I saw God

I saw God.

I saw God in his kitchen. He was white Jesus with blue eyes, blonde hair and a Palestinian outfit. I don’t know what that is, but he was wearing one. He had just created the earth, it was a dark little sphere that hovered over the palm of his hand as he lifted us up, and in amongst the orbits. Our planet was alive, an individual, we were like the specially gifted. We started doing the ellipses; we were assigned time. God watched the wind and the rain and the oceans and the land appearing in the daytimes, he saw the little baby feet and the lines on our hands, the number of hair strands, he saw us in all hurt, love and other intimacy. 

And then we invented electricity and the lights appeared through the swirl of clouds. The cities expanded. Everything brightened, darkened and then burned to bright to see. 

And I woke up. The guy who comes to haul our garbage was yelling at the gate. 7:00 AM, an impossible time for me to wake up - this can’t be true? 

I went out all mopey and “morning dazed”, mopey even and shook his hand, confused out of my mind; I should have told him I saw God too.

Colour pencils and small shots of espresso.

I love it when I go to the Irani chai places I frequent and someone comes over to drop off a pen or pencil – or as was last night – colour pencil that I had left behind the other day. There’s something welcoming about the experience, a sense of facilitation.

Someone told me that with the development thats been going on, the Irani chai places are dying away. Sounds like a myth although once in a while I do find one or two of the several that I frequent, quite suddenly abandoned and derelict. I’ve been breaking code and going to the Coffee Days, which would incense several of the few writers in this town that I know. However, my reasons are; the crowd that swings by these - 70/- Rs. a shot of espresso - places, they're interesting and sometimes entertaining people to watch. Although I’m sure that with my scrawly hair, a week worn jeans and repeated T-shirts, not to mention manic scribbling and other hyper-chondriac dramatics, I would make much of an amusing spectacle myself.

I like befriending the waiters at these places, their usually lower-middle class young people serving the upper-middle-class pseudo-classy youngsters and large lap-topped business execs. I was a waiter once, clearing tables, serving bottled water, spitting in the soup, very rarely do you have someone really appreciate service - and not oh so completely ignore you as a part of the furniture.  Sometimes, talking to these waiters, just thanking them causes expressions of bewilderment, like they're not sure they've just heard you. A little bit of recognition goes a long way, I mean isn't that all anybody wants - to be recognized?

I’ve also found that you can get a regular table reserved to write at whenever you want, and other customers are then steered away from your writing vicinity, you can get your own music playing. And sometimes, there is free smaller desert-ery. Which is always rewarding. Once in while, someone will sit down and tell you their story. This used to be fun the first six or seven years of writing, whats remarkable about it is the trust that strangers are able to put in each other, its as if isolation is what the real world is made up of, for a while at least.

To conjure & revive old spirits & other blogs

The worst thing about being able to write, is to come back to it some time later and read, and realize that, not only is it not bad writing, but its actually good, well the worst thing about it all - is that - all time spent not writing feels like this great mass of wasted opportunity; a time that will be accounted for on some great day of judgement; which is of course is a self-prescribed hell. Kind of similar to the exactness of now; sitting here being in this time and place, feeling sorry for oneself, writing away about how hard the writing is and how shittily the time wasted has been spent. Swallowing at every re-reading and re-sentencing. The desire for cigarettes and alcohol suddenly making perfect sense.

I wonder if she's looking for that blue smeared paint brush, theres still the smell of her hair on it, and the turpentine. Every things getting dark, too dark to see, like in the song...


http://acoffeeshop.blogspot.com/

Stretching over an essay on procrastination

My essay on time-management is divided into:

Defining procrastination
Putting it into context (its universal)
Why it is dangerous

I conclude with a battle cry that rings out about the benefits of alarm clocks throughout the day. My action item for everyone is simply to get up & fight.

In our streams of thought - people tend to over think themselves into terrible scenarios of what could happen if they did, what it is they are supposed to do. A task - that may seem daunting. The fear is of failure. Tendency then makes abandon what we're supposed to do.

The whole thinking process is procrastination, once fear affects rationality & subdues all sense into "No, its not going to work out" we back out. Later, one may regret, or maybe things will turn out differently & one will be able to say, “heck, I didn't do what I could have - but things now aren't so bad, what difference would it have made? The difference is, that you'll never know, because you never tried - but now sitting around to think about what could have happened - is procrastinating all over again. Ultimately, its about not getting bogged down into apathy & our personal zones of idiosyncratic meditating upon.

Thoughts, feelings & ideas must be broken down & molded into preparations on what one needs to do, the solution is, waking up in the morning to make sure it happens before one starts turning bitter.

