Being Herr K

Our dear teachers

2009-01-07T05:17:51Z

Every morning I open the newspaper fearing to see another report of violence of the state machinery on the individual citizen (or are we citizens?!), deaths in the police custody is an extreme (and quite common) phenomenon. But what somehow makes me more terrified is the report of the police playing moral guide, with schoolteacher-like claim of authority. Just the other day, there were reports of police punishing people on the spot, age no bar, for flouting traffic rules. As if we don’t live in a democratic structure, there is no judiciary, no process… nothing! Have you married a girl of your choice? The police can call and rough you up (how much? That’ll depend on the social stature of the parents of the girl). Are you trying to stand up against local petty goons? The police will tell you to ‘settle’ matters or… Are you so incredulous to have an argument about something with the police on the street, he has every right to slap you, drag you to the proverbial 'lock-up' and you end up living with a trauma all your life…

But the police is only a part of the great disciplinary apparatus that try to make us, poor citizens better, uplift our lives and souls….
There are other great bodies who rule over our bodies…

[…]

memories of things past...

2009-01-06T22:50:51Z

My meagre existence in Germany, after she left me, why write about it. Or wait, it was not so scanty after all, there were moments of real high, and real low (and the real lows are kind of highs, aren’t they?). None other than Saint Marx said it (Paris Manuscripts)

But I should cut this ambiguous babbling short and start in the beginning! But this wont be detailed character analysis of others, and me nor it would be a psychological novel type confused jumble. Its gonna be like an collection of headings, one liners, dramatic, on your face screaming observations. Sweeping, critical to the point of drama, merciless to the extent of funny! Illuminationen!

I started my academic career as an amusing radical, a strange and irritating little scholar from India who made quite a stir in the little insignificant pond that was our beloved Graduate school. She was gone, and my bitterness was endless, but that ironically made me addicted to words, speech, and people. I kept on making too many friend, and wrong ones at that…

aristotole @ 2008-12-09T02:33:00

2008-12-08T21:05:10Z

The world is insane, its cure is the world, oh when can we really be at home here!

Rudeness has become such an addiction, I am positively disgusted by the machismo of the place I live in...

The dream

2008-11-29T20:18:04Z

I do have such strange dreams sometimes…

Some of them are so vivid and what I call very 'impressive', they hurt me, leave a wound as if… because of the lucid leap with which they merge with my 'real'. The dreams end and reality rushes in without much ado, like a jolt, a fatal break, an ingenuous jump-cut fresh from an avant-garde French movie. Like the one I had in Delhi the very first night.

I 'woke up' in my bed muttering something to myself in great agony. It must have been loud, and R came running from the next room, he looked at me and seemed terrified.
I touched my face and felt it.
It was slashed end to end, like a cross marked in blood and slit skin. I went to the mirror and looked at myself and looked at an unfamiliar face, a face brutalized, a face under erasure. I sprinkled water on that foreign façade, I covered it with my two palms and concentrated hard.
No, this is a dream, I told myself, and I don't want to live with that face, the face of another …
And I wished to be transferred to another time and space, delivered from that present…

"This is a dream" I told myself and pulled myself through…

I woke up again. This time for real (?)

isolation

2008-11-29T19:43:16Z

I feel so frustrated when I see that to talk to most of the world, I need to compromise the complexity of my thoughts...

An avarage morning...

2008-11-29T05:33:57Z

I woke up with a terrible feeling that I have again lost a bulk of the sleep that my body deserved, and that too to watch that shitty movie (Being John 'whatever'), pretentious and mediocre! The head is still jammed, and like always I hate my room and my home in Cal after coming back from somewhere. But of course as usual I'd get used to it in a matter of days (I wish I wasn't, I wish this dissatisfaction was poking me all the time to the point of really taking off from here!)
Oh, how I wish to get the DAAD thing and settle all the material and other complications of my life... (but well, are they not insignificant in the context of the 'world'?..).
I am behind; so far behind in my sleep count that I'd never be able to catch up, it feels bad to think of this. But does it not also feel strange to think LIKE this!? Have I become more of a health-maniac (not is work of course but only in thought lol) after turning 30? Oh what does the 30's signify, start of the getting old feeling, end of youth or just a number in the highly boring metric system of the humankind? I wonder...

The journey back

2008-11-28T20:34:54Z

I arrived home today, last night I was in the train, Delhi is so far that one needs to spend one night atleast in train, but just to lessen the problem a bit, I traveled in a good train, which is air conditioned, with sleeping facility and also dinner and breakfast :) You know compared to Europe, train-service is much better and cheaper in India still, so the ride was okay, and I was not that much tired (well, but still you cant sleep well in a moving train!).
Last night after dinner I could not sleep for a long time, outside I looked through the window and the sleepy and deserted little stations of many unknown villages were passing by, and I had a strange sensation of loneliness and also excitement (I don’t know how to explain it, but you can say its the excitement of feeling the many possibility of my future life...the life seemed like that passing train...where am I going...I asked myself...it was a question to the emptiness of future time, but it also promised a life for which I felt very very eager and excited...I expected love and care and happiness in that future...may be..).

Very strangely, I missed a telephone call then, I wished there was somebody who was missing me then and might call me to ask how I was, and I wanted to tell to her (who understands me and cares for me) all those strange and wonderful ideas that were passing through my mind then, I wanted to describe the sleepy dark villages outside my fast moving train…then I did something strange! I 'staged' a fake call myself, I do not know why I did that (posing? trying to show others that I also have somebody to talk to over my cell phone...no...It wasn’t so easy! ;).... But I did. Our 'box' was dark, all went to bed, and I whispered away, a little cozy chat where I was supposed to be talking to somebody just out of her bed after a night of snow...and missing me. I still think it wasn’t just impulsive madness or fun on my part, not even a production of my lonely fickle mind, it wasn’t any of them simply because it was like a drama, a performance that I enjoyed, a little script that I tried to read aloud and that’s that :)

But the real drama was even before that. As I was putting my backpack onto the stand over the window before going to bed, the girl in one of the upper slippers whispered to the man lying in the sleeper directly opposite to her, "we should not fall in love"...! I should have missed the little floating statement, I knew I should have behaved as if I did not hear for it was meant to be only for that one man and I did act (oh see now! how many timed we DO ACT!) as if I did not hear, but I (or anybody with an ear) would never have missed those fatally dramatic retort. This was especially interesting since as I had gathered from the talks of my co passengers all through the evening these two were cousins...