Merrry Christmass!! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Our beliefs guide us that Christmas & Santa Claus are as alike as two peas in a pod. But, really these are two different notions, one meshed into another until the myth is as distorted as any other myth in the world.

Christmas, the word when broken makes Christ’s mass. Christ derived Kristos, a translation of the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ And the latter part derived from 'Missa' which means celebrating Euchrist; the breaking of bread and drinking wine while Jesus’s instruction at 'The Last Supper'. The issue of this eve, i.e. celebrating the birth of Jesus is very debatable. Supposedly, the date falls somewhere between a gap of 5 years. Well, they didn't have Facebook Timeline back then for obvious reasons.

Santa Claus as we now know was conceived by the Brits and Americans in the 19th century.The image maintained and reinforced by popular culture and bedtime stories. The main inspiration being Saint Nicholas who gave gifts to the poor and in one case presenting dowries for the three daughters of a godly Christian. Along with Sinterklass/Odin, this was merged with Father Christmas to form the modern day Santa Claus. In the mid 1800s,he began to acquire objects such as Reindeers, Bells & Sleighs.

Saint Nicholas

Our jolly old Saint Nicholas reflects our culture to a T, for he is fanciful, exuberant, bountiful, over-weight, and highly commercial. He also mirrors some of our highest ideals: childhood purity and innocence, selfless giving, unfaltering love, justice, and mercy. The problem is that, in the process, he has become burdened with some of society's greatest challenges: materialism, corporate greed, and domination by the media. Here, Santa carries more in his baggage than toys alone!

-Carol Jean-Swanson

Till the age of 16, I lived in an industrial town in the lower Himalayas. For things to get commercialized, the world had to move 20 miles south for me. So no one could really sell me ideas of make-believe, even if at an early age i was eager to buy. Well, no one except Television; that was the omnipresent, omniscient & omnipotent motherfucking lord of all men. If it told you Jesus was born on 25th December. You believe. If it said God, for whom all men are equal divided the children in Naughty & Nice. You ate that up, and start behaving. If it said you be good, and you get that Video Game Console on which you can play Contra, Mario, YOU.WILL.WAIT for it to drop down the chimney or the ventilator.

And that shenanigan would have sucked me down as well, if it wasn’t for my uninterested parents. I mean as if our own religious holidays weren’t enough now I was asking for gifts on Christmas and yes, the gifts had to be really good too. It was almost an international event and I wanted to be a part of it. They went along once as far as I remember. This pine tree lookalike outside our house. I brought in stuff to decorate it.Got a red sock and all, hung it over an open window. Looked up in the morning, and, nothing. All that faith in an Old fat cheerful white bearded man and it added up to absolutely nothing in return. People can be brutal when they think something should not bother you because of their assumptions that YOU don’t believe only because they don’t. I knew the truth about Santa. There was no Santa. But all this fuss had to be about something. Ramblings of 12yr old. Hoping against Hope. White Long Beard; Old; Fat; Rides a Reindeer; Ever happy, why not just go ahead and add smells of Booze & Felon to the description as well.

Comes down a Chimney. Rofl.

I took it pretty hard and you can call it bitterness but i will not succumb. It’s just good marketing. I am pretty sure not so long ago it would have been just a simple holiday when families gathered and you helped a cause. When you realised that miracles do happen and stories like Christmas Carol made you realise life is about living large not long. But that don’t sell no shit, Bro. So HALLMARK just went ahead & sodomized it.

                It's A Wonderful Life

Blink of a Year

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let every new year find you a better man. 

     Benjamin Franklin 

A human being’s lifespan is nothing but a blink of an eye if measured against the eternity of the universe. So what is it that makes us important, what is it that differentiates “you” from every other creature in the universe? People will tell you it's not the blink of the eye that matters, it's the eye, that makes us what we are.

They are right.

One year since a group of people had one of the most cheerful days of their lives yet, including myself. It’s been a year already, phew, yes time flies. But that day is of great importance to me particularly, I mean nothing great happened in a life changing way. But I guess there will be times in your life when your primal self comes out and you see clearly ‘the bigger picture’. You might even examine yourselves Before ‘the day’ & After ’the day’. In more than one way you are aware of what kind of person you are and how you are going to make a change. And you better make that change. Sadly, for me, I share this day with a bunch that have had different experiences on the same day, so while I am sitting here introspecting, for them it’s a jolly good nostalgia. It was not really hard for me at the end; examined the setback for a few months then I completely forgot about it. A year was perfect. I went through all the stages of shock, and I guess I was pretty much on top of it, before people started reminding me about it. Technology. Right?

So I am sure no one is really curious, but I will still enlighten you anyways. A bright colour.             

