Of Jesters and Djokers: The Novak Djokovic Effect

It all started with a name

Them, who called him the Choker;

For choke he did...

Against peers and rivals

Against nemeses and challengers

Breathless and lopsided,

Brash yet endearingly quirky,

Intense yet blowing-cold,

Making turncoats of hard-won loyalists...

Yet some, just shrugged him off

Still some, just wrote him off

Ne’er-do-well, as the rest tagged him

Till he plugged the heedless platitudes...

And showed them all

His might and valour,

His mark and candour...

It then finally came to his name

Only now, there was no Choker

Just a lethally honed Nole Djoker...

Travelling Blues: Part Two - Of Tickets and Tatkals

If travelling from point A to point B – long distance – was a pain, then travelling back from point B to point A was an even bigger one. Starting with the logistics of reserving the tickets for the trip back home, till the time one got into the train only to realise that it was your worst nightmare come true; being homewards bound was no cause of joy, while en-route. 

There are certain things that the Indian governmental service is good for and there are certain services for which it is incomparable – for those like Dr. Sheldon Cooper, I am holding a sarcasm sign for this one. The railway ticket booking scheme is a long-winding process that calls for pre-planning one’s trip, months before in advance. And for those unable to pre-reserve their tickets, the railway transportation department runs what it refers to as a Tatkal service – Hindi for an impromptu, immediate service offering – which incidentally causes a few more headaches, than it alleviates. 

Not that the Tatkal service is bad. On the contrary, it’s one of the handiest instruments that the government has provided for the potential traveller’s benefit. But the problem is that of the dispensation of seats through the Tatkal mode. In a country where billions live and a possible potential thousands travel every day, a handful of seats allotted for the Tatkal service makes it difficult for people to book their tickets in case of emergencies. On top of this, since potential passengers can avail of tickets either by visiting the railway department’s website – for which one has to be a mastermind – or by physically staking claim on the queue, it becomes a matter of seconds before the tickets vanish out of hands’ reach. And even if one’s number happens to feature in the ‘waiting list’ quota, one cannot guarantee that the ticket will be confirmed till the 11^th hour which further compounds individuals’ problems. 

Thankfully, in my case, even though I managed to get a confirmed ticket back to my city of origin – feels sophisticated to use the term – the emotional hazard of travelling in Second Class Sleeper was too much too bear. First there was the fact that the railway canteen employees were ripping money off from passengers, as smoothly and professionally possible. Honest to God, transcribing a mental accounting of the money I spent on my trip, I realised that three-quarters of my money were spent on conveyance rather on my own self. And if the railway canteen fellows weren’t enough, the way the train kept slowing down was further annoying. Forget the stations where it had to halt, it kept stopping at really deserted locations, as abruptly as it could. Even the logical thought that there were no murderous dacoits way down in the South, could remove the sudden instilled fear that nothing was wrong and the train was keeping to time, as it needed to be. Every stop that it took unnecessarily – at least to me, it was – was agony. Not because I had pressing matters to attend once I came back home, but because it meant spending more time amidst people with whom I had nothing common. Where in the past long-distance train journeys promised excitement and thrill, the whole endeavour now seemed pointless and a huge waste of productive time. 

In India, where majority of the people use trains for long-distance commute, it’s a pity to watch the struggle one has to endure to travel by trains. It’s in fact an irony that trains being a mainstay in many parts of the country, the services offered aren’t more passenger-friendly with either more trains to ease discomfort or more berths and coaches to allow for more people to travel at their time of choice – without any compromises, whatsoever. 

Continued from...Part Uno

Travelling Blues: Part One- Of Chatters and Squatters

Travelling long-distance alone for the first time, aboard India’s prestigious railway trains promised a lot of excitement. Meeting people, interacting with them, observing the not-so-spoken words and nuances; it was about learning to manage oneself safely and assuredly. It’s in this latter line of thought that the most important perspective emerges. Especially, after the whole chain of events following a certain shameful accident in the country’s capital. 

Parents, sure till now about their progeny’s capabilities to deal with newer circumstances and situations suddenly starting to spout litanies about how unsafe it is to travel alone. And if the progeny starts to offer suggestions that they are welcome to take the trip along – the litanies continue with even more fervour. This time the addresses are on how precious time is and how to waste it would be an insult to everyone and everything. The progeny mentally rolls his eyes – in this case, her eyes – and comments under his (her) breath, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ But the inner mind however tells a different story. 

