When all the world is dead

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

- Wilfred Owen - Strange Meeting

The hours of the early morning have become for me a silent space of madness. I strive for hours, in vain, to find the comforting blankness of sleep, but I find nothing but a mirror image of my own insecurities staring me in the face, unblinkingly, not allowing me a moment's rest. And fear, panic, remorse, slide down into the pit of my stomach, as I toss and turn in bed for hours. Blood rushes to my head, I throw off the blanket. I seems heavy, hot, restricting. Then I cool down. The cold wind comes in through the partially drawn curtains and my arms and legs turn cold. I wrap the blanket around me again.

Where is solace? Where is comfort? Where is peace in the knowledge that someone is watching over us? Nobody is watching over us. We are alone, because nobody can be us, feel our fears. They can at best raise us up again, when we fall. But when we fall, we fall alone, alone and into a deep, dark pit. An abyss from where no light escapes. Darkness that is perfect.

I wait till dawn strikes the cold rooftops, warms the stones that pave the path outside. The birds cry, the world comes to life, and alone in his room, one weary soldier, one Septimus Warren Smith, falls asleep as in a trench, a muddy tunnel, blind, dark and womb like. Shrapnel rains from the firebirds, they fall like insidious words from deceitful lips. Shells are flying overhead. And all the world is dead.

Panic time is here. All I can do is press the adrenaline button, down shit loads of coffee and nicotine, and hope it works. But how is this any better than BA? What happened to my resolutions? Why have I not studied from before? How much of this overnight learning will stay with me when I'm trying to become a better academic and do my frikkin PHD? It won't. This kinda studying goes into my RAM, not my hard drive. Fuck man. How will I change. And more immediately, is there enough time now?

Oh, and apparently, I've been mugging up sonnets. Mug, mug, mug, like a braindead sleazeball oily haired classtopping motherfucker. Fuck you all. Go burn.

Cool Shoeshine

The world is spinning too fast
I'm buying lead Nike shoes
To keep myself tethered
To the days I try to lose

- Gorillaz

How can one explain just how good it feels to have the perfect pair of football boots? It's magical. My new boots are a nice plain white, made of soft 'classic' leather that has a faint glossy-smooth texture. The stitches are stamped on in elegant aerodynamic lines that run around the foot in curves, taking the shape of my foot, pressing the leather tight against my feet. The studs are the classic round types, giving me a nice firm grip on the ground. When you turn suddenly you can feel them clinging to the ground as you pivot, the studs scooping out grass and earth.

They're also just the right size. Something which is very hard to get when buying boots. With my customary double socks they feel snug as a second skin. They're not bulky like my last pair of boots. Even when wet they don't weight much, which is awesome. They give me the kind of ease of movement and ball control that keds give. I can take a ball down from a height with the softest touch with these boots on, they make me feel like a better player. They have that perfect curved shape that provides extra lift and curl when taking shots or free kicks.

And to make things even better, I have two new pairs of knee length Korono socks. They're perfect. Tight and elastic, you can pull them up over your knees if the game is getting rough. One is plain black and the other is plain white.

Combined with my boots the snug, tight socks make me feel fast. I run longer and harder and faster. The other day, I really pushed myself, like I used to in school. My muscles, weakened by the dengue fever, are coming back to life. We played for 2 hours, an hour of which was a challenge match against another team. I scored a goal from fairly far out. The type I dream about. Taking the ball down out of the air, in a tight space surrounded by defenders, I pushed past into a yard of free space, leaving the defenders behind me. With all my strength, zoned in on that one moment, where nothing but the ball and me exist, not looking up, not looking around, just focused, I let that ball have it. One of those let-it-rip type shots that fly low and fast, it zoomed over the keeper's fingertips into the top corner. It was awesome.

Stranger in a Strange Land

My mother was born and brought up in a world without TVs, without computers, without Cafe Coffee Day or Someplace Else. It was a world which had not changed much in all her years as a youth. As a result, she has trouble, today, playing a DVD on the computer.

I suddenly realized, that even I, born in 1987, am not truly a kid of the modern generation. I mean the really modern- The 90s born kids, say early or mid 90s. The ones just approaching adulthood now. You see, Calcutta changed a lot in the 90s and in this last decade. I remember the first few english movies I watched in a hall. It was a novelty. I think it was either Jurassic Park or E.T. For me, cable TV only became a reality after say, the age of 6. I forget when, precisely. But by the time I was watching comedy shows on StarWorld, cartoons on Cartoon Network and later Nickelodeon, I was much older. FTV was like the thing kids were talking about in school. "Man, I saw nipples on TV today! Real nipples!". Yes, we were horny schoolboys. Judge us if you will.

I get shocked by the kind of access children have these days. It's amazing! They can just up and switch on the internet (something which I first encountered independantly as late as the age of 16) and find out anything they want to know about anything. Wikipedia is at their disposal. For me, it was always this Encarta CD my father had arranged for. Encarta is an encyclopedia on a CD. It was quite something. My father was always ahead of his times.

The kid who lives next door, has been brought up on a diet of anime. I think these Japs really have a way of getting across to children with their exaggerated gestures and frantic voices. The kid loves anime. I watch him when he watches TV at my place. Hopping about, shouting, pointing things out to me emphatically. He's fascinating. I wonder if I watched cartoons this animatedly as a kid. Then I remember, not without feeling a tad envious, that I first watched Cartoon Network when I was almost out of early youth.

Maybe one day I'll have a boy of my own. I'll teach him football. That's the only thing I've decided for sure. It's one of my life's plans. High up on the list. But as for culture/information/education, I'll probably be lost. They'll probably be doing Quantum Mechanics in their minds by the time they're teens and I'll be like my mom- obsolete, enfeebled by the pace of evolution. Already, I struggle to keep up with the changing face of the world. I get dazed by South City. There's too much information to take in. I wander out of the shops, often leaving my bag behind, or doing something wrong. I take 15 minutes to book movie tickets automatically and supermodernly at a kiosk, using a plastic card (no human interaction, the miracles of modern day technology!). I am not of the supermarket generation.

I am a bumbling bangalee who speaks poor bangla. I am a would be avante-garde in an avante garden. A rebel in a reign of terror. A stranger in a strange land.

This is the last bit of something I had posted earlier. Couldn't leave it up.

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There is something very sick about a person who knows what he's about, doesn't like it, and still goes about it all the same way. Which part is lying? The part that says 'I know myself', or the part that doesn't like it? The latter, probably.

We're all proud of our little sicknesses. They make us who we are. In dark corners of our own mind, we stand on a stage, before an audience, and strip, then thrust our pelvises out and put ourselves on sick display. Banners all around proclaim, 'Freak! Freak!" People point and stare. Some put theirs hands over their mouths. We hope some faint. We turn slowly round and round on stage. We are reviled, we are cast out, painted black, ostracized, hated, shamed, abjected, spat out, loathed. And we love it. We are sick little freaks playing with our genitals on a stage, before a crowd. "Pervert! Pervert! Stop that!", they yell. Yes! Drive us on, whip us, scorn us, we cry. Then quickly we hide ourselves away. Wrapped in cloth and welting red all over, we sob in a corner, convulsing, rocking back and forth, arms wrapped infant-tight around our fragile selves. How fragile are our impenetrable shields! They prod us, they dent us with a thought, a word. But they'll never touch us, never know us. We are lost. We are God's lost little children. God help us? But God is dead. We are dead. But yet, we breathe, we open our eyes to a bleak sun filtering in through dark green curtains every morning. The sunlight makes listless patterns on the bed, and we wait on endlessly, for tommorow and tomorrow and tomorrow.