FUN and CARING

Microsoft Robbed me of my PC

The horrible and terrible experience it was ! that of having your PC all of your data and music too being robbed completely by the MNC , called Microsoft

It was nt armed robbery , But the plethora of Virus which caused my system to lose its data . I think XP windows was designed to invite viruses !

There she was …Breathing ,moving , slowly , with rhythm . .

Could music be seen , She was a song which I could see moving ..Towards me !

A love song to wake me up , She was a green dark chocolate tea !

A deep slumber of soul , A chrysalis of consciousness .. She woke me up ..

and I saw her , Awake , standing next to me .. I was dreaming only awake ..

Was she real … She froze the time around me so that I could see her clearly

We both saw each other , with no hurry , Time was ours !

Trivandrum ! The city is supposed to be the Capital of Kerala ! Being the capital , Well it qualitifies to be a representative of all that for which we Keralaites have become so famous for . Its as lazy as me on Sunday , Its as lazy as any other day of a Malayalee who is aimed at only one thing in his life ! How to relax and have a green Tea after a BiriyaanieE . Nobody is in a big hurry , Everyone wakes up , Then slowly has a look at the unread book of O V Vijayan (probably Khasaskinte Ithihaasam ) then adjust their lungi and then have a beedi ! Followed by tea and brushing of their teeth ! ( Smilie in face is very important for impression with early morning tuition going angels ! )

The city taught me , still teaches , Lazy living , To relax and to let go . To forgive time for being so cruel - It teaches you to live and it teaches you to enjoy Kovalam beach !!

I was always in a hurry , Of the three siblings , One elder and one younger sister , I was always the one who was the most panicky when it was time to go to school . Our school bus would start @ 6.30 , But I would be there by 5.45 atleast ! That is AM for you my friends . Even during the school I was always running in between hours , Homework , Tuitions , I excelled other kids .. I mean only in time management ! but .. Not exactly were these efforts to ..beat time ..reflected in my marks . Lets just say the lazy teachers got jealous with me for being so Punctual (see I even spelled it correctly this time ! ) Infact , I was so ahead of time and was completing the things , academic , sports , computers/karate/kathakali classes so much so that , my father thought that I would grow older for every years that I actually managed to grow .

Life came to a sudden halt … When I reached to Trivandrum ! THe great Kapitol city towers - To join Entrance Coaching centre called Zephyrs .. There it was all about …well how you say it .. Chilling ! Relaxing . . . Banana was always there , so was the chips , There was tea , lungi and twelve roommates ! To wake up early morning was a crime ! which was punished by the most cruel dispecable and unimaginative …teasing ever invented by primates ! and Myself the Pious Krishna Communist bakta that I was , I was the butt of all their poor imagination for almost the best part of three odd months , I continued to wake up . Then hours in the morning slowly started to extend my sleep .. I was waking later and later until , only day - On a saturday , I did nt wake up at all , I slept through the day !

I woke up a different man ! Saw Trivandrum for what it was !!

Sri Padmanabha Swamy ! - The Capital of Trivandrum !

Where else would you see , the lord - Krishna , Vishnu .. Lying down ! it was the epitome of relaxation , The god lying down , I mean I had seen Kali , She was in rage , boiling with anger (much like my mathematics teachers down generation) Then you have , Anantha Sayana ! , I loved him and liked him for being so relaxed about running the world and all ! He ruled the world , just lying down ! Chilling so to say ! He was the original Malayalee !!

SriPadmanabha must ve been very angry with me , for whatever reason , For perhaps still not having anyone of those beautiful girlfriends ..For perhaps , finding this strange malayalee affiliation towards Communism and red flags , Russia and China ! Laal Salaam !!

Erode !! Salem - Coimbature !

The only thing about Erode that I liked and loved was , how close it was to Salem , And to Coimbature ! , I just could nt say enough about the bus services ! Coimbature , Erode and Salem , You could find buses at any part of the day and night throughout the twenty four available hours with Two Television ( last time I went , I saw a bus with EIGHT T V WITH DVD and Vijay song playing full blast ) I mean clean shining , silver coloured buses , going to anywhere within Salem , Erode and Coimbature ! Erode taught me to travel - Erode was a city with a very famous railwaystation , It was an important railway station , Erode Junction - Place where all we hooligans of college would face off with our rivals who aimed the beautiful girls of our college , We inturn ogled at their girls and girls our boys and our college girls their college guys !! (well you see why my writeups are full of love failures and confusions ! )

