banalspeak

The pleasure of language

Tohmaeto. Tohmahto. Once in a ketchup, does it matter anymore?
http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/?p=64

posted by thebanalsprite @ 11:02 PM 2 Comments

Intnl. Cricket Scores Widget

posted by thebanalsprite @ 9:38 AM 0 Comments

The sobriety of boredom.

If only the 'Contract' chappies would speed up with making up their minds on whether they should hire me. Redundancy back home with only a staple of wheat breads, green tea, Kurkure and Kim Kardashian's escapades is not too reassuring. Not to mention being totally wasted on nothing in particular. And this has been the status-quo for about 2 months now. Damn Bad Karma. Maybe a Shathru-Samhara Puja or an Amethyst ring would make amends. :(

So, yes, I'm back to blogging. Intend to continue doing so. Spreading general banality, non-joie de vivre etcetera, if my miniscule reading junta would remember (Paulose went and found himself another owner; but I do NOT miss him). Just that I've decided to make it less writey-writey and more blogey-blogey. It is easier to write thus.

Speaking of which, 'follows is a piece of banality that's supposed to co-erce people to take me in as a writer in their agencies. Not that I have found mucho success yet. It is a bunch of nonsense, really.

So go read. Retch. Imagine a kick on my derriere. Go back to whatever you were doing before.




**On why I am here

I wanted to conduct the Royal Philharmonic at Stuttgart. Have the players play Beethoven’s Seventh. A friend of mine convinced me that the whole idea seemed slipshod since the overture, he stated comprehensively, did not commence to the tune of “a kick in the bottom” by the famous Ougaudougan band ‘The Politically Correct Extra Terrestrial’.

That was the beginning and the end of my musical career. I did cut a record though, during the time when I was sunk deep in manic depression following the Philharmonic debacle. It was a big hit in the YMCA circles, as it is. ‘Jesus is not a wanker’, was the most sung single of the record for some strange reason.

Shit happens, they say.

And then, like a jolt from nowhere, I decided that I should paint a fresco on the ceiling of the Sixteen Chapel.

The Sixteen Chapel, situated on the 16th Main of the 16th Cross of Solah-halli, was thus named for reasons lost to posterity. The popular opinion among the believers was that it was concieved in the mind of the local parish Sixteentus The Sixteenth, when he had an epiphany on a particularly humid afternoon as he was about to bite into his 16th Salami Sandwich of the day.

The epiphany came so strong that he dropped on his knees to the ground ( taking ample care as to put away the half-bitten sandwich on to a table) whence it was revealed to him that Jawaharlal Nehru was actually a cross-dresser and liked Barbie Dolls and that sometimes he, inadvertantly, would go to Cabinet meetings wearing Barbie’s clothes. Such an episode in a high-profile government meeting with the Chinese Honchos, the parish realised, led to the Indo-China War.

How this revelation led to the construction of the Sixteenth Chapel is, of course, not explained, but hundreds of Kafka Scholars and an Indian Cricket Analyst are still feverishly working on unravelling the mystery. For the record, when asked on what they thought of the legend surrounding the Chapel’s name, all (including the analyst, having been driven mad by the Kafkaites) they replied was the laconic- “Kafkaesque!”.

The Analyst, when he had joined the research team, did try to reason that the name was thus because of all the ‘Sixteens’ associated with the chapel. His stupor lasted for, probably, less than an hour before the Kafkaiites devoured his congenital intelligence- hook, line and sinker and washed it down with Lemon-soda (salted).

I digress. So there I went to paint a fresco. I even had a title in mind- ‘ The agony and ecstacy of a flea flitting over a blob of cowdung’. I decided to use fresh cowdung as a binder over the plaster of the ceiling before I went around painting my art. This was to highlight the tough times a benign irritation like a flea has to go through, as a metaphor to the human condition. I had dreamt that the critics would applaud my sensitive potrayal of individuals as opposed to the society, and a chap or two remark on how the painting reminded him of Dialectical Materialism and a Sidhu-ism.

