hypocrisy, freedom and obsession..

I can't believe i am writing so much these days.. anyhow.. as i sit to write, there are three topics looming in my mind. topic 1 - hypocrisy in society.. my opinion is that hypocrisy is a consequence of human society.. that is where there is man, there is hypocrisy.. at some level.. i have some arguments that will go towards proving this.. but the point of writing a blog on this topic would be to declare that "i am a hypocrite".. i feel incredibly light to be able to say it aloud and have it out there.. i don't people to think that i holier than thou and have a possibility of being disillusioned later.. that's why i found gandhi's experiments with truth so refreshing.. how light he must feel!!

the second topic is about freedom.. a question is could gandhi have become the president of US.. an election here means having to defend every shit you have ever done.. almost as if they want to elect a perfect (consistent) person to represent the country.. when the country itself is so not perfect.. you might remember that i wanted to be a politician at some point.. but now, I no longer do.. i cannot beyond a point defend myself or my actions and i don't want to put in a position of having to.. i have a discussion with a friend the other day about tiger woods apologizing to public about his behavior.. i thought it was so bull shit.. he is a golf player.. a good one at that.. that's it.. whose fault is it that he held up to a saintly standard? he needs apologize only to his wife and kids.. that too if he feels the need to do so.. that's why i like george orwell's philosophy. how much freedom are you willing to let go of in order to have order in society.. i think it is a very important question.. and that's why communism scares me so much..

Topic 2 links to topic 1 - it is a hypocrisy of society to expect it's leader to be free of all hypocrisy when everyone knows in their hearts they are hypocrites in some way.. and I don't want to lead a hypocritical society unless i am able to say this aloud.. and people accept that i may not be perfect, but i can be a good leader to them.. what do you think?

the third topic is about being obsession worthy.. i am a little bit of an unstable personality and i tend to obsess stuff for short periods of time.. like a movie, or a song, or a person.. i am not loyal.. just short term obsessions.. if you want me to cherish something, I should have obsessed it at some point.. this has been an interesting line of thought and i realized that while i have enjoyed many things in my life.. i have only obsessed a few and those are the ones that I am pretty sure i will take with me to the grave.. i wonder if others think this way too..

there - i have written a little bit about all my three topics.. without going into the gory details.. and it feels good to have let it out.. and I can't believe that I wrote about hypocrisy, freedom and obsession in 10 min!!

maalika

beauty of the unsaid..

this is going to be a short post - i don't have much time to write a lot.. but i was thinking about the story that's never told.. sometimes in a book or in a movie, the meaning of the story and beauty of the plot is exemplified by the things unsaid.. two instances particularly comes to mind - i think i might have written about it before too..

in the godfather, when michael's first wife dies, the author never explains what he goes through after that.. the plot directly jumps to 6 months later when michael returns to the US.. and that gap is so obvious.. so contrary to the rest of the plot that it kills me to imagine in multiple ways what he would have gone through.. and how he would have had to harden his heart... i always found this poetic.. and love the book for it..

and similarly in the movie anand the plot never goes to the sadness that rajesh khanna seems to carry.. there is just this one song kabhi door jab din, which alludes to his past, but is never elaborated anywhere, leaving us to imagine the rest.. and again, given my active imagination, it moves me no end to think of all the tragic possibilities.. but i love this song.. every line is beautifully written, sung and acted.. he is both in the moment with nature and far away in his dreams.. the light breeze that plays with his hair, the slight wetness in his eyes and the slow movements of his brows alone make this song an evergreen one - especially to those who have ever nursed a broken heart..

hope you are all enjoying your weekend..

time for a new blog???

my heart aches at the thought of having to delete this blog.. but i am having to.. incidentally, right after i wrote my post on how i hate anonymous blogging, i read in the paper about how 70% of the employers check you out in google before hiring you.. and my blog is the first link if you searched for my name!! and my name is rare enough that you will know who i am.. so i am thinking that i will delete this blog in the next month or so and start anew - i will try to inform all my friends who I know have read this blog at some point or the other so that you may continue to follow me.. to my anonymous friends, I am very very sorry to lose you.. but hope you understand why i am having to do this.. internet could be a harsh scary thing where friends could turn into enemies if they saw fit to use your words wrongly.. while i am an open person and am not ashamed of myself, i don't relish the idea of my potential employer mis-understanding me either.. and according to one of my friends, showing passion means showing weakness.. and my blog has been all about the weak moments of my life with some rare interjection of passion! hopefully the new one i start will be a little different, a little less melancholic and a little more purposeful.. (though that sounds little like me :D)

so, before i become another mayonnaise toss or a bombay dosti (in a month or so) i thought I will write about rajesh khanna here.. you know how i have opined about shah rukh khan many times in this blog.. but i am also a big fan of rajesh khanna.. and this morning the radio (yes, bay area has an indian radio channel!! 1170 AM if you didn't know) ran a special on rajesh khanna - his dialogues, his songs and some bits on his life.. i only heard a part of it while I was driving to work.. but what i did hear was that he was an adopted kid who had decided early in his life that he was going to crack it in life..

