This is what each of us is trying to cope with during these times. Times have changed. Indeed too soon.
Soon July would bid goodbye. Clouds are still playing the cat and mouse game. They come hovering, dark and thick, but soon its sun all around smiling leaving us thirsty for rains.
No rains and our government with its laid back attitude are powerless up to 800 mega watts of the demand. There are more than three hours of power cut in Hyderabad daily, five hours in the districts and the industries have to go one day every week without power. Didn’t we have enough of the heat and sun in the tormenting summers left behind?
Rising prices have hit us hardest. The current inflation rate has touched 11.89 per cent. Everything has turned expensive, from vegetables to food articles, from auto fares to petrol prices, from house rent to home loans. The house budget has gone awry. What is the solution? Where do we go?
Now, this is an unusual tale. A married man named Thomas Beatie from Pacific North West of United States is carrying a baby in his womb. The man is pregnant!!
Well it reminds me of a book I read sometime back (Thanks to Akhil) similarly named “The Pregnant King”. The book by Author Devdutt Patnaik is a tale of Yuvanashva, King of Vallabhi who drinks a magic potion intended for his queens and is in turn pregnant with an aberration of an heir.This fictional account of Vallabhi is based during the Kurukshetra war and provides interesting insight into the concept of anumol, niyoga, story of Shikhandi, Illeshwara and Somvat.
All along the tale, Patnaik has blurred the distinction that divides man and woman. The very title is the weaving of male and female forms. Illeshwara is the male form of God that Vallabhi worships but has derived its form from Ila who was cursed to spend his life alternatively as man and woman. Shikhandi serves the war of Kurukhshetra with the grit of a man but is actually used by Lord Krishna to make Bhishma lay down his weapon because he recognises her as Amba reborn. Shilavati who is crowned as the ruler of Vallabhi as she is carrying the heir, Yuvanashva in her womb, clings to the throne as leech with her sensibilities that refuse to let her think like a queen. She has a head of a man and rules Vallbhi as an able King should. Her son Yuvanashva couldn’t find a place suitable, he takes poor decisions as king, his second wife rejects him as a husband, he gives birth to a son and yearns to be called a mother, and couldn’t be a father to his other son. Then there is Somvat, a man who chooses to die as a woman. Illeshwara in the end of the story emerged as neither a man nor woman but a symbol and Patnaik says “…the deity represents the myriad forms of matter, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes in between, always provoking the devotee, the mind. Beyond it all, formless stood the still soul, awaiting discovery.”
Thomas beatie too has certainly chosen an unusual route to self discovery. He was born a woman named Tracy Lagondino but went for a gender reassignment surgery and is married to wife Nancy. He decided to carry a baby for his wife who had hysterectomy years ago. He was able to conceive because during his gender reassignment he kept his reproductive rights intact.
Nothing strange, he faced strong discrimination from doctors, healthcare professionals, friends and family. He faces major health risks with the artificial insemination as a transgender. But Beatie confirms that he would be a father to his baby and Nancy the mother.
The imperfections of human body and soul leave room for questions that remain beyond comprehension. Or is it just, to quote Patnaik here, “…our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between.”
….the party was at Chiraan fort club and found dancing where all those without brains.
As soon as I entered the dingy smoke filled room, along with my apprehensions about a cocktail party, I discovered heads swinging and bodies gyrating to the blasting noise assumed as music!
Dancing to the ‘music’ were all those with no brains. To elaborate on the point, found dancing at the site were my colleagues and (pardon my audacity) my seniors including the management.
Sorry can’t classify the music.It was all thanks to a dj. Dj of a different sort! What do you call a dj with guthka stained teeth playing music as confusing as his brain. Saw him shouting on his assistant fumbling through the cd files.
He finally played good music but alas it was time for the party goers to return home or for some time to have dinner or may be worse for those too exhausted to dance anymore.
But saw some great dancers … dancing after losing all they had. One forgot the meaning of ‘stop’—coz he was dancing non stop! The other danced non stop but with breaks and glasses of water. Some girls were dancing as if its there last chance to woo someone. And how can I not mention the guy who liked staring at guys but loved dancing with girls!!
Well that’s not the end of the story…even had our head dancing with a lost head. He wanted to dance with all the girls and thus came up with a brilliant idea to make all the girls hold there hands and dance with them in merry-go-rounds (not to forget the DJ still struggling with his music). The head of heads did not know where to put his feet upon….he danced as if the floor burnt. Yes it was hot but certainly not burning, or was it because I danced too.
