m a n u s c r y p t s

A few years ago, 3 to be precise, I might’ve been in the thick of it. The fire at Carlton Towers. My visiting card then carried this – Mid Day, 301, Carlton Towers…. No, I wouldn’t have been tweeting, because twitter would come into my life only three months later. But perhaps this was the reason the entire scenario bothered me, even as I sat watching the Twitter stream and the reactions. At first, i thought it was some minor mishap, and even cracked a mallu pun at TGIF’s expense. (@mixdev reminded me of that yesterday) But later, of course, I realised it wasn’t.

I don’t watch news channels, so I was spared the repeated shots (a good post by my friend Nishant) of those tragic jumps. I was watching the stream though, and kept seeing retweets of @jackerhack , who was stuck in the building. I read about people jumping from the windows, and my first reaction was what the hell was wrong with them? What did they expect, a bloody bed of roses??!! And then I realised that there was no way I could even imagine, let alone understand what they must’ve felt in those moments. The closest I could get to is perhaps when I have trouble breathing. Now these are very very minor asthmatic attacks, but even then I know the intense desire to get one lungful of air. And that’s perhaps just a decimal percentage of the trauma those poor poor souls must’ve gone through.

Trivialisation bothers me. I still read Malayala Manorama daily, and my biggest grouse with them is the way they capture deaths. Not events like the above, but individual deaths. Though I realise its perhaps a way of communicating to those who might not have known, reducing a life (and its end) to a few column cms with a matter-of-fact headline bothers me. Perhaps its some sort of block towards mortality. When @jackerhack ’s (okay, he has a ‘real’ name, and its easier to type – Kiran), so, when Kiran’s tweets were retweeted by everyone who had access to an enter button, it somehow reminded me of the above. After some time, when he tweeted about not panicking, I was even mildly irritated. (Sorry!) If it was meant for the twitter audience, i was wondering whether the majority of the audience cared for him enough to panic, and for those who did care for him, I wondered if the words would do any good. Was the twitter crowd mature enough not to panic, or not to see this all as a “ok, big event happening, let me part of it” thing? Are we really so different from the media we claim to hate?

Now he bloody obviously had reasons to do what he did, which he has articulated very well on his blog. I read and re-read and even before that, could empathise. And so, this is not so much about him as it is about us. Us, the crowd which blocked the roads there to take a look, us who sat watching on the tube or the stream, us the viewers and readers, us the voyeurs, and definitely me, who writes a post. Death makes a good story. With apologies to the few who don’t look at it that way, I wonder if being part of the excitement has taken a whole new turn when we’ve become the media on Twitter. Unlike the case with other media, when the crowd creates and consumes, who can complain? Yes, there are many cases in which relief and charity work have been augmented by Twitter, but this wasn’t such a case. Hopefully, all this is just me

until next time, false fire alarms?

She was sad when she saw their tiny bodies in the balcony. After all, she’d known them from the time they were born. But she wondered why he was sad.

He was saddened at the wasted death of two pigeons, who, if he’d had his way a few weeks back, would’ve made a fine omelette.

until next time, </ tweets>

PS. People!! the key words are ‘a few weeks back’!! Pigeon eggs are a delicacy in china, I’m not sure about pigeons!!!

Ever since I saw Via Darjeeling, I’ve had this thought. In every movie that I’ve seen, the hero has to be victorious at the end. The villain never wins.

Of course, there are movies with tragic endings, where the hero dies in the end, but its always due to life circumstances than the villain in particular. Also, in Bollywood multi starrer movies of yore, whenever the number of heroines was lesser than the heroes, one hero was destined to die somewhere before the end. Sholay like scenarios, where its technically impossible for the hero and heroine to get hitched, are also included in this. There are also side heroes who end up martyrs. Add to this, the various instances of heroine/brother/mother/ human friend/ dog friend etc taking revenge on the villain  (the last one was specifically included for Teri Meherbaniyan) and you never see the villain win. Anti heroes always have a justification.

We obviously don’t have a problem with unhappy endings. There are umpteen number of films that have become hits thanks to the hero’s tragic death in the end. So what makes films shy away from endings with a triumphant villain? Is it a self created rule to make sure that good always wins in good vs evil? Because people watch films as an escape from real life, and cannot digest real life on reel life? Why can’t we digest endings where a villain wins?

So will you pay to watch a movie where the villain wins in the end, or will you stay away because you’d feel cheated with such an ending? How about books with this theme?

until next time, know any exceptions?

PS. Bollywood/Hollywood (like say, Arlington Road), I can’t handle subtitled stuff

It is not about death. That is a process that starts as soon as we’re born. It is the reminders of mortality that has led to my aversion for hospitals. Mangled body parts, groans of suffering that beg me to put the sick person out of his misery. Painful messages that tell me that I’m really not in control.
It is not about control. That is a process that stops as soon as we’re born, or perhaps way before that. It is the reminders of the hands that decide my destiny that nauseate me. Faces begging for answers as to why it had to happen to them. It warns me of age, and a clock ticking somewhere.
It is not about death. It is about groping frustratingly for answers that seem to elude me. It is about wondering if I have missed my destiny, and wondering if everything I experience is a clue to something that I’m missing, and the futility that I’d experience if I kept missing them. For, it is when I walk through hospital corridors, that I painfully see the possibilities- physical and mental wrecks of what were once, human beings, it is then I realize that it’s life I’m afraid of.

Until next time, live