When "It rained that day hence Pappu passed!" made sense

Pappu makes me wonder if an eight year old child can be so internally confined. Having spent the last two years being incessantly tormented , his frustration had snowballed into an anger fireball , to quench which it would have taken more than just a bucket of water. In the town of Timbuctoo, Pappu had already been a living legend, for he was the only child to have failed standard two , not once but twice. When the school master's only son fails in the very school where his father taught , it leaves a scar right on the forehead of the family tree. Since his first stint at failing Pappu's father , Pappu senior had never been the same. There had been a time when a bright student would spur the enthusiasm of Pappu senior, giving him this internal confidence of being able to create one more scholar for the benefit of the country, one more Kohinoor , so to say , of his very own village. Pappu had changed it all for him, every good student reminded him of his own inability to deliver a son who make him proud, leave aside the school, village, he had lost his enthusiasm to teach , his presence in class was a mere formality. Pappu knew all this, he had lost count of the number of hours he spent cursing himself , he thaught it to be some kind of self torture, a self punishment so to say. Pappu senior had vowed his wife never to lay a hand on his son , no matter what be his fallacy and he never broke it. It was not uncommon for Pappu to curse the moment when his mother entangled the vow over Pappu snr. The only thing Pappy could offer his father today was his cheek and every time he asked to be punished , he father smiled subtly , took him into his arms and said " You're my mistake , you gave me the happiness when you were born and now that you bring me shame I shall bear that too, it's my dharma to look after you, to care for you and after all your birth was'nt that bad an incident after all, it took me and your mother 12 years to have you. The very people who would throw me a " salaam master ji! " at the front me would mock me as an " impotent" behind my back, it was your birth that rid me of that epithet and it was a stone in the eye for those who had so easily disgraced my manhood . Back then you seemed the carrot from God , right now you seem to be the stick." Pappu held the fountain raging to leak within him, went to the balcony and poured his heart out to the Tulsi , a plant that he considered next to his mother ( Hindu mythology) , his tears had watered the plant and when he was all dry he went inside put his head down and slept. The village had been a dry place , it hadn't rained for the last five years, the only source of water for the entire village had been a single water pipe from the xyz dam which would run as if a drunkard were controlling its operation, flowing as fast as the Shatabdi at times and majoritarily as still as the platform itself. The people had found worshipping the diety more convenient than to complain to the administration , Pappu Senior had done enough on his part to reincarnate fellow villagers from the entrenched demons of priest hood or illogical animal sacrifices, but obviously to no redemption, for the practices never cease.

Pappu had been thwarted by his father's reply, his mother , on the other hand ,had always been indifferent towards Pappu's academic performance for she like others believed that Pappu could rather climb Mount Everest than pass his examination. It was ordinary practice for Pappu to get associated with names like duffer, fool , good for nothing , Pappu Snr's illegimate son, stolen from the orphanage et all. Pappu snr could see his son being mocked, he knew he could do nothing, it took him back to his pre Pappu birth days when he used to be mocked at his for inability to give a hier.

It was two weeks before the examination, the sight of a rennaissance when Pappu opened his book and then there was no stopping him. Pappu had vowed in front of mother Tulsi to leave everything and bring back to his father his lost prestige, to remove the blot on his family name. He lost count of time, watching the very clock staring which he would earlier pass his unbearable study time , was now a waste of precious seconds. Lost as he was , he could not remember coming out of the room more than once a day, his parents were happy in their much practiced ignorance to their only son. The final day arrived, Pappu embraced himself with the uniform with a smile of a martyr going into the battle field, he knew the pipe had only two ends now, either he would return with passing marks or he wouldn't return at all. A minute before the question paper was going to be distributed he asked himself if he had worked hard enough, a practice taught to him by his father, this practice had appeared to him rather silly earlier for he never got back an answer , but this time he got one and he kept it a secret even to himself, for ahead of him lay a task too detrimental to get distracted. He was lost in those three hours, his eyes went dry, for it was only seldom that he blinked , blinking would break his concentration,he said to himself. But there was moment when not only he but all others around him were left flabbergasted, the window broke open and came with droplets of life, rain. It was like christmas in the classroom , students had left their sheets for now they were dancing as if they were in a marriage procession , the invigilator couldn't but less complain for he threw a few legs himself. But there was one student who was like a statue with a moving right hand, it was Pappu, the rain for him was a trivial phenomenon , he knew he could not afford to waste those irrevocable three hours and then they ended , just when he was done with the last question. The result had to be announced in two hours, Pappu enjoyed the two hours flushing himself in the rain , a phenomenon which to faint to remember for it had been five years when it last occured. Pappu knew the importance of this rain , it could have been his last rain ever witnessed , his fate was going to be stuck on the notice board in two hours and he knew that it was beyond him now.

