Revisiting Kerouac on the road......

So this one time, at office, I was getting bored. So I downloaded the pdf version of Kerouac's On The Road again. Was reading it after almost two years. Since college.

Till date it happens to be his most talked about novel . Ramblings inspired by the drug-fueled cross-country car rides that Kerouac made with Neal Cassidy (1926-1968). Since then it has become the face of 'beat prose' as well. I somewhere read that when his friends did not like On the Road, Kerouac started to write inserts to patch up the work. These grew into a new book. Although Ginsberg considered it a "holy mess", he did not change its rambling style and discontinuous structure which had the improvisational quality of jazz.

Sal Paradise is a young writer who life takes a wild course as he meets Dean Moriarty, a crazy young man, previously convicted of several crimes including car theft. Dean comes to Sal to learn how to write. Together they go drifting around America, and testing the limits of the American Dream. Through rural wilderness, sleepy small towns, urban jungles, endless deserts-all linked by the road, they go looking for a vent for their expression and find freedom. Often finding pleasure in sex, drugs, and jazz.

Sal Paradise says: "life is holy and every moment is precious", which explains why Dean" seemed to be doing everything at the same time". To describe the likes of Dean, Kerouac writes," It's in prison that you promise yourself the right to live." And probably we all relate to it someway or the other. Especially if we have a bad habit of being optimistic about things.

Sal loves his homeland, especially the grandeur of its landscape, the variety of its people. But it is changing, and he is disappointed by the change at times, like when he tries to sit on the banks of the Mississippi River and is stymied by a chain-link fence. There seem to be two sides to everything. The vast emptiness of the American West can either fill the spirit or be the epitome of loneliness. On one side is Terry, the pretty Hispanic worker Sal spends a couple weeks with in California, and on the other are the suburban teenagers who shout at her from their cars. There is Dean, who is the spirit of the West, and the suspicious policemen with power who eternally pursue him. Sal's dreams of America are both realized and parodied, as in his first trip to the West, when he is happy to see real cowboys, but also sees the hokey Wild West festival in Cheyenne, and the tourist town of Central City. All the gold that was mined out of Central City is being returned to it in the form of tourist dollars. It is an America which is still plagued by class and racial divides, but changing rapidly.

"On the Road" is about experience; it tells tales of mad and the best minds of a generation destroyed by such madness evoking only feelings of confusion.

ON THE ROAD races like a mad man desperately looking for his something that he still can't define. A mad man looking to break away from servitude, a man who lives in all of us in some form or the other.

Aaj tebhaga chand er raat......tai sabdhane ghumiyo

Now this time around another software and hardware giant is coming out with an internal newsletter from and for the marketing division in one of their South-East Asian sectors. And our hero sitting in his copywriters desk has to visualize the neo-imperial effort. And thus his neo-intellectual socialism takes a back seat. Farmers are being slaughtered and their land taken away by once upon a time neo-communists, in his homeland. His city is in shambles.

"Millions of brothers in woe and Millions of sisters crying.
Millions of mothers in distress and Millions of fathers dying....." or something like that. And he is compelled to think about how this MNC has established its ground in Vietnam. Vietnam O' holy Vietnam. Vietnam and Cambodia.....And Burma and Singapore and Sudan......And Africa.......Is he really compelled to think like that? Is he thinking like that? Is.....

'Tebhaga chand utbe aaj raate"

.....Tonight is the night of the one-third moon.......And somewhere a fire shall find someone to burn......The curse of the undead will strike you down.....You in Palm Avenue......You in Salt Lake.....You in Bhowanipur......And you in Siuri........And in Gopalpur Panthanibash.......Or at Claridges.......or.....Maybe, this once, only once in Lenin Sarani........


"Tumi jouban ke merecho.....Etodiner tomar somostho sokti diye jouban ke merecho......Sei mora joubaner saap ebar tomake lagbe......"

The story of 25%

And it's that time of the year when you swear hard at life.....The biggest party of the year is calling upon you....that also home ground....and you are forced to turn a deaf year to the lures of indulgence....Friends are getting married....Friends' bothers are getting married.....Brothers are coming home for far away lands.....With new born members of the family....And I just sit in my fuzzy cubicle....with half-formulated dreams....Desperate to go home....And seeing my plans being massacred by 25%....Now naturally, you who is reading this, would probably wonder what 25% am I taking about....But that not the point of this discussion....The point is I am sad....And I have only one apple on my desk when I want to eat many of them....And the qawali at the Dargah at Hazrat Nizzamuddin Aulia starts in another 1 hour....I want to be there.....I can't......because of twenty five stupid percent..... I need a house to stay in.....I need new shoes.......I need a new job.....I need a car.....Thankfully life.....That I have one.....And I will gladly keep it.

Thus Capital

It’s always foggy these days. Have I mentioned Delhi that you forgot to mention winter was coming?

So many wrongs you commit each day. And you still dress up gorgeously and walk the streets in your high leather boots and leather jacket and your pink bustier.

Your neon lights brighter that glitter at Chandni Chowk.

As Navratris are followed by Diwali. Diwali followed by the mood of Christmas. Christmas followed by New Year’s.

The cheap liquor, the broken verses of confession…

Where are you, repenting?

