Broken window in the Red bus

I knew not where I was.
I knew not where to go.
Amidst the crowd of strangers,
I stood alone like a shadow.
Spotted a bus at a distance.
I climbed aboard the red beast.
Nothing around made any sense.
Time seemed to have ceased.
Behind two unknown souls
I found my battered place.
Rusted window and broken glass.
A faded leather solace.
I saw the dusky city scene
disappear behind me.
Gazing through the frosted pane,
streaks of evening colours faded rapidly.
Lady who lost her love
crooned away her distress.
Through the radio waves
to all who lent their ears.


Looking back at today
and all days gone by.
As life snatched away my dreams,
It all seems like a grand lie.
A sudden short drizzle
calmed the mind a little.
Sneakily trying to efface
my mask of sanity away.
"Hold on to it "cried my head.
Alas! My eyes couldn't carry on
It did at the end betray.
Tears gather at the brink of my eye.
Tears of disappointment.
Tears of failure.
Tears of hatred.
Tears of the fallen griever.
The cool evening breeze
stole them all away.
One by one,
drop by drop.
The ones I wanted salvaged
with my mother's hug,
by my father's hand,
through my sister's love,
alongside my friend's laughter.
Yet, all alone I lost my tears
to the suburban air
One by one
drop by drop.
Is this all how life gets to be?
No love near by,
so hard to breathe?

A piercing eye caught my notice.
That of a child wearing a smile.
Like a ray of light in all the darkness.
The smile was pure.
Nothing in the world appeared wrong.
A moment of hope,
A measure of love,
A twinkle of life.
Everything felt light.
A sign of being, that smile gave me
I knew this ain't the end,
I knew I had a shot
At happiness, I will see. :)


                                                                         

JaNe EyRe, A FeW WoRdS

The name says it all. One of the most cherished leading ladies of English Literature. I happened to befriend her recently and as much as I fell in love with the unadulterated charisma that is Edward Fairfax Rochester, I fell for Jane as well.

Quoting the wise words of Rachel Greene, this book is definitely light years ahead of its time(well not the Robot part). Feminism was the part which had captured the mind of the few with whom I happened to discuss this book about. What caught me the most was Jane's honesty.

To let go of the love of your life because it is the right thing to do takes much more than mere mortal courage. Especially to one who has never apprehended the pleasures of love and had just been handed an abundance of it. The greatest power in the world is definitely BATMAN. But when it comes to emotions , Love is Batman and dear Jane walked away from Batman.  It may not matter what the world would think, there was no one to stop them, yet she made her decision not to stay.

That requires more than just courage...!!

You mam, deserve a salute...!!

PaReNtS and PaRaNoiA

I have successfully reached the age at which general paranoia is attributed to lack of matrimonial commitment. At 25, I am exhausted, aimless and getting borderline schiznophrenic, more like the female version of all the antsy characters played by Woody Allen. Solitude makes more sense than company now. Believe me, this is new. In school and college, I was always with a big entourage of friends or fr-enemies or acquaintances. Lately, I seem to quiet despise company and have begun doing most of the things alone by myself. Things I always required a friend for company. Being an introvert who hates change, I assumed this sort of behaviour is beyond logical and normal human nature. But now, I am venturing to places I have feared to go alone. Why? I ask myself and others.

My parents have a theory to explain this. All of this "madness" can be explained by the fact that I am not married. Yes, a co dependent relationship with a bossy, lazy, controlling, narrow minded man is the answer to my paranoia. This is not a generalization about men. The men in my life are pretty okay, but as husbands they tend to be examples for one or more of  the above mentioned traits, to their wives.

I fail to comprehend as to why all problems in an unmarried woman's life immediately points to the lack of a husband. Marriage, according to me, is the the day I boast to the world that I have found love, who would stand BESIDE me and not ABOVE. Such love is very rare to find in a place where mothers breed their sons with extra dosages of "MALE EGO", assuming the general consensus of heterosexuality in my case.

My parent's love choke me and I think I would feel like an ungrateful parasite feeding off of them if in finality, I end up exercising my free will without considering their feelings. As a child with a submissive disposition, I , like many women fall into the snare of arranged marriage and are given the ultimate parental advice. Not about having a joyous and loving life, but to adjust to any difficulties posed at the In-laws place. Yes, that is exactly what marriage is all about.

The most unsettling aspect of this arrangement is that I am uncertain if I would have anything remotely close to love in the marriage that is fixed.

I am a good human being, a good daughter but I may be a terrible wife. This is something my parents fail to see as they perceive all  creatures of the female trait are hard coded to be perfect wives, hetero or otherwise.

