Bangalore Vistas : A Comic Strip

My sincere thanks to my beloved friends who stared in my +Arun CS, +Revathy Ganesh, +Rohith Odunghat  and +Rupertt Wind.

The Masquerade Party

Everything about life is a lie, everyone has a costume and everyone dons a mask. At times I do realize that the only place where everyone is who they are is at a masquerade party when they all don there masks and when they are in the costume and caught in the frivolous act of being someone else.

People have a way of hurting you, a way of disappointing you. When you finally come to believe someone they invariable cheat and dishearten you. Some do not trust you to spill their heart and the ones whom you end up trusting are almost always the devil in disguise. They hurt people for the fun of it or do they even realize that they are hurting people.

I know my words are meddled that is only because my thoughts are too. I am confused and scared, I do not know who to trust and I do not know whether I have any friends at all. I realized that the one’s I thought was there were never really there. All I was seeing was a mirage a happy illusion, a blissful product of a deranged mind. At times I hope I knew not the truth. I hope I knew not the actors behind the characters, they were so nice to me the characters. I just wish that the illusion persists and I never wake up.

It would be blissful to revel in the midst of ignorance and what the ancients have come to call as the ‘Maya’.

Trust me truth hurts, why I do not know. I do not know why they have to do what have done. They may have their reasons and though I wish I could see the good in them…

I can’t, I just can’t.

I feel lost that’s the truth and I do not know what to do or what to think, All I want to do is cuddle into a ball and sit against the wall and cry like a little girl. I just wish I could cry and make it all go away.

I just had to tell someone this, Thanks guys for listening. It means a lot that there is someone who would listen to me whine away. 

Womanhood

How can I write about womanhood? That is the first question that popped in my head when my mind wandered on to this topic for my next post. How can I ever write authoritatively about womanhood? I do not know what it takes to be a woman; I do not know what womanhood entails. Whatever I say I have to be blunt and distant, I can’t even pretend to know that I know everything about womanhood because I am not a doctor either. I have read the books, I have did my research and in the general being of womanhood I have a fairly good theoretical understanding of the way the machinery works but does that make me an authority on the subject and for that matter does it even make me qualified to talk about it?

The answer is that I can write about womanhood but not form a woman’s perspective but from that of a man, I can say and write about what womanhood means to a man. I can talk about the envy and wonder that a father feels at the birth of his child, I can talk about the despair and sadness a son feels at the death of his mother. I can talk about the magic of love and the hopes that a husband expects his wife expects from him. But greater than all this I can talk about what the many special woman in his life means to a man and what he would be reduced to when they evanesce from his existence.

When someone asks me what I see as the greatest of god’s gift to woman, I can think of only one answer, the ability to give birth. To be able to create something so magnificent and miraculous just from a tiny cell. I know that the journey is painful and at times almost bordering on anguish, I understand this though I could never venture far enough to feel the agony myself or to accept it in its true intensity. But I believe that it does all makes sense to her when she gets to touch her child, when the soft skin of her baby brushes against hers, when the first cry of the child beats down on her heart like a beautiful symphony. I believe that then all the pain and suffering seize to matter and the wonder of life overwhelms her and love like a miraculous medicine heals everything then and there. But what can a man do then but to witness this miracle unfold in front of him in awe and wonder like a distant observer. All he can do is try to understand what has just happened and try to fathom the intensity of the reality in front of him.

I have friends who weep every month for having being born a woman, alas if only they understood the true purpose in its all enormity. Sometimes I think they do, sometimes I think they are losing it. I for one do believe that this thing balances out all the suffering that a woman has to endure and transcend to reach that moment. Some of you may take to support me and some of you may not. I am happy for those who would say that I am right for that means I have got it right, at least some of it and for those who would take the other side of argument I should say that I have no way of knowing what it means for I am a boy, a man and to understand woman and womanhood is no simple task. I try but I know the chance of truly understanding such intense emotions is a herculean task.

Womanhood is not just about giving birth is it? At times I have wondered thanks to my upbringing, how woman are able to suffer so much? This time I am not talking about the physical pains of being a woman but the many emotional pains that they suffer through so effortlessly. I wonder how a mother can commit so whole heartedly to her child, how a wife can be there for a husband every single step of his life, how a daughter can help his father even when she has enough pains on her own to deal with. I have never had a sister so that is something I do not know about and what having a sister means to a brother. The one good thing about the Indian male hypocrisy is that women unlike men gets to spent a lot of time with their family and at times don’t have to bother about anything else and this instigates the formation of such intense relationships that are not often seen anymore.

