a mARTIAN dIARY

Balance. We humans as a race are obsessed with it. Every story, every song, every life needs to have a balance. The perpetual good vs. evil, where until the balance is restored no story is complete and if we think it is, we accused of thinking small, and encouraged to think from a larger plane of being. I am no different for however cynical I get (have got) there is that underlying glimmer that hope for it. Balance.

(Goodbye My Lover) And we have god, the great shopkeeper, ever ready with the extra cup of good or evil to set the balance straight. Life is easy for us, for the balance is out of our hand, and more importantly it exists controlled by some invisible strings. The connotations of helplessness that set in with “strings” make it too fatalistic and easy. But is it really that easy? For don’t we have enough tricks up our sleeve to control how the balance is distributed and aren’t we anyway too neck deep in our gentrified life to be not bothered, and isn’t the pain and joy that comes with this is what makes us live and not survive. And god there to ensure the balance of worry and bother exists and is maintained at the cosmic level. A contradiction ? Yes but one that, by virtue of working, ceases to be one

Just like me sitting here hoping that this vomiting of words is going to have an effect on the greater balance of the universe, which, even if it does, will be known to be only by my belief and not by my senses. At this juncture god revisits us giving the conviction for this belief to exist, becoming that self fulfilling prophecy which exists by virtue of its improbable inception and is equally true by virtue of its existence.

(So Long Jimmy) But too much of people to my liking, yet I am enjoying it. The contradiction is too strong and the urge of the reclusive side stronger. The darkness engulfs me, manifesting it in channels that I can easily accept without questioning my sanity. God comes in again this time in form of an urge to feel a temple. So I walk.

(Wisemen) Contradictions galore! My mind wavers at first, but then slowly draws comfort from the chord it strikes with the surroundings. The first part of my pilgrimage, or mental masturbation if you will, takes me about half an hour. In my loneliness James Blunt, gives me company making me feel lonelier, happier. His’ is a monologue, but I have nothing to add, nothing to contradict, only the need to listen.

And so I sent some men to fight,

And one came back at dead of night.

Said he’d seen my enemy.

Said he looked just like me,

So I set out to cut myself and here I go

(Same Mistake) The song is banging full volume thru my SE earphones, making me feel like a character from an Alejandro González movie, father time obliging , the world moving in slow motion as the headlights on a dark road look at me like sneering eyes and stares that pierce through the air conditioned interiors with filled disdain (or jealousy?) . I forget it’s the middle of the road. For a while the world stands still for me. The music penetrates deeper into my organism than what the stares could even dream off, a state of orgasm, but then the survival instinct kicks in guiding me to the footpath. The pseudo sense of machismo, creating a temporary hormonal in-balance, is countered by my sense of reality, at least at a subconscious level. The veracity of the situation is lost in my consciousness but captured fully by some vague part of me to whom I owe a lot. Probably some fuzzy act of cosmic balance to ensure that this piece gets written or just that I brush tomorrow? I understand the pretence of the situation but it does not take anything away from what the moment is to me.

(Your Beautiful) The ground grows softer, as the soiled remains of the deconstruction work that is currently going on in Delhi gets solace under my feet. Their new resting ground, as the city marches on into its tryst with new India. Is something under your feet trampled or is it protected till its eventual erosion from our memory? The contradiction strikes me. But for now the imprints that I leave on the soil, only to be washed by the next rain, gets some hope of care and remembrance in the picture that I take.

(1973) Images of 21 grams flash through my mind as I see rolled up glass left scattered after the last accident. My mind wanders into the realms of absurdity as I think about the people involved, and their family. About how it would feel for a kin to come back to that place which lay witness to the last few moments of a life never meant to leave so soon. To see a leaf dancing to the wind in front of their eyes, the same leaf that bore the weight of the splash of blood so close to that what runs in their veins? To have time running parallel and be able to reach out and touch that leaf during its herculean moment or smell the flesh blood but be unable to do anything. But eternal return consoles me with the knowledge that each moment, from your birth to your death all run parallel, not interfering with each other, but existing for an eternity. For it is the same with a book that one reads with each character reborn, different yet similar, in each mind that it comes across, sometimes taking more, sometimes less life that what the author intended more dependent on the neural pathways and experiences of the mind than the words from which it came, each stream running parallel to one other.

Balance. My hunt for balance is successful as I finally see the gate back to the campus at a distance. The sight is broken by involuntary pangs closing my eyes as James engages in his final vocal gymnastics for the day. And then all things in the world seem to fit again.

The cell phone had become a part of me, feeling totally incomplete when it was not around. And yet I realize that the only thing that completed me was that voice. Otherwise It wasn’t even worth the scarp metal if he didn’t call.The world without him felt empty…or actually there was not world at all since he was my world.

Every single moment I didn’t hear his voice was wasted time. Every breath of his I missed was a wasted lifetime.

Love is defined beautiful, but it’s emotions were too complex and faded to tag them right or wrong. Sentiments were plenty, even those which did not have an explanation. And yet obsession plagued  my love.