A mix of trepidation and fear follows the individual even as he – she – tries to put on a brave face. Worry guts the soul even as the train picks up its speed; first about the person sitting next to her, someone who’s chatting up to her as if they were not strangers but close acquaintances picking up threads of a past encounter. The individual doesn’t know what to answer or how to answer or whether even he’s supposed to answer. Simply because, his mind chooses to remind him then that his parents had cautioned him to speak to strangers. Round One to parents, Bazinga!

Round Two starts when the train slowly arrives at its destination. The stranger’s – seat-mate, for further acknowledgement – conversation’s starts to pick up speed even as the train begins to lose its tempo. The individual, cramped and tired – the latter because of Indian Railways’ ever-occurring fiasco of misappropriation of seats, stays huddled with a book for company in the hope that the train will reach its final halt before time only to make him stop. In the meanwhile, there’s yet another individual who’s managed to take these two guys’ seat for his own. His situation – thanks to the authorities’ misappropriation – is pathetic, even more so because our lead character’s tiredness is partly thanks to this man’s lack of desire to henpeck the bogie attendant for a seat for him alone in the crowded bogie and possibly even further into the other bogies as well. 

So there we go. The train lands on time – thank God for small mercies – and everyone rushes out. Our lead individual has managed to evade these two characters; he’s got his own issues to sort out. One major sporting tournament – that’s a huge hyperbolic exaggeration –and our lead character has to make adjustments that will suit him to the hilt. One was the travelling; the other waits for him for from tomorrow. Maybe that’ll be as eventfully uneventful as this one or if things work for the better; quite probably, turn out into an overstatement.

Thoughts: Of Security, Safety and of Priorities

A lot has been spoken about it. Since it happened, that is. Debates and arguments, discussions and peace marches, many people have taken it up. A sort of post-mortem, so as not let it fade from memories. As if, it would. 

Calling it, it isn’t an attempt to lessen the import of the act by any means. Neither is it a means of avoiding the truth. An act of extreme violation, of defiling and corruption, barbarism and inhumanness towards one’s very being; what difference is the right nomenclature going to make in the context? It’s a deed of abject apathy and as such, doesn’t merit any name-tagging of any sort. 

But what matters is the deed in itself in that, the audacity with which it was committed. The single-minded ruthlessness that certain factions employ to get their way, however amoral and wrong it might be. And what matters more than the deed in itself is the innumerable post-mortems that spring up. 

Post-mortems, that consist of so-called experts coming and raging on about potential punitive measures, about how in the future such events can be prevented, about the innumerable ways in which the system failed and most importantly – the peace parades that spill over as sudden as the event itself, without any precedence whatsoever. 

And just as sudden people assemble to carry the fight forward, equally abrupt is their dispersion. Holding candles one day, only to forget the event a few months down the line; it’s like a vicious cycle – a sliver of memory here today, gone tomorrow. Peace parades are supposedly all about taking a proactive stance, a vestige of the bygone days when the nation strived for its freedom by standing its ground – literally, so to speak. 

But reality differs from suppositions and differs hugely, at that. Peace parades today are more of a trend, catching steam as more people report its USPs on the various available social networking sites. A prospect that rather than achieve the purpose, defeats it admirably as over-hyped newscasters and media personnel start to surround the locale and try to purposefully put a completely different slant to the story. 

With law-making authorities entering the fray, thanks to the media intervention, the whole concept of peace and march lies blown to smithereens while newer voices rage on about suppression of freedoms of expressions and speeches. This utter destruction of the original purpose and intent, carried out in so unassuming a manner, pinpoints the very catch in the situation. Of lapses in security that necessitate these parades in the first place, and the resultant moral policing carried out by those practicing jurisprudence in an effort to subvert their inadequacies. If the law were so keen to maintain its untarnished repute, it wouldn’t have occurred at all in the first place, would it?

 

Which is why, while wanting to do a certain act as a stance against an unmoral deed, remains a message to be passed around; doing so with utmost discretion needs to be a priority. For as significant taking a stance is, equally significant it is to see it to fruition, no matter the involvement – or intrusion – of the media personnel and the unwanted extravagances of backlashes they bring in their wake.

Midnight Breed Series: A Review

Fiction that deals with paranormal protagonists and antagonists seems to be a popular trend in the present times. Like a domino effect, but without an exact known causation, the genre has brought forth various authors trying their hand at it and succeeding too, immensely. 

