from the Kary Brag-show

THE NEO-GENTLEMAN - A low down on love today !!!


The neo-gentleman my friends is a beast. All the ladies in the club will agree with me I assume? By that I do not just mean ladies of the ‘women who hate men they love or vice versa’ club … but women in general.

I will not be audacious enough to comment upon the situation in other towns of other cities of other countries but our very own cosmopolitan capital here is what I am going to rant about. What’s the low down on love today? Is it what it used to be? Are relationships the same or have the demographics changed? Have the tables turned?

I think they have. From what I see around me the female isn’t the femme fatale anymore, she isn’t the victor … she is the victim … of a new race of what used to be earlier referred as gentlemen, a race that has mutated into what should be referred as ‘men fatale’. The Dudley Do-Rights are dead and no longer around. Ladies lose hope - hope of finding Do-Right again and while you are at it also lose any hope of deliverance from these neo - (killer) gentlemen. It is sad how the beautiful McCartney song has lost its meaning. ‘Hope of deliverance, Hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us’. I am getting carried away.

So, these men fatale. How does one identify them? Well, they are surely dressed better than before but more than often its just a wolf in sheep’s skin. They are charmers but the charms are parvenu and one can tell that they are. The money is plentiful, yes sir but how far can money take one – certainly not beyond the banks of the Hades. And what about Love – they own it or rather they seem to have such authority over it that they feel free to abuse it. Heartbreakers are what they are!

This isn’t a smug ‘Someone Like You’ typo old cow new cow theory that I have formed. It might be smug but I do have proof. Though it would not be too wrong to say that the whole old cow new cow philosophy is in a way - true. All men are narcissistic and cannot stand being with one woman. They are always looking out for the better, the new and improved. Ashley Judd stops believing in it towards the end of the film but hey, she has Hugh Jackman to shut her up.

What about us? Who do we have? The regular Rahul or Amit or Sanjay? Our regular Joes are nowhere close to picturesque and to top it all now they are the men fatale. They come, they conquer and they leave as quick as a flash of lightening. And I am not exaggerating. Four cases known to just me in a single month and here I am box of cleanex in one hand, typing with the other. Oh! I am not using the cleanex, I’m offering it to girlfriends. “I cannot get over my ex-girlfriend!” … Bam!; “I don’t think I can find anyone better than you. You’re too good for me. So, I am leaving you.” …Bam! “I love you but I will marry the girl my parents have chosen for me” … Bam and “I had the time of my life with you, the three years we were together but I don’t think it will work out in the future” … Bam Bam! Clean bowled! You bet I can cite more examples but these are just the ones from the top of my head.

Is this an epidemic? Are we as a civilization manufacturing a generation of men who leave women they love? Or better yet, are we producing a whole new race of rap loving misogynistic, smack-my-bitch-up-typo brutes? My guess is we are. Well, then who is to blame and what is to be done about it?

I think the only solution is that men in India or rather specifically men in Delhi should either be sent for training to military school or to some remote part of Andaman and Nicobar islands where the men I hear are still gentlemen …

from the Kary Brag-show

you

a stationary body amidst the cacophony of a madding crowd ...
reaching out for the rainbow ...
leaps and dies.

a moving body amidst the obstinacy of solid ground ...
reaching out for the madding crowd ...
claims and finds.

i am the stationary body.

you are moving.

you

fall winter - the life of the gypsy's woman

part dead, part alive,
i've known in my heart for long,
there's something amiss.

for the way you look at me now,
strips me of all I have on,
and a part of me dies each time.

what are you doing?
where do you come from?
where do you go from here?
when do you stop moving around?

is this your way of wishing me away!
perhaps yes.

at long last,
i am tired of being a shadow,
its time I be my body now.

fall winter - the life of the gypsy's woman

Rulers of the world

Decadence of the supreme order,
Degenerate life,
Their plight,
They who’ve spent whole lifetimes,
Dreaming of the boundless dark skies.

One day I hope will be a new day,
When the world will wake,
Into tomorrow,
Not yesterday,
Pacifists will lead the world, For dictators too are bound to stray.

Rulers of the world

… and once again there was hope.

I don’t think I know the reason ‘hope’ has come alive again… but she has and that’s what’s most important.

A friend recently glibly termed my condition as … ‘isn’t this called numbness?’ and I agreed or did I comply? Yes, I would like to think of it as compliance rather than agreement because hopelessness had given birth to lack of judgment and for lack of better judgment I had left decisions to be made ‘for me’ by ‘others’. Is that what shook me out of my reverie/ phase/ condition/ numbness???

