas will help break manacles

Easy it is to have faith when the sky is clear

But the test really is when the dark night is here

Your life has not become a symbol of insignificance

Life becomes death when your interior thickens

They could have all the money in the world

Bathe in gold, rubies, diamonds, and pearls

But you’re surrounded by people who care for you

Ones who’d die for you and be there for you

Don’t think the time till now has been wasted hours

Life is a tree that grows through dry days and days of showers

Filled with fruits so sweet and some that tastes so sour

Bliss and agony goes together like the fate of lovers

Beliefs and strength are never to be let go of

God is capable of wonders one can never know of

Do not treat these lines as if they’re lines of false hope

God is your balance when you’re walking life’s tight rope

The heights you wanted you say haven’t been reached

The promises you made yourself you say have been breached

Greatness isn’t measured by your riches or fame

Nor does it matter how many people recognize your name

What’s real are the hearts and lives you touch

The tears that you catch which you deem not much

The broken lives you support by being their crutch

Give yourself up to God and he’ll take away your pains

An honest man always suffers more than one who feigns

Clean hands are fewer than ones with bloodstains

Goodness sustains life and not merely food grains

Clear your mind and focus on all that you have done

You’ll realize your real journey has just begun

It’s leaving God’s Earth with a clear conscience that’s the purpose

Spreading love and joy that can never be surplus

Leaving other people’s lives better urges God to help us

To the rich and famous life is nothing but a circus

Fire and noise adorned with moments of fake sparkles

Meaningless existence living out your flesh

Meanwhile real life exists outside this mesh

Finding your self and finding the almighty Lord

Resort to the feather and abandon the sword

Pray your heart out and search for the answer

Your soul and spirit will never succumb to the cancer

Leave your worries and submit to prayers

For those who trust have a place up the heavenly stairs.

I'm Here

The best way to explain how good this short film is is to tell the story of how I watched it. My wife is no sci-fi buff; on the contrary, she is someone who has not even seen Star Wars (the sacrilege). So settling down one night to watch a film together, I recommended we watch this short by Spike Jonze, all with the promise that we would watch a lighter rom-com afterwards. Not only did I not hear a word of complaint during the approximately thirty-minute running time, I witnessed the quiet appearance of wife-movie-tears at the film’s close.

The protagonist, Sheldon, is a robot with a head made of what looks like a CPU cabinet, from which he pulls a cable that he plugs into a power socket every night to charge. Not the stuff of exciting, light romance. From this starting point, the film manages to extract an extraordinary amount of sympathy through his minimalistic facial expressions. Jonze manages to show the humanity in very simple things: the day-to-day boredom of commuting, working, waiting. For viewers, these emotions are far more common than the passionate overexpression that film can often slip into. Seeing Sheldon do something day-to-day that we must suffer through as well, with the same melancholy that we saunter on with, has a lot more pathos than the obvious ‘do robots have emotion?’ gestures thrown around in other films.

The emotion conundrum has been couched in multiple ways by filmmakers for decades, but always with the ominous sub-text that robots may pose an existential threat because of it. Jonze is no ordinary filmmaker; he is one of the minds behind such mind-benders as Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation. His achievement in I’m Here is perhaps more impressive because he avoids his usual post-modern tricks completely. The simple sense of sacrifice that Sheldon possesses in the name of love is enviable. It is uncomplicated by human problems of selfishness, anger or frustration. When Francesca (with whom he has developed quite a tender relationship) comes to him first without an arm, he unscrews his as a gift; when she comes without a leg he does the same. In the end he is left as but a head: now picture that as the trade-off between love and self-interest. Sheldon possesses a purity of emotion superior to humanity. Why should our complex functioning minds be the ideal version of how emotion manifests?

The world of the film, independently of the powerful story at its core, has insights of its own. Sub-text is used to the level that Hemingway would’ve been proud of; there are histories told in the dialogue left unsaid, and the visuals simply mentioned and not explored. Francesca’s head is more anthropomorphised than Sheldon’s; it is closer to a face than his. Nothing is said of this. It simply reflects that there has been a generational development of robotics, and the corresponding treatment of robots has developed. When Francesca roars away in a car, an old lady at a bus stop yells (in typical ‘old lady on bus’ style – there’s always one), “You can’t drive”. This and the shots of worker robots earlier in the piece tacitly speak about a history of prejudice and subservience, referencing the roles we assume robots will fill as pieces of functional technology. But to get too bogged down in this would be to ignore the pleasantly simple emotional story of Sheldon and Francesca.

Andrew Garfield manages to capture a sense of vulnerability as Sheldon. The film is soft-spoken, subtle, and ultimately compelling. At no point in the thirty minutes are you bored, or annoyed by pretentiousness (a common flaw for a short). Jonze’s cinematic decisions are smart, and extremely touching. It is available on YouTube and I recommend you watch it – all of you.

Request to Join?

People make a big deal about really stupid shit everywhere. There are groups for the blatantly obvious everywhere on facebook, and if you fail to join a group for a good cause, the assumption is you’re a cold hearted douche or a terrible human being. There’s a group on facebook against rape, as if it’s required of me to state explicitly that I am against it. If I had the energy, I’d make 25000 groups for other things that are completely fucking obvious and see how it goes.

• Hungry people should have something to eat»
• Paris Hilton should not attempt to perform open heart surgery»
• People in a coma shouldn’t operate heavy machinery»
• Don’t go on a shooting rampage against newborn babies in the maternity ward of a hospital

I expect at least 50000 likes for stating blatantly obvious banalities.

I thoroughly dislike that these bullshit groups exist and that people feel compelled to join them in order to show that they are against something as if someone needed reassurance that yes, rape is indeed a bad thing to partake in.

Don’t invite me to your dumb fucking facebook groups unless it’s at least a debatable issue. No one is for rape you dumb faggots.

Anti-Thesis

We seem dissatisfied with our heroes nowadays. I think it’s because people have caught onto the fact that flawless human beings can’t exist, and if they did we really wouldn’t want them, because, really, they wouldn’t be heroes. They would just be perfect…boring…unchallenged.

We want internal turmoil. We actively crave Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight; it gives us joy that every superhero in Wathcmen is as broken as the world they inhabit; Iron Manis only interesting so long as he is an egotistical wanker. It’s an exercise in self-validation, a look at the greats, thinking, ‘if something that amazing has a really shit side, then my shortcomings by comparison must only be mild and weak-limbed, because I’m only an average bloke.’

In that vein, here’s some balm for your heroic souls:

Hercules went mad and killed his family.

Ghandi was very often a terrible husband.

Martin Luther King Jr was a serial womanizer.

Turns out Lance Armstrong was on drugs.

Oscar Pistorius may possibly have a bit of a violent temper (subject to the outcome of his case – in which, funnily enough, his prosecutor was taken off due to multiple charges of attempted murder. South Africa FTW).

Everyone wants to be a hero. Unless you’re apathetic, which, I guess, makes you a student. In that case, you, dear reader, probably don’t want to be a hero.

I say seek out anti-heroism. It’s what Epics are made of these days.

It’s the tragic fall that makes the hero shine brighter and turns his/her story into an epic. Try to do as much heroic shit as you can before then. Because you will fall. Trust me.

Note: On the other hand, if you think I’m wrong and are an optimist like my high school English teacher, do check out my conversation with the retired messiah.