The Gospel According to Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden: Do you know what a duvet is?
Narrator: It's a comforter...
Tyler Durden: It's a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then?
Narrator: ...Consumers?
Tyler Durden: We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.

Mischief.

Savage. Crude. Ugly. Obscene. Totally Ridiculous. Bad, bad and more bad.

If there ever was an example of critics going ballistic, this was it--exactly 10 years ago, when this little but arrogant movie called Fight Club was released.

If you haven't seen this movie, the hell with you. But don't go away and google for info, for I love to educate and enlighten. Here it is: It was directed by a guy by name David Fincher, who, at that time, was best known for Se7en and his music videos for rock bands. It was bad enough that he was directing, but what was aggravating for the critics was that he was adapting the widely-celebrated novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk.

Even though the the said book had strong visual prose, many pundits considred it "unfilmable"--the term they had earlier invented for such gems as Perfume - A Story of a Murderer. The only consolation was that Fight Club had a saleable enough cast and at least one thinking (may be even clever) actor in the form of Edward Norton. And, not to forget, the rousing and wicked presence of Helena Bonham Carter.

But, what about the allusions and mad-hatter philosophies of and about anarchical order, soap manufacturing, and cancer-care groups? Will the makers be able to bring them alive? Sometimes, it was better to leave a picture pixalised to a thousand words than trying to capture it in movement and colour. It is better for the artist, and it is best for the critic. Both can sleep well.

Mayhem.

Both the novel and the movie begins with the same line: "With a gun barrel between your teeth you only speak in vowels." True.

Fincher, daring as he is, might have been hearing the damning critics sharpening their knives when he said that Fight Club was "a serious film made by deeply unserious persons."

Was that an anticipatory bail? Many critics apparently thought so. The reaction to the film from critical high-palaces was savage from some quarters. One New York paper called it a film "without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell.”

Art Linson, one of the producers, described the situation best when he said of studio execs "flopping around like acid-crazed carp wondering how such a thing could even have happened." that the the studio which financed it was on a run-Lola-run mode.

Wine takes time to mature. Time is also required for the critics to mature. I wish we had sites like Rottentomatoes.com. The ratings going higher each year could have fucked the crap out of their credibility.

Soap.

One US judge said replied when asked on how he defined obscenity: "Defining obscenity is like trying to catch a greased pig. I can only know it when I see it."

True for defining what is a cult movie too. Go watch Fight Club, that'll get you an idea.

Bare-knuckle fights, trivial-but-hardcore-yet-trivial philosophies, vandalism aiming to bring about anarchy, and outright revolutionary terrorism. Fight Club the movie was not as good as Fight Club the book... It was, for many like me, better.

Now what was that I came to say? That a new commemorative DVD is out, with lots of commentaries? Not quite. What was it?

Got it, got it...Oh shit, I lost it!


nota bene: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned - Tyler.

A boy's own recall

Last week, in the Spanish island of Majorca, a gay man died in his sleep after coming home from a party, where he had a marathon drinking session. His name was Stephen Gately. He was a member of the Irish boyband, Boyzone.

I used to love Boyzone's music. They, along with Westlife and Backstreet Boys, defined what was cool and hip and beautiful to my generation.

I still remember how I found out about them. I was in fifth or sixth standard, and we had this "totally moby" classes called Computer Practicals/Theory. Theory was dull and Practicals were fun. We learned new programs called BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, hey i still remember that) and FOXPRO. At that time, learning BASIC was the coolest thing to learn--you could make balls jump around the screen. And there was this early version of paintbrush called Turtle. You could draw robots, ships and houses with that. Computers were just getting trendy. And in our school, we had a truly class kind of lab--two students per comp. Life was good.