I'm reading Malcolm Gladwells's new book, The Outliers. A part that struck me in his writings goes so - "A man who wakes up at dawn for 365 days a year cannot fail to make his family rich." I suppose to put it similarly, if you know what you can do & what you need to do about what you really want or believe in, wake up & work it through. Work at it hard enough, long enough & most importantly, be smart about how you are going about it.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book is interesting because he’s talking about how successful people don’t get things done of their own, but with the help & belief of the people that life surrounds themselves with.

In school our English Literature book had a story of an Athenian called Theseus, I don't remember much of the story, but in his adventures, Theseus met a man, his name was Procrustus, & he was called, "The Stretcher".

The Undiscovered Self: A Short Review

Religion and state, be it monotheistic or polytheistic and democratic or communist, by and large have made the individual, bereft of uniqueness, an unimportant unit among the crowd. The repercussions are loss of touch with his/her inner-self and the unfolding of history as we think we do but do not know it. This is an apologetic work prompting an individual to look inside him as opposed to outside in order to make the world, which is always one moment closer to its self-destruction, a better place.
Carl Jung asks it is time, back in the 50s, we stopped pointing our fingers at the Devil for the crimes of humanity and embrace our inherent duality: the self-knowledge of capable good and evil within. This is a small book that asks questions and posits provocative reflections as big as life itself. Jung at times is found to beat around the bush, nonetheless never fails to get to the thoughts that are of in vision existentialist and universal welfare.

The Joker RIP

Great that Ledger won Golden Globes. Rourke winning the lead is great too. The Dark Knight and The Wrestler are the two best movies I have seen last year followed by Slumdog. Curious Case is flawed though stunning in flashes. Slumdog is brilliant the first half but loses grip as it closes in on climax. Great camera work and editing gives it an edge aside from narration. The Dark Knight is the true masterpiece at all levels. Piss off Globes, come the next big thing.

clocks

It’s a regular evening, with the tedium of turning clocks. Nothing poetic or literary to say about it; only an opportunity to use big words.

The sun continues its steadfast decent, exactly the same pace that clocked the steadfast sunrise, a regular evening plagues a person, life descends on this person, the missed opportunity of what must have and could have been his – a beautiful morning and a day filled with objects of desires and purpose; the pursuit of human endeavor. [cntd]

http://pradeeprajendran.blogspot.com/

What Is and What Isn't

It is a sunny winter afternoon
Back looks the ghost of year past
Floats the blind ghost of year present
Front looks the ghost of year after
Sadness is in the eyes of ghost past
A thick veil hangs on ghost present
Terror blinding in ghost future

It is a cold winter midnight
Back goes the ghost present
Replaces the ghost of past
Front comes the ghost future
In place the blind ghost of present
Back goes the ghost past
To fill in for the ghost of future

Their creator says to its creator
What is between is the significant gap
What isn't between them is dialogue

HELP improve this Blog's structure. mandatory.

Greetings people, fellow Writers

I don't mean to be a killjoy but I should have thought this through when I started Moderating this blog.

Problems we have:
1. Clutter: too many words are often overwhelming
2. We need to give this Blog more interaction, if I open a page and see the dominance of one post, the interaction and previous posts tend to loose out

Solutions:
- The word limit for each post [on the main blog] is approximately 200 words. [between 200-250]

- If one wants to continue writing, post the 200 words and then add a link to your own blog [this gives space for diversity, your own pictures slideshow, your own template etc]

- For a continuing post [beyond your 200 word quota]- add square brackets [read more] - a link to your blog.

Whatever we write must be able to fit into a particular section:
- Poetry
- Prose\Story
- Religion\Philosophy
- Reflections on Life \ Random thought
- Movie Reviews
- Book Reviews
- Travel\Culture

We can add on these classifications as we go along. Everything is connected so there will be a crisscross of classifications in posts, but its a good thing for keeping a theme\classification in mind when writing, it helps hold the posts together.
Use explanatory Headlines for what the post is about including subject:

E.g. Movie Review - Name of the movie
I’ll post an example of what I have in mind shortly.

And guys\girls

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Mindless Wings: An Ode to an Insanity Called Terrorism

You shall not have what you toiled for,
The Bliss of Virgins your mind made to yearn.
There is nothing meta-real but things real.
All that is given shape to bursts not into life
Only because imagination gives them mindless wings.

I am one such immutable form given breath to,
I live in peccable minds and Holy Scriptures,
Indeed the prime of that shall never be,
In their ancestral deception, in their living dread,
To rationalize the tragedies life is made of.

Ancestral Cry:
Tears are our genuine friend
Bitterness and honey blend

At an age when merciless beasts preyed on them,
Thunderstorms sent chills down their spines,
Deaths of kins froze the blood in their hearts,
In the caves of hopelessness and evolving madness,
I was created fastidiously in the image of human.