Intense. Angry. Coward. Prejudiced. Destructive.

For a while you would think you have been scarred for life, it might seem the next worst thing after the holocaust. But it really isn’t .Its nothing. It’s just one of those experiences. I am telling you, you will get over it. Let me enunciate this, the human mind has a memory of a turtle in some scenarios. We never learn about certain aspects of society. That’s in our DNA. Or maybe not, maybe I just didn’t want to learn.I didn’t know how I got there,but that was where I was.

And it was a tricky situation too, I mean you had to be there to realise that. It was something of a straight out cliché. And then, nothing. Later, I was just there, looking like an asshole. A thing about assholes, you can be one, not let anyone know and then call somebody else one. Obviously, that wasn’t the case here. Obviously. But I forgot all about it, it’s almost an embarrassment now to think about it. And the thing is I can’t really blame anyone to remind me; these things are etched in  your muscle memory. THEY.WILL.COME.BACK.

So my point was, well actually I didn’t have any point. I thought I would write about that day but I just kept stalling for what exactly was a whole year. Until now, and even this is completely vague. I mean don’t get me wrong, that day was pretty eventful, right from around 11, the night before when I heard the door bell. Things kind of went downhill from there. Twenty five hours later I am walking alone in the rain for what seems like an eternity. Cliché? See, that’s the thing, It was 20minutes on a clock but it was an eternity to me.Doesn't change that life is still a blink.You must think,and you better think fast.Life is too short for fat chicks & cheap buffets.

You can repent, or you can learn how to better yourself. 

Can i get a fuckin' amen?

A Clockwork Orange

Tick...tick...tick...

This is the sound of my cheap fast-track watch tied around my wrist, kept close to my ear while I stare at the facebook profile page mechanically responding to birthday wishes from my peers and relatives.

     There is only one moment, so it is said, at the maximum, when a person feels true happiness each day. Which implies that if you were truly happy when today in the morning you got up, the rest of the day is going to be a drag no matter what. So thankfully, even if till now, today has been a major colossal fucking boring shithole cunt-muscle of a day, I still have a few hours left before I could be entirely, with heart & soul, JUST. FUCKING. DISAPPOINTED.

Such is my optimism.

Everyone has a number. You know the number. Yeah, you do. Lucky/Unlucky number. A number that scares you. A number that is a prophecy of its own. A number that very well could be the end and beginnings of things .

For me, its 23. Don’t ask why. And it makes me curious. What are the possibilities? Should I make new resolutions? 10 days from now, I will be in an entirely new city. Another adventure for me as an individual. How can I be prepared for it? What are the mistakes I made which can be avoided now?

     Every time your age column has to be edited, It cannot be a happy feeling. It is never a happy feeling, except when you turn 21,I suppose. but in this country none really cares about that as well.

Cynic?

Maybe I am.

But my “optimism” reminds there are always worse things that could happen, that could have happened. Remorse, I think i have had my quota of that as well for the time being. I am hoping for better things coming in the future.

     For everyone, who could find 10 seconds of their precious time while they looked at the facebook sidebar events and decided to wish me just for the sake of it, well, don’t bother next time. I appreciate the effort but really,  WHAT IS THE POINT? And those who didn’t...Aren’t you a smartass?

With Gratitude & Apologies

Yours sincerely,

Saurabh.

The truth people speak and the lies they don’t.

Psalm 12:2 "They speak vanity every one with his neighbor: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak."

Think about it, what do people do. They meet a person, they change themselves.

Mostly for better, always for better.

 We speak what comes natural, our sweet ideas of our better standards. We lie about our shortcomings. Not so consciously, but they aren't the complete picture of what we are and what they make us to be.

So yes in a way we lie. And yet we don’t.

Which brings us  to the main point. The picture is always incomplete. And it goes becoming more and more different than the real self, up till a point where the picture is something else entirely and very clear. So finally, we stop asking, we stop asking ourselves and we stop asking each other, not only about each other but also about how we seem in the mirror.

The truth is not there and no longer required.

Imagine another  party, a third party that brings us the truth, the truth and nothing but the truth. Crystal. Say in a file, humour me, of all the conversations we have ever had with someone. Everything, the lies, the truth and the semis. And you get it, to read, analyse, decipher. Everything, right in front of you. You have it. Where do you go from that? What do you do when you see where you started from and then suddenly the point was just not the same. It changed.

For good or for worse. For good, mostly. For your own good.

Lets say there was a person, who had the same revelation and he decides to do something about it. He starts correcting the dots, not just connecting  them as everyone else will do. What if he rectifies the wrong and puts right into place.

What would he have to do, to achieve that. That would be a story worth telling. Innit?