No sooner had I started daubing the ceiling wall than a priest walked in and told me that the whole idea stunk real bad. “Why, may I ask?”, I askingly asked. “Hear, my child”, he said, “the first parish to run the chapel, a direct descendant of Sixteentus The Sixteenth (them priests are not supposed to marry. Immaculate Conception, maybe.) had died of cowdung-poisoning. Some treacherous well-wisher had mixed dung in the priest’s meal (“adds to the flavour”, the well-wisher had later said in his defense) and the good Father was history.”

Creativity is not appreciated in its time, they say. And with this episode, my painting aspirations went down like a Lead Zepplin.

I, moved on.

And then.

I happened to meet a scouting agent during a Jazz concert and he told me that I would become the next big thing (don’t even think about male appendages, please; it is not naaice) after Himesh Reshamiyya on the box-office. Yes, he was drunk like a guppy, but what is a small behavioural quirk against a solid foresight, I say. Movies, I decided then, was where my calling was.

I called up the same agent the next day to see if he had any work in store for me. As it transpired, my expectations were spot-on when he offered me the most coveted role for any fresher in Bollywood- I was to play Hritik Roshan’s ear in a scene where HR’s ear (Hritik Roshan. In these times of the Reshamiyya chappie, you just can’t abbreviate, can you?) is seen overhearing a conversation between a psychic dog and a snail on dope.

So far so good, eh, you think? Notsofarsogood. Nopsy, Nahin, uh-uh. The director of the magnum-opus decided to can the scene when he realised that Hritik’s character was born-deaf and that they had already shot the scenes in which his handicap had been established. “How can Hritik hear a conversation all of a sudden”, he said. Oh sure, as if miracles don’t happen. He did get to direct, didn’t he?

Back to square one, as a geometrical loser once said. I spent sleepless nights pondering over the next big step, leap, spring, gallop and where the hell is a Thesaurus when you need one.

“Oh, I know. I could write”, declared yet another epiphany, yesterday afternoon at 3’o clock. **





p.s: There is a sale going on in Landmark here in B'lore. Some interesting books being doled out at Third World rates, if you didn't know already.
p.p.s: Yet another Onam alone. To like souls, A very happy Onam to y'all. Do tell me of Sadyas I can mooch off somewhere in Bangalore.
p.p.p.s: The Balaji feller's deal never came through. He got another hike on his soap-writing job. He, just so you know, is Paulose' new owner and pampers him no end. I do NOT miss Paulose.
p.p.p.p.s: Oh, and I finally graduated.

posted by thebanalsprite @ 4:35 AM 2 Comments

Of blog-posts and mere men.

Blogger's Block. That's all I can come up with.

Then this wonderful friend of mine, considerate as he is (and endowed with lots happening in his life to 'show and tell', or so his blogging spree reveals), posts me ultimatums yelling out "Post or Die!" and " what a shameful waste of web-space", yada yada. Not being a fan of Eichmannian, Machiavellian or American-ian strong arm tactics, I decided to ignore those. But it's been a while and I just cannot come up with anything that could reinforce the established aims of spreading general banality and non- joie de vivre, that this blog's set out to achieve.

A written repository of my life in general, with no word further from the truth, expounding ideals of Anarchical Democracy and Socialist Totalitarianism, not to mention fervent attempts at putrid and dubious oxymorons and long sentences, it was supposed to be. Weather reports too. But it's this inability to come up an iota of an idea to make up my next blog-post-which-would-exemplify-tripe, that's gnawing at my conscience.

Excruciating!

Kyunki-Saas-Bhi-Kabhi-Bahu-Thi*-excruciating.

I did know for a fact that I can be diabolically dumb at times and have not quite acquired any of my family traits , well, except one - that of drinking and emptying Maggi Ketchup bottles in nano-seconds flat (one which still earns us our undying infamy in the annals of history. Check out the next edition of the CBSE Class IX 'Moral Science' text book for more details). But for once, I feel like a complete, comprehensive, total, consummate Jack-ass. How can one ever not have anything to write about!?

Nope. Every confounded Tomdictionary can write about something. Pushkin. Carthage. Dolly Parton's Memories (pun intended). Laloo Prasad Yadav. Or Deepika Pallickal, perhaps? It's all there!!

Why-can't-I?

The ans'r, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The ans'r's blowin' in the wind.

Sure.......................bollocks!!