I have been righteous and yet not,
Omnipotent, omniscient but not at all,
Creator of ever is yet created out,
Blesser and punisher but whose pawn.
I have been What I Am yet Am Not.

Another Cry:
In our heart is your palace
Wherein found your best solace

In the minds of human I Am and Am Not.
I am half there if only in this world.
In another I shall never come to pass,
Let alone things glorious surrounding me,
You wanting to reap what you did not sow.

Paradox me with your scintillating insensibility,
Enlighten me on your lifeless dreams, son, un-son,
How on earth can you take lives, throwing your own,
Claiming proudly the Greater Life shall be yours.
What good is sinking in a river of self-deception.

Yet Another Cry:
Wherever is your absolute vengeance Lord
We shall sharpen your double-edged sword

You have been an unavoidable horrible means
To the madmen’s obscured ends they never saw.
Oh! How I wish in minds I never was conceived.
What so far in millennia persistently eluded me
Now is laid crystal-clear to me why I am so unreal.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army sadly does not fare well neither for a filmmaker (Guillermo del Toro) whose forte is dark fantasy nor for a franchise that is deeply rooted in mythology and occult in the graphic medium. My rebuke is more so because the film has the writer/creator, artist aboard as screenwriter. Sin City had Frank Miller aboard and it is history. Perhaps, Sin City is a hard act to follow, that is, without deviating from the standard set by for a fictional world in the graphic medium. Well, no, look at what Nolan has achieved with the Batman universe. Nolanverse deviated from the graphic medium yet inspired every bit from it adding a great deal to it. To critique the former in light of the latter, the translation is overall tragic and bleak.

It would be wrong to say I didn’t enjoy the film at all. I was awestruck by the portrayal of magical creatures, namely Tooth Fairies the seemingly adorable tiny things with wings, until a bunch of them feed on a live human and display his skeleton in a minute; the Troll infant that says I am not a kid, I am a tumor grown out of the interrogated Troll; surrealist Cathedral Head, who provides Princess Nuada with the map, with crown like miniature cathedral and a goblin that has wooden cart for back; and the Angel of Death who ironically helps Hellboy survive. Del Toro is at his finest when dealing with surrealism and magic. When comes to connecting it with the alternative world is where his film falters. He did it with his seminal Pan's Labyrinth, alas! Not here. Mignola's Hellboy is a demon who chose to fight for planet earth instead of being its destruction. Such a protagonist and his surrounding world are brought to life in a horror series inspired by folklore in graphic genre. But this is like uninspired Harry Potter and Narnia series that haven’t been touched by the light of Lord of the Rings or Nolanverse.

RATED 5/10; MISS IT BUT NOT AT MY EXPENSE

Sequential Art and Hollywood Pact!

What if some of the finest works in literature are shelved in comics section where one would fear to be spotted and mistaken for a giant kid? I must eventually confront my onlooker. So, I call him forth and point to him the tag at the back of the cover that reads “Suggested for Mature Readers,” and The Comedian molesting Silk Spectre from the pages of Watchmen or Dream Lord cutting Lucifer’s wings off from Season of Mists, and read from Rorschach's Journal in Watchmen, “The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll look down, and whisper 'no.'” Now you may wonder if such materials are thus shelved. Yes, I am positive, and I am thinking a great deal telling the shop guys to put such titles in the top shelf where it is unreachable to a kid except, of course, if he be a giant. Graphic Novel, the pioneer of the medium Will Eisner suggested it to be called, so they now call it: a genre directed towards adult readers.



Hollywood’s pact with this medium is history in itself. A work that serves as storyboard to the other no surprise must be in its hunting A-list. Alas! But there was something devised by the god of that art form that made it so unique left the other yet cracking the code. When discussing the nature of comic art in an essay written in 1985, Alan Moore asked: Rather than seizing upon the superficial similarities between comics and films or comics and books in the hope that some of the respectability of those media will rub off upon us, wouldn't it be more constructive to focus our attention upon those ideas where comics are special and unique? Rather than dwelling upon film techniques that comics can duplicate, shouldn't we perhaps consider comic techniques that films can't duplicate?

Nearly all of Moore’s works translated to films have turned out to be tragedy, From Hell to Constantine, excepting V for Vendetta to an extent. Now, his seminal work Watchmen is being filmed, a work that once was said loudly to be un-filmable by screenwriters. This Graphic Novel—a heavy meditation on the pitfalls of masked vigilantism, impending nuclear warfare, amorality of so-called heroes, and the corruptibility of power set in the backdrop of an alternative America that had won Vietnam War; one giant twisted beast containing in itself brilliant panel-to-panel transitions, red herrings, tongue-in-cheek characterization, overlapping storytelling tricks—for all my worthy bets must take a trilogy to flesh out faithfully on silver screen. To do it in one film, and even portray half the brilliance the original work has, should be nothing short of a miracle and a stroke of genius.



