The Journalist

It was said that only the brave could chronicle battles.
To not be biased needed more courage than the sword could offer.

There are brave men/women no more; only the petrified and the sycophants.

PS.

Dear Flabbergasted,

Hope you are happy to be responded to over my blog. Thank you, for your consistent praise and criticism. Now to answer your questions: 

~ I voluntarily choose not to activate my 'Comments' feature, because I do not wish to publicize what anyone thinks about my blog. 
~ All K’s are not the author.
~ Read the little intro on the right hand side of Mixed Bag’s Dashboard. That is the identity of the Blog.
~ Yes, some of the posts are anecdotes; some are a complete “lie”.
~ No, I do not write like this professionally.
~ I am unsure if my mother reads my blog or even cares about it.
~ The names are my way of describing the core of the people I write about. It is a fairly common method used by many bloggers.
~  I do read other blogs. I follow none.
~And, No, I am not available.

K and the Myth of Absolute Freedom

It is like the good/evil myth, the ‘quick rich’ myth, the ‘hot, rich, dashing lover’ myth. Whether it is our sense of being, our social living or our expression – we never exercise absolute freedom. Be it making a movie or writing a book or painting a picture, we are always doing it for an audience, we are always eliminating the criticism triggers, we are careful to avoid taking names, boasting fame, claiming blames. 

It is impossible to do something for the very act of it (Art for art’s sake).

Just as it is tiresome and dishonest to write for an audience, be politically correct, and contort things (old school satire) to not be spotted by the very people who would read it. We are entrapped within our definitions. 

K is such a victim. The professional space is suffocating her and now the blog has its set of readers writing back with references that would lead to questions. No matter how much she claims her inch of space of the WWW, she still is not free to paint that inch at whim.

Luckily, she is more than a letter in the alphabet, and as arbid as three sticks together called ‘K’.

Voyeurism, Men & LSD

A lot of us loved Love Sex Aur Dhoka. A part of me did too; however, a part of me was disgusted, stirred and shocked beyond my fragile competence.

To paint a picture: I saw this movie at the behest of Oyster Seeker. I was with one of the safest, coolest dudes I know. But I was still insecure, by the midst of the second story (SEX). Usually all chatty and funny, I had my hands and feet tightly crossed; as if I was holding liters of urine or grabbing tight my sense of self.

The only question reeling in my head was ‘how could someone do such a thing?’ The very next thought was that ‘only a man could do such a thing’. My general opinion of men is very low, women is even lower. Men disgust me; they are filthy and juvenile – in their minds, their bodies, their languages, their attitudes, their habits… the term Lech was invented for their forever hungry eyes. What scares me the most is their ability to turn something beautiful into something so disgusting, that it’d stay in your system and give you shivers. LSD gave me shivers. I ached for some sanity, and Oyster Seeker’s ‘it’s just a film, k’ did not help. For him, I was overreacting, I was not being sporty, I was being a pain in the wrong place by condemning his penile species.

But I do hate men. Anyway, there is very little about them to like.

Fortnight later, {when I got over the film; and my nightmares of all the men in my life doing horrifying things to my image had finally stopped,} I consciously pondered on what this three part film was all about.

I concluded that it was about a person within that we seemed to entertain once in a while. Like Oyster Seeker’s indulgent ‘shopaholic’, Chameleon’s ‘sleaze ball’, Loud mouth’s ‘cruel tyrant’… We all have a liar, a cheat, a thief, a slave and a voyeur within us. Just as we have a savior, a friend, a shoulder, and a saint within us. Problem is that the voyeur feeds on titillation, and our minds are great at creating carrots for donkeys. The media lusts over violence, patriotic movies vicariously make you dream of bombing your neighboring country. Inventors make you yearn to pick up that ‘up-on-the-market-only-for- you-piece’; you ogle and ogle at the mannequins on the window sill or sneak a peek at the latest gadget on the net.

However Sexual titillation is everyone’s all time favorite. Be it imagining a bikini clad woman in a burqua or guessing some passer-by’s bra size or watching porn or someone’s intimate act of love making/kissing.

