Now look Hair Mr.

We are here not for random musings. We are here for a purpose so definitive that maybe once we are done, we will be looked at differently. But allow us to introduce ourselves before we start off what might eventually turn out to be a long tale of hanging on for a lifetime. A tale about living on the edge all the time and getting ruffled by many a winds. We are hair (or hairs) which again is a matter of immense consternation among us. We are totally against calling us in the same way in both plural and singular forms and hence would refer to a collection of ourselves as hairs, Grammar be damned, but let us come to the point.

We have been residing on the head of our owner ever since his infancy. We were shaven repeatedly when he was a kid and less regularly as he grew up and we grew up to be a plain lot of complaisant hair and were always limpidly hanging loose over his forehead in spite of repeated attempts to sweep us back into our place. We gave him quite a girlish look and we could guess he hated us for this. However we were just hanging around without enjoying our stay on his head, frankly speaking. Life was not exciting at all in the sense he never experimented with us much. He just went about his life without ever realizing that touching us up could change it for him. Anyways we got use to not complaining just like him. We were also grateful to him for the fact that he never misbehaved at school to get us yanked or pulled.

A change came when he was severely scolded by his dad for having the same hairstyle all the time. A pretty trivial issue and it was actually a case of anger spilling over but it resulted into a wave coming into his hair because the naïve barber clipped a section of us awkwardly while cutting the rest of us. The inexplicably emerging wave looked even more idiotic and we guess he hated it even more. Then came a pretty turbulent phase of his life when he moved into a new school which he instantly managed to abhor. It came as a breather for us however since we got to see a lot of interesting female counterparts of ours especially one of the many sets of them existing and we think it had something wholly to do with the owner of those hairs. It seems our owner was getting bonkers or something because for the first time in our/his life he was actually paying maximum amount of his attention to us.

We tried to tell him that we, that is, us and him were looking terribly silly and he would only get the kind of attention he did not want from the kind of people he wanted it from. He did not listen to us and we proceeded to make extra efforts to look uglier than we were as a result of which all his hopes dashed. We know we sound like some heartless criminals but that was our way of telling him he was wrong. Danger came in the form of an authoritative teacher who took it upon herself to get us trimmed. The rebel in our owner rose and he grew us even longer just to make a point that he would not be thumbed down. He was losing it all then and so he just clinched on to us as the only thing he stood for. After years of inattention we were the best of pals and we supported him to the hilt by growing up as nothing else can, much to his happiness and the squirming of that teacher.

Things got settled down and through an accidental occurrence/illness we were suddenly transformed to barely an inch long community and he decided that we looked much better than before and we stayed like that for a really long time. We liked it though it meant going under the scissors more frequently than ever before.
After we had reconciled to an amiable existence with that size, he started listening to strange music and made strange friends and suddenly he wanted us all to go as long as we were earlier. Now this was straining. We had lost out on our strength after his prolonged illness and we were old enough to be in the twilight zone of our lives where we did not want to be rushed around. Anyways we did grow as he wanted us to for old times’ sake but with disastrous results which he again failed to notice.

Let us come to the present when we are still in a longish avatar, considerably weakened, albeit better shaped than before almost thriving well in conducive weather. Everything seemed to be going well when this Mr. Being Whatshisname, a friend of our owner, came up from somewhere and called a tuft of us RAT and that too a pet, docile, no-nuisance rat of all the nasty ones in the world. Our owner pissed us off by laughing the issue off as he usually does. We mean he did take notice of the insult and tried to think of something to reply but since nothing fitting came up he just left it at that, occupied as he was in his silly work but we tweaked the necessary grey cells of his(yes we can do that too though he is not aware) and made him think endlessly of a reply so much so that he kept on Googling thus ‘rats, repartee’, ‘rats, humorous’ et el but could not get to a reply he deemed fit.

We were not satisfied with these meager efforts of his. We played on his grey cells, twirled them around till he wreathed in a fit of agony and revenge. So great was the effect that he went to each and every colleague (not senior enough to fire him) of his and asked them to form a sentence which had pet rat in it and the moment they formed one he would give a scathing reply and note down its effects on the person. He kept on doing this till he got ratty and then graded the replies based on their offensiveness but eventually left it all at that because they were not witty enough.
How could he do that? We knew he was useless but this incident not only proved we were right all the time but also, on a sadder note; put more than a hairline chasm in our relations.

Now as he rests his head on the table in a slumber, we grab our chance to type out this strong letter of offence that we take at being compared to a puny rat and Mr. Being XYZ, for all that has been swept and combed ever since our evolution, we take this opportunity to say that we, if not your friend, have been deeply offended by what you had to say about us. We know the kind of hair you have and we are in touch with them as a community through our own methods, so next time you do that, we will ensure that our counterparts desert you when you need them the most, in an extremely inexplicable manner leading to a radically bizarre situation.