So coming back to being serious - Yes , Erode taught me to travel - It was rather the virtual emptiness of the place where I stayed , It was surrounded by acres and acres of nothing , And on weekends , It would stare right at us , the empty corn fields and rice paddy fields , was such a scary sight ! if you are not sleeping that is ! So we would run , We would travel , To the end of the world as we knew it , Mostly we went to Salem , from Erode , then towards Coimbature then To Yercaud , Then to Ooty ! These places , They teased the traveller in me ! Lovely places ! They are made only for one thing , make a man want to travel , make him love the journeys ! For me the entire city , Erode , Salem , Coimbature , They are nothing but one big railwaystation ! With lovely girls ogling at me ! and I ogling at them and we meet and depart , and occasionally remember each other in Orkut !

Chennai !

Chennai - If at all anything Chennai had taught me , It must have got to be how to laugh ! It was a riot of laughter , Mostly I laughed at myself . It was not college anymore , But the girls were more beautiful and more friendly more bright not dummy ! Yet ..they were with all these qualities , more sisterly ! too ! ! yet only they warned me to remain always a few kilometers apart even when we called , talked and laughed together for hours . A place which taught me the sophistications of a relationship between a man and a man and a woman , Place which taught me how to remain superficial to appear Civilized , A place which taught me how to muffle my loud laughters with sinister sarcastic pointed jokes ! A place which taught me how to blog , How to regain my laughters through words shared through cyberspace , How to have my laughters clapped for and commented too ! ! A place which …. made me fall in love ! with all the memories and green tea ! - A place which I stay right now , Dusty polluted , ugly , cruel , Kind , Compassionate home ! of Kamal Haasan , Of Jayalalitha , Of A R Rahman , where I met , People whom I value most now and forever ! A place where I met the girl of my dreams in a training room !! where she broke my heart too ! A place which has beaches , RTO ! Traffic signals !! Too much to say ! all in just one post !

But all this ! is nothing ! Pales in comparison with the one and only place the hometown of all madness !! It is called KOTTARAKARA - But I could nt write about this place - Its top secret military intelligence of Kottarakara Grama Panchayat !

“But I dont want love , I want time , I want space , I need to breath ..But love as you give me , I dont want it . Its something which binds me . Which makes me feel obligated and grateful . It has no value or utility in my life . How will I trust you , if you prophese your love ! ? Your love sounds like a lie , A fiction ! ”
It was something deep and profound about love I discovered , It was about ..love and loving , It could never have taken place in a popular commercial cinema , The hero of the this movie , Is seen wooing the girl for a long time , almost years . He is seen sending her flowers , Saying sweet things to her , Always thinking and obsessed about her , He is attractive and rich enough to afford a relatively comfortable life . Yet the Heroine , She just does nt want to live with the guy , Ordinarily not even the audience , let alone the Hero is expected to understand the reaction of the Heroine ! But in this movie , He is seen to have understood , the decision of the heroine and decides to move on with life ! It was a relatively slow moving movie ! yet this moment was something which made all the slow screenplay worth it ! I was really small when I watched it , yet it was something which had haunted me for a long time to come . Even now ! It was an Art movie - A non commercial cinematic experiment of sorts ! It was not a movie about love , or relationship , It was perhaps a movie about two chappals .. and a bicyle ! A mystery movie of sorts . . But the movie had so much depth that each of the element that it had dealt with … had such insights ! such long tales to tell ! - I am not sharing the name of the movie ..To perhaps add to the appeal of the movie ..

Love as seen in commercial cinema !
In the entire history , Of Tamil/Hindi/Malayalam films that I have seen . None of them , Except for a really very few .. had escaped from Love . It was impossible to imagine a movie without love having been touched somewhere . Most of these movies ..had love everywhere . There was one guy in love with three girls at the same time , different times and all the time too . Those who claim to be really different with a brand new story is usually the ones with a twist , where the charectors will be married ! and still love (someone else ) he he - . Then there is the variety where a Gangster is seen loved and his subject of his love (somehow only in movies )the most decent looking gorgeous glam dolls simply fall for the most disgusting Tapori who just happens to be really good in heart (**whatever that means) . I often wondered , Why none of the movies show life after love . The movie begins with guy seeing the girl , Progresses when he/she/both/none proposes , Then there is denial , Then there is sadness/torment/revenge - And ends with the lovers being united . . . !! was that all . They make it sound as if all that there is to life and all that there is to happiness is just to establish a relationship / With Opposite sex ! That was the popular concept of entertainment as seen valid by successful film makers !