*KSBKBT is a tear jerking, gut wrenching, insufferable Indian TV Soap Opera from the Balaji Studios, aired at Prime-Time. (ever since my friend Bullshee started the trend, I presume, rather conveniently and immodestly, an International readership for my tome and keep my fingers crossed at the prospect of appearing on the Interpol lists for disseminating blasphemy, slander and general mental torture).

ps: Technically, this should count as a post. The ramifications of this non-creative effort, I shall discern from the comments of my reading junta, if any (that would be me and my dog 'Paulose').

pps: I shudder at the thought of having to write the next post on the blog. I have evaded this one by subterfuge, as you can see. Hence, I hope that the next time you stumble on this blog, you would be fed on tripe by this Ghost-writer that I'm hiring. He works in the Balaji Studios as a Script-writer for the time being. That way, I can be assured of a humongously long life for my blog and a never-ending spate of ideas (recyclable or otherwise) to impress upon hapless readers. :)

posted by thebanalsprite @ 5:45 AM 7 Comments

The Monsoon Strikes Back.

It seemed a fairly innocuous venture. Can you blame me for feeling hungry at 2 am , however unearthly a time it may seem. So there we set off from college- me and my accomplice in crime -The Frumious Bandersnatch (name withheld for no particular reason) to grab something to eat at a place about 7kms from college, the Mukkam ‘Highway’ Restaurant. All pepped up for satiating our hungry gullets. Frumious brought down our loyal steed-a scrap value Kinetic Honda, which was not christened Bucephalus, owing to the second half of the name when pronounced, having vulgar carnal connotations.

It seemed fairly simple. We would drive to Mukkam, have food, come back, and go to sleep.

Or so we thought.

We reached The Mukkam ‘Highway’, but the guys over there weren’t serving that day due to a poor turnout of customers (usually goods truck and lorry drivers who travel in the night, and dubious scum-of-the-earths like Frumious and myself, who have a penchant for suddenly being hungry late in the night owing to their digestive juices working overtime and because they figured among the ‘Good Gluttony’ magazine’s “Top 10 Gluttons of the Year ^TM”.).

Cursing our luck, we started back. We had reached a place about 3kms from college when it started to rain. Rain? It poured. The pourest pour that’s ever poured! (Forgive my grammar, it Eats Shoots and Leaves.) Droplets pelting like a downpour of small rocks. Frumious, even with his awesome driving experience , couldn’t make out the road any further, not to mention the water drops really hurting our faces while it came down.

We were searching frantically for the nearest shelter. And there it was. The Marthoma Cathedral, a modest roadside church with fairly protecting roof eaves and grilled shutters. We parked our loyal steed outside and scampered to near the shutters and the protecting eave. I could make out the lanky figure of Jesus on the crucifix through the grills. “Poor guy that”, remarked Frumious. “Yeah, they don’t make ‘em no more like him”, I replied. We started small talk about college, GPAs and Dialectical Materialism and were having a jolly good time, when a voice boomed from somewhere.

”So you dorks got stuck after all, eh? Losers !”

Of course we don’t believe in ghosts except the kind that teach us in College, but this was unsettling, to say the least. We were looking through the grills into the Cathedral searching for the source, when the crucifixed Jesus spoke, “ No, you morons, look above at the sky! It’s the Rain God talking.”

Now, a talking clay Jesus, we could take, but a voice from the sky? “What’s next, Monica Belluchi doing a belly dance to the tune of ‘Kaliyon ka Chaman’, in front of us?”, I half-expectantly mused aloud.

.......*Reconstruction of the conversation that subsequently transpired*.......

Mr. RG (Rain God): “That’s right, dorks. Especially you, you tiny piece of thing-that-you-find-in-a-baby’s-diaper, who likes to cuss me in his blog ! You’ve got some nerve writing that piece of inconsequential banality. It’s me alright! Now how do you feel about the rain rendering you stuck at this wee hour of the morning, sucker?

Me: Eh, heh..heh..Hi, Mr. Rain God. I..I….’just figured that the weather always made a nice topic when you are out of conversation..heh..heh..*ulp!*

Mr. RG: Well, guess what.. It’s not! How do u feel about this big downpour falling down like it’s never did , doofy!? No one ever rubs me the wrong way, dork, and gets away with it!

