The Beckoning

Wait, wait a moment.
Don't submit to mortal sleep,
not just yet.
Something is afoot.


Melodious notes
in infallible subsequence.
Sky angry and red
ready to throw bolts at the ground.
Upheaval to end the torment.


Feel the hair stand up on ends
tickle of ice run down your spine.
Oh don't give in just yet
something is afoot.


A waft of warm breeze,
in the chill of the night.
A soft voice, calling out
from behind the filament bright.


Do they not beckon you?
Urge enough to get up.
Start walking towards the unknown
Oh don't just end your day as yet.
Something is afoot

Bon Voyage.....

Departures. 2 of them. Never completely painless or harmless. Nevertheless, not without reason.

Valentino Rossi ......

Multi MotoGp champion. Leaves Yamaha after 7 years, heading to the Ducati, to form the Italian dream team. He joined, when he was "disrespected" by Honda, the factory to beat back then. He took the Yamaha M1, a pig of a bike back then and turned it into a winner. Leaving Honda in the dust. Honda still regrets letting him go.

Mike Portnoy .........

Prodigial drummer. Face and percussive talent of the great prog rock band, Dream Theater. Leaves DT after 25 years with the band, having co-founded it with John Petrucci and John Myung. Entered the drummers Hall of Fame at the age of 37, recipient of countless awards and unarguably one of the best drummers in the world. Leaves DT because he feels the band is burning him out and feels better playing with side projects like Hail and Avenged Sevenfold.

Both legends in their own right. Both colourful personalities. Both departing when they are at the top of their game. Both relish challenges. Both infinitely passionate about what they do. Nothing less than 100% works for them. Both know where their heart is.

For me, these guys are heroes. And this sense, of following your heart and giving it all, I will try to inculcate in myself. Till then, here is wishing them the best of luck.......more records waiting for you guys!

Some good lyrics....good songs too!

A couple of songs, the lyrics of which are very relevant to whats going on with me. My personal mental being aside, two amazing songs with great words. \m/



"Schism" by Tool




I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them fall away
Mildewed and smoldering. Fundamental differing.
Pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers souls in motion
Disintegrating as it goes testing our communication
The light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us
So
We cannot seem to reach an end crippling our communication.

I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication

The poetry that comes from the squaring off between,
And the circling is worth it.
Finding beauty in the dissonance.

There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall
Away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second
Guessing
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our
Communication.

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion
Between supposed lovers.
I know the pieces fit.

"Tribes of Babel" by Motherjane




We’ve learnt to ignore oceans
Wake up to changing times
To rediscover with innocence
All boundaries are thin lines

Born under our different flags
Wrapped up in belief systems
Pain body, Pride, Psychic bags
Good, Bad, We’re all of them

The tribes of Babel, the angels sent on
With the 1stand 5thnote in every song
To paint graffiti without walls, in the air
Stairways to heaven, for the truly aware

To raise our sights and tear walls down
To tempt us to look within & all around
Facing strangers to find ourselves
Singing out loud, in someone else

We’re the tribes of Babel, the angels sent on
With the 1st& 5thnote, the soul of a song
To paint graffiti without walls, in the air
To celebrate all Earth while we’re still here

St. Anger

Quick steps
help not today,
to vent the fury
bursting through the veins.

A few creases on the skin
are all that betray.
The anger contained
beneath the skin.

Draining my energy
to keep the surface calm;
tears rising quick
glistening, not flowing.

Today, i will contain
suppress, resist
what will inevitably come
pray, it is not
what i do not want it to be
a Demon.

Still Life....

Fascinated by the dynamism of inanimate objects and hence the snaps. No particular order or theme or preference. Please do suggest your interpretations and titles.

Genocide

Genocide (defn) : ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II

Burned, charred to black as coal
entire people, a culture little different
what for was never questioned?
what for, was never answered.
Source of hate, i have never seen
hatred we hold for our kin
colour of skin, colour of flag
colour of things so myriad
Colour of my blood and yours is same
the same deep red
then why scar your skin with my sword
or my land with your pen
Generations lost in entire madness
subject to whim and vengeance
for material rewards ever so transient
quickly washed away by the blood that was spilled
made nauseous by the putrid stench

Question the reason of my flawed existence
if i deny that right to my neighbour
Anger in the futility and the helplessness
while pictures recount the horror and Holocaust
Account for all the hatred
Source of all hatred is Us
Slay the demon inside
and then we think alike
Blood warm pusling through the veins
spent in labour of love and life
is more valuable than
blood spilled in the name of skin, land and religious strife.

Zen in oBzen....

*Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The Japanese word Zen is derived from the Chinese word Chán, which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which means "meditation"

*oBzen is an album by heavy metal band Meshuggah.

For relevance, please read this post by Shrikant Narayanan . 

World Cup 2010 for free...Enjoy!

Shame! India sold its dead cheap......