It came like a truck of complementary biryani, students flocked to see their result. Pappu approached the notice board as if it were the longest yard of his life. He started from the bottom but couldn't find his name, he was left heartbroken , continuing to skim through the names from bottom to top, somewhere in the middle of the list he lost courage, he sat down considering the efficacy of one type of suicide to the other when his drooping ears intercepted this unanimous noise " Arre! Pappu pass ho gaya" , apparently Pappu had checked the wrong list , he had passed and that too with a good margin. It was hard to decipher the tears from the raindrops on his face, his face gave the expression as if he was going to cry his throat out . With the news on his lips he went to his father, Pappu snr, who sat in his house anticipating that Pappu would fail yet again. Pappu reached the front door and shouted " Papa , I passed! " ,his father came outside with cautious steps for he thought that this happiness would make him fly off the ground like superman . He tucked Pappu so hard in his arms, that Pappu could smell that his father hadn't taken a bath today. There was a unanimous awe and apprehension over Pappu passing the exam , only when it was being discussed among a collegium of hippocrates who were enjoying the rain with jalebis , one of them said " it has rained after five god damn years, but it rained today, it's an auspicious day, perhaps that's why Pappu could pass his exam " and the others agreed and the word spread like fire : " It is raining today so Pappu passed his exam !". Pappu heard it and tried to remember what answer he got when he asked himself if he had worked hard enough, the answer was : " yes , I've worked hard but just not hard enough, could have done more" and then he said to himself that maybe it was the rain and thereby continued the legendary slogan " it rained that day hence Pappu passed the examination". For Pappu his fireball of anger and frustration had finally been quenched by the rain and that was just what he needed.

Movie Review: Hotel Rwanda

If ever in our lives had we seen a sight more horrific than ever, Hotel Rwanda presents scenes which make it too thr top of that list and that too with a good enough margin. I could have said this just to make this book review sound more interesting but I'd rather stick to facts here and the biggest fact here is that these scenes , a few years ago , were nothing but a reality in Tanzania. The movie depicts a region caught in the ever persisting army- rebel turmoil, engrossing in itself lives of more than five hundred thousand innocent civilians. If there has to be a depiction of a Universal Saviour , it could not have been better metaphorised by Paul XYZ, the manager of the Belgian Hotel which sheltered 1500 natives when the UN had left them nothing but a brutal, incinerating merciless death, a kind of death which haunts the dead soul even after death, a death more tragic any genocide that has ever occured and if I had to restrict my words I would call it the death of humanity.

Hotel Rwanda can be wrongly perceived as a war time tragedy , an appeal to the ostensibly rich western world that it had more responsibility that it even pretends to exercise, which it is not. This movie is a tale of hope, a story of how one determined man takes the responsibility and saves a thousand lives with the zeal in his heart to save a lot more. It is often seen that the character , of the savior that is , is often shown to be the one most heroic, intelligent , wise , strong and wat not, Hotel Rwanda , on the other hand personifies him to be entirely different, he is as human as one can be , he isn't equipped with the most intelligent foresight, neither is he the richest man in Rwanda, what he is perhaps is a man of Conscience. It is often intriguing to human mind how a man so ordinary can do something so extraordinary and its a true story by the way. The scenes have been constructed wiht utmost simplicity trying to keep it less glamoiurised and more objective. This review would be incomplete unitil I talk about a scene where Paul , after having witnessed the sight of a genocide, is in an exacerbated state of mind, trying to forget all that he's seen an hour ago, he's changing his blooded clothes and realises that he has goofed up the tie, it expells him into this subtle laugh , at this moment the viewer is fooled to believe that the man has finally managed to leave behind the horrific sight and come to terms withe the current situation but the moment of laughter had not even been broken when reminisces what he had seen, and he lies there tearing of his clothes, shattered till his inner spirit, crying and perhaps trying to hide from others his helplessness,it is then one realises how simple he is, how ordinary for that matter. If there was one thing that I had to embibe from this movie , then it would be the fact that people , who are extraordinary are made extraordinary not by inherent extraordinary skill but extraordinary circumstances and their ability to cope up with them.

to be cont...