Me: Heyy. So I did write something in my blog about you. But you should understand, man. I did have a shitty day back then with those incessant rains and all. And stop calling me a dork, will you!

Mr. RG: Dorky iggy boogy Dork. What do you fancy, as an addressal, your Highness King Dorky the 5^th of Dorkesia?

Me: umm..how about Efficient Baxter. I’ve always fancied a name with an adjective in it. It would sound awesome.

FB (the aforementioned Frumious Bandersnatch), after nudging me, and in a low voice: Dude? stop kiddin’ around, man. Don’t incense him any further with your PJs. He could as well set upon us this deluge and have our pathetic bodies washed away in the flood.

Me: Wha..but I wasn’t kiddin’..

Mr. RG: You think you are smart, eh? Well, let me tell you, dork. Even discounting the fact that you bad mouthed me in your blog; your writing just absolutely sucks! What’s with the wannabe esoteric vocabulary that the aam junta wouldn’t understand, bloody dork?

Me: Well. Nothing could be more specious, Mr. RG. I would never resort to any subterfuge or rhetoric inter alia in a language that’s dubiously precocious, ostentatious and......

Mr. RG: Oh, shut it, dork. We use the “Chambers-Oxford-Cambridge Multi Lingual Talking Dictionary of the Languages of All Nations Of The Universe” up here, when thy pathetic prick is just toying around with an Oxford Dictionary. A concise edition at that. Bleeping Idiot!

Me: *gulp* Shit! He’s seen through me.

Mr. RG: Now listen up, arseshole. I’ve had a shitty day myself. There was this plebiscite up here in heaven, and I’ve been upstaged by this other Rain God no:23 who used to take care of the arid deserts of Sub-Saharan Africa. He’s going to take over the responsibility of delivering showers to this sub-continent of yours from now on, while I have to take his place in Africa. What a shitty transfer, I ask you! And with your levels of audacity, on top of it....I’ve a good mind to make you guys suffer from humiliating levels of misery.

Me: *sotto voce* There we go again. *non-sotto voce* Frankly, O Transferred Rain God, I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings one wee bit. But honestly , yeah, I do accept full responsibility and may I apologise for the sacrilege I’ve committed (yeah, well, now I have to apologise to this voice-over artist from up above!). I’m sorry.

Mr. RG (obviously cooling down when I coupled my previous monologue with an expression the 'Puss-in-boots' makes in the Shrek Movies): hm..well, ok. Apology accepted. You do seem to be a nice guy after all.

Me: Salt of the earth.

Mr. RG: Yeah..yeah, yea.. I must admit I was a bit grumpy and had to take it out of my system.

Me: Never would’ve guessed.

Mr. RG: hmm..well. I already feel sorry on myself for taking it on you guys.

Me: No problem at all. The reason we were born was to be at the receiving end when ye Gods have mood swings. ($@#%^&*!)

Mr. RG: Anyways, I gotta go now to deliver liberal doses of Rain at Company-Mukku*. The drains haven’t overflowed even once and blocked the roads over there this monsoon, I’m told. Have to make amends.

Me: Of course. Duty beckons, eh? Tellya what, to make it up to you, every monsoon I’ll do the Red Indian Rain Dance so you can laugh your ass off before making it rain down here. What’s more, I’ll even get baptized as Crazy Constipated Bull , as Red Indian names go, if it makes you happy.

Mr. RG: Spare me that misery, will you? Just write about our conversation in that blog thingy of yours, so that future generations of senile bloggers know who they are messing with when fancy strikes. Ok?

Me: Okey Dokey. But before you go, may I ask you something? Is it true that it rains ‘coz the Gods above are taking a leak.

Mr. RG: Well, we do have bladders working overtime, alright. Heh..heh..

Me: That settles it then. See you around Mr.Rain God. May you drench everyone to glory and endow them with ridiculous laundry bills.

Mr. RG: ‘Righty then, and your fly’s open, for Chrissakes!

Me: eh..heh….sorry. ‘Bye Mr. RG and so long .

FB: Buh-bye Mr. RG. GO Rains, wohooo.!!! *phew*

We got back to the hostel safe, but totally wet. The rains didn’t stop. It- just - didn’t - stop….