For now, I must wait and watch.

Delicate Silence

Delicate is the silence that keeps away from noise.
Like dark corners that stay away from sunrays.
The delicate silence that hears no sound, but its own.
The silence that does not drift past, but stays.
The silence that does not speak up, but still says…
The quietest of moments are the noisiest,
But keep the promise that objects make to surroundings.
Delicate it is, the silence, and breaks not due to sound,
but due to its aim to isolate itself.

FASHION by Madhur Bhandarkar

Have you guys seen this movie?
I believe it is the the weakest execution by Madhur Bhandarkar ever.
Did he do a research on a variety of subjects and then decide that it would be safe to call it Fashion?
I don't know. Where is the spark that he showed in Chandni Bar?
Where is the smart direction we all witnessed in Corporate?
Where is the reality-edge that Page 3 carried and shook us?
I guess this is where Madhur Bhandarkar is transforming from a real-film maker to a real film-maker.

http://pradeeprajendran.blogspot.com/

unedited. uncut and unashamed. I'm still working on this
You can send feedback. Grammar Sucks incredibly.

http://pradeeprajendran.blogspot.com/

Corruption

Where did it all start?
Did it start due to our government’s negligence to issues that are important, but are buried somewhere in the rack of old files?
Did it start due to the young generation’s transparent protest for a better society, which slowly transformed into an opaque and endless disagreement?
Or did it start in the insignificant goals of these decision makers who are not leaders, but solicitors of our country’s values for money.
I’ ll tell you where it started.
It started in our minds. It started because of lack of determination.
It started because we allowed it to start.
And it goes on because we all allow it to go on.
It started from the extra bucks we pay to get our jobs done quickly in government and private offices.
Let me tell you something.
India has amazing guidelines in theory, but not in practice.
Why is that?
It is because our opinion leaders fail to reinforce them at the grass root level.
Let me ask you a question.
How do you know that the money in your pockets right now is white or black?
How do you know where it came from?
I won’t be surprised if the money in my pocket has come to me, roaming from a poor father who paid an unnecessary donation to admit his child in the school.
It must have come to me, roaming from a retired citizen who has to put his assets at stake to make sure he gets his pension.
I don’t know.
I wont say all of us, but most of us have witnessed corruption and not many of us have made an attempt to stop it, or even question it at that point in time.
Even if we believe that we are not responsible for all this, we should understand that we need to be responsible enough to put an end to it.
I can see a lot of opinions building about what I said. I hope it also builds the determination in you to challenge the corrupt system and get an optimistic reply called change.

An unremarkable existence

An unremarkable existence
is like a quickly smoked cigarette.
that life will be short.
like shortcuts lazy people take
cigarettes shall cause short lived writings.
they will bring down a curtain of smoke
and death by asphyxiation.

Shards

In darkness
Alone 4a smoke
An open door to the roof
Beams across the light

The quiet & light shatters
Explodes with several tinkles
Barefooted in the dark
Walk around & prevent being shard-ed
Heightened state of fear; the idea of pain
Bulb fragments & tungsten?

How many bulbs blew up in Edison's face,
He was saying that Genius was a % of inspiration & 99% perspiration
The light bulb is a connection

Walk in circles
Walk a random pattern
Walk the chances of being shard-ed
Walk the smoke

Feetless for a few days
Brainless for life
Gamble, its all a half chance

Chance, Louis Pasteur saying; Gamble, it favors the prepared mind.

The walker didn't get shard-ed
I'm footloose & free
& a real oddity

Writer's Block

Question:

How do YOU as a writer deal with "Writer's Block"?

Cinema Paradiso

Noon after noon, he comes to see her. Her haughty talk makes him dream and as she sways his eyes widen. She rarely looks at him but he senses the corners of her eyes.

“I know… I know…,” he tells himself laughing silently.

“Dali would have painted you but I can only write,” he regrets and scribbles secretly in the tiny book he always carries. When the music comes, she sings and dances, and everybody whistles at her.

“Love me, baby”, they all shout and scream from everywhere around him.

The medley puts him off. “I wish I was the only one who could see her,” he curses at the people around him. Whenever she goes away, he starts scribbling hurriedly; and she shows up again.

Even in the evenings he goes to see her, again the same act, music and medley. The only time he misses her is in his sleep. The movie ends but her act, never. For he knows, she’d come tomorrow again.

“I know… I know…,” he tells himself.