Reverie

A wakeful sleeping

Of sleepless slumbers-

Opening at the shut

Of closed beginning,

Where befuddled emotions

In an endless maze

Perform a supernatural play.

The real morphs into unreal

The mute voices speaks of stories

Seldom seen or heard.

The illusional self

And delusional beings

Trapped in a cage

Behind the closed lids.

So much lay hidden

Like the treasures

Of deep ocean trenches.

The pearls and weeds

Grow harmoniously

And the waves

Whipping and lashing the shore.

By a whisker it is understood,

Barely spoken,

But always forgotten

Lies a dream somewhere

Behind the lenses

Awake or asleep-

Is a dreamer dreaming of dreams.

Timeless Giggles

Smallest things give the greatest joy and that is where our greatest happiness lies. It was my first pay and I was exhilarated. With that, I purchased my new smart phone with activated 3G connectivity, first to have to have it in the family. I carried it as the badge of my pride, as I had earned it to feel that. I flaunted it to all my family members, happiness simply multiplied. I can never forget those happy faces. It was only later on that phone had become burden for me. I had to do my work on Sunday’s as well as I had easy access to internet from anywhere.

World Of Mobile
Image Courtesy: webdesignsingapore.org

One Sunday while working, my ten year old nephew walked up to me and asked, “Popo (that is what he calls me), ain’t your phone fun? My friend’s dad has it… and he plays games on it all the time.”

I dint know what to tell him. I smiled at him and opened the Pandora’s Box and showed him what internet, games, apps, videos and social networking was. I told him how internet had enabled us and get all things on our finger touch. How I could work online, how I could surf the web on the move, how I could shop and in between he asked me, “Can we download games for free or do we have to buy?” I smiled and said “Yes, we could do both.”

I was amazed by the way he swallowed all the information. They are fast! It was not too late before he started operating my phone all by himself and showed me more fun features and taught me how to use maps and games. I saw him having fun more than ever. Without me teaching him, he learnt to download his favourite songs, wallpapers and mobile apps all by himself! Wow! Children are getting smart with smart technology.  I thought to myself.

Few weeks later, I woke up with some giggles coming from the hallway. It was time to go for work, so I just brushed around to see who it was. I saw my grandparents, working on my mobile.

NO. That’s not what they did.  I moved slightly closer to have a clear picture. I saw my grandfather was showing something to my bed-ridden grandma on my phone. I dint really want to disturb them, but my grandma replied just like my nephew with the same excitement in her tone, “I saw my friend after 30 years.”  Then I heard my grandpa say, “That was Facebook. This phone, it’s just like Alice’s Wonderland.” I dint quite understand what he meant but I felt he was charmed by the phone that could do everything. I wondered if it was phone or the internet on the phone that made my grandparents behave like kids!

I appreciated his imagination, and then I wondered how he had learned all this. To my surprise, he grasped the same knowledge that I fed my nephew with. He was watching, learning and understanding at the same time.

Few more giggles were heard when they were enjoying themselves with ‘Talking Tom Cat’ app. I just couldn’t enjoy myself more with their joys. I couldn’t believe such things were making them happy, while they remain vital part of my life. Internet, Facebook, applications, chatting, games much more on my mobile had become mundane for me while it was pristine joy, pleasure and fun for them! While I thought internet on mobile was work, email, more work and more mails…but for them internet on mobile was fun!!! Yes, they made me realise that internet is not just work but a lot more fun!

This post is my entry for the indiBlogger.in contest ‘Internet is fun’, sponsored by Vodafone. Readers can have a look at the Vodafone fun page – http://www.vodafone.in/fun

A Looking Glass

A fumbling hand strikes a glass,

Falling, shattering, breaking

Into pieces ten thousands

That lay dead on the floor;

Like a broken dream

I lie like a corpse in a deep slumber.

Hope I could have survived

This tragedy, loss and suffering

That has occurred to the world;

That lies in the nadir of pain, desolation

And whose wretchedness

Has spared no being - worthy or kind.

These moments have scarred

My heart, my soul, my self

And I see how cracks have appeared

Through which agony has found

Its course in the abyss of my conscience

Tearing and breaking me.

Like the glass pieces on the floor

That is sharp yet futile

And has no form or structure;

Separated, isolated and sequestered

Self, A face – broken and ruined

Is what I see in the glass.

Pen(is) Mighty When I hold It

I, I flirt a lot,

Going around, encompassing all

The thoughts, the words

And breed more in darkness-

The intense passion.

Initiation- make a move

I do it, do it all,

I play a lot with them

Swirl them, turn them, toy them.

They get better with more touch.

Our naked souls converge.

We get to the point,

Bereft of our coyness,

Ideas begin to penetrate my head,

Desiring for more and more.

Inserting pen on the sheet laid wide,

Expelling all that I am aware of

At the zenith of heat generated,

I deliver the climax and

The final sigh of pleasure!

A Pause

Walking on the road endlessly

Measuring its pleasures

Your eyes grow voyeuristic,

Seeing and glancing over everything;

A bus on its way

Reaching its desired destination,

A dog barking, sellers yelling, sun shining,

A child crying, his eyes watering…

Water in the ocean-plentiful

Sky- a limitless view of infinite hues

Thoughts- so pensive and intense

Emotion changes like shades of the sun

Time so rapidly moves, it sways

The seasons- such a constant cycle.

Words like me are so mortal!

I is constantly stuck in quagmire-

Unmoving, failing and regressing.

Crisp biscuit in warm coffee

Softening with time, loosing

Spirits, hardness and making.

Leaves of the trees, once rich,

Fresh and new becomes dead and dry.

A rock at the foot

Has no story to tell

But silent waters running deep

Tells tales untold.