Did you not bother to think again before whoring yourself out to your new friends

In their Mercs and their Audis?

Did you not wince upon finding yourself in bed with Big Mac and KFC and ever wonder what happened?

The warm evenings at Karol Bag blanketed with the fragrance of incense sticks,

The aura of Paranthas at Chandni Chowk and the Kebabs at Jama Masjid…

Where is the solemn walk of broken hearts near North Campus, and makeover. And lonely dinner at Majnu ka Tila?

Where are the old souls…on your sidewalks ?

Burn boy, burn

The bird proudly willing to burn,
So that he may live again,
Chooses the flames of fires
That burn the aged Phoenix
The nature stands still
Till a new young bird starts again,
and begins the legend of the Phoenix.

- Claudian (Roman author)

Legend has it that one day many many moons ago; the Sun looked down and saw a large bird with bright red and dazzling gold feathers. The Sun God blessed him, "Glorious Phoenix, you shall be my bird and live forever!"

Since then it has been the destiny of the legendary bird. It lives and a time comes when it loses all the energy to live anymore. It is then that this creature sets to self immolating itself. But the blessings of the Sun God don’t wane away. The Phoenix’s ashes accumulate energy for new life, as the bird rises from the ashes rejuvenated with natural energy.

Energy is an omnipresent entity which travels through space, time and medium. Lost energy is just a transfer of the same. Similarly gained energy too, is just the same.

A man, who runs out of steam, has just transferred all his energy to another subject. And there are ways to reimburse that energy, accumulating it from other forms which hold them in their dungeons. And even today many many moons after, the transfer keeps taking place.

They say partying hard is a practice for de-stressing. Some psychologists say that the after-burn of a party plays catalytic in releasing the stressful negative energy.

Negative energy is powerful and extremely destructive. This affirms that its release can be at times catastrophic. When such powerful energy is released it leaves the previous owner weak with fatigue. It accumulates into a raging powerful force, uncontrollable and destructive, hitting any obstacle on its way like a steam engine, on full go. But the functional result of this is that the previous owner is freed from the stressful energy that was raging inside him.

To release this sort of pent up energy a person needs to reach that saturation point where he can commit into the act of splitting with it. Sometimes it needs a catalyst to take you to that high energy point where the pressure cooker finally starts to whistle. Without that all that energy keeps boiling inside you for a long long time just below the saturation level, where it is capable of releasing itself.

About a catalyst which opens you up to releasing old and repulsive energy to make way for new vibrancy and ardor for more spunk.

POLISHING THE GENITALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICE

It was a morning at the hillside

It was Kafka in Hand, coffee on the table

It was junk in the bedroom

It was all perfect.

The graves were still and the grass wet with dew.

Woe to formalism I was allowed to smoke two joints of marijuana as I woke up,

I was allowed to drink ten bottles of beer and throw up at 10 in the morning.

I was allowed to kick off my shoes and run through fields of wheat

Nobody to stop me as I trampled on standing crop.

The men who grew them were busy committing suicide.

In our democracy it's raining.

It's raining in Kerala, Kerala and Assam, Assam, Assam and Gujarat and in Karnataka.

Where are thou O banana moon?

I dream of a sheep-skin clad shaman illuminating a room full of mirrors, it reminds me of the Holocaust.

Restless minds are screaming at ringing cell phones.

I read about Allen Ginsberg, and I read about mutual funds

I read about belts of marijuana and about shopping malls.

My ex-girlfriend calls up to tell me that death seems so alluring.

Reading about tranquil minds wanting to return to the womb, experiencing anti-Semitism.

Will you ever make noise democracy?

Will you ever stop selling yourself to nuclear hegemony?

Will you tell the white man not to kill the likes of you anymore?

Will you tell Uncle Sam that justice is not what he dictates?

Will you speak about Mutiny with pride ever?

When will you get drunk democracy?

When will you do drunken crazy things?

When will the Time Magazine recognize you democracy?

When will you hear millions of mothers crying in your villages at vermilion dawn?

When will the lights come back in Vidharva, In Vidharva, Vidharva, Vidhrva and in Andhra Pradesh, And In Bengal….

Will you ever get stoned and stone the barbwires in Singur?

Will you ever be happy with you life democracy?

Will you be Pagan once more.

"Helluva night. Could have rewritten the Kamasutra," says Jonathan- the Hero of my novel.

Angry fucking hooligans took over my terrace last night. I tried screaming at them. They screamed back even louder. My landlord came up and told me they were here for a good cause and I should offer my services to them as it was towards the end of humanity. As he went down, these people started hurling abuses, directed towards me. And I stood there, feeling abased, my little tenement privacy completely violated.

Did you yearn to kick your daughter's dumb butt? Did you ache to wring your wife's treacherous neck?

Fuck you O The Land Of Opportunities, with your fucking white-arsed opportunists.
And Fuck you neo-political groupies, panting for the penumbra of limelight.
Fuck you with you loose pussy lips and your sacks of deception.

Your breath reeks of the white man's cock. Your arse slimy with his semen. And you crave to be the political opinion leader of my country.

Fuck....Fuck.....Fuck....Fuck.....Fuck......

Make Tom Mooney your Idol....Worship the dark Lord of love......of Truth........servitude to the brothers........