Whichever it was - out of the options given above or those that are not – it’s gone now … I would like to think. It went away in phases and I came back to life in waves … Each day a vision, a spark, a word, an argument, a decision, a view point drew the delirium/ the coma/ the freeze away …

And now there is warmth … I can feel it in my hands … my typing fingers … my heaving bosom … my jiving being.

What visions … words …arguments? Who did they belong to???

There isn’t just one single person actually who managed to influence me this time around and even though I’m afraid I’m forgetting some of them … its but fair to put down some of the names … to thank them as well as for future references …

Think the first was the American woman who chatting up a Malyali passenger sitting besides her on a rickety plane jabbered inconsolably – “… You’re from Keralaaa? Oh well, I’ve traveled a lot in India but I haven’t been to Keralaaa. I mean like down South I’ve been to like Trivandram and …” On being told that Trivandram is situated in Kerala, she exclaimed making sure the whole plane heard (despite the squealing of the plane and the snack time clattering) including me with my ears stuffed with earphones generating high decibel noise to drown out this noise and my mind enmeshed in a quagmire of consuming revelations from the past … (in an unusually nasal voice) …”Oh! Wooooonnnw! That means I’ve been to Kerala. That’s gorgeous. My gawwwwwnnd!” Believe me it doesn’t sound half as bad when it’s written.
It shook me … brought me out of wherever I was … only the effect wasn’t permanent or even half as temporary in comparison to certain other events. Out of sheer contempt for this woman, her voice, her pompous being, the United States of America and its degenerate citizens, I went back to my ‘condition’.

Think next time I woke was when I saw the dolphins … I had to for I would have missed a vision more precious than life itself … after that every time I met the ocean … I was wide awake …

I woke up when I found love where I least expected it. I woke up when I sat down to have a meal by myself. I woke up when I spent a day with myself in a world not my own – a world where I was a total stranger at complete odds … with everyone in it, with its totality … I woke up when I started hearing dawn approach.

I woke up when I met Geo George. A man unlike most others, a man of substance in his own right. A man so simple that it put me to shame to think of any of his actions as malicious or unwarranted. A man who taught me in the few moments spent together to be devoted.

I woke up when I met Joseph Fiennes in a local daily. A star unlike other stars – one you don’t expect to meet in the local daily … who’s hazel eyes can bore holes into your head if he stares at you … who said – as if to me exclusively - “I love life.”

I woke up when I met Ch’mma. A friend, a companion, a compatriot, a mentor, a philosopher, a guide, a mother … she can be who she wants to be, who she thinks you need her to be. And she loves. Truly. Plus she writes beautifully – at leisure and at length…

“You have touched my soul, I want you to know, you are wonderful”

… and once again there was hope.

There’s beauty everywhere

The last few moments,
With her,
With her vastness,
And my perfect song,
Sun in my face,
Warmth,
Sand in my feet,
More warmth
Water gushing in and out,
Heat, a rush of blood, such a sensation,
The waves of salty water,
Dead fish strewn on shore

And finally it made perfect sense,
“So, let go,
jump in,
oh well what ya waiting for?
Its all right,
Cuz there’s beauty in breakdown”

I could have,
An irrelevant detail.
I shouldn’t have,
The righteous, the morally correct.
I didn’t,
The truth …

All pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,
Destined to fall together for that one moment,
And then apart for the rest of our lives…

And after we’d lived that moment,
Breathed all we could in it,
Felt whole once and forever,
We drew apart,
For no good reason,
Is social conditioning reason enough?
Perhaps! Perhaps not !!!

For when we went apart,
The sand couldn’t wait to escape,
Escape from under my feet, my whole body’s weight.
The shelled crab couldn’t have enough privacy,
So he scurried off to death.
The scavengers found time in their busy schedules,
And picked up all the dead fish.
Formidable clouds enmeshed the sun,
In a dirty, filthy embrace.
The tide ebbed,
Holding the waves back from reaching my thirsty feet.
My song reached a crescendo and then got over.

Only her vastness remained,
I wasn’t expecting it to remain,
Yet it did,
Is that Love?
Or did I like every other time – Imagine it?

I turn around and walk back,
Seemingly unchanged.
Seemingly…
I’m neither sad nor happy anymore…
I think I am at peace…

There’s beauty everywhere