A Week at the Anti-Christ's

I hate kids. I hate them emphatically. Not to sound cool or to make any kind of statement. I just hate them. I am ready to go to arms against the people who melt into raptures when they see kids. I don’t care if they are cute, are innocent or say stupid things in a cho chweet voice. I hate being pestered by their questions, I hate laughing at every mundane thing they do and I hate being told that the kids these days are smarter than us. Anyways let me come back to my topic and tell you about the Devil Reincarnate that I have been living with.

He is my youngest cousin, four years old and unfortunately I share my birthday with him. He is Satan’s emissary. Five minutes with him and you would prefer hell to earth. After my arrival at my uncle’s house, it took him minutes to realize that his latest victim was in his presence. A mere second later I had been pinned down by this pint sized person who was sitting on my neck and all the while I had to smile and remark how strong he was. Then I watched the travails of my aunt as she tried to follow him all over the house trying to force food into his mouth. She finally succeeded after two hours when he found out that the inside of the washing machine is a good substitute for the dining table.

He likes waking me up in the morning by jumping on me, blowing in my ears or pulling the pillow from under my head, whichever catches his fancy. By the time I sit down with the newspaper, and he has succeeded in making my aunt and granny run a marathon for his breakfast, he comes over to make my morning miserable. He takes a devious delight in shredding the sports column to shreds right when I am in raptures over Sachin or the Commonwealth Games. He scribbles nonsense over the Crossword and Sudoku just when I am stuck in a tricky position. Shooting darts at my face is his latest contravention.

He also has a special antipathy to any other channel other than Pogo or Nickelodeon. I swear I will have those two channels cut out when I have my own place. The imp can raise the dead with his screams and cries and he holds the whole family at ransom due to his impressive bawling capacity. When I had just made myself comfortable with my copy of I, Claudius, he promptly tore off the cover page causing me to stop reading there and then, which even my parents haven’t been able to in the last two decades. His favorite way of baiting me is to turn off the power when I am on my lappy, or pressing all the keys at once or spitting on the keyboard. When he is doing none of this he is hanging from my shoulder, or pulling my hair or pulling down my trousers. He can give Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame a run for his money any day, I swear.

And trust me I am trying. I spent three agonizing hours building a house from Lego bricks which he smashed into bits because he wanted another design. I have lost in mock alphabet and letter writing contests to him. I have got bitten and spit upon and been made a Bull’s eye for his shooting prowess. I just can’t wait till his school reopens on Monday and I will be rid of him for at least six hours a day. And now I must stop cause he has lost interest in the fire-truck I got him and is making faces at me, which I am sure does not bode good news.

Remedis Amoris

So far so I have seen lots of kinds of love. Also the miserable endings. Love at first sight, which continues until one of the pair discovers true sight. Blind love where the saga continues till both the protagonists are blind to everything else. True love which continues until either of the pair discovers a truer love. One-sided love which is always doomed to die a lonely death. Unrequited love where your better half doesnt give a rat's fart about your feelings.

But coming back to what I was saying, the past few months have been a heart-break season here. People have been breaking up left, right and centre. In fact it has been so prevalent that I guess Cupid's agents must be playing hookey. Otherwise there should be no logical reason that at NIT Rkl, the place which sees more anomalous pairs than anywhere else, there should be so many break-ups.

Suddenly there are more morose faces, a greater quantity of alcohol consumed than the regular, people watching more chick flicks than the usual, more unbearable love-lorns songs wafting across the corridors. I have been assured that these are popular cures for love-Remedis Amoris.

I did some investgating into it and found some incredible facts.In Tallinn, Estonia, The  Raeapteek drug store has been preparing and dispensing a concoction of marzipan to ‘relieve the pain of love’ since 1422. There must be some modicum of truth to it for otherwise it would have been drummed out of business since long.

Picking up a few chunks of potent marzipan may literally be easier to swallow (and safer) than some of the other cures that the store stocks like the grease of dirty sheep’s wool, pieces of ancient mummies, burned bees and the like. In fact, most ancient remedies tend to concentrate on weird exotica, from bulls’ testicles (famed as an aphrodisiac in Spain) to lizards soaked in urine, periwinkles mixed with powdered earthworms to the Spanish fly.

Even Nietzsche’s remedium amoris — “The cure for love is still in most cases that ancient radical medicine: love in return” — doesn’t hold good in these fickle days. Who knows you may land in a deeper pit than you were in before.

My prescription for this malady-heaps and heaps of self love. One kind of love where you donot have to suffer from any insecurity, rejections, no costly dates to keep your girlfriend happy, no use of recharge offers. All you need is to bask in narcisstic glory. Besides, why take the risk of falling in love once again when statistics suggest that for achieving one successful relation you need to experience 5 unsuccessful ones. 

Seven Sins, Revisited

Its amazing how life forces you to change your outlook, how it manages to rein you in when you seem to be getting ahead of yourself and how it makes itself come to a grinding halt altogether. It is not yet one year since I had written about my own Seven Sins. And I marvel how I have been made to eat my own words after one year. I have been made to eat the humble pie. Now I am not flying with eagle wings, soaring above the nondescript multitude. I now cannot afford the magnanimousity I had taken to be granted of myself. Never before have I had to look forward at such a bleak and uncertain future. It is with a radical change in perceptions that I now rewrite my thoughts on my sins. 

Pride- I used to be proud. It did not matter to me whether it was for my benefit or for my loss. I thought myself sheltered from people or things because of a monumental ego. It made me wax with pride to believe that I could revel in mediocrity while being above it and being aware of it. But what of it now, that I have rendered myself mediocre in all eyes-be it that of others or mine. Where does that leave me now? When self-doubt gnaws at my pride, eating at the remnants of self confidence and making my knees go weak. I think I never missed being proud as I do of this moment.

Envy- It is human to be envious, I concede now and not the lament of the weak-willed. The nonchalance that precedes the apathy at the success of your competition, always leads to failure in the long run. It is envy that makes you hungry, doesnot let you sleep in peace, harangues you until you decide to either rise up to the occasion or slink away unnoticed into pall of failure where it consumes you. But that is life. It is as fair as you decide it to be.

Wrath- I am wrathful. The anger that turns inwards burns my whole soul, arresting my whole being in paroxysms of self-hatred. It does not leave me in peace for a second. It does not let the bygones to be bygones. It twists the fabric of me and wishes that it had the tremendous power to wrench the part of me that has brought this day upon me.

Sloth- This is the sin that describes me best. This is the part of me that decided that I should be the grasshopper and not the ant. It has a faithful sidekick too-Procrastination. Amazingly I used to be proud of this pair not long ago. Its only when you taste the bitter fruit of failure that you have to rethink of everything. And yet knowing all this, I tremble to think of Sloth's overbearing influence on me.

Greed- Nowadays I am not just greedy about the small things in life, I am also greedy about the larger things and if I do admit, especially so. I am materialistic since now I know it is easiest to be non-materialistic when everything is within your grasp. Love and companionship, the things I used to be greedy about are intangible, not a blue-chip investment for one's greed. Greed is best served when it is meant for objects that can be attained and not pipe dreams.

Gluttony-When you have remained hungry for the better part of four years, one knows how to value food. And this reminds me of beer, something that I believe can sustain me now. This one sin is not going to change hopefully under any circumstances.

Lust-I dont believe myself when I re-read what I wrote last year. What positive frame of mind possessed me to see that vision in red, I do not know but I now assure myself I am well cured of it. My lust is common and ordinary now, hopefully to my satisfaction.