I have met some very proud woman and I have met some not so proud ones too, but at this day when I celebrate the anniversary of the day my girlfriend became a real woman (if you know what I mean). I must tell you that deep inside I feel much envy and jealousy to the whole of womanhood and I salute the marvelous women in my life for what they are and what them being there means to me.

Have I told you about March?

What is March to me is a far better question than who is March? Do I know march and how do I know march are even better questions and quite frankly I can’t answer the later duo, simply because I do not know the answers to them. March is an enigma to me, a bewildering and mind blowing puzzle. The truth is that she never existed and if she did her existence was more ethereal that the mirage in the mid-day sun. She exists and she doesn't at the same time, She is and she is not at the same time, yet she persists like a ghost upon my memory, entangling me into the abysmal oblivion of not knowing who she is and why she came into my life and whether she came into my life at all or is it all nothing but the delusions of a deranged mind?

Any story or any sentence about March must be abstract and shall only be abstract not because I intent to protect the identity of an otherwise domineering public presence from stigma but because she is as elusive to me as she is to you by these abstract words. Her existence for me is just as abstract and doubtful. There are times I scrutinize my sanity for what had happened that fateful day when destiny played the tune of fate going rogue.

I saw her, her eyes pierced into mine like the splinters from a shattered shell. Hungry for vengeance they struck me deep and painfully in the depths of my tattered heart. I cried in unheard agony when the heavens itself must have turned deaf that day. Then she smiled at me her smile spreading inside my body like death upon a famished being and bestowing me with a warmness of the ultimate awareness. Alas disappointment again waits for me, the most peaceful of seconds ceased to exist soon enough as all good things. She came and she went in a fragment of time that was far too small that between dream and reality the lines began to blur.

The truth is that I do not know whether I had lived through March or not, I do not know whether March is an enigma or a truth like the lives under the sun. But what march was and what I know March to be, is that march is the beacon of light from a domain unknown that signaled to me that all is not lost and life is yet to exist. March showed me in the twilight between life and death, between despair and hope, between dream and reality that my destiny is yet to be written and my gardens of love are yet to see the spring.

More From this Series : My Long Love Story
January
February Part I
February Part II

Different and Flawless : Tantra by Adi

Tantra the action packed story of a stunningly ravishing and vampire hunting New York city girl named Anu Agarwal, who moves into the sprawling city of Delhi in search of some answers and a couple of blood suckers to kill is both unique and predictable. The narrative is flawless and as Adi takes every reader on a nail biting journey through the alley ways and rooftops of a historic city with some old and set habits. The city offers her an entirely different challenge from what she was used to back in New York. She finds her enemies to be her allies and innocent children to be the price their unholy alliance. She finds powerful enemies, greater weapons and more importantly some answers and more questions to find answers to.

The story is a good and unique one and the narration is insidious, one tends to lose track of time as the story unwinds slowly and painfully. Though the twists are not expertly executed they are not dull or predictable for that matter.The lack of a strong prologue haunts the story as readers are often at a loss when it comes to the why part of most things in the story, Adi was not clearly in a mood to  explore the past of both Anu and the vampires in the city of New Delhi.The book has enough in it to keep you interested till the very end if you have a thing for adventure and don't mind some more than ugly vampires.

The fall side of the story is that its very predictable when you are done with less than half the chapters and it has not one such twist that could keep the readers guessing. Once the villain is revealed it is only a matter of some chapter before its the end.There are no surprises  no drama or not even some real action in it after that point. The story-line is plain and straight forward and taken for granted. One other thing is that for some unknown reasons the author has rushed through the climax way too fast and the whole things ends in a unceremonious ruckus. Thirdly the book lets a lot of questions unanswered even the basic ones that seem to be the very core of the story, in fact the story is not that keen on answering questions as it is on asking them. 

The final word is that if you are looking for a one time read that would take your mind of many a mundane stuff in life, then Tantra by Adi is a very good choice. Its hearty, light and full of adventure and lets you easily be lost in the underworld of Delhi among vampires, magic and some super cool 'Tantric' stuff. But if you are that person who would prefer substantial quality to the books they read and is not at all into a the less classic ones then do keep your distance and find another book to read. This is strictly for a reader who is at leisure and is not much obsessed with everything literary about it. 

Some Specs as given in FLIPKART
Publisher	Apeejay Stya Publishing
Publication Year	2013
ISBN-13	9788190863629
ISBN-10	8190863622
Language	English
Binding	Paperback
Number of Pages	344 Pages

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