Yes the fool of fools danced at the party too coz she lost her brains as everyone did. It was the annual day and everybody is entitled to colour their grey cells once in a while.Aren’t they?
The face speaks for itself or does his myriad looks. Am I not sounding like a fifteen year old so smitten by somebody? But I am not talking about somebody but Aamir Khan. Ammir Khan in his latest Samsung Mobile advertisement.
The ad has just been released in the print version with only a couple of hoardings here and there. (No idea if its available in the newspapers and magazines coz cant gather time to go through much of them.)
What strikes is the idea. The ad is able to convey a whole lot by only using his profile. Mind one its only the profile in both the ads that I came acreoss. Lovely. One version focused on his latest hairstyle in crew cut and the other in a cap which he wears holding the Samsung mobile. The caption says, “I am Samsung Mobile”. And to tell you frankly its Aamir’s eyes speaking it out.
So much the ad speaks in its plain white backdrop with Amir in grays and blacks that just couldn’t hold my thoughts about it. Sorry to all those who think I should not be so smitten anymore. Do tell me if you believe the same thing about the ad to let me find assurance I am not the smitten but its Amir who moves us so.
Talkin about ads then have to mention the new Vodafone ad promoting their damn customer care. Atharva simple loves the ad. He would come running if he hears the initial music of “tick, tick” and stands watching it loving every second of it!
The dog helping the little girl go along her daily chores glues us to the Idiot box. The song “I wish the mornings would just stay” goes on playing in the mind long after. It’s beautifully carrying the idea forward but with a change, the owner. Little girl has replaced the little boy; Vodafone has replaced Hutch. Nonetheless nothing has replaced the same old damned service that they provide. Be it Hutch or Vodafone, their customer care are least informed and least synchronized with their own other departments.I wonder if they deserve such a lovely idea promoting their service.
Good old days when students use to walk up to school and fathers had a bicycle to ride to their work. Fast forward to the present scenario – buildings being reduced to rubble to make way for traffic.
Things move pretty fast in Hyderabad. A couple of years ago, being new to the city I found the city, the roads and the traffic management system refreshing. In Kolkata, roads are bad and narrow.The bellied traffic policemen good only for stretching their hands up to the truck and lorry drivers to receive that handful amount so as to make way for them into the choking traffic. Private buses stop anywhere to pick and drop passengers and not to forget my own habit of crossing the road from anywhere just using the hand signal.
It took just two years for Hyderabad to catch up with Kolkata and yes making me less of a homesick. The ‘wait’ gets endless during the office hours and now I am again learning to cross road in the same old way.
It’s not just the plight of a commuter that I am whining about, as a driver things are all the more bad. Since I took to the driving seat I discovered whole new world of traffic lawlessness. In Hyderabad, one can turn the vehicle from anywhere to anywhere!! Not even a hand signal to be cared for. The autowallas are the Baap of all the traffic rules; they break and create them according to need. And don’t dare to give them a lesson—somehow or the other, it’s always your fault.
Sachin is learning to drive in a Hyderabadi way, to quote an instance – he is not very good with right turnings. The other day he turned the car to right in a clumsy way and the driver sitting next to him saved the brush with a sedan parked innocently to the left of the lane. The driver tried explaining him the rules all over again. Sachin in a quick Hyderabadi way retorted “main to achcha hi ghuma raha tha wo gaari waha kyon khari thi!”( I was turning the car good but why was the car standing there!)
It’s been long time since I’ve written anything. Even the daily dairy got tucked away somewhere in corner. I’ve used writing for being whatever I am today. All the sorrows, pain, dilemmas, apprehension was poured down to my dear friend with white pages. My writing gave it varied hues of red, blue, grays and even black. Many got to know about the diary and eyed it to know all that I was and felt. It was thought to be easier way of knowing me than to well, trying to know me! Obvious as it was I guarded it zealously.
Sachin read it. Thankfully he was too matured to react to nonsense that sometime creep in the depth of heart and soul. And not to forget he read it like a book, so occasionally giving references out of it.
Blogging has become such a rage. If one is here and now one must blog! The idea is likeable merely because it is good networking and an opportunity to let the creative juices flow.
I wanted to be into it but certain apprehensions marked my foray. Wouldn’t it be rendering thoughts open for all to read it like a book!? The choice of subject is definitely personal but isn’t a blog some personal space that I would allow others with an access to. Let’s give it a shot. Personal thoughts need not be guarded in a fort. Hope the attempt helps me to explore a whole new experience, that of blogging and more so writing again.