We cut short our outburst since our owner seems to be waking up because every time we press Shift T, we stretch a bit too much for his comfort.

Am I blogging your view ?

The greatest reason behind writing a secret diary is a desire for it to be read.

This apparent paradox, though impulsively deniable is uncannily true and saw the emergence of so many diaries on the public scene each outnumbering the skeletons falling out of the closets with every emergence of secrets written during different periods of time with that same desire of being let out. Come to think of it. If a secret is to be maintained, why write it in the first place. It’s like that childhood story about a barber who unable to hide a secret goes and shouts it out in a well only to be overheard by a tree and revealed through the musical instruments made out of its wood. The desire to let out things kept bottled up in the deep recesses of the mind and heart is ever too strong to be overcome at all times by everyone.

Add to it an increasing emphasis on introspection of the self and an overbearing desire for incessant soul-searching and you have just the perfect script for a blog to jump on the screen and in a way that adds a new dimension to life as we knew it when diaries were being written. Blogs, unlike diaries, mirror life in a better way by providing different levels of ambiguity to a human being. So, you have blogs visible to close friends, blogs visible to friends from some other domain of your interest who usually are net friends and blogs visible/known only to you. The ones known to us only are the ones which bear the closest resemblance to the diaries of yore except that they are less likely to leak out and ready to be deleted into oblivion on a mere click.

That blogging is a phenomenon today hardly comes as a surprise. The opinions run thick and fast and quicker to say the least. It’s a throwback to the word of mouth publicity of yester years albeit at a lightening pace and has a rivetingly cascaded effect. The other notion of it being an opinion of a normal person just like you and me gives it a simplistic credence that does not reek of the sophisticated authenticity of corporate news with its business like indifference to emotions.

If you think this is all, you are pleasantly wrong. What started off as a simple version of a diary has now assumed interesting tentacles that look menacingly poised to multiply and sweep away everything in their deluge. From online diaries to discussion forums to literary clubs to photo sharing to vlogging, there is still some time before the last word is written on it. The creativity is buzzing at the sight of endless opportunities.

The skeptics are sitting up and taking note of it. We have existing media sources incorporating blogs to keep up with an audience that is getting disinterested by the day. Having said that one just hopes that blogging will lead to all things good and will be able to evolve a method to it to be more authentically accepted to the rest of the world without losing its inherent innocence. We need not worry about shortage of content. I am sure it will take an eternity if you try and next-blog your way to the end of the end of the Internet.

Here’s to meaningful blogs!

Nothing to bag about

This is how a conversation went between me and my AM when he came across my bag lying on my desk. He had to come across it because of an obnoxious abundance of blackish don’tknowat on it and an embarrassing absence of anything remotely green on it. I say green because that was the sprightly color when I bought it from Janpath in Delhi about ten years back (if you go by its condition) and a couple of years back (factually).

He came to my desk and seemed to be making his mind to say something. That set me thinking about all the traces I must have left somewhere about something I must have done sometime. Anyways this is how it went.

AM: Nice bag
Me : I am gonna wash it soon.
AM: No I did not mean that. . . . Anyways if you wash it all that is black would just smudge and it would get uglier.
Me: No it would be better if I could devote two full days to it. Anyways I don’t use it regularly. I had to carry some junk today (showed him some official documents for proof).
AM: Oh I just said it like that. Don’t mind

Is he thinking I am actually going to wash it?

Me: of course not. I don’t see a reason for that.

He thinks I am sulking now. So he launches into something totally unconnected to the 190 bucks now-black-previously-green bag

AM: We are all dirty. When we live in a country where the supposedly purest thing Ganga has gone dirty, what do you expect of everything else?

I just look at him and half nod and smile my way through before I realize that he won’t stop staring at me till I actually tell him what I expect of everything else in a country with its purest thing gone dirty.

I look to my monitor hoping , as if, for an answer to emerge from among the script that had chosen that precise moment to behave normally and hence was incapable of being used as an object of digression. I look back at him and stammer something about things having to change and human beings et el. I spoke half to myself in such a low voice that even I don’t know what I said to disappoint him enough to cut off any further communications on lines similar to the one used by blogs that turn you mad with their depressive leanings.

That was a steep learning curve for me. I come armed with my bag today to office but it is safely tucked away under my desk hidden courtesy its natural smoky camouflage.
My AM passes by me and I just move my chair synchronously to make doubly sure that the bag is hidden.

I am definitely gonna wash this bag once I fall ill next week for my medical unless I feel really emotional about this dirt thing and let the bag be like that to symbolize the common depressing grounds broken.