Where The Blahs Dont End

dont go to war

2008-12-27T16:53:00.002+05:30

i just hope that india doesnt go to war.. seriously a waste of time n money n we really dont need it ya.. everyone will be talking of war, as if they have fought wars.. news channels will go on n on about things they have no clue about.. itll be just too bad.. n then pakistan will occupy more of kashmir.. damn it have we ever won a war?
every time i think if we've actually won a war, people tell me that we have, we reached lahore once.. and im like, you check the map of kashmir before the war n after the war and pok keeps on increasing and after this war im sure we will have iok rather than a pok :P
seriously war is just something that irritates and saddens me.. its just waaay too futile n nothing good will come out of this war..if anything we will have more terrorists and more people hating india and indians and wanting to take revenge.
frankly there is not even a reason for war.. just cos instead for rdx some terrorists got some ak 47s.. we seem to have no problems with rdx and all the bombs that go off all over india.. but damn guns.. and we want war.. lol
anyway.. lets hope we dont have war.

Me n me

2008-12-15T18:11:00.002+05:30

Me: ssp!
me: nothing much, but im not bored?
Me: do you hate accepting that you are bored?
me: yes, but im not bored.
Me: now, how can i believe that?
me: dunno, infact i think i forgot what being bored means.. so either im always bored or im actually not bored.
Me: i guess you are always bored.
me: ya everything is boring, actually its not always boring. some stuff starts out as fun and then they get boring.. once it gets repetitive.
Me: so constant change is something you enjoy?
me: not particularly. like i like eating same old tried and tested stuff.. im experimentative with people and computers and some other stuff, but ya im not experimentative with stuff that i dint decide to do.. something someone else decided for me.
Me: like going out to eat?
me: ya.
Me: okay, so you like making decisions?
me: again, not when im made to, then if im reaaaly reaaly cornered i make a half hearted decision which wont require much convincing.. but then again i suffer after making that decision, ie, during the time of execution n all.. crap thats bad.
Me: blah.. so ssp?
me: again? gawd you are so bad act building conversations.
Me: arrey, i get bored when it gets predictable.
me: isnt there anything you can do to actually decrease your sense of boredom? as in you get bored easily.
Me: dammit, i actually get unbored with great difficulty :P
me: ya, so why dont you do something which nicely engages your mind and is fun n all?
Me: i cant say i really enjoy working my brain without any reason.
me: this is Bad.. it almost sounds nasty.. lol.. you obviously dont love being bored and you dont wanna work without reason? isnt working not to be bored a good enuf reason?
Me: please.
me: lol.. knew it wunt work..
Me: what say about the blasts.
me: please.. seriously some 300 people die and theyw ant the whole bloody nation to go beserk.. more people die of more "beatable" causes everyday.
Me: still, rich important people and all dead, no place is safe n all, dont you feel bad about it?
me: well, see its not fair to feel bad about just this incident and not feel bad about all the other "unfair"(i assume that is the reason why you feel bad) deaths, no?
Me: no, im not feeling bad cos people died unfairly, im feeling bad cos people died.. people who werent supposed to die died, people whose stories i read in the papers just died.. im sad because people were killed as if their lives were meaningless, i feel cheated cos it could have been stopped.
me: think about it, we have a billion people, and seriously there is no way we can stop 10 people from procuring guns illegally and killing 300 people.. its too small a number.. so it could not have been stopped.. yes it could have been worse, it could also have been less damaging had the forces reacted faster n all.. but still its just too small a number.
Me: dont act cold.
me: im not acting cold, maybe i feel sad, maybe i dont, im just presenting another side of the story, im talking to you and when i talk to you i think that you feel you are right.. im saying you may be wrong.. i just wanna argue.. im ready to be someone else to argue better.
Me: so what is it that you feel?
me: dunno.. since everyone around me is not feeling very good about it.. i think im just arguing against them.
Me: no, but what do you feel?
me: dunno.. really dunno, im capable of making statements for and against the same goddamned thing.
Me: me too, but i like it that way.
me: ya even i like it that way.. im pretty happy go lucky really.. im not very into being sad n unhappy n all.. do whatever it takes to be happy :D
Me: manipulate yourself cos you think itd too much of a pain to try n control others, na?
me: exactly, well thanks.. ttyl.
Me: chao.

one man's secret

2008-11-15T01:07:00.006+05:30

im sure we all have seen movies in which a father tells his son that one thing that changes the life of the son, the son follows that one saying and becomes the person he is. well of all the things a father can tell his son, my dad chose to tell me, one man's secret is god's secret and two people's secret is everybody's secret. now this may sound trivial and may not be rated as one of the best sayings of mankind but it is.
it makes sense, i interpret it as building a wall around yourself and not lettin anyone enter and not to trust anyone with anything important. that is what is trust. trust has various levels.. unlike many other things one person can trust everyone and at the same time no one. very interesting thing trust is.
and it basically calls the whole of human race untrustworthy and questions the reason why one person must confide in another man.
also, i believe that trust someone is basically judging yourself, and here is why.. when you trust someone you trust them with some information and also mentally you believe the person to be trustworthy(unless you are screwing around). so when the trusted person turns out rotten, your judgment about the person itself fails, and hence you judge yourself.
and since i dont think anyone is worthy enough to be used as a measure to judge myself, i dont trust people :P
so yea i dont trust anyone with anything important.. in fact i believe that importance of a particular thing can be judged by the fact that how many people it should not be told to. i make friends to whom i never open up, i find such friendships very satisfying and comforting.. i find explaining myself a big pain(unless im drunk) and avoid it as much i can. on thinking about the way i make friends i found out something quiet interesting.. for me making friends is just a reason to get to know someone.. if i find someone interesting and prolly peculiar i make that person my friend.. as in i try and spend more time with them, learn more things about them, and it turns out that the whole process is fun for sometime, but soon i find out irritating things about them and get too bored of their company and this is when it gets very much interesting( this does not apply to everyone, i have liked some people for more than 10 years now, without getting too bored :))
now that i know a lot about the person, i gain information about the weakness of the person.. i find out exactly where it hurts and often spend my time wondering what exactly i must tell to absolutely screw around with their minds. to do this i dont even need their trust or anything.. some people are so indifferent that no matter what you tell they wont feel much, for such people i make a list of things that can be done to hurt them. ok now that i sound so bad n all, ill tell something good.. i have never, but once, used the information ive collected.. i get angry and all but i never use it.. i always convince myself that they deserve better and that they like me n all those things.
many people get hurt very easily, its hardly fun hurting them or being rude to them.. i do this only when im really bored and desperate for fun :P
people who dont get hurt much or act as if they dont get hurt are the most fun.. cos mostly they come back n try to get me too.. so it heats up n gets into a nice fight.. and fights always make you stronger :P and you learn more about the person in that one second they get pissed off and angry than in the whole time span you've spend with them, i can find out their breaking point and their capacity to retaliate and how dirty are they actually willing to get.. that one moment is often the deciding moment and seriously the best thing to do when you find yourself in that situation is to smile gently and acknowledge the fact the opponent has gotten you cause most people are trying to piss you off by passing those sly remarks(which they very well mean and know to be true) when they are in a crowd and are very jolly.. its a wonderful cover and by smiling and acknowledging this cover is thrown off and it pretty much always surprises the opponent :D

