On Solitude and Sanity

While I can't claim to be a brilliant eccentric, but being a loner, living alone, I know first-hand how it helps preserves sanity in taxing times. Hence, in the early days of the ScamDemic,  I used to roam around the neighbourhood with a "what me worry" attitude, sans a mask of course, oblivious to being the target of the collective evil eyes. Meanwhile, my neighbours downstairs were lowering down a bag on a rope from their balcony for groceries ordered on Amazon. And my landlord and friend decided to utilize the time to create a walking regime by prancing to and fro on the terrace which alternately made me think of a poor caged feline in the zoo or just gave me vertigo watching him going round and round. That with a park next-door...

So, when concerned friends asked me how I was dealing with isolation and the quarantine, I always replied "Marvellously!!" The thing is I had already self- isolated myself for almost a decade...from needless social interaction and human stupidity that is... Contrary to what Hollywood and the popular culture has been indoctrinating, the real Zombie apocalypses doesn't involve  living corpses thronging the streets, but living people who choose to remain brain-dead, watch TV and  hide in the confines of their homes.

On the collapse of life and civilization by Dmitry Orlov in his book 5 stages of Collapse

Vintage Cars, Elfin Eyes...

 I cancelled my streaming services because I realised binge-watching was even more wasteful and addictive than social media. However, except for saving me a bit of money on subscription charges and making binge material a bit less accessible, it has not really eliminated the pastime. I ended up wasting two nights watching a so-called supernatural drama set in semi-sepia tones, with 30s era cars and people wearing period costumes in a contemporary western liberal (read as US Democrat propaganda) indoctrination series masquerading as a TV serial. All because of a brief flash of flesh in an altogether different film. 

Honestly, I started watching it only because Natalie Dormer gave a peep of her stockinged thigh in the "Counsellor," which I consider as one of the most sexually charged scenes in cinema, paradoxically in a film with the most morbid ending I have ever seen. 

I had neither watched the Game of Thrones, except for a compilation of all the nude scenes in the series, nor the Tudors, where she had acted earlier, so I really had no inkling what to expect from her. One would also be hard-pressed to call her beautiful in a conventional sense, especially without all the makeup highlighting her elfin eyes. 

Yet undeniably Sexy, she is…in Yoda speak!

The serial in question if you have not guessed already is the "City of Angels-Penny Dreadful." I am still quite clueless as to the connection with the original Victorian-era horror mishmash Penny Dreadful, which I also binge-watched, no, thanks to being enamoured with Eva Green. Where despite the impressive sets, great acting, the ample nudity, it largely gets my thumbs down solely because it forced me to endure several gay sex scenes as the writer, director and producer John Logan seems obsessed about pushing forth his sexual orientation. The really dreadful part of the series I concluded, was that everyone from Satan to Dracula and Dorian Gray got to sleep with Vanessa Ives, Eva Green's character, well all except her poor soulmate, the werewolf protagonist - he only got buggered by Gray instead and had to do with a consolation prize of a young witch towards the end.

Though set in the late 30s Los Angeles, the City of Angles is a typical modern Showtime production; meaning it's a crime to be white. The Jews are the valiant heroes(a la David vs Goliath, with the wisdom of Solomon), even their gangsters. The Latinos are the poor but joyful  hard-working folks, the victims of racial injustice. The protagonist is a tormented Latino Good-Cop, while his two brothers are both cop-killers (justifiably so, of course) #Latinolivesmatter after all. Quite surprisingly, there are no Blacks or Asians in any role. Again with several (unwelcome for me) homosexual and bisexual scenes imposed upon us, courtesy John Logan and his gay agenda. 

The white characters are portrayed as either sadists, racists, fascists or Nazis, the sole exception being a tragic blond gospel singer, the hero's love interest (diversity politics in love, in India they would call it Love Jihad) who is controlled by her hawkish and ambitious, Nazi sympathizer, Christian revivalist mother, but who ultimately commits suicide, probably to make space for a Latino Chica in season two, except that they got panned and rightly so.