*Company Mukku is a place close to Kattangal, which again is the next bus-stop after the Calicut Regional Engineering College stop.

posted by thebanalsprite @ 3:35 PM 12 Comments

Mausam ki Jaankaari

"Rain rain go away,
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to play,
Rain rain go to Spain."

The first rains are always a joy. The whole scenery is peppered with generous helpings of green and then there's the smell of the wet mud. Good signs for the writer suffering from a writer's block to have yet another dig at the tried and tested metre of alluding to his drenched surroundings, perhaps. It turns out to be such a enthusing experience to see, when after the harsh n humid clime(as a run up till when the monsoons bless), the rain just instigates the drains and the numerous potholes and the caches to overflow humongously (readers can prepare themselves for reading this banality, if they still are, and the irritatingly ubiquitous parantheses by recalling the Coleridge-speak: “water, water, everywhere..”) . The non-descript umbrellas suddenly have a life of their own. Belligerently squirming and squabbling, the black cloth is in loggerheads with the metal rods and the hands that hold them. People who don't possess them on self or were too stupid as not to have listened to their wives when they were told to leave their homes with an umbrella, would be ducking for cover for the nearest shelter which, however dilapitated, would suffice and protect - the scene is animated.

What happens when the rains just won’t stop for days at end? I mean I'm blessed with this boon of not having to wake up till the afternoon, 'coz my classes haven't yet started and Morpheus is allowed to just lull me on to glory. An affair adding to your already 'topping-the-scales' levels of lethargy. But after I do wake up and get done with matters of personal hygiene, I need to go out and get a 'brunch' (not 'coz its fashionable, as you would have made out, but 'coz that’s how it is. Well okay, so portmanteaus ARE en vogue!) and my pack of cigarettes. Here's the killjoy. The incessant rain duly supported by this git called 'the strong gust of wind' makes it literally impossible to get out without being showered by, what the people of yore liked to fancy as, the piss from the Cornucopia that is the bladder of the Gods. I curl-up back in my bed. And then this slight ray of hope (sunshine?) concurs as soon as the rain stops. Or so I think. I venture outside and bang, right there, is the next spell of showers. Now that you are out, you would rather not prefer to start back, and would keep walking on to the nearest place for food n fags, would'nt you? An effort akin to dips in a pool, albeit with your clothes on. Then there's the dirt all over the place assuring at least a handful of baths (you see, I may be a Piscean and fishes may love the water, but I detest having a bath). Sludge, slimy sediments and what have you, no siree, it sucks! Gene Kelly sure should have been paid a lot to go about Singin' in the Rain.

Singing!? Imagine.

I would have to go back and change into warm clothes, when I already have run a huge bill on my laundry and was counting on this sartorial status-quo for maybe a couple of days more. The weather renders me with this worst kind of redundancy that puts me up in the league of the Rumpleteltskins . To top it all, just when I thought that I'll play along, supine, in my cosy room, the electric supply does a volt(e) face. I feel wasted.

Damn you Mr.Weather-god!

"...."

I've already downed my food and have the cigs to smoke and my books to fall back on (albeit after the electric supply resumes in my hostel room). And maybe, just maybe, I am ranting for no reason. And that objectively, the monsoon being that endower to the numerous farmlands of a primarily agricultural economy and the death knell to the nagging heat waves, is quintessential. A symbol of Plentitude, perhaps. Moreover, its worse in Mumbai every year, with just the first showers needed to bring the pulsating city to a standstill. This realisation should cancel out the discomfort I’m feeling this depressing Friday evening. I hope so. For the time being though, outside, its raining cats, dogs and Trichur Pooram elephants*.

*Trichur Pooram is the annual festival held in the district of Trichur, in Kerala, showcasing the legendary face-off between two rival Temples (the Gods would be pleased) with garish opulences of music, fireworks, elephants, pomp and vigour.

p.s: It might, forgive my audacity, interest the reader to know that the current supply got cut for about 4 times while I was trying to upload this post. It’s been a soiree of ctrl-c’s and ctrl-v’s ad nauseum since then. I luurvve monsoons.

posted by thebanalsprite @ 9:46 AM 4 Comments