seriously, the way people pull other people's leg is another awesome way to find out what kind of a person the person is (too many persons :P)

okay, so ya.. i was thinking how id react if i met some one like me(call him r2).. firstly sure as hell the gender of r2 wud be very important.. a guy r2 id hate.. id surely never stay with him.. he'd try pissing me off, id piss him off and the whole thing'd be a mess with no real friendship n all.. seriously we both would only just piss each other off and would never ever enable each other or compliment each other.. at the most we might get together to say carp about other people, but thats it, nothing good can come out of it.
but if r2 was a girl, things should be more interesting, she'd keep saying bad things about herself and that would intrigue me and she would push herself away from me and id try harder to chase her, it would be interesting but again only for a while, the problem i face is that everything and everyone is interesting but only for a while.
taste everything, like nothing.
damn it.. sometimes i much rather prefer that i had one god level love for something and did just that all the time without getting bored of it.. but again living without boredom wont be fun.. there is just too much satisfaction in doing nothing :D
okay, im not half as extreme as i sound in this post, im very maha flexible actually :)

the love bonsai

2008-09-13T20:15:00.000+05:30

I’m just a bonsai
note me grow
I’m not too much
but just enough
slowly s t r e t c h i n g ,
change shape -
patient nurture
tend and care.
Staying old,
protected and safe.

feeling

2008-09-13T19:50:00.000+05:30

sun and moon,
create light and weight,

the gray sky filled with dry ink,
circling eagles eying minds,
reading words hidden from me.

breathing slowly, desperately high,
slithering away, absorbing heat,
burning sun, watching it pour.

wailing away clenching frozen fists,
waking dazed, the pulsing moon,
overpowers.

desperately happy

2008-08-11T20:34:00.005+05:30

i think i am desperate to feel happy, i think many of us are. in this desperation forget why and when i feel happy and in this blindness i hit upon walls i know will not break or even crack. im trying to help out a bunch of retarded kids, im trying to talk sense with people i hate talking to, making excuses to eat food that is pathetic just ecause your lazy to complain and rally to get people to complain , im trying to be happy all the time by running way from things that sadden me, that make it harder to sleep when my eyes are closed.
im trying my best to put of questions i dont like dealing with, im lost and its like i like the feeling of being lost in some wilderness with out any hope of being found and in fact hoping not to be found, almost hiding. this makes me happy.. the state of being unknown.. i think.
infact im so good at running away that i dont even feel sleepless when i close my eyes and try thinking about all the things im running away from, and gaining hella lotta distance from them. i sigh and that's about the end of all the thoughts that wrestle and try to bring me down and put in some sense into my head. its easy.
im nice and bored and im so happy to be bored.. i guess im so desperate to be happy that i can even convert boredom into happiness.. its simple.. but i dont know weather im lying to myself or not.. either way im happy with no tensions, with confidence to live my life to the moment, confident that the future will be dealt with.
im worried that i dont have any problem to solve, that im almost content to live with problems.. even small ones.. im ready to compromise because of my laziness and my willingness to stay jobless and bored.. its like the attitude i love about loosers.. the fact that they dont care about themselves.. making it comfortable to live in a gutter of rotting waste.
but i think im not so much of a looser.. long way to go actually.. im just not committed to any thing.. i think it takes loaaadsa guts to back something to the end.. i feel much more light headed and free to be irresponsible and stupid?(perhaps sometimes). i hate responsibility of anything and anyone but mine.. i like relationships where im free to be rude and truthful.. knowing that the other person is not really too affected by what i say or do.. i like to be thoda alone in any kind of relationship..
i really think that when we trust someone, we dont trust in them our secrets or our emotions or our stupidity and vices but we give them the right to hurt us.. this right is way too often misused and taken for granted.. there was a time when id give this right to people, many people, priding on the fact that i can live my life as an open book, but the truth is i dislike people i dont know, and i dont like to get to know people.. which invariably means i dont trust most people.. makes life so much easier to live :D
im now goin to do cheap publicity for the movie "the fountain". watch it.

haan i also feel i crack too many pjs when i have nothing to say.. i think people who dont know me or spent time with me get irritated very easily.. i musnt crack too many pjs in front of strangers.. but aaah its too hard and too useful.

its such a hard decision to make weather i want to care for someone or not, weather i want to feel the pain for someelse, so that they feel better, weather i want to lift the boulder for them, weather i want to notice their lives and make they happy, genuinely, hoping to be loved the same way, knowing their virtues and vices and still supporting them.

i am still thinking weather i want to form a bond with the retarded kids, knowing that in the end all im going to get is pain, weather i want to feel the pain, knowing that i cant in anyway make them happier or their lives easier to live. knowing that what i teach would effect trees and sand more than them.. yet i feel the urge to help them, help people trying to help them, and be a part of the stupidity just to feel more human, desperate to feel the happiness of seeing one of them learn, desperate to find satisfaction is doin something hopeless.

aah.. i think im goin to like the pain of failing, and see any kind of hope shattered. sometimes the thorn that makes the deepest cut is the most loved.

carborundum

2008-07-10T15:55:00.006+05:30

shantaram a good story but thats that.. all that philosophy he jaadhofys is utter rubbish and nerve recking.. and infact i get so bored reading the book sometimes i start figuring out what part of the story is real and what part is fake.. that really keeps me interested in the book other than the story.. at the end of every chapter he summarizes it talks all wannabe deep stuff.. the book could do well rid of all that.. hes not good at all that jazz.. about soul and river flowing through all of us and how indians are so happy living in india, about how everything is an illusion, about god and about loneliness and being wanted(ok that part is bearable).
its a wonderful genre ofcourse, semi-autobiographical but the sincerity in the story made up is so missing.. its very easy to see the difference between the things hes made up and things that made him, some parts of the book i just felt he was being this big phony too.
anyway, i dont like anything, my favorite passtime is to find things to dislike, so dont fight with me over the book even if you love it, i suggest you nod and go away.

and now i havta go back to Rourkela, im too used being lazy and not doing anything and not picking up phone calls and rudely telling people i wont join them for a movie or lunch.. im going to miss all of that. its been one long holiday and very uneventful one.. which makes it very special.

i keep feeling scared that ill be forced to change and become more affable, and compromising when ill start earning and all. you know this is one crazy time in my life where i can smell thoda freedom.. freedom in hating everything that is substandard, freedom to speak at will and be rude, freedom to criticize openly and say things people dont want to hear, its all because i dont care.. but once someone pays me little by little i loose that freedom to be nasty, because ill care about the money and the interesting thing will be to see how much i sacrifice and for how long to get what i want.

if there is some job i can do real well it is to figure out all the bad stuff about anything, i wont be a critic.. a critic may tell something good.. id like a job where i can just figure out bad stuff.. that would be fun and autonomous.

sometimes i wonder if it takes courage to do something real stupid once you know it is stupid. i can go to give examples.. but ill skip that (read this months readers digest, the article about great Olympians).. but then i guess its either about priorities or about good ol' not thinking before acting.