I think Love is just an overstated , overrated ,exaggerated male fantasy (in films that is :p ) , Films have portrayed love only like that . That is why perhaps most of the movie are so rigourously male oriented . The worst examples can be perhaps the Vijay/Ajith/Rajni movies of south - Here the hero of the movie is not simply heros , They re much more than super heros too - They are Tamil/Telgu/Kannada filmee Heros . It means .. That they can with a finger snap move back a running train , Split a bullet in half . With their eyesight burn a hole in Ozone ! and what not . usually they fight ..They dance .. ANd have atleast five heroines, barely dressed and always bathing …running crazily head over heals behind , ahead and besides them ,,These heros - (Someone just kill me ! )
I think love has become reduced to a simple element in a Grand film formula ! Love was nothing but something which is seen as an active incredient for a commercial cinema ! All genres of movies , Action , Tragedy , Comedy , Serious - All had to have a Hero , A heroine and some kind /Some variety of Love or some chemistry between them . What was wrong with the expectations of general public who made these films Commercially viable ! Have they lost their sensibility
Ofcourse I had this debate with a couple of friends who were consuming mainstream Vijay/Ajith/Rajni formula terrorism with religious fervour . They would eagerly await for the next film like they would wait for Diwali or Ramzan ! And I was completely at loss …What were they looking for ! Any new commercial film was actually nothing more than the Old wine in a slightly spruced up bottle . There was nothing new in films in terms of content or treatment that have differed substantially for the last fifty years (except for the offline cinema - Which get lost in Arthouse )
They had their arguement - The function of cinema is to entertain !
What was entertainment ! ?
Was entertainment just going to a cinema hall , Celebrating an ordinary looking moron , dressed in bright yellow , orange , flourescent green , Fifty years old he is and still acting as if he is doing college - Romancing girls slightly younger than his granddaughters neice ! Ofcourse , the songs ! the really crass vulgar lyrics and gyrating rhythms ! Yes but ofcourse the dialogues , I have NEVER seen in real life anyone blurting out such non stop gibberish and pass of as someone sane ! yet when these brightly coloured idiots do it , People , Employed and educated too - they whistle !
Is this a psycological disorder - A sort of mass hysteria where the popular taste for entertainment has so distastefully been declined !

Man was perhaps animal indeed - Man needed such saddisms . Ofcourse these commercial cinemas were full of sadistic pleasures the hero derives from beating up fifty guys ! The epitome of mass saddism is seen when you get a person getting beaten up all the time and still people passing it off as Comedy ! I am talking of vadivelu !
All of his movies he just ends up getting beaten up ! somewhat drastically and violently . So much so that if I see a guy getting beaten up ..or worse even murdered !! I would not react very violently ! it was just comedy right ! ?
What is art - Art is not something which only attracts money ! - Cinema was perhaps not art . It has become perhaps a voyeuristic exhibitionism ! A sort of crude commercial magic or even a circus ! where talents were being fed to the frenzy of popular taste - Is there no way out of this . Is Art or enlightening entertainment only deserved for a select few ! Will there be mass enlightenment ! ? Will someone with true and good understanding and insights use his/her talents to create something which was immortal . Cinema is something which had immense value in perhaps shapping the thoughts of a generation ! Now that kids and adults hardly read and only go to cinema on weekends for entertainment . It is perhaps something dangerous that a generation of movie goers are getting reduced to mindless viewers of crass , crude stories or ego centric male fantasies !
We need to change ! we need to produce more meaningful cinemas/Upcoming Directors ! As a start , I am stating five meaningful cinemas I have seen who/which had also been commercially successful ! (Please share me your favourite movie and directors list too )
Farhan Aktar - Dil Chahta hai ! - it was perhpas nothing entirely new , Such movies are seen regularly in Hollywood , Yet , it was simply most pleasurable to watch Aamir , Saif and Mr Khanna in action ! Such delicious screenplay , Simple real life pranks and scenes ! Kudos Farhan ! !
Shyama Prasad - Ore Kadal - It was very credible for Mammotty to have opted for a film which was not very conclusive ! it was perhaps one of the most sensitive films I had ever seen , Somewhat sad as well as painful to watch too it was , But the film always becomes a part of you ! once you have seen it with enough patience !
Cheran movies - This director must have got to be so bold , He makes realistic and sensible fims in Tamil and make it even successful ! Only the one problem with him too is that the over redundant theme of love ! ? why perhaps for reasons unknown !
Sasikumar ! - One guy who made all his debuts into super hits ! - Subramanya puram he was a debut director - Pasanga he was a debut producer , and in Naadodigal he was an actor ! , I am all praise for this guy and he is quite promising !
Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) - Adoor gopalakrishnan - A thorough intellectual excercise ! - Intellectual only in the attential for detail and perhaps treatment , Not though in the complexity !
I think we need to grow , Or rather accept and understand the complexity and nuances of - Life and art . We need to grow out of our fantasy of love , action , drama , - Cinema and art can also express these variety in a much more realistic way . Cinema need not lie to us or exagerrate our life or create fantasy for us . If we were adept in seeing such finely represented tales of oridnary life , Perhaps we too as a human population - Be sensible and sensitive to real life
Last but not least - Its high time , we stop being so obsessed about LOVE ! - Love is redudant and seen in Cinemas and my Blog ! as had been validly pointed out by one reader ! We need to deal with other things as well … It would be really grateful if any one could point out one successful Indian/Tamil cinema . which had no hero , no heroine , no LOVE !! Not anywhere ..Not even the love between friends ! ?? There will be a reward for those who claim more than five movies like that ! But you have to argue with me and prove that there was no love indeed !