The role of Santa Muerte, Mexico's Grateful Dead inspired superstar deity and protector of gangsters and drug dealers, seemed completely out of place in the 1930s context as the cult rose into prominence only in the late 90s. It's as if the storyline got mixed-up with a contemporary Narcos serial. Or maybe the scriptwriters were just promised a discount on their weekly cocaine stash by the Mexican dealer, who demanded the inclusion of his patron saint.

The central figure in the City of Angels is the anti-hero Magda, a multidimensional goddess/demoness of chaos with Caucasian looks, a blend of a Succubus and the Norse trickster Loki. She who thrives on causing mayhem, discord and death played by Ms Flashing Thigh a.k.a. Natalie Dormer in multiple roles, each in a human avatar of the queen of chaos. Can't say she did an excellent job, won't say that she sucked, but yes, she knows how to flash them eye-lashes and stare at you almost supernaturally with those faux elfin eyes.  

She did act like a real bitch at times, well play the role that is, but couldn't be the venomous evil incarnate she was supposed to portray. No personification of madness, either, like by Eva Green or our very ow Kankana Ranaut, both on the screen or real life. And except for the sexless, frumpy secretary in all her other characters, her acting was overshadowed with her doing what she does best...being Sexy!! 

If Santa Muerte at least has a historical, cultural and contemporary religious significance, Magda is a figment of Logan's imagination, probably inspired by the legions of women who create trouble anywhere they go and for anyone they come across in real life. Believe me they exist, I happen to know a few, and they don't need Ju-Ju to do their Voodoo!!

With a 2020s politically-correct liberal narrative, Santa Muerte transported back in time and a real lacklustre storyline, it is a guarantee of wasted time...the only saving grace was the Vintage Cars and those Elfin Eyes...

 The end was even more pathetic and straight out of a Biden-Harris electoral campaign with the hero proclaiming, they are building a wall to divide us!!

Yeah, no female nudity as well, unless you consider some Latino guy's arse, but that's John Logan for you!!

The Chinese Mask Torture

With age, a man sheds two things; the hair on his head and so-called friends! The ongoing ScamDemic has had me blocking a few Covidiots who were daily sending me a barrage of scaremongering messages. Likewise, I had to tell a couple of "Maskista" Karens to Fuck-off, also reminding them that I am not their hen-pecked husband to listen to that chiding tone. Which reminds me how fed up with their sermons and pretensions, I used to get rid of my female college mates exactly the same way, and they always angrily retorted back" No wonder you don't have a Girlfriend" as if my single hood and inability to take their Bullshit was interconnected. But, they probably had a valid point!

Without going deeply into the topic of masks, government flip-flops on the subject and over 50 medical (peer-reviewed) papers, which I collected that say that they mostly don't -  the main factor causing this current divisive rift is really about not their effectiveness but the subject of "Virtue Signalling!!"

Its Religious fanatics vs Atheists all over again. For religious whackos it's because their holy book/prophet/guru says so, here it's because governments and their bureaucracy who are always on a lookout for ways to increases taxes and curtail citizen's rights and promote autocracy, say so : “Honey, we have to trust them. This is our government. They’re on our side!!”

 All for public safety of course; protection from communism, terrorism, a venereal or some cooked up disease. This time they have hit jackpot by effectively combined fearmongering against an invisible enemy and people's inherent narcissistic need to display that they are better than the rest. 

Hence, the mantra "I am a better person than you, because I obediently wear a mask for your safety!!" 

Let's face it, Virtue Signalling is endemic everywhere, only in different guises. In India, it traditionally takes on a religious or cultural colour with a clock of drab orthodoxy. I am better than you because I am vegetarian,  more religious, maintain fasts and go on pilgrimages. Many a young Indian woman proudly states that she comes from an "orthodox conservative family" to denote that she is a virgin and sexually unavailable. So don't get any ideas Bozo unless you fulfil my long list of entitled expectations, those of my parents and the society too. Just like her same-age western counterpart would declare that she has a boyfriend  before even saying her name also meaning  "I am not available for you as well, Bozo!!"