Pinky

2008-06-29T21:50:00.006+05:30

i dont like to admit that i like someone, i dont admit easily to them and neither do i tell others that i like someone. when sunaina asked me to write a post about her as her birthday gift, i was confused.. i went on to think why would she want a post from me.. did she want to know what i was thought about her or did she just want someone to write about her, or did she want to be a little harder to be forgotten. well turns out she wanted a birthday gift thats all and birthday gift on her birthday from a friend.

i thought i found someone i'd like when i spoke to pinky.. she disagrees with me a lot.. i like it when someone disagrees with you, reasons it out with you, but doesnt try to change me. thats what i liked about her right in the start.. i can write stuff about how i started speakin to her n all that jazz.. but ill skip that.. i feel like writing sense.

i wanted her to like me and accept me as a friend.. to confide in me.. to let me help her.. she did, i guess but i never took it seriously.. i thought her problems were frivolous and i made jokes about them( i dint want her to think she was important to me or that i treasured the fact that she trusted me.. forgive me pinky.. forgive me) .. now i know i was wrong.. small things may not be important to me but they were to her, its because of the kind of person she is.. she believes that people are good.. that her friends are good. though i disapprove of that belief i can respect it.. its these beliefs that make her what she is. and i like her for what she is.

i remember one day i told her shes boring and keeps complaining.. she went over the roof that night.. she called me shallow, stupid and almost accused me of being a phony. i dint like that but at the end of the conversation i felt kind of happy to be the person on whom she vent out her frustration.. she dint tell me what exactly set it off.. she never does.

i guess im a friend of hers.. i never let myself belief that.. i start expecting then.. i guess im her friend because she takes me for granted.. shes rather frank with me.. that sometimes i sense notes of happiness in her tone, the kind one person feels when they are wanted.. i like to feel that happiness too.. a feeling of being wanted.. but rarely feel it.. i feel it now though.

she is a nice person, what i dont like about her is that she keeps telling me shes not capable.. she doesnt write good poetry.. says shes not good with studies.. she must believe in herself, no one will if she wont.. i will though.. i have a knack of finding talent :P

she told me about how she lost her parents even before she could tell them she loved them, i found it hard to look past the tragedy.. and the pain.. and i tried to relate her behavior and her being to the death of her parents but i was surprised to learn that she has her own identity and she has wonderful strength and courage to be herself even when she is not protected from the world. that i admire.. i often wonder how she'd be if her parents were alive.. i believe she would be just as wonderful and strong.

she laughs hysterically at the stupid things i say.. sometimes i feel a great deal of excitement and try makin her laugh more.. i sometimes feel thats my whole reason for talkin to her.. to make her laugh.. but then again i hope there is something more to all my phone bills. yes there is.. i dump my rather uninteresting talk about how i used to struggle to like and then landed up ending my struggle but stoppin to like people at all.. she listens.. gets confused.. blames me, and tells me somethings i dont remember now.. the point is i never had a problem with not liking people but sometimes i found it weird that everyone liked people.. but i dunno.. the things she said made sense to me.. i dont remember what she said though.. :(

she always get sad and hight irritated due to disappointment when she finds out that some friend whom she trusted is a phony or when some person says she writes pathetic poetry or when she is learns are her friends done some stupid thing.. its weird but i cant understand from where she gets all that strength to still expect from people and still like people and no just simply label all humans as jackasses and live with it.

she read ayn rand and liked her even though she dint agree with everything she said.. she doesnt agree that logic is the ultimate thing.. but that lets her be what she is.. its her belief system.. she stands by it even if i logically prove her wrong.. i admire that.. shes such a strongheaded person but she still makes compromises.. she chooses between what she wants and what the people who love her want, she makes sacrifices, but if she had to make the choice again she'd still choose to what she just did... its a wonderfully stable characteristic she has.. ive hardly seen her fickle minded.

she and i have shared some good moments.. some bitter ones.. but on the whole the good ones out weigh the bitter ones.. she made me special by demanding this post from me.. by showing that she wanted it from me.. i hope i made her feel special by letting her know that shes not gone unnoticed, that i respect her, that she is important to me, that she can make me happy, that i let myself be vulnerable when i speak to her, that she can hurt me.

pinky, the world sucks, but there is someone whom you can make happy, and someones waiting to make you happy.

happy birthday.

ipods now complete.

2008-06-27T15:01:00.003+05:30

my dad once asked me if id take good care of my ipod.. just before he bought it for me, i replied it would be my baby.
my dad asked me if id take good care of my laptop and i answered twas my next baby. if i have friends then my ipod and my laptop are those.. the ipod lets me connect with the only people i can relate to.. the tortured souls of nick drake, kurt cobain, syd barrett, plant, page, waters, jimi and morrison et all.
my ipod is now complete.. itunes doesnt work with my laptop.. dont know why but well so i tried some million alternatives but none of them were even close to good and dint make use of most of the ipods features.. then i used winamp with this pluggin called ml_ipod.. worked like magic.. it had had loadsa bugs when they started with it.. but by the time i started using it all roadblocks were cleared.
i spent some time nicely getting artwork so my cover flow feature looked good.
it has some featured even itunes dont have and is much easier to use than itunes and doesnt really cause great deal of trouble to your ram and the transfers speeds are heavenly.
i bought new earphones for my ipod.. i struggled to buy them.. i dint find anything like i wanted.. i bought two sony earphones and they are very good.. the ipod earphones were bad and no loud at all.
anyway, ive been listening to nick drake for sometime now.. hes really good and anyone who can use his brain should listen to him.. well most people cant use their brains.. he more like the thinkers musician.. most people find it boring and very slow.. but i find it meaningful and very very appropriate. the music and the lyrics are beautifully synchronized. many good songs have either good lyrics or good music.. most good music is coupled with horribly boring and unengaging love lyrics.. which is the best way to waste your music. most of his songs are not about love and even the ones that are about love are indeed lovely.. even i feel like being loved when i listen to them.. but he has these random songs about death and the basic struggle to live and being yourself.. his understanding of instruments is unparalleled.. i could go on but i have no intention to do so.. no ones going to listen to him anyway.. your goin to find him boring only.
most people like nirvana for nevermind.. but i think there best album is beach.. love the album.. its so raw and unadultrated.. it has that frustration and the sense to being tortured in every note and the lyrics are awfully painful.. this song called papercuts is about feeling like a caged animal used for amusement.. its so painful to listen to kurt accept his fate and "accept his friends of ridicule". i love other songs in that album too.. his control over distortion is amazing.. his lyrics are blunt and totally sincere.. which is a very rare quality.
this world tortures true talent because it cant accept change.. it cant accept the harsh truth.. we need that bubble to live in.. we need its protection.. whod believe me if i said the two pillars of our peaceful society are hypocrisy and illusion.. all we do is churn out tons n tons of puppets who are controlled by circumstances.. its disgusting to see people so easily manipulated and influenced. i guess this is the worst way we can treat the thousand of brains on which the seven billion rotten bodies are surving. what a waste.
i haven't doen anything these hols.. i dont intent to either.. why should i do something all the time and race against time all, im happy doin nothing, it adds so much meaning to life.. really.