Its a hopelessly inevitable reality which stares you in your face , Like the sun , The early morning sunshine . . . I m talking about being alive . As someone trapped in a body . A soul … A song .. Something incomplete I felt in me . It was her . My soul in a different body , other than mine . I think , I felt it . My soul . . The part of my soul in a different , beautiful , human form . Was it her .. No it was the morning . It was an illusion . . . Was it love ! Questions . . . Mind was alive and active . It was asking me . . It was wanting . . To know . Why I was .. I N C O M P L E T E

I , ME , YOU . Different forms of yourself to you ! Various forms of myself to me ! We are the biggest personality in our lives . It is always My father , My mother , My brother , My friends . My world . My Cosmos . We are all egoist . We all believe that the universe surrounds us . Well its not wrong , Its not a lie . It is but true that when you close your eyes . The world stops existing as the things you see . That when you die . THe world dies . The universe stops existing . . . . For you ! As what you see it as . You are the something which sees and recognises this world for what it is .. . .. For you !!

This personality that you got . Is the biggest gift that the random and hopelessly chaotic world by accident stumbles upon ! There is no particular reason why you are ! Alive .. and recognise that you are .. Alive . This is always something which is taken for granted . That which is accepted without being asked any questions . For someone who has also been gifted with avenues of material wealth , even dreams as coloured by fulfilled wants and needs .

Until you ask ! ? Until you see ! that you are incomplete

I was told once .. That love is a mirror on which you see your incompleteness .

I am an ordinary day , You are my sun , I am morning only when you smile

I am the silence which yearns to speak and I sing when you speak to me

You are the face of my soul , In my life , My soul , Its depth and its light !

Dont say no . Dont deny me with love ! Walk with me and let me grow

Sometimes you cant make it on your own , You need help to stay alive and see your soul . I know it is her , But she said no . I dont cry , I m not sad . May be not this life , May be not when I am alive , But I know my love is true . I let go . If it is true . It will come back to me ! It is but my soul , It wont let me die … . . . Alone !

This is supposed to borrow from the theme which was set earlier by a quiet and wonderful poetress of Ch1
and has been requested to be posted by yet another beautiful InDUlGed poetress . So this was rather forced than willing ! Yet I got to have my say - Especially since it says about .. Philosophers !

Checkout the link @

https://ch1blogs.cognizant.com/blogs/173015/2009/08/10/memephilosophers-of-my-life/

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As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate .

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This is from Alfred Camus’s Book the strangers , This is after the lead charector realises that Life is absolutely meaningless , purposeless. That life is Absurd ! He has this innate realisation thoroughout his life . Based on this conviction he does not believe in sadness , or regret , or remorse .In the story he kills an arab shooting him four times . It does not matter to him that the Arab dies in the very first gunshot . He just fires three more , Because of no reason ,It did nt matter because he was dead already . He fired three more shots and it was because it was absurd , He is sent to get the capital punishment . Just days before he is about to decapitated , He is able to realise that the loss of his life was as meaningless as any single insignificant events of this universe . As insignificant as any monday or thursday or friday of his life ,As insignificant as his mothers death . Utterly , absolutely meaningless . Its as if the entire universe was indifferent to the existance and events which happened in his life . The turning point in the Story is that .. there is a reconciliation , the utter dissillusionment with hope ..which is providing him with some sort of a relief .