Around 22,000 dead. More than 1,20,000 injured. Rs 1 lakh for each body. Rs 25,000 for every poisoned lung and damaged heart and blinded eyes. 26 years of long wait. And just 2 years in jail for the men who committed the worst crime against the people of this country. And this mockery of justice after such a long wait. Twenty six years after 40 tonnes of lethal gas seeped into the lungs of Bhopal, families of some 17,000 men, women and children are still waiting for the so-called compensation. Thousands more are still waiting to be accepted as victims. People of Bhopal are still drinking toxic water poisoned by Union Carbide in December 1984. And the main culprit is living life kingsize in a mansion in New York. 


No country sells its people so cheap.
No country sells its poor so cheap.
No country sells its dead so cheap.


Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.


India – its government, judiciary and corporates – accepted the ridiculous amount of $450 million dollars for the people killed and maimed by methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in the heart of Bhopal three decades ago. In all these years, the poor victims have done everything they could to get justice and compensation. They have cried and died on streets, sat hungry and faced police lathis on roads and filed court cases in the hope that one day they will get justice.


Today, they were denied justice. Today, they were told that they should be happy with the peanuts thrown at them by Union Carbide. Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich.


What justification does CBI have for not being able to produce Warren Anderson in court. The chairman of UC at the time of the gas attack (it was not an accident, the gas leak was caused because of cost-cutting steps taken by him) on the people of Bhopal, Anderson was arrested and later released on bail. He ran off to US in 1986 and we have not been able to find him or ask the US to extradite Anderson to India. Why? The government says it doesn’t know where Anderson is. What a lie. What a shame.


Last year, on a balmy July day, a bunch of victims danced on the streets after hearing news that the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal had ordered the CBI to arrest Anderson and produce him before the court without delay. The court also asked the CBI to explain what steps it had taken since 2002 to enforce the warrant and extradition of Anderson, who was declared an absconder in 1992. Though the CBI and US government failed to track Anderson, supporters of Bhopal victims traced him to the elite New York neighbourhood of the Hamptons. In 2003, Greenpeace activists paid Anderson a visit at his home and handed him an arrest warrant.

Today’s ridiculous judgment in Bhopal didn’t say anything on Anderson as he is a “proclaimed offender”. This status suits him fine because he doesn’t have to bother about coming to India and answer some very crucial questions:


*Why did Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US?


*On the night of the disaster, why did the six safety measures designed to prevent a gas leak fail to function?


*Why was the safety siren, intended to alert the people living close to the factory, turned off?

The victims have always alleged that Bhopal happened because of negligence by the Union Carbide and that was caused by cost-cutting measures taken by Anderson. Is it because of this reason that Anderson has been 'hiding' in the US?

A criminal has a reason to hide, but what reason does our government have to let a mass murderer like Anderson go scot-free. Is it because he is an American? Can an American come to India kill people in this country and run away with no consequences? That seems to be the case. We are still struggling to get a chance to question David Headley Coleman, an American citizen responsible for the worst terror attack on an Indian city in 2008. Will we succeed in getting Headley extradited to India? No way. Never.

Today, India proved that it doesn’t really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap.

Rs 1 lakh for every body. Rs 25,000 for every blinded eye. This is the cost of poor life in a failed state.

==>Courtesy : Shobhan Saxena (Times Of India)

"Justice has been done"

I could not, but shake my head in disbelief when the verdict for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy was announced. 8 convicts, each handed a 2-3 year imprisonment and also immediately given bail. This paltry leisure of a punishment for the crime of genocide! A mass murder of 15,000 (....an official figure, significantly lower than the actual number of deaths...) innocent civilians over a period of years because of the Methyl Iso-Cyanate that leaked from the Union Carbide factory. A judgement that was delivered 23 years too late! I have been swearing ever since I read the judgement and what made me livid was the statement by Magistrate Mohan Tiwari , "Surely justice has been done". No sir, it really and surely hasn't been done!

A certain Metallica lyric will make my thoughts extremely clear in the aftermath. Sarcasm, bitterness, anger and violence in perfect chaotic harmony. From their legendary album released in 1988 of the same name, it does reflect that things have not changed one bit.

...And Justice For All

Halls of Justice Painted Green
Money Talking
Power Wolves Beset Your Door
Hear Them Stalking
Soon You'll Please Their Appetite
They Devour
Hammer of Justice Crushes You
Overpower

The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price You Pay
Nothing Can Save You

Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real

Apathy Their Stepping Stone
So Unfeeling
Hidden Deep Animosity
So Deceiving
Through Your Eyes Their Light Burns
Hoping to Find
Inquisition Sinking You
With Prying Minds

The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price You Pay
Nothing Can Save You

Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real

Lady Justice Has Been Raped
Truth Assassin
Rolls of Red Tape Seal Your Lips
Now You're Done in
Their Money Tips Her Scales Again
Make Your Deal
Just What Is Truth? I Cannot Tell
Cannot Feel

The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price We Pay
Nothing Can Save Us

Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real

P.S.: Fuck you Union Carbide, fuck you Warren Anderson, fuck you Rajiv Gandhi, fuck you Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari, fuck you Keshub Mahindra....may you fucking burn in hell!