My problem is that we never say ‘no’ to this titillation, we never refuse to have the dirt of nude pictures, clips or genital jokes. My bigger problem is that (as men are the fore runners of this filth) I am yet to find a man who takes offence to all or any of the above in the privacy of this back slapping, bluetoothed friend circle.

K’s a Weirdo

I know, you know that crystal clear. However, I thought I was weird when I could not type on any other Laptop/computer what I’d mentally jotted. I’m too attached to my loving laptop and have therefore by some quirky method blocked my mind from expressing (even wording) anything on another gadget or paper.

Holy Matrimony

Most of K's friends are married. That makes her ears ache.

However most recently, she started to observe them, closely. they were not the kind that her mother often hankered about. That attracted her even more, so she dug and dug (to her friends curiosity) till she found the mole she was tagging.

Here it is : 'Marriages, that i have encountered, [being specific is very important. because all crows are not black. (no, i do not expect you to understand the joke.)] have a certain comfortable strangeness and selfishness to them. The 'I' is very much intact in the 'We', the chores divided; the care, mighty pragmatic; and the love, well bargained.'

What a relief!

'just like that' Gyaan

These are some of k's newest realizations.

# The funny part of being an overtly and inertly emotional freak is that passion and depression are forces that come uninvited.

# Passion lives in the temple of Venus. The Venus woman asks questions, bends the norms and is cursed by Hera, so that nice men with common sense do not excite her.

# “If you love someone, you must be unselfish enough to give them what they want.” - Pierce Brosnon from some film.

# Lovemaking is not over rated. We are in dire need of Kamasutra schools.

# Conversation between Radha (Eunuch) during a Movie scene :
 K: Babes, what is the whole funda behind a eunuchs’ clap? Do you practice it?

Radha: (laughing) : Arre, clapping is fun, and yes there is a technique. Par, the best part of the clap is that it instills fear; it scares the lukhas, the mamus and the chokras. It is the only language they understand. The clap is the sound of us – sharp, yet accommodating. It means that if need be – I can protest. Par, this is the way I choose to live.

# Capricorn Rook quoted someone from somewhere “we are scavengers looking for scraps of fulfillment.”

# A drunken Venus woman breaks up with her forlorn lover. 72 hours later, she climbs down her pedestal of respect and calls her lover, who responds, “At CCI, in a meeting, will call you back.”
Pragmatism sucks. Btw the mountain and the valley, K shall one day climb across the mountain.

# Conversation btw K and Mitsu
K: Why don’t you move on, you divorced him three years ago!
Mitsu : There is so much love that I am numbed by the constant pain that I feel. I do not think of things, they live in me. I see him in every man; any man I love will be in his image. Will have his flaws, will make my head fly. I need him not, but I am not over him. I keep thinking of how it would be if we’d never met, and how would it be if we’d never have parted.
K: Love is a poison; it runs in your skin, your breath and your blood. It’s like the dead baby’s ghost that hangs by the umbilical around your throat.
Mitsu: (Laughing) you know, kit, never stop writing.
You were right then, God, I should have shot him!

Satvic Phirni

K's newest fasciantion is cooking Satvic food which rests on the principles of Ayurveda.

Ingredients:

Rice – one medium sized bowl
Rock sugar – 4-5 medium sized rocks
Fresh Cows Milk – 1 liter
Almonds – 10
Raisins (yellow sultanas) – 10
Kersar – 6-7 strands
Cardamom powder – 1/4th tea spoon
Nutmeg powder – 1/6th tea spoon
Turmeric - 1/6th tea spoon
Earthen pots – 8


Procedure:

~ Lightly roast rice grains.

~ Wash and soak rice, almonds and raisins separately in water over night.

~ Boil Milk and add Rock sugar and turmeric.

~ Steam Rice in a pressure cooker, adding milk instead of water.

~ Once the rice is soft and breakable, add it to the boiling milk.

~ Season the milk with chopped raisins, Nutmeg, Kesar and Cardamom.