cats n dogs

2008-06-14T21:13:00.000+05:30

i like cats more than dogs because they do their own hunting.. dogs depend on people to feed them.. either directly or from the garbage.. cats hunt.. cats take whatever they can.

nolan

2008-06-04T13:24:00.003+05:30

i have been watching a lot of movies lately.. n i have come to like nolan and tarantino a lot.
both assume that all people are evil and no one is even close to the kind of selfless heroes we know , which is a good assumption to make and i make it myself :D
ive seen 3 nolan movies and in both memento and the prestige there is no real good person overpowering a evil guy kinda bullshit.. because face it.. it never happens :P
though both the stories could have been manipulated a little to lead to a situation where there could have been heroes, nolan avoids and delivers the audience a good surprise.. i had no clue about the suspense in memento but then i can pretty close in the prestige.. i figuered that many hugh jackmans were created, and that no one had killed him.. but the story is very good indeed and very rewarding.

i always loved magic.. and its true i never wanted to know the trick.. its funny but it all works because we want to be tricked.. but just like any other profession.. its filled with ugliness. another thing very good about the movie is the character sketching.. alfred borden is so determined and has just magic in his life.. thats all there is to him.. wonderful character really, his greatest magic trick was his life.. wonderful na?

i dint write this very well.

2008-05-29T18:51:00.001+05:30

oh how the world killed my ernesto.

lark

2008-05-23T16:46:00.002+05:30

Skyward,
mouthing polluted wind -
weeding moon above grey veins,
thrashing battle pennant bones
above a once proud clan.

2008-04-21T23:14:00.002+05:30

i found out that i hate having to do things i dont want to or like to do.. and the funny thing is when im forced to it, i do the work but half heartedly.. now for the reason why this is funny.. i do it half heartedly cos i hold a grudge against the person who is forcing me to do the thing i hate.. n since i hold a grudge against him i must not and will not let him see my full potential and my ability to do things.

i have seen that im good at almost anything i do.. even if i dont like it.. my basic pillar is laziness.. im very lazy and choose lazing over almost anything else.. so when im pushed to work.. i do it as fast as i can.. which means i hvta to it pretty well.. cos not doin it well may lead to having to do it again.. n thus i get to laze again once im done with the work.
i value the time i get to laze away.. but goin to back to what i wanted to say.. i hate letting ppl noe im talented at something i dont like doin.. but i have too much of an ego not to do it well even if i try it half heartedly..
its weird and unusually perhaps.. but really at the end of the day nothing really matters too much to me.. i dont care about most ppl.. and now im immune to anything ppl do or say.. i absolutely hate ppl and make make only circumstantial frnds.. ppl who are around me all the time will become frnds with me so long they stay near me.. dats all.. sometimes i try keepin in touch with ppl.. but i do get drained.. but i have seen it reward me too.. but only very rarely.. ppl are usually just junk.

i realised that im in unmotivated.

2008-03-14T19:44:00.003+05:30

now pri really wanted to read wat id write.. so this might not be the truth..though ill try.

Life Ten Years Ago:
10 years back i was 8.. eight means 5th std.. this was the 1st time i had was taken to my principal for searchin and showin the meaning of "fuck"..lol.
anyway 10 years back i played a lot.. i vent to school regularly.. hardly spent time with my parents.. went off to sleep at 10pm sharp and came back from play at 8pm and i knew the time weather i wore a watch or not.. i sucked at math but kicked ass in other subjects :D
i was very studies oriented.. i made frnds only with ppl who got more marks dan me or ran faster dan me.. this was also the year that i ran almost as fast as abhay.. he is legendary :D
i realised dat i was very very good with words and could kickass with my mouth and also ran fast enough to tell anything to anyone and get away with it.
i dint like girls at all.. i used to get teased with some gals though.. i hated them and never spoke much to them.. but there was this gal who always got the 1st rank and the teacher made us sit 1 guy 1 gal on the bench.. so dat gal n sat together..but then the teacher changed her mind n made another gal sit next to me.
i cried. like crazy.. lol.. i dint likt her or anything.. just dat i cunt sit next to the 1st ranker.. but then i horribly guilty cos the other gal who was sittin next to me felt bad cos i dint want to sit with her :S
this was also the year i had this horrible geo teacher who hit a lotta ppl and made a frnd of mine hit ppl too.. and she dictated notes very very fast and scrwed u if the notes ver not neat.. guess dats why i write so fast even now.
i also learned writin in short hand :D
we had two gangs in our colony..lol.. we fought a lot with stones and all the wwf moves we knew.. loadsa bones broke before the parents intervened.
i also hit a guy on his head with a bat for callin my then best frnd a blackie. Got into major deep trouble for it.. but made one great frnd :)
10 years back i knew i was the smartest in my foyer and that i needed to work harder to beat them all.. but even that time i rmbr thinkin wat id do if i won everything.
i guess 10 years not long enuf to change.
oh ya this was also the time a guy told me stuff about sex.. i cunt believe dat my parents did it for me. and also spent time wonderin why ppl dint just unzip and do watever they wanted to do.. why did they hvta sleep naked?

Life Five Years Ago:
5 years ago i was 13.. i entered my teenage and my dad loved me for not throwing tantrums like my sis..lol. i fought like crazy with my sis.. loved irritating and was a true sadist :(
i also realised that i cant really like anyone enough to miss them.. and felt real bad that i wanted my dad to return for the his trips to foreign countries cos he bought me gifts.
i was still in the same school.. and i started liking gals but i also knew i dint want to spend all my time on one gal.
i was still very good at studies but i hated it now.