The Moment of Truth

I'm left in an entirely confused state of mind right now, having a continuous moreso back to back dose of Independence Day and Armageddon, it inevitably resurrects this sudden feeling of patriotism . The feeling that is palpable ( which in other times isn't ) now gives entirely different meaning to virtues of self sacrifice , for once to think beyond logic and work with a conscience. If at all I had to set an analogy , and that too a funny one , it would be when Adam ( the proverbial male --> the first and only one in those circumstances) had embibed this perpetual hatred for Eve ( the proverbial female-> moreso the onlt one) and still had to mate with her , for the sole reason of multiplying mankind, now that would be some serious self sacrifice! On a more serious note, I do agree that sometimes choices have to be made in order to obtain the worst for yourself but the best for all those around you and btw by the rules of Economics ( please excuse my limited knowledge), that is indeed the best choice in the bag. Now the non initiates here would wonder how that goes that way, well I'm sure to the naked eye the tact of saving one's respective arses is indeed a better option , and I would agree that sometimes it is , but in contemporary circumstances or say the circumstances dealt with in the movie, one can speculate what would have happened, had the self sacrifise not been made , perhaps everything would have been destroyed, so there was nothing much in store anyway, that means if Adam hadn't mated with Eve , for whom ( I assume ) he had perpetual hatred and detestation , he would have had to stay with the same irritating female for the rest of his already sucked up life, so rather he made the one time ( ohhk ..might have been more than one time ) investment and got himself a few cute little pups to dwindle around, you know just to keep himself all the more preoccupied. In effect he escapes with a balance sheet in green. If I were to elaborate I would reiterate this by the beauty of the very prestigious " Prisoner's Dillemma", what to say about this , I'll say it's an entirely personal opinion , if each and every country's government had the ability to catch the not so banal background music orchestrated in this puzzle, not a single war would have happened, but then expecting every politician to get it in its true sense is a bit too much to ask for. So continuing with the idea, the man who makes the sacrifice is unarguably the evolved soul, for he is the one who realises that if nobody is gonna make the sacrfice , nobody including himself suffers, but if someone does , the loss is substancially less, perhaps he smothers himself with the whole loss camouflaging the whole society from its ill effects. Obviously the best proposition would be to sit back and let someone else make the sacrifice and make the benefits, I'm not contradicitng that, but just sit back and analyse that if ever in life you had to be judged by your acts and not by some god forsaken entrance examination, to ever prove to the world that your thinking is a notch higher than them, then this would be the moment, call it the Moment of Truth. A man witht a higher evolutionary process would think logical and assume the sacrificing role, for he is the one a notch higher, the one who has realised this logical truth, ( the one who read Hal Varian :P) the one who realised the importance of this moment of truth.

Now and then..

Stands resurrected another side , a side as dormant as an emotional equilibrium. Well if watching Titanic doesn't make you feel the same , stay rest assured , you're blessed! blessed with apathy. It's almost immaterial how many times you've managed to see it before, whether in lieu of the song or the censored scenes ..:P., it manages to vibrate " the" chord. If at this very moment I let a free flow of myself , which I'm sure I would and that too quite unhelpably , there is this resurrection , it makes you aware about certain self-trivialities . The fact that no matter how much one pretends to be engrossed in encompassing the ever engrossing rat-race , at the end of it all one is just a silly little human with an incessant desire to watch Titanic with a hankerchief in one hand and an expresso in the other ..(hahaha !) enjoying the rightful freedom of laughing at dialogues people generally don't find funny (I assume they miss the euphemism ), and the laugh , no ordinary expression of happiness but a lion's roar to appreciate the worldly parody, often springs up a cascaded laughter, and guess who's the butt of the joke this time!. It's evidently hard to do that in movie halls , unless you're in Regal . Now, it's given that people would prefer watching Titanic with a companion of sorts , who'd mind , I mean holding hands, talking about being there for one another for life , perhaps now your hankerchief is obligated to provide its services to two souls, expresso I'll say , should be discreet ..:P. Nevertheless, for people like me , who'd rather live on a string of illicit imagination than stereotypicality, the very surge in apprehension for the days to come becomes all the more liquid. Now, I really need to end this , I'd say just one thing , no matter what I've to go through, no matter when it happens and no matter if it happens in a respectable self bought accomadation or a rented dingy 1 bedroom set, it will happen someday, and that day I would switch on my laptop , which I hope will be existent till then, plug my netconnect , which I'm sure will be existent till then coz my dad pays the bill :P, and read this very article, and say to myself "How silly I was to write such an article then and wtf , so many spelling mistakes! " Budge!