Incidentally, despite the fact that many authors have been successful; the aspect of repetition in the theme of such paranormal characterisations has also emerged in their literary work. As, in a bid to elaborate and evolve the plotline, many authors invariably succumb to the lure of creating and incorporating newer characters – placed opposite to the existing protagonists, often as the proverbial anti-heroes – those, that invariably following well-worn clichés. 

But where there might emerge character combinations like witches against war-locks, or witches and warlocks against vampires; the most cliqued character combination remains that of vampires and werewolves. Rather like two sides to the same coin, seldom does one get to find a paranormal account where an independent narration is given about either of these two factions. 

And though storylines involving these two mythical sects are not in any way devoid of imagination or without any convincing premise, it indeed does get predictable after a certain time-span. And with such a predictability comes boredom; the sheer feeling of ennui that leaves one bereft of satisfaction that only a good read can bring. This is where Lara Adrian’s ‘Midnight Breed’ series packs a different yet a most impactful punch. 

After 10 books and numerous twists and turns along the way, the author has managed to hold on to the attention of her readers – in fact, even managed to keep them on their toes thinking about what’s to come next – without introducing any lycanthropes to vie for attention with the vampires. So much so, that the readers of the novels get such an authentic picture of these fictional images that they can actually imagine the parallel course of paranormal affairs being conducted along with the mundane flow of life. 

The plotline is systematic, clean and focuses on one simple object – conflict between a paramilitary-like vampire organisation known as ‘The Order’ and an almost unknown enemy within the vampirical bureaucratic ranks that the Order seeks to unravel in the course of each of the book. Each story is thus complete and stand-alone, but yet incomplete as the author connects the previously disjointed dots and leaves them to be connected further along in the series, as each of the ‘Order’ warrior tries to untangle them. 

Of course, unravelling details about the enemy also includes the warriors getting involved with women along the way, closely followed by seductive moves – seductive, but not corny – with each book thus having its version of a happily-ever-after. 

But it isn’t the plotline alone that makes the novels unique. It’s the way each characterisation is fleshed out, both of the vampires – good as well as evil – and of the females, known as breedmates, that nails the romanticised bit to perfection. Unlike the norm where vampires are traced back to a certain Count, are dead and are anti-God in nature, Lara Adrian’s creations, referred to as Breed, depict an uncommon blend of fact and fantasy that makes these characters more relatable and convincing to a reader.

Transcendental in nature, Adrian’s vampires have non-earthly origins which accounts for their blood-craving nature and their natural aversion towards sunlight. Just as it’s these non-earthly origins that provide them with their extreme agility and speed, the tattoo-like patterns adorning the entirety of their body – from neck downwards, throughout the torso extending to their hands and feet. Their quality of humaneness, on the other hand, is lent thanks to the said quality provided by their human mothers and later on through their mates, to their progeny. 

Deviating from the expected trajectory yet again, Adrian presents specially endowed women to suit her male characters. Women, who are not only blessed with inherent qualities that make them exceptional but who, also, contribute substantially to the aura of mystique and intrigue that the plotline has otherwise essentially invoked. 

While it’s not easy for literary creationists to create fictional tales, coming with a convincing plot with equally engaging characters; to come up with a series of novels, that constantly challenge the readers and keep them on their toes cannot be merely qualified as difficult. And more than the vested time and effort on the part of the creationist, it’s the shroud of doubt about the book not being accepted by the audiences – and thus not living up to the standards set by its series’ predecessor – that takes a toll on the author. 

In case of Lara Adrian though, there’s not a single Midnight Breed novel that has disappointed or let her readers down. A fact that cannot be taken lightly, especially considering that only two more months remain for her 11^th novel in the series to hit the bookstores. A book eagerly anticipated with soaring expectancies, poised to take over from where the previous 10 left, for almost a year now.

Anachronisms

It means naught,

When freedom comes with restrictions

It means naught,

When life comes with impositions

Stifling surroundings,

Impenetrable enclosures

Snuffed out kindles,

By provocative flames

Banked embers,

By ignited zealots

Seemingly obvious,

Yet glaringly opaque

Mocking outsiders,

Impervious to the misery inside...

Embittered natives,

Falling prey to the manipulative beyond...

Everyday diabolism

Everyday contradictions

A reality,

Nothing less than a fatality...