Life was good, mainly because we didn't know anything better. Then I discovered this new graffiti kind of scrawling on the polished lab desks. Actually, it was there all along, but I hadn't really noticed. "Backstreet Boys", it said. There was this other one big scrawl too--"Fuck". The former, i guessed, was some kind of dude-club (we had many in school, and some of these names were as mysterious as to me as to its memebers, haha), and the latter I had no difficulty in understanding (this was because we had broken into one perennially closed room of our school, innocently named Scout Room, and discovered volumes of Illustrated Weekly, a particularly vivid magazine, which offered sneak-peeks into the adult world. Years later, I learned that IW was the earliest of English magazines in India; and boy was it hot).

Weeks later, one more addition to the scrawling--"Boyzone". Mystified, I asked my friend Bibin if he knew anything about this Boyzone. He replied that the only boyzone he knew were the boys' toilets, and that to his knowledge, girls dominated all the other rooms. I could understand his grievance--he always wanted to be a six-footer, but in terms of height, the girls in our class were overtaking us poor guys. Hormones, one day our science teacher had explained. That was the reason. And the bloody seniors were starting to get interested in our girls, much to our chagrin. How dare they?

Boys? Boyzone? Backstreet Boys? It took a while a to find out what those names meant. Those days, downloads were unheard of, and MP3 was just becoming popular, and Axxo was probably learning the beginners guide to hacking and ripping. Music, other than that of rundown fare of regional movies, was hard-access. You could, of course, catch the videos in any of the satellite channels. That's exactly what me and my friends did. Four or five late-teen or early-twenty boys, with their perfectly groomed hair and twinkling teeth, singing in chorus. Listening to this, as I soon found out, was kind of addictive.

A switch from Michael Jackson's pop-metal to the sweeping, flourishing ballads of these boybands was an easy one. They had more in common with us than Jackson could ever have. The songs were light, all emotional and all about love, lose, and love again. Not an even an iota of logical thought or philosophical music blemished the lyrics. Suited me. Suited my generation's age--an age when we all wore our hearts in our sleeves.

Dammit, writing this is like a compulsion. I can't find the right conclusion to finish off this piece. It could go on and on and on, and still reach no end. The idea to write this, as in the case of most posts here, came when I was smoking a cigarette. After I learned the news of Mr Gately's death, I had called Joshy, a friend of mine who used to be as enthusiastic about them as me. "Stephen who?," he had asked. And: "Oh yeah, Boyzone. Does it still exist?."

No, it doesn't. Boyzone had split years earlier, like 'N SYNC and Take That. Split of these bands launched one artiste each--Ronan Keating, Justin Timberlake, and Robbie Williams. Backstreet Boys hasn't produced an album years, except that near-forgettable effort Incomplete. Westlife still has some youth left in them. But can they...?

I'd rather not finish this in an oh-so-beautiful-were-those-days mode. I am better off with U2, Coldplay, and Radiohead these days. It's better to be a skeptic than live in a synthetic airbrushed world. At least, they offer some darkness to hide in, to see the outside world much better.
***

Doubt: This Gately guy came out of the closet only a few years back. If the world knew he was a gay, I doubt Boyzone'd have been as successful as they were. Cluck!

Saving the environment from the environmentalists

"Do you know how much carbon you are emitting just by smoking cigarettes?"
"No." Puff.
"Around 5 to 10 grams per cigarette. How many do you smoke a day?"
"Let's say 5-6." Another puff.
"Hmmm, that's easily more than 50 grams of carbon. Just by smoking."
"Proud of it." Puff. Puff. Puff.
"You are impossible."
"Don't these plants need carbon in the first place to grow up? I am only releasing that back. Balancing out."
"Hmmm, that's an interesting argument..."
" ." Puff. And sigh.

***

Last week we had a class about environment, global warming, conservation and all that gobbledeegook. In my humble and simple opinion, environmentalism is the easiest subject for a person to get "expert" status.

You can even take this crash course: Environmentalism for dummies
Step 1: Read a book (most favourably Rachel Carson's Silent Spring)
Step 2: Close your mind after reading, and don't open it to any new or contradictory ideas
Step 3: Sport something that proclaims you to be a rebel--like a beard, or a green peace tee (you can even listen to a rock band that support any stupid green cause)
Step 4: Read another book (since you have already read Carson, move on to Carl Sagan)
Step 5: Coin your own words to save mother earth (like that Sagan word--"nuclear winter")
Step 6: Convert another person (or plant a tree, if possible)
And....KABOOOM!!! Here you are: the new-age environmentalist.