There were scribbled signatures I didn’t throw off. Those were cherished memory to me, but may be crap to him. It bounced back the smile on my face from the lost moment. There were flowers, guarded by my book leaves. Dried though they were, it brought back the lingering fragrance of the one time gift of love. To others it might seem like crap, but those were the things nearest to my heart

but why was it that he never had even a paper flower that once knew my touch. Why was it that he never saw my eyes puffed red, though the tears held, as they were thrown crushed into a waste bin. A moment shared under a tree together was bliss to me, but happiness to him was when he ran around with his gang.

The urge of wanting to be the priority in his life, was un-detachable from love. Love provoked to seek attention. Jealousy was an emotion termed bad, but yet in love they arose in heart for those who got his time and those who felt his eyes.
Pain gave way…revealing that you don’t always need a knife to pierce the heart.

Silly it would be, to the watching “world” sentiments might look foolish. But though the “world” to me, was… only you and me.

Douglas adams hit the nail right at what is probably the most dangerous of all human…living traits…when he realized that any universal book on how to survive (cue H2G2) would have to start with

DON’T PANIC !!!

Evertonians around the world are a worried lot today. After all the positives of being a club on the progress last year, finally breaking the pattern of following up a strong season with a weak one by two successive strong finishes, most blues were more optimistic at the end of last year than they were the season we finished  4th.

But with all the bubble built up with names, from as exotic as the Russian magician to as unknown (to me) as the African enforcer, the bubble has finally seem to reach its limit with everything starting to go wrong at least on the surface creating the negativism that I  find online and that exists offline. Of course being a blue from India, I am far removed from the “real” picture happening on the ground, but I can still sense that general sense of despair that is being felt by us blues.

Many a times fans have been frivolously been accused of being away from reality, more as a form of protective rationalism on the part of vested interests , be it the different clubs or the media, but this is one case where I think we are actually refusing to leave our blue heaven and come down to earth.

Looking at out squad, one can only help but wonder who we are going to but the 11 + 7 people on the bench as the season progresses and this is truly a major cause of concern. But what we fail to understand is that the global economy is facing a credit crisis. Once we internalize this fact and take off our blue tinted spectacles off for a moment, we can see certain things.

• There is a global banking crisis and credit is getting harder to get for a football club or any institution for that matter. This is not really a good time to take out loans if we cant realistically project where the money is going come from.

• There are chances for as slump in the economy and this can lead to lower expendable income and football is one of the things that, at least for the less passionate of the fans will cut down from their budget. From what I perceive this is something that will affect Everton less than other clubs because the very fact that our catchments area is lesser compared to London clubs making us a relatively bad investment choice, will work to our benefit for the kind of club loyalty we have from out “small” catchments area but none the less there can be a decrease in the amount of people coming to matches and this must be accounted for

•  Just because other clubs are spending heavily does not automatically make it the best thing to do. I want to quote the oft repeated example of ManU’s golden years to drive home this point. We have good players coming through and not spending heavily and accepting a mediocre (as in maintaining our 5th spot rather than going all out for a 4th spot)  season might be the best thing to do. This is not a pessimistic plea for us to lay waiting while the other clubs to buckle down and implode under financial mismanagement but more a plea for a pragmatic look at the transfer scene and credit situation of today. Going in with Rodwell, Kissock Baxter and Gosling etc may actually be heralded as one of the boldest management moves in the history of club football if the Moyeasiah is able to pull it off.

• From my basic understanding of finance, the real “extra” money for a club comes from the world wide merchandising and not winning and this is one place we are lagging behind. But the thing to note here is that we have taken some concrete steps to alleviate this problem and should be able to reap in the benefits in time. But again this is not something that will happen overnight and we need to give it time rather than lament about the “gap” between us and big four and then try solving it the “leeds” way.

To conclude, I would like to say that, the general negativism is understandable, but would urge blues all around to take a closer look at the financial and practical side of things before writing us off.

Everton Forever.

Njaan
That what defines me
That what am me?
But something that is getting sold?
Am I different from the virgin whore
blinded by the dazzle of city lights and glamour life
Ready to sell something that was never hers
People tell her “To experience heaven, you have to die first”
But does feeling alive come at the cost of total numbness?
And what really does an acquired taste mean?
A privilege experience that fulfils its joy
But its mere non existence to others

For is the virgin night violated by the stars
Or are they what make it timeless, limit less
The discontinuity helping us realize the infinite stretch
That otherwise would be lost in total darkness
But isn’t a spotless sky as mystic and divine
And does it have to feel infinite to be infinite?

Being in deep shit teaches you a thing or two
An excuse to break bonds
That probably shouldn’t exist anyway?
But they have been there and will be there
So who are we to question?
Both the bonds and the breaking
Nothing might be forbidden anymore
But this and that and this will always be there

For one who can see beauty in the smallest things
Can taste the water in the subsequent drinks
And the hidden emotions of the waiters who see
People breaking bonds everyday
And breaking their limits as well
But to them is it anything more than a charade?

(Written in a party)

the warmth starts with a spurt
it spreads as it flows
for some its dirty
for some its life

as the warmth grows
part of it disgusts you
other makes your wonder

is contradiction its truth
the truth of life
is hipocracy the expected norm

or just a human trait?