A book is once written

Once read and once forgotten.

I have no center to hold,

It will crack and when it does

I will sink

There is no time to wait,

It flees like sand in hand.

The jewels of the night sky

Have begun to fade,

Clouds have begun to appear.

Again

Caught and trapped,

Seized in these pensive moments

I have locked the self.

I don’t know where I exist

In this fleeting time

The becoming has became

And don’t know of what will become.

Eulogy for my Beloved

How can you be so despicable!

Loving you is next to impossible.

You don’t take shower for days

As if you have been a stray kitty.

You take all the pride in the mane you grow,

Fashion it as a style as you know.

My heart thumps to kill you,

When you endlessly play your games

You feel triumphant when you murder visually,

I wonder if I could do that really.

If it is humour that you so praise,

I could use that in number of ways

To not let you know how was it used

A secret joke on you for getting me amused

You brag about the Apples you collect

And endlessly swagger over its seamless make.

I wish I could slice those imported Apples

And have them every day for my breakfast.

You talk endlessly as if you were the only human

Who had the precious speaking ability.

Trust me, my dear, if animals were able enough

You would be outspoken by a rat.

Elephant’s vision can compete yours.

Four eyes and yet so blind?

Everything is always in its place,

My love, only it is you who is lost.

There is not a better pig-head

That I admire the most

Who fails to understand simple logic

But tries to decipher laws of physics.

You laze around like a well-fed lion,

As if you returned from a Trojan war.

Sloth and you have some similarities

Sinful to share the same initials.

You batter my heart with the web of stories

You weave, the fables you narrate and

The tales without tails- Yet you proceed,

Without any shame or guilt.

Loving you is next to impossible,

While you are so despicable!

BlackBerry Boys’ Chauvinism

We learnt how to ignite fire. We learnt the magic of the wheel. We broke mountains, harvested water from the river and reached the moon as well. We have passed the modern age and landed in an age of fast-paced technological age. Great minds have enabled us to have all that we want as Midas’ Touch. Things are just a touch away these days.

Technology does have a colossal impact on our life-style but not majorly impacted on our thoughts. We are still crippled by age old conventions and ideologies that advance very gradually. We have passed through several movements of feminism since its initiation. The ad-world somehow still desires to instill the patriarchal notions. The BlackBerry phone which was initiated as a business phone, that enabled busy people to work anytime and anyplace to get them much and much busier; they started up with a ‘BlackBerry Boys’ ad-campaign to target younger audience. We see the scope of brand growing larger with the sing-song ad. The fast-paced features of internet access, e-mail and the BBM chat attracted many young minds, and BlackBerry was no longer business phone only.

The ad begins with five gentlemen in their “cool suits” and their “shiny shoes” singing the BlackBerry song. They think the BlackBerry adds to their already established 'coolness', or rather the word cool is more associated to ‘cool dude’. To my amazement, I do ponder what makes them think that business phones can be used by business men. How entertainingly they have sidelined businesswomen class! Or in recent case, they have also marginalized girls using the phone for same networking reason as boys. We see how they still inculcate the idea of how technology is better understood by men rather than women. In my defense, I believe the world (chauvinistic) is still unable to grasp the idea of how women can handle technology and nature well, unlike men. With this ad, they are surely boosting their male-chauvinistic ego, while they still desire to call themselves “Boys”.

On asking this question to my friend Anushka, who is also a Blackberry phone user; she denies of having any problem with the ad. It is true for many people that the campaign of ‘BlackBerry Boys’ that propagate “Boys” and not girls go blind.

It seems to me that “Boys” is also used for the purpose of alliteration (Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound), to make it more catchy. In that case, why couldn’t they use “Babes” for instance? I think it would have shattered their consumption, while they seem to target larger audience, as we see male population on rise in most of the countries. The hegemonic, normative men would have their concerns using a BlackBerry phone or their masculinity would be at stake if they had to use a phone that sung BlackBerry Babes and having lyrics such as:

"We wear tall shoes,
We wear smart dresses,

We are the BlackBerry babes,

Oh Yeah!
We are bright,
we are special,
we are very very special,

We're the BlackBerry babes,
Oh yeah!
We're the BlackBerry babes,

We do chat and
We do shop,
We do surf and we do all on the move,
Ooooooooooo,

Cos, we're the BlackBerry babes,
Oh yeah we're the BlackBerry babes,
We're the BlackBerry babes."

Can you imagine any of the Khans of the industry using the phone cause of an ad singing like this? Or can you imagine any of our so macho cricketers using a phone with such feminine inclination. Many men would not want to buy a phone with such a song propagating it. However, the current Blackberry ad does, effectively, cater to men and women as well just by adding women in the ad sequence and not in the lyric. We see the biased nature of patriarchy shooting themselves on us. In the prior case, such equality would be hampered. The question I would like to bring into light is, even if they created an ad with such a song, would they dare to show men in the ad; as we see many women in the ‘Blackberry Boys’ ad?

And so the tradition continues… The second sequence of ‘Blackberry Boys’ ad propagates the use of the phone by the current pop-generation or the younger generation for chatting and social-networking purposes. The ad somehow essentializes the use of technology that can be appropriated by male counterparts only. However, the ad ‘compensates’ and populates it with the women in it, that really doesn’t seem enough.

We see how in this ‘progressive’ world the binaries between the genders do exist. We still find ourselves caught up in the quagmire of gender discriminations repeatedly propagated through media. While women are still trying to break the glass-ceiling and climbing the corporate ladder, paving their ways through equal opportunities and fighting for it, it is a tragic event to see such incidents happening in the ‘advanced’ world, is regressive and recessive.