From here you can go on educating the world about the dangers of carbon emissions. And if you really grasp what it means, you can enter the fascinating new world of global warming. In this world you can accumulate any data you need to build a climate chart that predicts the end of the world 5-10 years before what another dummy predicted.

In short, even if you don't know whether it would rain tomorrow, you can have fun predicting apocalypse, and thereby scaring the shit out of other peace-loving human beings.

What a way to live! If you are coming from a middle class family, the least you could do is hold a placard and shout for a decrease in carbon emissions. You can ask the government to slow down industrialisation, shut down factories or switch to greener energy resources (the fun is you don't even have to know what this "green energy" means!).

And keep your eyes wide shut if you come to know of the fact that for every reduce in carbon emission, we are reducing industrial production, which reduces employment, which in turn reduces earnings. Somewhere, somebody will miss a meal. Or someone's child will die.

And why should we care? We are so busy saving earth.

***

Hell, this is why I am tired of this environmentalism. Last week's class had also these (to be fair, it was pretty good) and more. By the time the lecturer finished the class we had about 5 minutes left.

"Any questions?" He asked.

I had many. But I decided not to ask the question. So I am having my catharsis here. The question is...well....

Since childhood I have been studying things like "Nature is evolving" and that "survival of the fittest" "change is the only constant thing in nature" etc etc.

I learn that no two centuries are the same ecologically, and that for survival we must adapt to changes in nature. Stress on "adapt".

And then, all of a sudden I learn that the environment must be conserved for posterity. "Conserve our environment."

So, my questions are:
1. Why are we talking about conserving the environment, when conservation itself is against the laws of nature?
2. Isn't it because we are so selfish as a species that we are so preoccupied with our own survival?
3. And we want to paint this blatant selfishness as "good for nature". Don't we?
4. Since reducing carbon emissions in fractions aren't going to affect us, we can shout from the rooftops, can't we?
5. And what about all the Malaria deaths in Africa when we banned DDT? (courtesy Rachel Carson)

***

I didn't ask, and hence I didn't get the answer. I am sure I wouldn't have gotten one satisfactory answer. Friend, If you have come this far reading this, please go to google and search "malaria deaths by ddt" or "silent spring deaths".

And please open you mind. Puff. Period.

Of signs and spirits: A conversation with M. Night Shyamalan

As part of our writing exercises, we were asked to submit a questionnaire about any celebrity we wanted to interview. I wanted to interview Night Shyamalan, and our venerable director K Thomas Oommen ordered us to submit a profile of the person based on the answers imagined by us, with the help of that "tiny speck under the hair that we call our brains". Here is the resulting crap:


Interview/ M Night Shyamalan

PUDUCHERRY: “If you are not betting on me, then nobody should get money, I have made profit a mathematical certainty. I am the safest bet you got,” said Manoj Night Shyamalan in 2002, when his “Signs”, which was released the same year, was breaking box office records.

Three disappointing films later, he is less sure about that claim. His last film, “The Happening”, was touted as a comeback of sorts, but it met with intense criticism for it's “ridiculous storyline”.

“A lot of people want me to turn indie (independent filmmaker). But I don't want to do it now, not at this point (of my career),” he says.

Shyamalan is shooting the final scenes of his latest film, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in Puducherry, the place he was born. This is the first time one of his mainstream films feature a principal location other than Pennsylvania, his adopted state.

“I always find Pennsylvania mystical. There is something about that place where I live in; some magic in the air that inspires me to write,” says Shyamalan. “And I don't think it makes any harm to shoot films there.”

Shyamalan says he is as much influenced by religion and mysticism, as by Alfred Hitchcock and comics. Religion was the cause he returned to India after graduation, and his debut film “Praying with Anger” the effect, he says.