The thing is, I am a lazy bum and I am proud about it. Its not exactly an ideal life, but what exactly qualifies for an ideal life. It is pretty objective and my vision is to live the way that makes me happy.There is a catch here as a free female mind is always looked at as an arrogant aka bitchy one, while the same traits in a man make them either despicable hipsters or impeccable gentlemen.

Take a 180 degree spin....

On the other hand,
I hope I am just over thinking things.
I hope everything goes well.
I hope life is not as  screwed up as it appears.
I hope I can mend it if it does screw up.

Hoping for the best.
Amazing part of being a human is you get to hope that things are not always as bad as it seems and to figure out that single ray of extraordinary prospects that you may end up having, in spite of all the pessimism that mounts up around you. In spite of all the things that could go wrong, all the things that could turn bad, the thought that there is a possibility of things could go your way, always pulls you to that extra mile and that extra mile may be the the life changing one.

ThE DeScEnT Of ThE DeCeAsEd

DISCLAIMER : THE FOLLOWING POST MAY BE INSENSITIVE SO WHATEVER.

Death. Something that used to be dark and gloomy. I believed it brought about great deal of misery, for the loss of a loved one could be unimaginable and loss of loved one being the key word. What happens at the death of a not so good person? Some one who was rotten to the very core but pretended to be sweet. Even though everybody saw what kind of a person he/she was, yet never made an  attempt to confront them about their wrong doings merely because they were older, richer and had a tad more power than the confrontee. This is about such a person. Her death neither stirred a great deal of grief or joy among her near and not so dear.

I happened to be there, at her funeral. Well I am technically her relative but our relationship was never cherished. Well she was supposed to be a big part of my childhood, but she simply didn't care. Before I go ahead explaining about the funeral, I would like to recount my previous funeral experience because I do not want to seem insensitive or inexperienced when it came to funerals. I had been to two. My mother's brother and father and they were full on funerals of the countryside. The traditional women-in-huddle "opari", sounds of waterworks all around, men discussing how the departed will be missed, family trying to get a hold of the things happening around. One could easily cut a slice through the grief that lingered around the place. After such grim experiences, this was a.. how can I say it.... weird  experience.

 I was walking towards the house were funeral was held. A few houses away, I could see my destination quiet clearly and there started the weirdness. I heard no "Tharai/thappatai" and I assumed it was too early. I heard no crying and I thought people were tired of crying for a very long time, but it had just been a few hours since she passed.  Mind you, this is not a woman with very few relatives. She had 5 step children, 4 sons of her own and a brigade of grand and great-grand children. All I heard was the noise of conversation. Men having men talk and women sharing women thoughts.

I retreated to the wall on the opposite house to observe the proceeding. Suddenly, the people stirred and looked down the street. A family of four were walking towards the house. A respectfully dressed elderly man, an elderly woman, clearly the man's wife and two other women who were most likely their daughters. I knew the gentleman was the dead woman's step son, to whom she had successfully cliched the role of a step mother. As soon as he appeared at the threshold of the funeral house, his two sisters started their lament almost instantaneously. The timing was so accurate that even trained actors cannot start crying on cue like they did. They scooped their brother in a huge hug and led him in. He was not sad or for that matter he reflected no emotion. This death did not affect him, for he made sure her life didn't affect him in any way.

This routine continued for a while . As new mourners turned up, the sobbing sisters engulfed them in their lament and after a threshold period of 2 minutes, they went about their business. The dead lady's own daughter in law, looked thoroughly annoyed, not at nature for depriving her of a mother in law but the number of people who turned up to pay their respects to the dead, adding to one more fake pleasantry that she had to deliver.

The proceedings were dull, not in a grim or nature of death, but people looked extremely bored. Nagging kids all around urging parents for something more fun than a funeral and that's when the most curious event of my observations of the funeral began.

An elderly woman, whom I learned  to be the cousin of the weeping sisters, came rushing in, crying a high pitched lament which was further encouraged by the sisters in distress. The three got together and started crying and the tricky part was when the sisters reached their threshold 2 minutes but the cousin still continued "oparying". They sat there for another 10 minutes not to seem rude , but the cousin was unstoppable. After a about 15 minutes past their threshold period, they left the cousin to grieve alone, and resumed their usual funeral talk. After another 10 minutes, the cousin  came out, finishing all the verses of the lament and joined the sisters to complain about the frequent power cuts.


     What amazed me the most that day was that a human life had ended. Any form of physical existence of the woman ceased that day but the impact she had was so little that it was near miserable. The state of events of her funeral made me feel sad for the life she had more than her death itself.