Life Tomorrow:
watch as many movies as i can.. to make up for the fact that i dont read enuf.. listen to as many songs i can and make a nice songbook too. i want sleep and food without having to work at all!
id like to like something a lot.. really.

Five Locations I Would Love To Run Away To:

1. hmnm moon.. alone away from humans.. paradise :D
2. greenland for the fjords
3. taj mahal/ pyramids.. the most beautiful graves
4. my granmas home in madras.. this where i spent all my summers when i was young..
loved playing with the ants.
5. baluchistan has the biggest illegal gun market :D

Five Bad Habits I Have:
1. i procrastinate a lot :P
2. i dont have one opinion or rigid thought from which i can build other opinions.
3. i dont like any one thing soo much that all other things seem trivial.
4. i find it hard to accept that ive made a mistake.
5. i make too much fun of people.

Five Biggest Joys At This Moment:
songbook :D :D

Something to Achieve By Next Year:

hmnm dunno really.. just survivin at rourkela wud be enough.
Something that Impacted Me Last Year:

using the camera during the boards.. highest level of ecstasy and enjoyment ive ever felt

What I Will Miss About 2007:
hated the year.. was the worst year.. did badly in allll the xams i wrote.. felt dumb for once :(.. so ill miss not missing 2007!
yeah.
Five Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
see im uselessly unmotivated... but still if i cud id like to write for some newspaper.. play with loadsa kids..fall in love.. exhibit in some photography exhibition.. make a movie :D

rare.

2008-03-09T00:41:00.003+05:30

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51915435@N00/2319244838

inquisitive and peaceful.

Nail

2008-03-05T01:31:00.001+05:30

love the look on the girls face..seems like a wonderful contrast to the situation.
i read a lot of comics these days.. this ones from Nail.

help yourself :D
http://blackbox.j-chaos.net/comics
http://unearthlyheight.com/uploads/comics/

fear or laziness?

2008-03-03T00:22:00.002+05:30

i just listened to one anime's stating credits song and loved it.
anyway thats bein playin in my head as i type this out.
for the last 4-5 mnths ive felt that there is a great difference between people who archive and people who dont, about how we just add zeros and zeros to this world and go to the extent of eliminating the 1s thru our wonderful gift of education, but this post is not about education.
i believe that the difference between an advanced thinking human brain and an average human brain is far more than the difference between a chimpanzee and the avg human brain and that thinker and the artist who have reached the realm of their true spirit, who are engaged the the activity of thinking and thriving.
our civilization has been adding endless amounts zeros in this world of ours.. it makes me wonder why are there so few 1s or even lesser 1s in front of zeros becos i also believe that hard work can take you places and that Einstein and i are only different because he worked harder than me to understand and observe what was left unanswered.
this brings me to another question, that which is very near to the answers to the questions i raised both in this post and the last one.. which is the most influential human character.. fear or laziness.
which is the mighty inhibitor.. fear to commit and work towards a goal or the disinterest to do it.. though i think that if you do have interest you'd be more than willing to work hard and do something, but that still does not completely answer the question.. because you can certainly have interest but the unwillingness to commit and believe in yourself.
laziness is a choice made.. when your lazy to do math.. you choose the couch or the lappy to math.. its pretty fair to tell that that choice was conscious too and that you simply dont like it.
it i guess is a dead end.. it could be both fear and laziness or one could be the outcome of another.

i dont know.. this thing has kept me busy.. buts kinda like a dead end. :S

Redemption

2008-02-08T00:21:00.000+05:30

we all have a place where we go to ask for forgiveness.. to escape from the world.. to feel alive.. to feel freedom and to see the colors of the rainbow.. to have a conversation.. to feel understood.. to understand.. to find someone.
most times i spend this time alone.. knowing and sometimes feeling sure that i wont be understood.. i wont find anyone and mostly confirming this belief.. and sometimes i justify this belief.
for sometime i found redemption in the setting sun..and in the floating clouds.. and the wonder of nature which controlled both in perfect harmony.
for a time i found peace among the ants.. seeing them struggle and carry the huge pieces of sugar id throw upon them.
for a time i spoke to chubbix and still do.. trying hard to battle the feeling of emptiness and trying to fill the void of regret and wastage.
nowadays i go to this leprosy colony kids.. they laugh and play and i laugh and play and it eases me out.. i feel more understood and the whole of the worlds problems seem simple and insignificant. the kids enjoy my company and i enjoy theirs.
i realised that an easy way to gauge a persons intelligence and his ability to think by figuring out the thing that engages him and his mind. its simple and so far it has always worked.. if you can show me what engages you.. i can very well make out if we'd get along well.. so now my latest hobby has been to search for random but interesting things and find out if they engage anyone.. lol.. its kinda good tp.. :P
anyway i also figured out that i converse mostly to feel understood and to find a kindred whole can converse back with me at the same level and fill in my blank spaces or take me to another dimension in the same topic.. to open my door of perception and in return i open theirs at times.. now im woefully outta company to do this.. and hence its highly irritating not to find anyone to converse with.. infact im so disillusioned by crowd dat i guess ive given up on them..i mean even of the entire crowd wud do something id like..id still run away from it.. i dont believe in them.. even if they can pull of something spectacular..im rather uninterested in crowds.. so i ran way from my crowd in rourkela.. i came back to mumbai for like 4 days :D
twas quite a story how we got the tickets and all.. to put it simply..twas some eventful hostel life :P
yes back to conversations and crowds.. so now i mostly just crack sad pjs one after another disgusting myself and ppl around me.. and make myself feel miserable after a session of fake unrelished laughters n all.. the point is why.. why do i hvta talk..why is it so hard to converse without words..why is the language of understanding so one dimensional and feelingness.. why cant anyone understand my emotions or sensitives without my words.. why is art so neglected dat it is embrassing to speak of.. why is modern thought of as a junkyard and not some canvas of great emotions and wonderfully well understood feelings..why are colors and words so differently judged and so differently rated.. and the vice versa.. why isnt math or physics considered a form of expression and related to art and philosophy.. why is there a great divide between art and science and math and languages.
are they all not forms of the mind and perceptions of the world.. do they all not originate from thought?
do they not?

syd barrett

2008-01-29T19:09:00.000+05:30

my mind has been working overtime these days to keep me away from my own life that i believe im wasting here in the midst of people i cant get along with unless i drain myself out of excuses to acknowledge their existence.. my only ally seems to be my ability to forget things and get along without pausing over issues.

anyway i have decided to write about Kurt Cobain for his birthday on 20th February. But before that i want to write about Pink floyd for now that i appreciate their music as it seems to have the same structure as my life, an unachieved ecstasy.
the songs Syd wrote are distinctly different from those that were written by floyd later on. Syd's music is unique and it has the quality of experimenting and of reaching high notes which by itself give me a overpowering sensation of an overdrive, of an ecstasy but just as i search for every song to reach its climax and give me that which i seek from the music at that moment, it fails me and gives me a new direction of unheard sounds and beautiful feeling in the head.. it takes me to a land where im surrounded by sounds i have never heard before.. and every sound i hear is unique and of the kind i wont hear again but for which i crave.

that is a unique sensation only floyd offers me.. the music has certain meaning and certain randomness.. it will make u follow the music in search of a meaning and then betray you with a smirk.. almost like it predicted your thoughts and lead to you the meaning you searched just to betray you.
it takes you to a height and then leaves you for a free fall.. that my dear, is ecstasy.
Syd is dead, and with him it took away the music only he could make.