His other major influence is Hitchcock. Shyamalan has made it a point, like Hitchcock, to make cameos as obscure characters. Is there a reason? “It's very difficult to define the reason. Few things are done for a reason; we humans normally act by instinct,” Shyamalan smiles.

Shyamalan can go on endlessly talking about his artistic influences, for the simple reason that he is influenced by a lot of artistes and genres. One of the prominent news of year before the last was that Shyamalan was going to write the script for the fourth “Indiana Jones” film, that was to be directed by his childhood idol Steven Spielberg.

But Shyamalan withdrew later. “I was at first excited. But then, it was very difficult to plan events in the screenplay so that it may end up in a desired situation.”

He is on the last leg of his shoot, he says. There is no lack of excitement still, Shyamalan says, even after 17 years since he began directing. “This film is a tribute to the comics I grew up reading. And also to the children who enjoys them,” says he.

He says he is not bothered about what the critics would say about his latest effort. “Twenty-six people love a movie, and the 27th person hates it, and the only thing you can think about is the 27th person? I wouldn't.”

Although Shyamalan films usually splits critics to the extremes, none of them would argue that he is irrelevant. His films are like events—you either look forward to it or you don't. But you cannot ignore it.

“I think I am not irrelevant. I still make films. I will only stop if they end the cinema experience. If there is a last film that's released theatrically, it'll have my name on it,” he says.

Shyamalan smiles when asked what makes him go on in the midst of criticism. “My hope is to break so many rules so that I can create a new rule.”



NB: Most of the quotes used here are not imaginary. They have actually been spoken by Mr Shyamalan. What I did was to take these quotes completely out of context (which many of my classmates say I'm a master of), or even better, quote these without having any idea of their context at all. For more quotes and details visit Imdb.com (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0796117/). Feed me back, friends.

Ode to a boring sunday spent

A magnificently boring Sunday. Listened to this song called Lemon Tree by Fools Garden, after a long long time. Brought back fond memories of boring Sundays spent in Cochin. As I have nothing better to do, I am posting the lyrics here. (And you can download this @ http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=2125881&song=Lemon+Tree.)

Enjoy!

Fool's Garden - Lemon Tree

I'm sitting here in the boring room
It's just another rainy Sunday afternoon
I'm wasting my time
I got nothing to do
I'm hanging around
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I'm driving around in my car
I'm driving too fast
I'm driving too far
I'd like to change my point of view
I feel so lonely
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree

I'm sitting here
I miss the power
I'd like to go out taking a shower
But there's a heavy cloud inside my head
I feel so tired
Put myself into bed
Well, nothing ever happens and I wonder

Isolation is not good for me
Isolation I don't want to sit on the lemon-tree

I'm steppin' around in the desert of joy
Baby anyhow I'll get another toy
And everything will happen and you wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
And I wonder, wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see, and all that I can see, and all that I can see
Is just a yellow lemon-tree



Sigh

It (religion) is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx

October 2. In Kottayam, as everywhere else in Kerala, bars and beverages are closed, because it's Gandhi Jayanthi—the day the father of our nation was born. If you are a drinker, I needn't tell you this. When a new year approach, along with the usual greetings sms that flood cell phones, there also comes a list of days when the beverages will remain closed on that particular year. There is little else that bind men like drinks do.

But Mahatma Gandhi won't agree with that. He disapproved of drinking. I read his Experiments with Truth, and I surmised that much. Though I have reservations about the greatness of the man, there are few doubts about his staunch beliefs. I am not talking about his disapproval of drinking, but his religious faith.

Let's talk about the stupid prohibition, sometime later (Uh, meanwhile, that's my story for Gandhi Jayanthi. I'll file it here, later). Let's switch topics. Talk about religion.

Gandhi was a devout Hindu. He liked Christianity, but didn't like Christians in general. He, knowingly or unknowingly, was one of the reasons Jinnah demanded a Muslim State.

Today, one of my classmates invited me and some others to her home. The place where her house is called Manganam, which is about 15 minutes from Kottayam. Nice place.