MiSoGyNy n MoViE sOnGs

 Not so long ago, the whole lot was buzzing with the Kolaveri craze. As the excitement for Soup Songs slowly receded, it got me to pay a little more attention to the lyrics of the songs. As explained by Dhanush, the man who coined the term or brought it to the notice of a wider audience, it is about love failure. As a member of the women folk, I fail to understand why this concept has been claimed only by men, let alone be claimed, I wonder why they begin to imprecate the beloved damsel they were swooning around all along. Well, there may be many women who may deserve the whip but why generalize it? Calling all women as a curse cast upon the innocent men of the world, lying cheats, sadistic beast and what not. So here, I would like to stand up, not for all the women, but for at least the ones whom these songs of accusations where composed on, for I think they deserve some hearing as well for these songs are mostly unfair.

Pengal endral – Neethane En Ponvasantham – One of the most selfish heroes of the Tamil films, accuses the girl who was an amazing girlfriend, whom he had ditched conveniently for a record 3^rd time for his family and his future. Now seriously, do you guys even use your head before singing such songs?

Venam Machan Venam- OK OK – Well the girl clearly states that she is not in love with the hero and even if she has to fall for someone, what are the qualities she is looking for .Even though the hero does not satisfy a single expectation of hers, he goes on to accuse her of abandoning him and sings praises for his friend, whom he conveniently ditches when the girl walks into the frame in the very next scene. Neat!

Why This Kolaveri Di?- 3- The song that captured the global audience about how a girl has descended from beloved high school crush and soul mate to black hearted “girlu” with a murderous rage because he thought she had ditched him for a life in US. Had he waited a day, he would have known that she threw away not just hers but also her family's dream and had eloped so she could be with him. Ironically he decides to slow things down when she proposes marriage. Why this kolaveri da?

Kadhal En Kaadhal- Myakkam Enna - The song where the hero’s friend urges the hero to hit and kick the girl who ditched him. Yet another song to convey the message that men and their friendship are everlasting and a woman's love is short lived, so choose friendship over love. Funnily the hero chooses the friend’s girlfriend and the girl stays with him in all his highs and lows despite his psychotic phase that drives away all the ones around him. Yeah kick her I say.

Yemma Yemma - 7am Arivu- No matter what, the heroine must reciprocate hero’s love because well he is the hero and he HAS to get the girl, even if she is a genetic engineer and he is a circus performer. Complying with the norms of Tamil films, she eventually does fall in love with him but he cannot wait that long so he starts singing the string of accusations. Yeah right.

Kadal Endral – Goa – The gorgeous girl is head over heels in love with the normal village guy. She sings an absolutely romantic song where there are no subtle hints but direct punch-to-the-stomach words expressing her love. He ignores her proposal as his expectation in a girl is foreign nationality. When he realizes the love for the girl, his lying friend says he had a romantic encounter with her and BAM... women are deadly disease that kill men. Wow, just Wow!

Kadhal Seithal Paavam - Mounam Pesiyathey – This misogynistic snobbish hero who was not even sure which girl was in love with him and was stalking him had to chime that love is a sin and women are deceiving. Good going!

Pombalainga Kadhal – Unnai Ninaithu – Bunch o' 60 year old men complaining about the whole female contingent   because their love left them in the 60's.. where there were so many restrictions for women... when love was considered taboo... Okay. Well the hero, who was back-stabbed by a selfish girl, stands up for the ladies and when the hero is someone like Surya, sorry old men your arguments are null and void!

Of course there are exceptions,

men who blame the world (Ulage Mayam- Devadas),

blame fate (Vaazhve Mayam- Vaazhve Mayam),

matured enough to wish the girl who left him goodluck (Engirunthalum Vaazhga- Nenjil Oor Alayam),
plead the girl not to leave for she has forgotten him due to a medical condition (Kadhal Konden- Moonram Pirai, Pogathey - Deepavali),

simply sulk and reminiscence the lost love (Vellai Pura Onru- Pudhu Kavidhai, Venmathi – Minnale)

The lady mourners play a tone of mild bitterness in their songs

(Satru Munbu- NEP,

 En nanbane- Mangatha,

Evano oruvan- Alaipayuthey,

Malai Neram- Aayirathil Oruvan,

Engey enathu Kavithai – Kandukondein Kandukondein,

Ninaika therintha maname - Aanandha jyothi).

There are a few songs that are not gender specific and plays to blame both men and women (Aambalaikum pombalaikum – Kazhugu)

It’s just that, one of the reason for these songs to find a place in chart busters is because they go on to taint the not just the girl who ditched but the whole lot. Just because your girl ditched you do we all deserve this? Just because you guys, who call yourselves hero, cannot choose the right girl, don't go about blaming all the women.