Following the election of the Supreme Leader Modi and the masturbatory fervour with which people have been forwarding the ruling party's IT cell's (Fascist India/Indians/Army/Hinduism is great) messages to each other, Virtue Signalling in India now has got  a new nationalistic Hindu avatar. I am virtuous because I claim on Facebook that I worry about our poor soldiers dying on the borders or freezing their arses in the snow!! 

As organised religion is all but dead in the west, at least among the  white-skinned population, Virtue Signalling there has adopted  multiple new forms. Before the Covid masks, it was psalms to scowling Saint Greta of the Holy Church of Climate Change, the poor hungry polar bears, Asian Tsunami victims, suppressed and depressed women of India, Chinese torture victims and so on and so forth...

I remembered Chinese torture victims because that's what a very prim and proper Danish woman I met in Leh claimed she was doing: "Counselling Tibetan Monks who were victims of Chinese Torture." She spoke about it with such earnest sincerity that anyone listening was forced to nod solemnly in appreciation. Though almost 30 at that time, I was still very gullible in the ways of the world and my BS filters were not yet attuned to such western forms of VS. As I was  a journalist at that time, one who had  not yet discarded his "Free Tibet" grab, a month later I emailed her offering to connect her to some relevant people in the Tibetan Govt in exile at Dharamshala. She expressed her gratitude, but she was already in Bali at that time !! Never knew that Chinese torturers didn't even spare the island!!

 I could have guessed that she was just a poser when she kept extolling West African culture and music, all because her ex-boyfriend was from Mali. Now, interracial porn may not be my forte, but again who on earth gushes about a former partner's homeland's cultural wealth irrespective of whether he or she was black, purple or blue!!

Now, I don't need to pick up an African hooker, the kind who hang around the Pastry Palace on the Outer Ring road in Delhi on weekends For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge to appreciate  Youssou N' Dour!!

BTW, the face masks which the various governments, virtuous Karens and countless COVIDIOTS dictate, threaten  or scream at us to muzzle up with, can also be termed as Chinese torture, or even better China's revenge. After all, didn't this charade start when western powers led by the US used the excuse of a seasonal respiratory illness epidemic in China as a pretext to start hybrid economic warfare against the country?

Forcing a temporary economic embargo causing billions of dollars of losses for the Chinese by quarantining their ships, followed by dumping of share in Chinese companies. An assault bolstered by a 24x7 global  onslaught through media channels with theories of lab created chimeras and  recipes for bat soup thrown in for effect. But the Chinese quickly understood the game and gained the upper hand with an even better orchestrated media and PR campaign, while their domestic investors picked up the dumped shares for a song. 

Soon they were forgotten and every political opportunist around the globe starting using the ScamDemic and the lockdown tyranny to further their own domestic gains. The US elections, Brexit, a constitutional referendum, an excuse for demonising Muslims or to justify 6 years of misrule in India and in the process whether by accident or intent, making true the Rockefeller Foundation's prediction about possible future scenarios. One where countries impose an autocratic tyranny and curtail citizen's rights using the excuse of a pandemic: The Lockstep Protocol. 

So till it (Lockstep) is in place, be good and obedient citizens,  keep breathing in those cancer-causing and lungs blocking microscopic synthetic fibres and filaments from those Chinese made facemasks or material. 

But remember, you are undergoing the Chinese Torture in order to protect others!!

Who says I have anything against masks...

You Imposter!! Shame on You...

About 24 years back, after motorcycling across India for 6 months as a voluntary mechanic with an international group (I will skip over the part covering loud rampant sex or riding dead stoned);  I was unable to sit in an office cubicle again. 

So I took up on my ambition of becoming a journalist except that sans an MA degree in English or a Mass Communication diploma, I wasn't going to land a  gig in any local publication even if I had the writing skills of Harold Robbins. 

So I started freelancing to build up a portfolio, which was writing 2000 words for  250 rupees and trying to cram it with at least 3 photographs as I was paid 100 per image. In a few months, my articles became a regular front-page feature on the supplements of the largest local English daily of the region. 