There is a seminary there—St Thomas Apostolic Seminary, of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. We entered through one of the side gates, and the first thing that greeted my ears is the song 'Ezhimala poonchola...' from the memorable Mohanlal hit Sphadikam.

Clean, quiet, calm place. One of my friends knew people, and we went in the main building of the seminary.

There is a pool-like construction on the ground on right side of the main hallway. I first thought that was a swimming pool, but changed my mind when I went closer. It was a three-dimensional sketch of Palestine, with the water representing the Jericho. Why it was there, I don't know.

The thing made me remember reading reports of the bloody Ulster mob wars, where Catholic Church spent money like hell on gangs to rival the ones of the Protestants. Where did the money come from? Mainly Mission Sunday donations from all over the world. After the Ulster trouble subsided, the annual donations were spent mostly on hushing up child-abuse cases in countries like Australia, USA, and Britain. For lack of money to spend, the Portland Archdiocese in USA even resorted to filing Chapter 11 protection under bankruptcy laws. Religion as corporate.

We went to the museum, and there hanged the cassock Pope John Paul wore, when he visited the place. “All these years and the years to come, lie it unwashed,” said my friend Joe lyrically.

Ah, I just remembered a story. It's about that Franciscan missionary (or was it Jesuit?) St Francis Xavier. He was the first one to visit Goa and when he reached here, he promptly began his God-given duty of converting people to Christianity. Some say he was extreme in his faith to the point of ruthlessness.

Anyway, when he died, he was buried. Like everybody else. But his body didn't decay. When the grave was dug again about a 100 years later (I'm not sure about the time, but who cares; it's a goddamn story), the faithful found his body intact! What a miracle!!

He cannot be an ordinary man, so the Pope decided to make him a saint. “OK, lets do it,” said the Pope. Before any faithful can be made a saint, his saint-ness must first be investigated. So out went one emissary of Pope to India.

He came back after the investigation, filed a report to the Pope. After reading it the Pope asked the priest, “So you say he must not be made a saint?”

“Yes, my Holiness,” replied the priest.

“But why? I agree that he was a bit too harsh. But is it not that his body lies immortal? That it's still intact? How will it happen if not for the work of god?”

“Too much of Alcohol, my Holiness. It has mummified his body,” replied the priest stiff-faced.

Ahem, that was the story. The hanging cassock of the former Pope also made me remember one fact: That when Pope John Paul II was made Papa, nobody expected him to last long. But he outlived at least four of the Cardinals who nursed dreams to be the Pope.

So, when Papa John Paul died, the Cardinals assembled in Sistine Chapel and elected Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then already 80 or so, to be the new Pope. None of the Cardinals wanted a long reigning Pope. But Benedict XVI, is already making some palms sweat because of his longevity (anyway, what do you expect from a former Hitler Youth member who resembles that stout old actor Anthony Hopkins).

So, where were we? Nowhere or now here?

I recently read a book called God is not Great written by a guy called Christopher Hitchens, one of the most prominent intellectuals of our era. This Hitchens guy goes both guns blazing against organised religion. A true treat to read for those who aren't religious or not that religious.

There is one other book called The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a famous evolutionary biologist. Our Hitchens guy argues that intellectuals like them cannot be argued and defeated by religious people. In olden times they could have, but not now. Science has grown and is growing, he says.

I cannot but agree with that. Most of today's religion tries to divide people for no apparent benefit at all. It cannot argue for its own sake. There were people in that seminary who studied philosophy and theology. Yet I am sure that not one person can satisfactorily interpret the Book of Revelations, or the reason that while some gospels are canonical, others are not. Because, as the saying goes, theologists are blind men in dark rooms looking for a black cat that isn't there.

The reason I began with that oft-repeated Marx quote is that I recently discovered its true meaning. I used to sneer at Marxian ideology, and this quote—that religion being the opium of the people—particularly irritated me. Coming from a man whose ideas are exploited worldwide, this too had a tinge of wisecracked-ness. Nuns and priests, for this simple reason, dismissed it without having to apply a single drop of intellectual effort.

