Prologue

It was a long time ago, as far as I can remember. I must have been about 3 or 4. Not too sure. It's all too hazy. Most of my memory revolves around evening time, for some strange reason.

The skies would be turning and toiling in shades of orange. There was this long by-lane, at the end of which I waited, sometimes for what felt like hours. From where I saw, a long road lay in front of me. Just that between me and the road, there was this gate. The gate had these vertical bars on it, enough for a cat to get through. Enough to see through to the other side, but not to cross over. There were others like me, but they were either inside, or they were probably long gone, I don't remember which one. 

I stood at the gate, holding onto it's bars, with two of those bars pressing onto my face. In hindsight, I looked like a perfect prisoner, rather like a caged bird, hoping for someone to get me out. 

Then from the corner of my sight, I could see someone turning into the by-lane. It was a lady. She carried bags both her hands. And before anything, I knew there were oranges in the bags. And she knew it that I knew what was in the bags. I love oranges. She smiled on each evening that I remember. And I can't describe my elation on seeing her, for each of those evenings I remember. I could finally stop looking like a prisoner, open the latch on the bloody gate, throw it wide open, and run to her. For my savior had come. "Mom!!".And I was free again, till the next day that is.....

Banned!

"A PIL(Public Interest Litigation) was filed on Monday in the Allahabad High Court seeking a ban on the showcasing of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film ‘Ram Leela’ on grounds that it “deliberately and maliciously insults and outrages the religious sentiments of Hindus."-The Hindu

A line so straight out of a news article shouldn't have been blatantly used, but the emotions it evoked, were hard to keep aside. 

By the way, this whole concept of banning really sucks. Are we all contestants of Big Brother/Boss? "Why does it suck?", we ask. What are we? Sheep? A bunch of fellows go and decide for themselves that something is not good for a community, specially by evoking ones dearness to religion. What an old trick! The lines of the article, which sounded rather fanatic in their outlook, specially this one, "The film's posters show half-nude characters in a rather offensive and compromising situations and use the tag ‘Goliyon ki Raas Leela’ to define itself. The official trailer of the film shows abusive language and intimate scenes which are far away from the religious connotations of this word, which insults and offends the religious sentiments of Hindus.” It almost sounds like the person has never seen anyone nude in life, or feels the necessity to purge him/herself each time he/she does.

Yeah! "Intimate scenes", "Compromising situations", What??? The fellow who bothered to file the PIL would have thought that blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. Surely! All Hindus will have a problem watching this movie. Again, let's repeat! ALL HINDUS!! Hilarious! And delirious too. So, what do we go ahead and do? Everything in our might to prevent everyone from seeing what is there on offer, as it offends someone's sense of self righteousness, mistaken or not. Everyone wants to be the thunderous voice in the house! Just that no one wants to say things aloud. Instead of saying 'Sexually evocative poses', they say "Compromising situations", because? Because anything remotely sounding like 'SEX' is to be muted in public. Pretty surely, folks with such mentality would blush a bit too often, even in their Mathematics class, to the extent that they have troubles reading every equation containing the word Sec²β! 

How conveniently, banning something, be it a work of art, or be it anything, in the apparent public interest, can really fiddle with the concept of free will. But, no! One has to ensure that he strikes upon 'we' with great vengeance and furious anger, those who have obviously hatched a plot to poison his brethren. 

It is sad to see so many works go unappreciated for the sole reason that they put us a bit outside the comfort zone of our mental confines. Even sadder is the fact that the list of such works isn't short by any means. 
Where are the worshipers of free-will? We've already lost a lot of good work to the 'banners'. How much more?

To give an idea of what the status quo has been so far, here's a list of things that were lost to us, thankfully not anymore....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films

And then there are books, of course

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments

Case of the Taken Photo

Scenes that really excite us, like REALLY EXCITE US,  are a rare find. Be it movies, be it real life. Okay, maybe that's not true for movies. Nevertheless, here's a story. Let's just start at that.

The scene begins in a garden, actually at its entrance. It was a big garden. A very well maintained one. It didn't have a sand-pit with all the slides, swings and see-saws for kids, which saved the garden from the noise and carnage, that a bunch of innocent little torrents were capable of creating. It was almost an 'A' certified garden, quiet, serene, and virtually motionless, except for a few huffing-puffing and panting aunti-type creatures.   But that wasn't the only kind of motion you could find. The place was also a place for working out facial muscles. It's just that you don't grow biceps on your face at the end of the session. A bit on that, a bit later.

There were also a lot of bushes around. Bushes make a lot of things convenient, specially when they cocoon a bench capable of seating two. And it wasn't too hard to find such bush-cocooned benches-capable-of-seating-two.

On one such bench, there were two, seated comfortably. Actually, a bit too comfortably. WAIT! It looked like these two folks had read this piece of information on some  'The *****Times' website that kissing burns 120 calories per hour.Hmm.. So they were trying to lose weight.

Almost forgot! The garden was famous for it's weight loss stories! Many of those fellows who testify on TV that some XYZ pill helped them lose weight, all were found to be regular visitors of this garden. Just kidding.

So, these folks on the bench were doing their thing, kissing, then murmuring something neither one of them understood, then kissing again, then murmuring, and so on. If what they did were a computer program, it would have been a recursive loop! Little did they know that a bunch of teenagers were getting all excited watching these two,quite literally jumping in their places out of excitement. What innocent faces! And how happy they looked! That is, the bunch of teenagers, not the kissy-folks. Kissy folks never look innocent. They sometimes look like cannibals! Okay, not these two. The girl looked fine. The guy, as usual, looked the kind that every time he was seen with the girl, people thought "Goodness! How can this guy have a girlfriend?? Huh?".