i was shocked to hear about his ambition because i, probably like others, mistook his soft on-screen personality, his voice which breaks so charmingly, his eyes dripping with kindness and a sort of deeply buried tragedy and his small frame mostly clad in dhoti kurta for a peaceful personality without a notion of ambition.. and how wrong I was.. anyhow, i have loved this guy's songs.. from his joyful "ye sham mastani" to his passionate "yeh jo mohabbat hai" to his bittersweet "kahi door jab din" and owe many a deep moments to the moods brought on by these songs..

here's to rajesh khanna!! have a good weekend friends..

maalika

with love, wife..

i have tons of work.. i really do. but it is one of those days when I am simply not able to focus. but what is different is i am not feeling romantic or nostalgic or melancholic.. i am outright indignant.. outraged.. and the root cause is an article that i read which seems to state that it is a lucky man who gets a beautiful (of course) but also a submissive sweet wife who will honor him in front of others.. i read it and i realized that this is a very common view held by many men (i will not mention which country such men mostly belong to)

i for one, am independent, vocal and if I have to disagree with my husband will do so outright and expect him to have the backbone to defend his view. but at the same time, i would feel badly if my husband thought i was less of a wife because of this. marriage is a relationship between two individuals who possess all faculties needed for full functionality.. but expecting the women to not deploy her right to express her opinion freely, or defend herself is retarded to me.. but it is a most common expectation that men be allowed to talk in public setting while the women just smile and agree and all in all be a gracious wife..

one argument that I have heard (from a man, i might add) is that women need to deploy different strategies.. like be more charming.. because it is common knowledge that while power and attraction are positively correlated for men and it is negatively correlated for women.. and given that is a natural instinct for all of us to want to be attractive, what we are essentially saying is that women should not exhibit power openly.. but instead exert it through underhanded means such as "charm".. the whole discussion disgusts me.. i live and work in a world where overtly, all of us, irrespective of gender, are expected to perform equally, but behind the curtains, there are different expectations in terms of behavior. I don't want to discount this issue in the name of evolution, psychology etc etc.. it's a bloody disadvantage, and I will do the best i can to dispel this notion form society at large in my lifetime..

so if you find me arguing with my husband in front you, please don't bother feeling sorry for him.. he is a lucky man to have got a full person (with all faculties and thoughts and opinions intact) as a life partner who didn't see the need to charm anyone by any underhanded means whatsoever!

by
not a feminist yet,
maalika

period or pause?

Ok - so one of my distinct if utterly irritating writing styles has been the lack of caps and the ...s. Today I was chatting with a friend who has just started reading my blog and he commented on it. Apparently, it irritates him. He also shared with me a blog that he has been following for some time - without linking it here i will just say that it's named after a neurotic food item. For the very first time, I had spent a significant amount of my time reading through a blog that written by an anonymous. She had a lovely writing style, thought very much like me (as in romanticized a lot of things, albeit without the melancholic ring to it) and used caps and periods.

As usual, I can see my writing has chosen its own topic - the first one being anonymous writing. I don't like it. I don't know why - we are all anonymous in this world in a way that no one beyond the handful who bother to read cares about what we write and to add another layer of anonymity seems pitiful. As much as I hate taking controversial view points, i always comment in my own name even if it's national newspapers. Somehow I feel others have the right to know where the voice is coming from. And because I hate anonymous writers, its only fair that I am never anonymous. Hence my posts are signed with my name and you can trace me quite easily if you are into stalking and that kind of thing.

So I read this blog today and while it was nice and everything, I kept feeling guilty as if I was prying (which is why I won't share the name here) and alienated that this person didn't want me to know who she was while she wanted me to connect with her writing by keeping it open. Maybe she wanted it read by only a select few of her friends. I don't know.

Anyhow, coming to the second point, which was the original intention of this post, I am trying to use caps and periods for size - it's a new habit and my fingers are protesting and I having to delete two dots at the end of every sentence :) but you can give me feedback on whether this looks better. Language is an evolutionary science after all and maybe there are meaningful reasons behind a single "." versus "...". To me the "..."s have signified a continuation in my thoughts which never stop, but smoothly flow into the next one. That said, I will try to put a full stop, period.

That apart, I am happy that I have two new visitors for this blog and hope they continue reading it and be a part of my literary journey - how much more lively it is to graduate this internal monologue into a deep, fulfilling conversation!! And in the interest of taking off the air of depression around my blog, I will not mention my accident earlier this week and the unforgettable tragedy of seeing my precious black hybrid car (who is by now as good as a partner in crime, my almost magical portkey) being towed away. Miss you babe.

Have a happy week ahead my dutiful friends, and if you are not (dutiful that is) - the weekend is only 4.5 days away!

Love, m