But then this Hitchens book offered me the context of the quote. Later, I read the whole essay (Its here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm)

Here it is:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Couldn't have said any better.

NB: I can see the frown of more than a few friends when they are going to read this, if ever. So I better clarify. Here's a story one of my very young cousins told me (I have modified it. Well, what do you expect from a journo?). The story goes:

Humans have become so technically evolved that they can now make a living, breathing person. A summit of scientists believed that because they now had the power to create life, God was no longer needed. So they all decided that someone should go and tell God this. One man volunteered to go. One day he climbed a mountain and called upon God. "God! We humans now have the ability to bring people from the dead, we can create our own life, we don't need you anymore so you can leave us alone." God listened to the scientist and nodded his head. "Okay, I'll tell you what, if you can really create life, let's have a competition, if you can create a better person than me, I'll go, but we'll have to do it the way I did it in the old days." So the scientist agrees and begins to collect some dirt to make his person. God simply watches him and finally asks him what he's doing. "I'm using the dirt to make a person." God smiles, looks at the scientist and replies, "Go make your own dirt."

Let's say I have doubts about the dirt.

the first graffiti

Have you seen The Bourne Ultimatum? If not, you probably should. I say 'probably' because although the movie (directed by Paul Greengrass, the one who did the gloriously “unsappy” United 93) is set in real time and real world, it tends to underestimate the perils human beings face in day-to-day life.

Whoa, whoa—I heard you say. Didn't it have a scene in which a reporter of The Guardian is gunned down by a sniper at the Waterloo station, that crucible of humanity in London. How more dangerous can things get?

Exactly, my dear Watson, exactly. There couldn't be a more unsafe situation for civilized civilians. When journalists are gunned down like that, the very foundation of liberty and democracy are WMD-ied.

When I first saw the movie, this scene had me by the throat. I marvelled at the perfection, at the timing, and at the concerto-like brilliance of everything coming to culminate at that moment where the bullet strikes the scribe's head and he drops dead.

It made me apprehensive too, because I wanted to become a journalist but didn't want to end up half my face blown off. I finally decided that getting killed is the extreme-est kind of hazard a journalist can face. Nothing more than that.

Nothing more than that, my foot! Two years after that goddamn movie came out, I am sitting at a godforsaken place called Erayilkadavu (a place which can be termed as the ass-end of Kottayam town), reducing to typing this shit out and thinking about how would I avoid getting screwed the coming week.

The reason: I am at MASCOM, and I am at the mercy of a 73-year old, teddy-bear clone called K Thomas Oommen, who was the same one who set up other journalism torture centres called ACJ and IIMC. It has been three months since I began living like this.

Before coming here, friends and neighbours, I used to read two books a week and see at least 4-5 movies. I used smoke 2-3 cigarettes, no more, and drink on most Sabbaths. And I travelled places. Not to fancy spots in Himalayas, but small, unexplored locales like that deserted strip of beach at Andhakaranazhi, near Alappuzha (and most places I went boasted of good toddy shops, a particular luck by chance I guess).

And here I am now. Reduced to typing this shit out. And every down I burn midnight oil (metaphor, of course) and smoke-sticks (that's literal) trying to figure out a lead or an entire story containing less mistakes than some of my (I hope) would-be-illustrious classmates.

The fun part is when we go out looking for stories that we have to file every weekend. Everybody roams around Kottayam looking for big, banner-headline demanding stories, and finally ends up doing things like, well, elephant-shit.

And (oh crap) except for the preceding paragraph, every para in this passage looks like under 30 words. That keep-it-under-30 law of Fuchs (oh, how I love his name) is getting to me.

But why I wrote this is because: 1) I am free here to completely screw up his syntax rules, 2) I can call him names (I called him names, pandu), and 3) It would give me at least some pleasure of putting together words without somebody looking over my shoulder, and....

The heck with that, I am stopping. I don't need to satisfy you, reader. I am writing for me.

Oh, by the way, I feel like reading Papillon.