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Albert Camus’s thoughts were significant in forming the founding stones for establishing Existentialism as a major way of thinking about Philosophy

Per Existentialism: Destiny is responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences, because one has free will; Truth is in being consistently honest and direct; despite being judged amoral.

That there is no meaning; and that is the only meaning. The individual who is the Stranger is a purposeless atom moved about in a purposeless void. Mere life, like mere death, is not even confusion. It is emptiness

Myself and Existential dilemmas of who? , what? , why ?I was !

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Existentialism came to me as a rude shock , As if being knocked down by a truck when you are about to make love to the flowery world , flowery words . All my life , I have been taught to go to temple , Pray , be gentle and chant . That God is . But existentialism and absurdism told me that .. God is a waste of his time and breath . Really , There is not a single man/woman/dog who sincerely believed in god . There is infact no belief at all .

You see , Does anyone believe in sun , No they dont have to believe , its an experience , Does anyone have to believe in sweetness of sugar , No its an experience . No matter how much you make believe that there is sun , There is no point for the one who is blind to believe in it . In case that experience comes , There is no question of belief . Just believe what you have experienced

Other Existentialist philosophers who influenced

Friedrich Nietishe , He claimed that God was dead . He was a hardcore German existentialist philosopher . His treatise of truth was as honest as it gets .

O V Vijayan , This mans literature is so very deep that , Each sentence was enough deep to have an entire lifetime dedicated to finding its meaning and significance and impact on you , On the things he says . One of his major works include - Pravachakante Vazhi ( Prophets path ) Khasakinte Ithihasam (legend of Khasak ) He was a very famous cartoonist . He was jailed for publishing damaging cartoons during the times of Emergencey . Each of his cartoons were a deep philosophical caricatures . So much every cartoon said .

Now I could nt complete the list of the philosophers who influenced me in a single blog , or a post . I needed a lifetime and all the words it could afford me to describe their influence , what they mean to every minute of my life and how they enriched me with thoughts and insights .

Life is much more than what you get to see , hear , and think it is . Its more than just words too . Its is an enigma . Its as deep as you are willing to let it influence you , As rich as you are able to think and analyse .

But I guess modern man has been trapped in his material quests . Man has to realise that essentially he is a thinking creature . He differs from Bacterial in functionality only in the fact that he is able to comprehend and understand . He is able to contemplate his own reality in terms of Past , Present , Future and PURPOSE !

Now this realisation is not easily triggered in everyone or anyone . It is but triggered by shocks .

Osho Rajneesh was one one man who gave me shocks which made me jolt out of the reality , superficial existance I was having

his question was simple - WHO ARE YOU ?

WHO AM I ? ? ?????

Easy , I am Suresh Kumar - But that is just a name , It could have been anything else . Now what if I was named - Shenoy Srinivas Sreeram , Or Srinivas Badekila , Then I would have answered was Srinivas , Or shenoy , Or sriram . You see then name , What I believe I am , is just a combination of alphabets which was deemed suited to name their child !
And If I believe that I was what I did , I would probably answer this question as , I was a programmer , Or a software tester . Again this was just a label to describe what I did for a living , how could it be me !

Such really stupid things people believe they are ! But really if you remove these labels - We realise that we are nothing - Nothing that we know us as what we are ! We are much more and nothing too . Lies and labels - Masks which are deeply engrained into our belief of what we are

I can not say anything conclusive , decisive about the philosophy that I believe in . Everyone has a philosophy they either consciously choose or rather unconsciously choose to believe in . It takes a sensitive and rational mind to realise their thought process . I guess the hungry man listens with his stomach . This world which is deeply craving for sensual and material things , Believes in Material capitalism .

We are exploiting the entire livable part of universe to cater to this insatiable hunger to experience material opulance . This hunger is a dangerous hunger . The hunger for Name , Fame and electronic equipments , Cars , Bikes , and Buildings , servants , wife , children and family name . We ought to realise that these things - Material things does not have any direct meaning or consequence to human existance or its purpose . That is why perhaps the best thinking mind , the finest brains must have escaped to either madness or to the jungle to meditate on its own significance

Dont be lost in things material - The really alive world is there calling you like a child to play with it . The world of thoughts and realisations . The world of enlightenment and Satori . Its human destiny , Its absurdity . It may be even love ! who knows .. Its a deconstructed reality - A reality which we know by our inferences with words and symbols - We can colour it with whatever we want to think it is - But to be brutally honest - Its an existential , deconstructed , elemental , building block —–this world !!