Book Review : The Discovery if India

t's mere coincidence, that I write this book review on the eve of the 2nd of October, for this day had never been revered by me as much as it is today. When they used call India the bejeweled nightingale, less did I imagine , that it was still proverbially being denigrated. Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru's Discovery of India, if read, may emanate similar feelings in you, even if you're the the most ignorant of Indian citizens. What appears sometimes to be a work of fiction, is rather a concoction of India's prolonged and recent past. It's hard to imagine how a piece of land could encase within itself so much diversity and still exist as one, albeit on a majoritarian note. One who picks up " Discovery of India" would have the least prescience, that what intended to be a process of learning of India, was actually a journey to look within oneself, to contemplate one's Indianness and finally accumulate a lost sense of oneness.

At every juncture one would realise the avid inheritence that one is born with in this country. While some may interpret it as burden of truths, as I have often heard people proclaiming it, it is probably the only ornament that a poor farmer living in the unirrigated and helpless lands of Vidharbha may feel proud of inheriting. I'm astonished to cognize , what seemed to be non sensical notions to me earlier, are often justified in this book. The very seed of thought seems have been germinated on these very soils, while rendering a rather chemical perception for Indians to be " other wordly", but I'm sure this title is only trivially appalling. What intrigues me the most is the fact , that despite its congenital richness, India still survives as a " developing" nation, The word " developing" itself is immaculately disturbing and rather paradoxical, for the biggest and best of the current economies seem to have inherited vital inferences from India, in some phase or the other, which I'm sure they're accepting of. Nevertheless, the most vital part of the entire manuscrpt is the approach to life. If I ever had to inherit the shoes of a critic to this work of honour, then it would inevitably the diplomatic stance adopted by Pandit ji regarding the entrenched demons of priesthood prevalent in India, but I do acknowledge that being a national leader , unavidably accompanies itself with adopting an ever unoffending stance, not even to the faintest of minorities. Also, as Late Ms. Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister , India , confirms in her message in the beginning, that the author has ubiquitously tried not to inflict in the book his personal views and prejudices, for the book is not about what Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru thinks India to be or to have been or is, but the book's about India and its facts in the truest and most unediited form.

Discovery of India , is a journey, a journey that at all junctures offers multitude of paths,it is for us to acquit ourselves of all harbingering inhibitons and suggest to oneself the path suitable. What perhaps is the most encouraging of all, is the unscrupulous freedom guaranteed to the reader, in contempalting the truths by the virtue of their whims. On this politically sacred day , the 2nd of October when the world , much unknowingly witnessed the birth of a soul , so determined and formidable , that he's often looked back at by the most finesse of gentlemen in search of not behaviour, but principle , I write this disturbing book review, "disturbing" because, to comment on the work of people of such stature, itself requires too much of a precursring thought process, which I would ingenuously accept that I have failed to put in , nevertheless, with all reverence to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru , not necessarily in that order, I celebrate in silence the Gandhi Jayanti in this 8' x 8' room of mine, as some great being once said to the world " silent vice is better than ostentatious virtue".

