Patriotism...?

Independence day was about a week back. the flag was hoisted in reverence, as most wore their Indian finery. speeches were held about heroic tasks performed 61 years ago and we were reminded how as a generation we are uncaring and inapt. less than an hour later, i was sprawled on my bed in jeans and a t-shirt watching 'the simpsons', and i couldn't help thinking whether i should be feeling guilty about my clearly inconsiderate lack of patriotism. and that got me thinking about the whole concept of patriotism. the more i thought about it, the more absurd it seemed to me. does any one have only one place they adore? if you haven't travelled then probably, but for those of us who have gotten around, its practically impossible. but patriotism decates that you must be loyal to only one place. it doesn't leave room for the resonable possibility that its citizen may prefer another locale equally, or heck, even more. why must anyone be required to be reverant to an area just because they were born there?
before you start sending me hate mail, let me explain my self. i think patriotism is an excellent way of uniting people of varied backgrounds. i just think that patriotism, as it is being defined today, is horribly misleading and can be quite dangerous. my primary issue with patriotism is the boundary it imposes. not only should no one be required to be loyal to certain man-made demarcations, they shouldn't want to be either. as a person entering the 21st century, poised at the brink of an exponentional globalisation, it seems ridiculous to be going backwards and putting up boundaries just as they are being distroyed. my (other!) primary concern with national patriotism is that it creates divides among land and hence among people. the concept of 'mine' and 'yours' is no longer abstract. it can be quantified. this has lead to, and will continue to lead to regional conflicts in many forms.
my solution, as unreal as it is, is simple. replace national patiotism with global patriotism. let people be loyal not only to their place of birth or origin but also to everyother nook and cranny of this planet. no one wants to harm whats theirs. no one would want to wage wars, whether economic or political, on their own land! no one would want to dump their radio active waste in their own land. no one would want to lead a part of their own land into accepting unreasonable loans. thats absurd! and that is what we should try to achieve.
(the counter argument to what i just said would be that people are inherently twisted, and that in reality no one thinks twice even when comminting atrocities on their own. also global patriotism is extremely 'large' - if you know what i mean- and that fragementation is inevitable. ALSO that if we did achieve global patriotism, people would still need someone to unload their radioactive waste onto and there is a good chance that this might be along racial lines. but like i said, i never claimed for my solution to be the one. what i do know however, is that national patriotism is getting us no where, so why not give this a shot?)

Moving On

Im not one to scan newspaper supplements for astrology or horoscope readings. i do have a set of tarot cards though. they were given to me by a really special friend who said that i might need them someday. being only 10 at the time, i was quite bowled over by her prophetic statement (and romanticized it endlessly in my mind - in most cases i was this huge aviation tycoon and i needed to consult the 'sages' - as i called it - for wisdom!) A couple of months back however, going through every teenagers griefs and pains, i actually was rummaging through some old stuff and found this set again. half amused - half exasperated, i sat on my bed and, with the required questions on my mind, i pulled out a card. It was a '8 of water'. the book told me it translated into, to sum it up, 'to move on'. not sure how 'moving on' had anything to do with my problem or solving it, i put the pack away, assuming the time hadn't come to consult them yet. (my tycoon years would be in need of them for sure!)
But 'moving on' got me thinking. to move from... to move past... to get on with your life. a very interesting article i had read once spoke about death in life (this is not 'a coward dies many times in his life, but the brave die only once' bit). we die at every stage. or we are supposed to die. most distinctively when we go from a baby to a child, child to teen, teen to young adult and so on. but we also die with experience. a death in the family, maybe even a random event that struck a cord. its like a snake shedding its skin, or a pupa to a butterfly. its the same entity, but with time its appearance and characteristics might alter. a sort of darwinian evolution at the individual level. we change with experience to survive. the to need to learn from experience equates to a struggle to survive.
My biggest 'what a load of bullshit' moment when i read the 'move on' tarot, was that i assumed there was nothing to move on from. (my inane explanation was that moving on meant there was baggage to be dropped, but a 19 yr old didn't have any baggage DUH!) but its not about baggage or about some distraught childhood that i might have had, it was simply that i hadn't died completely. that i had gone from pupa to moth (butterfly sound too flamboyant!) without dying a pupa. letting go closes a chapter. letting go is a form of dying. it was many months after i first stumbled across this card, that it started to make sense. my one biggest regret, however, is that this was probably my moment of need earlier foretold, and not the 'tyconic' one i had envisioned!

Georgia V/s Russia (click on the strip)

Citizen Cope

Last night on the way back from my friends place, i was shuffling through my best friends music (i can almost never finish an entire song!) and i came across 'citizen cope'. i'd never heard of them before. and i mean i had actually never heard of them before - most times i think iv never heard of a band, but eventually, once the songs starts, it turns out i know of them . but citizen cope was to me a completely 'new' band. your probably wondering why im rambling on and on about how i first heard them.. but for me the process of finding something new is sometimes cooler than the thing itself (not in this case though!).. but anyways, because i had never heard of them before, i had no expectations or preconceived notions about how they might be... and so it was with a truly unbiased and open mind that i heard them... if you love music you probably understand what im getting at...
ANYWAYS getting down to the music itself.. they are brilliant! if i had to say what genre they fall under, id have to say soft rock.. but thats being very generalist's.. they range all the way from punk rock to jazz-ish to classic rock (im talking santana, eric clapton... not kiss, megadeath.. - they aren't metal).. okay, im saying this with caution, but if you are a clapton-FOB-killers fan ('coz im all of those!) you will love this guy...
my favorite songs are - bullet and a target, let the drummer kick, when the sun comes up, sideways, fame, night becomes day. ('if theres love' is slightly pop-ish.. its k)
just give these guys a shot (if you haven't already) .. for some reason i feel responsible to get the word out about them! my missionary task, if you will! (without the brutality and violence!) cheers!

Happiness (?)

2 months into therapy, my main goal is supposed to be happiness. but what counts as happiness? i remember my first day on AD's. it was surreal. i felt invigorated. like nothing could spoil my day. i spent the first week grinning my ass off!! but then i wondered if that was happiness.. these anti depressants make you happy.. so there is this chemical formula for happiness.. and thats kind of weird... that means some one has pre decided what happiness for each individual should be.. i was supposed to be text book definition of 'happy'.. its kind of INSANE if you think about it.. luckily my pill popping suicidal days are over and im happy... but i cant help thinking what 'happy' am i? am i happy how i want to be? or am i happy by what the shrink wants me to be.. you know... i dont really care! im happy. period. i cant believe i just spent the last 10 minutes coming down to that.. i really love to meander don't i! IM HAPPY, BITCH! (im not even going to bothering proof reading this now! so please forgive me if this doesn't make any sense!)

An attempt at being random

hmmm... randomness.. the necessity to be random... to be liberated from structure.. to write without inhibition.. to be unleashed... a flower child of the 21st century... oooooh so the gay pride parades tomorrow and im really kicked and stuff... im hoping i can go... i have malaria and that totally suxss.. so the gay pride parade.. delhi, calcutta and banglore have already had theirs... bombays is tomorrow... the abolition of section 533 or 33 or something like that, which calls gay sex an act 'against nature'... weirdos.. iv realised that most people don't really care which way you swing.. the only ones whom seem to be all like woahh gay= bad are the fags that haven't come out of the closet... jackfucks... insecure prats.. but i suppose you can't really judge them, you never know what kind of environment they grew up in.. i mean i was lucky to have grown up in one where i could express myself and not worry about the repercussions.. yeahhh..