Futile.

2008-01-13T23:47:00.000+05:30

if this is living then what is dying?

I must.

2008-01-11T23:49:00.000+05:30

I know that mine is not a lost cause.
I will sidestep these horrid, barren gulleys
These concerns ascending through purity's tears
From here, I will climb still further
Up, through the mist toward sky's veil
Where some have fallen, and some have paused
Amongst icicles chiseled by the unkind sun
I will smile at ancient spiteful freedom
I will face cold stone's grimace and find anchor
Beyond knowing and the known, beyond today
Beyond tomorrow and life's tremulous hold.
There is always the need to grow.
--
I must grow, every moment.

Lets do fraandsheep.

2008-01-09T11:50:00.000+05:30

i dont keep fee bad..infact this year ive been extra happy seein the prospects of the new year.. i ahve 12mnths free with prolly 2 weeks of studies.. its quite a relief toknow that i can touch 8 without much effort :D or atleast without much sacrifice on my part :D
y that they have seen
anyway i just saw that my roomie has bought a dvd.. it had 5 movies.. some scary movies n all.. it caught my attention when i saw that it was sold by babloo entertainments.. in Hindi.

quite a pity that my roomie and his friends can now claim that they have seen some of the most crowd pulling hollywood movies.. and can even discuss the storyline with others.. but what a way to ruin the movie and its appeal.

so suddenly it sunk into me where i have come to.. its a nice new naive experience but then again for how long am i not goin to mind it.. and when is it going to get on my nerves and when is it goin to get me. I dont know.. but its not goin to be very soon.. you know i have been thinkin about it and i realized that i dont have a great choice of frnds here..i mean if i had to choose anyone from here to be my frnd..id rather not choose anyone.. n then i was quick to understand that i dont trust people as such at all.. its crazy but i dont let somethings out not matter what.. i dont know why..its npt imp or anything..its mostly to avoid embarrassment or to avoid having to give some dumbass explianation but then again id feel sick if noone asked..lol
so i want some kinda attention.. but u noe if someone gave me that kinda attention and really liked me id take them for granted.. :S
now its gettin interesting.
so id like someone to give me attention and expect stuff from me.. but then it shunt be too much or too lil.. and i shunt feel it a burden anytime. yikes. they must be smarter than me and shud lecture me often but again the lectures shud not be like normal lectures but shud be given to me when im not expectin it.. and again they must not tell me stuff i know..haaaw.
also i dont trust people for trivial reasons only genrally.. basically having to explain.. i hate explainin but again i hate it when someone can read me very well.. so i guess a relation wud never grow too much or id change thru the realtion :S
gwad this is getting real messy now.
so i havnt got anyone really.. and i guess soon ill loose hope of finding someone who can understand me well..infact i havnt met anyone like me at all.. id like to meet another raghu to see if id like him..but its most likely i wont like him..hed be too corny n all.. and we'd get into constants fights n all.. we'd clash like crazy.. maybe after all that initial jazz we might become great frnds..
actually another raghu wud be fun.. if hed like me hed nice take care of me n give me bhav like crazy and in return i just have to small small special things.. u noe like just want to spend time with him.. he really likes people who like spending time with him..this goes for people whom he likes or not..if anyone wants to spend time with him he really likes it..he might say no or he might act as if he dont care but in all truth he likes people who give a lil bhav :P
but he gets real suspicious if someone gives him too much bhav cos then they are getting something outta him.. without him bein able to figure out wat it is.. though once he learns the intent hes open for usage.. no probs on that.. load nahi letha :D
ok so thats some kinda non deep description for the kinda guy/gal id like to spend time with.. but then ive found many a nice things in many a folks but never all things da.. so anyway.. for now its just a crazy cocktail of people
and himself and chubbix that he lives on..haha .. :D

oh ya this year has been great :D or im being overoptimistic :S

Affection :P

2008-01-04T01:51:00.001+05:30

love sinfest.
http://www.sinfest.net/

The Comprachicos by Victor Hugo.

2007-12-23T21:40:00.000+05:30

THE COMPRACHICOS.

I.

Who now knows the word Comprachicos, and who knows its meaning?

The Comprachicos, or Comprapequeños, were a hideous and nondescript
association of wanderers, famous in the 17th century, forgotten in the
18th, unheard of in the 19th. The Comprachicos are like the "succession
powder," an ancient social characteristic detail. They are part of old
human ugliness. To the great eye of history, which sees everything
collectively, the Comprachicos belong to the colossal fact of slavery.
Joseph sold by his brethren is a chapter in their story. The
Comprachicos have left their traces in the penal laws of Spain and
England. You find here and there in the dark confusion of English laws
the impress of this horrible truth, like the foot-print of a savage in a
forest.

Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequeños, is a compound Spanish word
signifying Child-buyers.

The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and sold them. They did
not steal them. The kidnapping of children is another branch of
industry. And what did they make of these children?

Monsters.

Why monsters?

To laugh at.

The populace must needs laugh, and kings too. The mountebank is wanted
in the streets, the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the
other a Fool.

The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of
the attention of the philosopher.

What are we sketching in these few preliminary pages? A chapter in the
most terrible of books; a book which might be entitled-- The farming of
the unhappy by the happy .

II.

A child destined to be a plaything for men--such a thing has existed;
such a thing exists even now. In simple and savage times such a thing
constituted an especial trade. The 17th century, called the great
century, was of those times. It was a century very Byzantine in tone. It
combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity--a curious variety of
civilization. A tiger with a simper. Madame de Sevigné minces on the
subject of the fagot and the wheel. That century traded a good deal in
children. Flattering historians have concealed the sore, but have
divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.

In order that a human toy should succeed, he must be taken early. The
dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play with childhood. But a
well-formed child is not very amusing; a hunchback is better fun.

