Tuesday, October 25, 2005

compare and contrast

it was towards the last part of my drive that I started noticing it. The long beams thrown out by the headlights of the oncoming vehicles pierced my brain like pins entering a cushion. silent and painless. they reacted with my cells changing them more than my own thoughts could.the fusion caused my brain to burst out releasing metaphors like the many offices ejecting workers at the stroke of 5. there were metaphors of all kinds. some as colorful as the expletives uttered by our honorable members of the legislative assembly. some were plain like white text on black paper. a few were unnecessarily long like oscar acceptance speeches. and a few succinct like mani ratnam's dialogs. but among all of them one stood out like a sore thumb. it was the one comparing my mistake to that of an unlicensed poet:
"these are not metaphors, you fool, all of these are similes"

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

early morning nirvana

things are invented regularly. more than anything else purpose determines their design. and if you dig a little deeper, the purpose is almost always determined by something that already exists in nature. and thats just a way of taking a trip around the moon and then saying we copy shamelessly. being "cleverly designed", we conveniently use a saying that justifies means and the collective human conscience is appeased. besides nature can't sue us for plagiarising, can it?

one such amazing creation (like many others) probably had its seed in one of the -asic eras. the caveman had been enjoying peaceful sleep after devouring a rather rare bear stroganoff when he was woken up by this hideous sound. he woke up and ventured out of his cave to discover the yellow ball slowly climbing from between twin mountain peaks. the very picture that would later become the template for every 2nd standard student's drawings. he looked around for the source of the sound and found this most regal of birds standing on a rock. it was brown and had a brilliant red crown on its head and when it opened its beak to render what it thought was melody, the hideous sound emanated again. he admired the beauty for a moment,carefully took aim and flung a stone, missing the bird and his breakfast at the same time. but this memory imprinted itself in his genes and evolved till finally a rather evil scientist invented the alarm clock(yeah thats how subtly i state the obvious).but this post is about something that followed.

going back in the past again. the next morning the same thing happened and it repeated again and again for centuries and our Man evolved on the side.his work load increased significantly and one morning our guy wanted to sleep-in while the bird continued to alarm (covering the name origin angle ppl) him without stopping its cries. a strange combination of his half-awakened rage and the rooster's concentration on screaming its crown off, meant the stone thrown by our man knocked the rooster out cold. only temporarily though. it was back at its crowing best within a few minutes. but in those few minutes our man experienced the sleep of gods. this too went into the gene pool's memory banks and aeons later the evil scientist met his nemesis. the snooze button.

in the dark early morning hours when dreams are projecting your fantasies in amazing technicolor and 5.1 Dolby surround sound, evil lurks outside in the form of the alarm clock. and when the hour strikes, succor is at arm's length. and as you press it down, remember this quote by an anonymous soul who no doubt experienced the pleasure of the snooze button :
"Your future depends on your dreams.
So go to sleep"

happy snoozing