One of my ardent fans was a  professor of Linguistics or was it Folklore, from Gauhati University who always complimented my pieces whenever he met me. One day he asked me from where I got my Mass Comm degree. 

"Nah, I don't have one" I replied smugly, expecting awe and praise. 

"Not even a Diploma" he exclaimed!! "Then how come they print you?" 

From that moment, I became a blasphemy to his world-view and whenever we bumped into each other he looked the other way and never spoke to me again.

Complementing the learned professor in his ignorance was a distant uncle whose  daughter was as fair-skinned, pretty and  glamorous as he was ugly and condescending. 

"So what are you up to?" He once asked me in a manner which belied that he already knew that it was nothing good. So I told him that I was freelancing and  listed the names of  newspapers and magazines where I was regularly printed.

"Oh, so you still haven't got a job" he snorted. My daughter passed out of Delhi School of Economics (a blatant lie) and she earns about a lakh a month (no clue if it was true and wouldn't care less).

I still face similar situations, especially in technical meetings and hear, "how come you are so immersed in the subject, you are not even an engineer." 

I really want to tell them about young engineers who I shooed out of my room for being ignorant about the basic tenants of engineering or mechanics, or those Yi-Yi-Yi-Ts and Yi-Yi-Yi-YMs graduates I came across peddling fast-food for MNC corporations or even better, as vice-President Logistics of a Pizza franchise.

Only now, a bit more restrained and mature, I just reply…"yeah strange isn't it !" 

Cherchez Le Femme

The Russians love to use the French phrase "Cherchez La Femme," popularized by Hugo, which implies that most trouble, directly or indirectly, is caused by women. Their women use it with equal fervor, because beneath the facade of female solidarity, they actually all hate each other.

In my case, these words should be embossed on my walls, mirrors, and coffee mugs.

Most of the women I’ve met as an adult over the past 28 years collectively inspire me to write a Punk Rock version of the Rod Stewart classic—"Some Guys Have All the Luck."

Only my punk anthem would start with:
"Some dudes get blowjobs, others the whack jobs—no prizes for guessing where I belong..."

Misogyny? Sour grapes? Trapped by unwanted pregnancy and bamboozled by child support payments? Did the ex-wife take it all? False rape accusations?

Nooo.....Sir! It’s far more insidious!

I could, of course, rant for hours about a recurring theme with women in my life: "I rejected you earlier to sleep with/marry someone else, but now, please feel sorry for me." Some turned up the next morning, others after 10, the latest, after 30 years.

Not my skeletons, nor my closet—I was just opening the front door. So why me?!

A more benign, though no less infuriating, episode took place when I first relocated to Delhi. Some friends of mine—a couple—introduced me to one of their friends, a runty little woman with a large, pumpkin-like head and small beady eyes. Despite of having the sex appeal of a female Mr.Bean, she seemed intelligent, friendly, and was quite witty. A few drinks here and there, a walk in a mall, and we all ended up at her place.

At some point, she asked me aside to help her replace a burned-out bathroom lightbulb. The new one burned out instantly. She then gave me a damsel-in-distress routine (which I didn't yet know was her speciality) about having to leave for work early, getting back late, dealing with uncouth electricians, and living alone.

Tipsy and gallant, I offered to help her out if she couldn’t find anyone to check the wiring.

The next day, I gave her a quick call to ask if she managed to fix it—no more than 30 seconds. To my relief, she told me not to worry about it.

Before I knew it, my friend's wife was accusing me of harassing (sexually, of course) a poor married woman under the guise of helping with the lightbulb, no, thanks to copious inputs from the latter. This was the cause of a big fight between her and her husband earlier, before she decided to hold her own trial for my misdoings. While I was somewhat dazed by the accusation, I was more pissed off by the friend's wife than Madam Pumkinhead, who was and remained a complete stranger as far as I was concerned. There you go, I told myself, once again trying to help people out! After all, no good deed goes unpunished!

Later, my friend claimed he got revenge on my behalf by posting a photo of her ( Madam Pumpkinhead)on Facebook, sitting on someone’s lap at a party,  for her husband—who lived in another town—to see.