~ Once the mixture is thick and of porridge consistency, pour it in earthen pots.

~ Garnish with slivers of peeled almonds.

Serve chilled

Thought

Can a woman’s lingerie give the same warmth as what it envelops does?  

The Plight of Mrs. Bennet

Parents, rather mothers are a kind that few really understand. The worse kinds are the Mrs. Bennets’ of the world. In the Indian scenario, to have your daughter married to the most right person within the parameters of your value system is their numero uno crises.

For someone who has been ‘put up on the marriage market’ and has a trillion reasons to either be turned down or to turn down; the deal is quite simple, walking away. Can Mrs. Bennet do that? Unfortunately, she can not. I have mocked at her just like everyone else. Called her a drama queen, a gold digger, a castist and more. It was in a brief moment today, when my phone sang that I realized how wrong I have been. No denying she is all of that but there is more to the obnoxious nonsense. It is sadness, paternal love, and insecurity. She lived through times and juggled between families, siblings, in-laws. She knew that love had little to do with life post marriage. However, she’d never been in love. 55 years. No love. There is care, of course, and there is need – and it is her only argument against love, when it comes to the ‘stickability’ of marriage. 

There was a resume, she liked for the status of a potential son-in-law. The horoscope matched to the T, the boy was from the supremely pious Brahmin family, tall, fair, handsome, lived in Uptown Bombay, and had a flourishing career as a doctor. The pluses were multiplied once she learned that he could sing; that he called at odd hours to sing to her daughter, and that he was seemingly in love with her. K being herself, restrained. She found the singing a bit annoying (one song is fine; six at a go, are not.) It was pestering to tell a man in his early thirties to hang up at 3am because she was in no mood to listen to a gazal or a Sufi story. His megalomania of his talents and credentials was driving her overboard. Initially it was funny that he addressed himself as a Dr. Soandso is calling you or Dr. Soandso will now sing a song for you. My dismissal was dismissed quite briskly, calling his irate behavior ‘romantic’. Likewise was my luncheon experience was dismissed too – “you are so sarcastic, so what he chose the restaurant you do not like? So what if he wanted to share your soup or coffee into ‘one-by-two’? So what if he does not use a perfume? So what if he ordered all by himself, maybe he is not used to a woman’s company? Burping is a natural phenomenon and so is farting. Maybe, he is unwell! So what if he made you walk till his patient’s house. Maybe he wanted more time with you! So what if he uses fowl language and has a perpetual cringe? Don’t knit pick. Men change after marriage, he will too. You could teach him all the table manners and personal etiquette! 

Once the parents met, the cardboard mantle collapsed. The Uptown house was a shanty. The garb was cheap smelly polyester. His parents, house and him sitting there (with a pot full of attitude) were below average and stank of miserliness. Mrs. Bennet dressed in her Kanjiveram, K in raw silk, and Loud mouth who decided to accompany us in order to provide a neutral unbiased judgment was dressed in linen.

Post the fiasco, btw my cackles and Loud mouth’s remarks, Mrs. Bennet’s silence turned to tears. She could not contain her desperation and her ‘shoving off’ of her beloved child into the arms of a crude, sloppy ape with manboobs. As we tried to cajole her, she uttered something that broke us evenly: 

“Mrs. Bennet: Why is it supposed to be so? Why could he have no manners? Why did his family need to be so crass? Why was his mother not dressed for the occasion? Is it imperative for a mother to be blind in order to find happiness for her child? How many things do I have to let go, to know that the potential son-in-law will take care of my baby daughter? How much do I need to feed into the families’ treasury and how much do I have to educate you and make you beautiful, in order for them to treat you like a princess and not a golden hen? K, as a mother, I am falling every minute; I’m failing to give you a husband who would be everything your father is and more. I’m failing to digest and let off of all petty things that I know will hurt you in future. When I see you, I see myself, at 28, I was running behind you, helping you strengthen your legs. How can I today send you off with a wobbly crutch? I’m failing, and I want you to forgive me for putting us through this.”