The " olay -olay " effect

Now this one, I swear , comes completely spontaneously..as sponti as 5 minutes back. Lazing on my bed, in this cozy little room, doorbell !..yeah back..actually not so little.. it's the biggest bedroom of the entire house, the one which is blessed with the comforts of an attached bathroom (prospective girlfriends/wives please note). One couldn't even guess how I cried to get each and every thing in this room the way I wanted it, from the colour of the walls to the shape of my mirror, but now that I have it ( all to myself) , no soul in this house can dare push me out. Okay ..so back to olay olay, I'm half awake and half asleep on my bed and suddenly realise that the tune I've been whistling for the last 5 minutes belongs to the olay olay song, for the forgetfuls , the primevil Saif Ali Khan song who sports this oh-my-goddishly collonial and pathetic hair-do. I remember dancing to those shoddy steps, the song was such a rage in those times, I can distinclty reminisce it being one of the few "respectable" songs that boys would epiphanize in the middle of the street with an ardent hope to get a random date and kids like me ( age 8 maybe 9 at that time) couldn't but less think.." man, aren't they obsessed with this song, but no where close to my obsession..I mean ..they're just singing ...but I ,the mighty, dance on it ( in complete secrecy) !

What more can I say to end this, now I'm seriously considering , why at all am I even writing this stuff! , I would rather solved those faaaaaeeeeve hunnndreddddd question laid like bags of cement on my back. The humour , I must say, is an inseperable part of every article I vommit, so I'd just end by singing this very olay olay hymn .. On the contrary I'm just doubtful if this olay olay thing was plagiarised from the spanish " olaa". I wouldn't know and I couldn't care less.

Next article on Euro . no not Auro...Euro ..the speculatively prime currency to emerge in the future.

The proverbial Mr. Thomas

While the title of the post may not particularly enlighten you regarding the contention added . I hope the words to come may make things clearer. China, as it is completely and quite aptly named , The People's Republic of China. There has been a recent hulla baloo over the rather devalued price of the yuan, hurting significantly the capitalist giant, Mr. U.S.. While China continues to dominate exports, the US economy enters into a state of vicious helplessness in regard to its increasing trade deficit. It's no big deal to guess for an economically aware entity, that the falling dollar is nothing but hysterics, for it's inevitable for US to promote trade in order to not only promote export but to reduce the perennial fiscal deficit, due to which I must say the Republicans have often scoured on Mr. Obama's collar( they should realise he's hardly to be blamed). While socialist Chinese government remains skeptic of a yuan revaluation , the US perhaps can do nothing but wait.

I hope Gandhi ji was alive to see this, to see from his very own eyes the situation of the western world. A situation I must say, in which they've been reduced to mere puppets. The tangible factor , perhaps, emanates from their much denigrated Asian counterparts, the very nations for whom the IMF was set up nothing but like a beggar's bowl for charity. And mind you, the intention for setting up the IMF couldn't be entirely selfless.

Perhaps this analogy can make things clear. A beggar , sitting in front of a grocery shop, only to be in an inhumanly emaciated state. The owner of the grocery store, considered to be a shrewd , greedy ,money minded bugger remains completely oblivious to the beggar's depriciating condition. He might have left him to die, it wouldn't have perturbed him. Nevertheless, when the grocery store couldn't do business and its commodites were at the verge of rottenning, the owner plays a trick, a trick more rotten than his rottening commodities. He decided to lend the beggar some meagre amount, in full cognizance of the fact that the beggar , no matter how much he tries, would not have been able to return him that amount. Now lets see what happens implicitly , fait accomli that it. The beggar in his sense of urgency to diminish his hunger, buys even a rottening commodity from the grocery store. Therefore a part of the money the owner lent him is back to him allready. What follows is the beggar's unsaid subservience to the grocery store owner, given the beggar's inability to pay the debt. As a matter of fact , the owner gains a free servant. So much said, there is yet another benefit that is perhaps invisible at times, and often the primary bone of contention, the benefit of Social Appreciation. The owner of the grocery store was being seen by the whole community as self less , a ethical, righteous and god fearing man( these adjectives , I'm assuming add implicitly to a person's character upon his/her commiting the act of charity). It is unarguable that in a market of competition, gauging the seller's intention is of primary importance, the radical change in the midset of the people regarding the owner, pleases his sales, thereby adding to his business not the moon but the Sum itself. The owner couldn't be happier, for his investment on the beggar had proved to be too less a cost as compared to his business appreciation. I would leave to the reader to interpret this analogy in his/her own way and find the real identity of the proverbial owner and beggar, for if you can't even do that. you didn't even deserve to read this article in the first place.