As for his wife… well, let’s just say we stopped being friends. And for various unconnected reasons ceased to be his wife.

 

 

P.S.: With my karma demon(whose existence I vehemently deny) working overtime, a few years went by before Madam Pumpkinhead, her husband, and a bunch of party people were all arrested in a high profile case by the narcotics police in their hometown with a huge stash of drugs. Their names and photographs were plastered all over the local newspapers and TV, effectively ending her banking career. Though I heard about it much later, I still unashamedly savoured the news with unabashed schadenfreude!

Loan Defaulters, Debt Collectors and those caught In-Between...

 

I recently read a story about lenders adopting intimidating techniques on loan defaulters, no thanks to the precarious economic condition in India for the last few years,  now conveniently explained away by the government as the fallout of the COVID-19 ScamDemic. 

Well, despite not being a loan-taker, my car instalments being paid 10 years back, I still found myself on the receiving end of such harassment several times. 

The first started when I added a friend's wife on Facebook, who had apparently defaulted on a car loan more than a decade back and fled town. The recovery agent followed her FB account as it had no privacy settings, next found my phone number from a job site where they were registered as an employment agency and unleashed 24-hour harassment via intimidating calls demanding her number and address. He even cited my home address, threatening to come over physically.

It took me a day to discover that they got my contact details from the  India job site www.Naukri.com. I believe the firm's name was Lakshmi Debt Recovery Agency, unfortunately, I deleted a bunch of emails which included the one where I mentioned their full name and address in my complaint to the job portal, which incidentally didn't even elicit an automated response! It was only when I threatened them back with much more abusive language naming their agency and address did the calls stop. 

Next, it was some tailor who gave a bank my landline number as his, or maybe the phone company just allocate me a disused number. It took the cooling power of an industrial refrigerator to keep my blood pressure down as I patiently explained to the utterly obnoxious woman on the phone that my sewing skills extend to darning my underwear or sewing a button. That I have absolutely no clue as to who their elusive tailor was. Yes, I even invited her for a cup to tea to my place to see for herself, mentioning that I lived alone... The creep factor always works with women, and she backed off.

 Most recently, I got a call about an ex-colleague, an out-and-out conman who in his latest series of unpaid loans, defaulted on a  personal bank loan taken out on his wife's name. I bluntly told them what I thought of him but asked them back how I was concerned? 

"Well, you were a director in that company," they replied lamely. 

" I was just an employee", I clarified "but even if I was the owner, in what way am I liable ??" 

They cut the line. 

India is Filthy - Live with it!!

India has some of the filthiest cities in the world,  no thanks to a dysfunctional socialistic and corruption ridden municipal service, lack of civic amenities and an almost universal lack of civic sense among her citizens. Indian cities occupy  22 positions among the top 30 dirties cities in terms of air pollution in the world with Delhi being the most polluted capital. Yet, what surpasses both our filthy air and toxic waterways in the amount of venom my fellow Indians are capable of spreading online the moment they feel the country's image or prestige is undermined.

 Well, to be honest no one really gives a flying-F about the country, otherwise she wouldn't have been in the state she is in, but for most of my fellow Indians whether the domicile variety of the economic migrants (sorry ex-pat is strictly a white-privilege term) the equation for nationalism and self-respect is per the following formula:

My ancestors were great = My Country is great = So I should be respected!

Post Modi and the rabid but short-lived nationalism his regime brought about (rabies is in-fact short-lived) it changed to : 

My ancestors were great + My Leader is Strong and Assertive(Great)= My Country is great =So I should be respected!!

Hence, the online rage and venom because Trump spoke the ugly truth about India's filth. Though it beats me how the topic even came up in US presidential debates, especially when considering that US cities and the poverty of a large section of the  people is that country rivals that of 3rd world countries. 

But yes, it's true the air quality in Indian cities is filthy, in fact the worst in the whole world and that's a fact. I live here and I know it first hand. So  feigning rage and spreading venom on social media, hurling abuses on Trump or "H.E. Supreme Leader Modi" is not going to clear up the atmospheric toxicity here in anyway.