The drudgeries of the darkies...

If there is one thing that has been going on in my mind through the ages with the frequency of calls from Vodafone and the unpleasantness of a happy mallu song greeting you while on roaming from the same source (you have to feel it to understand it.. You are on roaming and pinching for money and the last thing you want is "thaangalkayi avatharipikkunnu.." Ente theivame!!!) it is the question of why I am dark while my brother is fair. Before you say "oh come on!" with the ceremonial rolling of the eyes, think why actresses spend millions of rupees every year to get that "purrrfect" complexion. And am not considering Bipasha Basu. I havent seen her without makeup, and if it is as I think, she would be classified under "Interesting, but at your own risk of social ostracism" category. Indians are racist. Period. Look at the amount of money generated by fairness products. The typical day of a girl would be.. get up, do ablutions, put fairness cream and massage the cream deeply into your skin, go to work, wash your face and massage the cream deeply into your skin at lunch, continue with work, come back home, wash your face and massage the cream deeply into your skin, go to sleep. And the happy part now is that now guys also have to do it, cos the once sensible girls are also into the fairness quotient of their mate. And so the guys also repeat the above algo albeit am not sure of the ablutions part..

And God, being the true benign being that He is, He made the people living above this totally arbit, imaginary, geographical line fair and those below, dark. And by dark, I mean charcoal dark. Not dusky-bong-beauty-dark. So if you happen to have a name like Mylai Mundakaneeswari or Chekkancheri Chakkochan or Rayalseema Renganna, chances are you will be the opposite of fair. No wonder there is so much of tension in the country. You don't realise how much this destroys the chances of Chakkochan hooking up with Hardeep or Mundakaneeswari with Kshitij. As an aside, look at the names that will come up if they indeed get married.. (shudder) So to help all the poor souls, including yours truly, I request you the reader to do the following algo everyday.

If you are dark {

1) Get up in the morning

2) Pray to God for a miracle

3) Watch the early sunlight turn your skin into the color of orange, rather burnt orange

4) Use a good quality scrub everyday during bath to see your skin turn burnt red (No matter what color you aim for, it is going to be burnt, like the dishes in Vim ad)

5) Wear dark clothes, so you can see you are a burnt brown (may pass off as a tan)

6) a) You wont have much of a life beyond this point, so eat, work and go to sleep, but not before a generous dose of fair and lovely. Yeah, you are right, a burnt white. (Dark people are intelligent, are n't we?)

b) This way you can fool yourself into believing you are some color other than what you are, give fancy names to it, pump your dark fists into the air before crying yourself to sleep.

}

else {

1) Get up in the morning

2) If you are a guy, pray that Mundakaneeswari turns fair, or if you are a girl, pray for Chackochan.

3) You would be having a great night life, so chances are you miss the early morning sun. You are missing out a lot in life, you know.. (sigh, I wish that was true...)

4) No need to take a bath. Your aesthetic quotient does not need cleanliness.

5) Do I need to say this? You fairskins are dumb. You can wear anything. Even Ramarajan-meets-chennai superkings yellow.

6) Once a month, take a dark skinned person (decision based on logic in no.2 IF you are straight, our lives are pretty screwed up already) out on a date. And do not look at opposite sex of fairer complexion while doing so. This helps a lot for our self esteem. You are welcome to look at the darker types - it comforts us. Do not talk about movies, politics or religion as these abound with examples of vanilla being preferred over chocolate. Bring him/her back safely home and then you can go and mingle with your kind while he/she repeats 6b.

}

Inshallah, with this algo, all we darkies will together collectively get a lifetime of dates with a fairy. ;-) (You have got the better complexion, so we get the better name)

The snake

Raindrops, I hear thy song,

The song of old and pain.

Blood, I smell thy scent,

Mixed with smoke and rain.

The soldier lay wounded,

His finger still bore the ring.

The death knell sounded,

To my deaf ears, it did sing.

I squatted outside, prayed,

God, feed my child once.

The youth lays there torn,

No dreams for him hence.

My presence, did he know?

My presence, does he call for?

Hands stretched, he groaned.

I waited, a snake, that hour.

Lost in the game, i was.

Strength in the mind, nought.

Toil in the fields aplenty,

To have slogged it, i ought.

The clouds had dried up now,

As empty as his veins.

I go in to get the prize,

Get my undeserved gains.

War had found its face,

As the moon shed its ray,

From these parts, no doubt

Forgive me brother, I pray.

His soul, the Battle took it,

His band, my battle took it.

Then the parchment did come,

A confession, a will, was it?

“For our dear comrade,

For his gallantry, a ring

Lives plenty he has saved,

We wish joy, it will bring.”

The snake, it still struck,

like the other on my child, did.

The ring sold, life was bought,

Life was sold, to the devil he bid.

I am still there for you...

Since AFM's classes are over, thought I would write a poem for those wonderful classes. Thank you sir!

We struggle below in the nether,

The lance in my hand, raised,

Demons, powerful, untethered,

I shall fight them, make no haste.

Caste, creed, race, gender,

Kindred waiting to slay you.

I will be there for you, brother,

I will be there for you.

When the laughter, tis wiped away,

The bassinet grows small, fast,

When family, love hold no sway,

Ghouls, we fight, of times gone past.

When dreams, respite, they bring over,

The world, incapable, it calls you,

I want to be there for you, brother,

I want to be there for you.

Our head stands alone, weakened,

The arms now, we have repulsed.

The coiffure casts off nails blackened

Hurt, unknowing, when avulsed.

Meads waiting for us, aflower,

souls, yearning for freedom true.

I am still there for you brother,

I am still there for you.

Random Rumblings

Have had a whirl of a week. A few close calls with regard to project submission and a couple of as-usual-goofed-up papers and quizzes. Have a general feeling that the things are not going quite well up in the clocktower, due to which bells are not ringing at the right time. So pardon me if the post sounds quite drab. Am trying hard not to make this my personal diary, but every badger needs his badgerette to badger. (wtf?!) Have the Finance Summit Arthanomics starting tomorrow... Or today... Aw! Doesn't matter... At least for the ones who stay up all night watching movies or writing soap stories on blogs. Finance... A cleverly disguised term to encapsulate everything that involves numbers so that the ones actually good with numbers are turned off by the sight of ManAc.

Anyways, the prime purpose of this post is to discuss some of the brilliant movies shown by our beloved prof, Mathew sir. The most recent was Le Chiavi de Casa (The keys to the house - yes it is chiavi in both tamil and italian!) This particular movie is about a young father seeing his differentially abled son for the first time and the journey of how they grow close to each other. At one point in the film, another parent who has looked after her similarly abled daughter with so much care for twenty years, declares "Sometimes I wish she would die". This tells of two things - one, love is not about keeping someone alive and making them better; it is sometimes better to let go and save them from a cruel world that offers them no help and two, achievements are not measured by winning prizes but hearts - we often have cinema showing differentially abled children competing with the so called normal ones on an equal footing and yet winning. Though it is possible, it is not always that way. So many lives come and go that have not achieved anything worthy of a certificate, yet to someone they are always special.

Another movie that affected me deeply was 'The Grave of the Fireflies' - a Japanese animation movie. Maybe it was because both the films involved children, but it doesnt matter because if we are not sensitive to children, in no way, are we going to be sensitive to adults. This particular film takes place during the fag end of World War II with the children losing their mother and the elder brother taking care of his younger sister. The interesting thing here is the way the director handles death. Which is worse - a violent death or a peaceful one? How do you quantify tragedy? Do watch these movies. Highly recommended.