Everything was going fine. It had been going on fine for a bit too long. They had easily hit their weight-loss target for the week, probably. Meanwhile, on the other side of the bushes, one fellow, let's call him the Lone.Wolf, decided to part from his pack, as he spotted a better position for stalking his....preys. He occupies this so-called better place and enjoys the 'better view'. Good for him.

And a bit more time goes by. And a bit more. And Mr. Lone.Wolf decided that he'd had enough. He's bored of watching. So....now here's the important part....

Mr. Lone.Wolf was gutsy. He was kind-of odd, but he was really gutsy, the kind who'd ask your girlfriend out in front of you.....and probably get beaten up....

This fellow goes and stands in front of the bench-seated couple and starts off....

"Hey! Dude, I know that girl is the Principal's daughter! And you have had enough! Even I want to kiss her! You see? I have already taken photos of the two of you getting all cozy and snoggy! Let me kiss the lady, and I shall hand over my cell-phone to you. Promise!"

Mr. Lone Wolf even followed his epic line with a smile. And he continued.

"Else, the photo goes into the Principal's mailbox!!"

You see, after the NSA robbing everyone of their so called privacy, now this. The guy(Mr. Boyfriend) must have felt devastated! Given the situation, in some alternate reality, he could have done a dozen intelligent things to get himself out of his dilemma, but in this dimension, he turned out to be a bum. He almost let go of the girl, almost suggesting that he had no qualms with Mr. Lone.Wolf kissing his lady, just to ensure that he got Wolf's camera phone, in which lay his salvation. His lady, seeing the lack of a spine in her man's, now ex-man's spine, left the scene.

Mr. Boyfriend got hold of Wolf's phone, searched its memory inside out for the supposedly taken photo..... Wait for it... Wait for it.................................

Nothing!! No photo! Now, he could even hear the giggles coming from the bushes behind him, from our jumping-on-the-spot monkey gang. Had he looked in the mirror, he'd have definitely seen something like this...

  Outside the garden's entrance, Mr. Lone.Wolf and the Girlfriend met again. At first, the girl looked angry at Wolf, as though the whole performance had gone awry. Then she smiled. Wolf gave out a sigh of relief. Then the girl spoke... "Here's your new cell-phone, as promised."

Goodness! What all one needs to do to show that someone's got to grow some balls!

If......

It's been a while since I hit the proverbial wall. Hitting the wall is a condition, usually used by marathon runners, when they can't move any further in the race. This is usually caused due to complete depletion of carbohydrates in the body, basically no more energy left.
At such times, even a stray word, not necessarily any stray word, could spark your imagination, specifically if you are looking for motivation to continue with your pursuit of becoming better at writing. Guess what? I came across an entire sentence. Here goes.
"If you could accomplish anything with your life, what would you do?"
I came across this line in the very beginning of a book called 40 Chances. That italicized line is a question posed by Warren Buffet to his son as a challenge.
Wow! Think of the question. Specially the first half of it. "If you could accomplish anything in your life". Firstly, if we observe carefully enough, that line is the truest thing that can be said about life, specially if we remove the 'IF' out of it. Secondly, anyone who has realized the truth in that line, surely is a fortunate person, as I am. And lastly, for some reason, each time that question repeats itself in my head, it seems to be Will Smith asking me the same question in his 'Pursuit of Happyness' outfit.
What would you do? Or, ask yourself this question while standing in front of the mirror.
Pretty surely, this question isn't just a challenging question for Mr. Buffet's son alone. Goodness! How do these really crazy people come up with these questions? Is it because they know the answer to such questions? Or is it because they don't? Huh? The latter definitely sounds unlikely after looking at what they have accomplished in their lifetimes, which, needless to say, is nothing less than commendable, although maybe, just maybe, it might not be worth ruling that possibility completely.
A while ago, I came across this list of questions that people are asked during job interviews. All the questions were the "Where do you see yourself after 5 years" type questions. In most cases, the answer that pops into my head is the ubiquitous "I don't know". And it feels pretty crappy.
By the way, how do I know that the person who is asking me these high -flying questions knows the answers to them? That is obviously immaterial as long as I can't answer the questions myself.

That is why we read so much, if at all we do. To 'figure it all out'. In his book on Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson clearly mentions how Jobs felt restless out of not knowing what to do. Jobs, while addressing the students of Stanford University, back in 2005, said something like he hoped that everything would be fine, when he decided to drop out of college. Of course, when you hear these heavyweights of our world ratifying the 'It's okay to not know' Theory, it obviously sounds a lot more convincing to 'not know'. That's always been the case. Why do we have Sachin Tendulkar instead of our mom/dad/grandpa endorsing the National Egg Coordination Committee with the slogan सन्डे हो या मंडे, रोज़ खाओ अंडे (Be it Sunday or Monday, eat eggs everyday)? Does the line sounds convincing coming from Sachin? Actually, it does. But it is more because if our mom/dad/grandpa happened to try convincing us to eat eggs using the same 'Sunday-Monday' lines, we would be rolling on the floor laughing each time they told us this, which would make them feel embarrassed, and in all probability, that would be the end of their advocacy of the health benefits of consuming eggs. So that's pretty much about eggs.
Coming back to the big question, rather the answer to the big question, If I could(and Can... So can anyone) accomplish anything I wanted, which is still something I couldn't figure out in the 45 minutes that the question has nagged me, If I would want to accomplish one thing of all, it would be never regretting trying something. Yes, surely that will take a lifetime to accomplish, but the, I hope everything will be fine.
How about you?