Hence grew an art. There were trainers who took a man and made him an
abortion; they took a face and made a muzzle; they stunted growth; they
kneaded the features. The artificial production of teratological cases
had its rules. It was quite a science--what one can imagine as the
antithesis of orthopedy. Where God had put a look, their art put a
squint; where God had made harmony, they made discord; where God had
made the perfect picture, they re-established the sketch; and, in the
eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch which was perfect. They debased
animals as well; they invented piebald horses. Turenne rode a piebald
horse. In our own days do they not dye dogs blue and green? Nature is
our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to God's work. Man
retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The Court
buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey. It
was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in retrogression. At the
same time they tried to make a man of the monkey. Barbara, Duchess of
Cleveland and Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page.
Frances Sutton, Baroness Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons,
had tea served by a baboon clad in cold brocade, which her ladyship
called My Black. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, used to go
and take her seat in Parliament in a coach with armorial bearings,
behind which stood, their muzzles stuck up in the air, three Cape
monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal
Pole witnessed, had her stockings put on by an orang-outang. These
monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men brutalized and
bestialized. This promiscuousness of man and beast, desired by the
great, was especially prominent in the case of the dwarf and the dog.
The dwarf never quitted the dog, which was always bigger than himself.
The dog was the pair of the dwarf; it was as if they were coupled with a
collar. This juxtaposition is authenticated by a mass of domestic
records--notably by the portrait of Jeffrey Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta
of France, daughter of Henri IV., and wife of Charles I.

To degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of his state was
completed by disfigurement. Certain vivisectors of that period succeeded
marvellously well in effacing from the human face the divine effigy.
Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen Street College, and judicial visitor
of the chemists' shops of London, wrote a book in Latin on this
pseudo-surgery, the processes of which he describes. If we are to
believe Justus of Carrickfergus, the inventor of this branch of surgery
was a monk named Avonmore--an Irish word signifying Great River.

The dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose effigy--or
ghost--springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidelberg, was a
remarkable specimen of this science, very varied in its applications. It
fashioned beings the law of whose existence was hideously simple: it
permitted them to suffer, and commanded them to amuse.

III.

The manufacture of monsters was practised on a large scale, and
comprised various branches.

The Sultan required them, so did the Pope; the one to guard his women,
the other to say his prayers. These were of a peculiar kind, incapable
of reproduction. Scarcely human beings, they were useful to
voluptuousness and to religion. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel
utilized the same species of monsters; fierce in the former case, mild
in the latter.

They knew how to produce things in those days which are not produced
now; they had talents which we lack, and it is not without reason that
some good folk cry out that the decline has come. We no longer know how
to sculpture living human flesh; this is consequent on the loss of the
art of torture. Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but are so no
longer; the art has become so simplified that it will soon disappear
altogether. In cutting the limbs of living men, in opening their bellies
and in dragging out their entrails, phenomena were grasped on the moment
and discoveries made. We are obliged to renounce these experiments now,
and are thus deprived of the progress which surgery made by aid of the
executioner.

The vivisection of former days was not limited to the manufacture of
phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace (a species of
augmentative of the courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes. It
abounded in varieties. One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks
for the king of England.

It was the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to have a sort
of watchman, who crowed like a cock. This watcher, awake while all
others slept, ranged the palace, and raised from hour to hour the cry of
the farmyard, repeating it as often as was necessary, and thus supplying
a clock. This man, promoted to be cock, had in childhood undergone the
operation of the pharynx, which was part of the art described by Dr.
Conquest. Under Charles II. the salivation inseparable to the operation
having disgusted the Duchess of Portsmouth, the appointment was indeed
preserved, so that the splendour of the crown should not be tarnished,
but they got an unmutilated man to represent the cock. A retired officer
was generally selected for this honourable employment. Under James II.
the functionary was named William Sampson, Cock, and received for his
crow £9, 2s. 6d. annually.

The memoirs of Catherine II. inform us that at St. Petersburg, scarcely
a hundred years since, whenever the czar or czarina was displeased with
a Russian prince, he was forced to squat down in the great antechamber
of the palace, and to remain in that posture a certain number of days,
mewing like a cat, or clucking like a sitting hen, and pecking his food
from the floor.

These fashions have passed away; but not so much, perhaps, as one might
imagine. Nowadays, courtiers slightly modify their intonation in
clucking to please their masters. More than one picks up from the
ground--we will not say from the mud--what he eats.

It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions
never perplex us. In approving always, one is sure to be always
right--which is pleasant. Louis XIV. would not have liked to see at
Versailles either an officer acting the cock, or a prince acting the
turkey. That which raised the royal and imperial dignity in England and
Russia would have seemed to Louis the Great incompatible with the crown
of St. Louis. We know what his displeasure was when Madame Henriette
forgot herself so far as to see a hen in a dream--which was, indeed, a
grave breach of good manners in a lady of the court. When one is of the
court, one should not dream of the courtyard. Bossuet, it may be
remembered, was nearly as scandalized as Louis XIV.

IV.

The commerce in children in the 17th century, as we have explained, was
connected with a trade. The Comprachicos engaged in the commerce, and
carried on the trade. They bought children, worked a little on the raw
material, and resold them afterwards.

The venders were of all kinds: from the wretched father, getting rid of
his family, to the master, utilizing his stud of slaves. The sale of men
was a simple matter. In our own time we have had fighting to maintain
this right. Remember that it is less than a century ago since the
Elector of Hesse sold his subjects to the King of England, who required
men to be killed in America. Kings went to the Elector of Hesse as we go
to the butcher to buy meat. The Elector had food for powder in stock,
and hung up his subjects in his shop. Come buy; it is for sale. In
England, under Jeffreys, after the tragical episode of Monmouth, there
were many lords and gentlemen beheaded and quartered. Those who were
executed left wives and daughters, widows and orphans, whom James II.
gave to the queen, his wife. The queen sold these ladies to William
Penn. Very likely the king had so much per cent. on the transaction. The
extraordinary thing is, not that James II. should have sold the women,
but that William Penn should have bought them. Penn's purchase is
excused, or explained, by the fact that having a desert to sow with men,
he needed women as farming implements.

Her Gracious Majesty made a good business out of these ladies. The young
sold dear. We may imagine, with the uneasy feeling which a complicated
scandal arouses, that probably some old duchesses were thrown in cheap.

The Comprachicos were also called the Cheylas, a Hindu word, which
conveys the image of harrying a nest.

For a long time the Comprachicos only partially concealed themselves.
There is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over
iniquitous trades, in which they thrive. In our own day we have seen an
association of the kind in Spain, under the direction of the ruffian
Ramon Selles, last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three provinces under
terror for thirty years--Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia.

Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means in bad odour at
court. On occasions they were used for reasons of state. For James II.
they were almost an instrumentum regni . It was a time when families,
which were refractory or in the way, were dismembered; when a descent
was cut short; when heirs were suddenly suppressed. At times one branch
was defrauded to the profit of another. The Comprachicos had a genius
for disfiguration which recommended them to state policy. To disfigure
is better than to kill. There was, indeed, the Iron Mask, but that was a
mighty measure. Europe could not be peopled with iron masks, while
deformed tumblers ran about the streets without creating any surprise.
Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh. You are
masked for ever by your own flesh--what can be more ingenious? The
Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees. They had their
secrets, as we have said; they had tricks which are now lost arts. A
sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands; it was ridiculous and
wonderful. They would touch up a little being with such skill that its
father could not have known it. Et que méconnaîtrait l'oeil même de son
père , as Racine says in bad French. Sometimes they left the spine
straight and remade the face. They unmarked a child as one might unmark
a pocket-handkerchief. Products, destined for tumblers, had their joints
dislocated in a masterly manner--you would have said they had been
boned. Thus gymnasts were made.

Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child, they
also took away his memory. At least they took away all they could of it;
the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been
subjected. This frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance,
but not on his mind. The most he could recall was that one day he had
been seized by men, that next he had fallen asleep, and then that he had
been cured. Cured of what? He did not know. Of burnings by sulphur and
incisions by the iron he remembered nothing. The Comprachicos deadened
the little patient by means of a stupefying powder which was thought to
be magical, and suppressed all pain. This powder has been known from
time immemorial in China, and is still employed there in the present
day. The Chinese have been beforehand with us in all our
inventions--printing, artillery, aerostation, chloroform. Only the
discovery which in Europe at once takes life and birth, and becomes a
prodigy and a wonder, remains a chrysalis in China, and is preserved in
a deathlike state. China is a museum of embryos.

Since we are in China, let us remain there a moment to note a
peculiarity. In China, from time immemorial, they have possessed a
certain refinement of industry and art. It is the art of moulding a
living man. They take a child, two or three years old, put him in a
porcelain vase, more or less grotesque, which is made without top or
bottom, to allow egress for the head and feet. During the day the vase
is set upright, and at night is laid down to allow the child to sleep.
Thus the child thickens without growing taller, filling up with his
compressed flesh and distorted bones the reliefs in the vase. This
development in a bottle continues many years. After a certain time it
becomes irreparable. When they consider that this is accomplished, and
the monster made, they break the vase. The child comes out--and, behold,
there is a man in the shape of a mug!

This is convenient: by ordering your dwarf betimes you are able to have
it of any shape you wish.

V.

James II. tolerated the Comprachicos for the good reason that he made
use of them; at least it happened that he did so more than once. We do
not always disdain to use what we despise. This low trade, an excellent
expedient sometimes for the higher one which is called state policy, was
willingly left in a miserable state, but was not persecuted. There was
no surveillance, but a certain amount of attention. Thus much might be
useful--the law closed one eye, the king opened the other.

Sometimes the king went so far as to avow his complicity. These are
audacities of monarchical terrorism. The disfigured one was marked with
the fleur-de-lis; they took from him the mark of God; they put on him
the mark of the king. Jacob Astley, knight and baronet, lord of Melton
Constable, in the county of Norfolk, had in his family a child who had
been sold, and upon whose forehead the dealer had imprinted a
fleur-de-lis with a hot iron. In certain cases in which it was held
desirable to register for some reason the royal origin of the new
position made for the child, they used such means. England has always
done us the honour to utilize, for her personal service, the
fleur-de-lis.

The Comprachicos, allowing for the shade which divides a trade from a
fanaticism, were analogous to the Stranglers of India. They lived among
themselves in gangs, and to facilitate their progress, affected somewhat
of the merry-andrew. They encamped here and there, but they were grave
and religious, bearing no affinity to other nomads, and incapable of
theft. The people for a long time wrongly confounded them with the Moors
of Spain and the Moors of China. The Moors of Spain were coiners, the
Moors of China were thieves. There was nothing of the sort about the
Comprachicos; they were honest folk. Whatever you may think of them,
they were sometimes sincerely scrupulous. They pushed open a door,
entered, bargained for a child, paid, and departed. All was done with
propriety.

They were of all countries. Under the name of Comprachicos fraternized
English, French, Castilians, Germans, Italians. A unity of idea, a unity
of superstition, the pursuit of the same calling, make such fusions. In
this fraternity of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean seaboard
represented the East, those of the Atlantic seaboard the West. Many
Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque and the Irishman
understand each other--they speak the old Punic jargon; add to this the
intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic Spain--relations
such that they terminated by bringing to the gallows in London one
almost King of Ireland, the Celtic Lord de Brany; from which resulted
the conquest of the county of Leitrim.

The Comprachicos were rather a fellowship than a tribe; rather a
residuum than a fellowship. It was all the riffraff of the universe,
having for their trade a crime. It was a sort of harlequin people, all
composed of rags. To recruit a man was to sew on a tatter.

To wander was the Comprachicos' law of existence--to appear and
disappear. What is barely tolerated cannot take root. Even in the
kingdoms where their business supplied the courts, and, on occasions,
served as an auxiliary to the royal power, they were now and then
suddenly ill-treated. Kings made use of their art, and sent the artists
to the galleys. These inconsistencies belong to the ebb and flow of
royal caprice. "For such is our pleasure."

A rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss. The Comprachicos were
poor. They might have said what the lean and ragged witch observed, when
she saw them setting fire to the stake, "Le jeu n'en vaut pas la
chandelle." It is possible, nay probable (their chiefs remaining
unknown), that the wholesale contractors in the trade were rich. After
the lapse of two centuries, it would be difficult to throw any light on
this point.

It was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws, its oaths, its
formulæ--it had almost its cabala. Any one nowadays wishing to know all
about the Comprachicos need only go into Biscaya or Galicia; there were
many Basques among them, and it is in those mountains that one hears
their history. To this day the Comprachicos are spoken of at Oyarzun, at
Urbistondo, at Leso, at Astigarraga. Aguardate niño, que voy a llamar
al Comprachicos --Take care, child, or I'll call the Comprachicos--is
the cry with which mothers frighten their children in that country.

The Comprachicos, like the Zigeuner and the Gipsies, had appointed
places for periodical meetings. From time to time their leaders
conferred together. In the seventeenth century they had four principal
points of rendezvous: one in Spain--the pass of Pancorbo; one in
Germany--the glade called the Wicked Woman, near Diekirsch, where there
are two enigmatic bas-reliefs, representing a woman with a head and a
man without one; one in France--the hill where was the colossal statue
of Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood of Borvo Tomona, near
Bourbonne les Bains; one in England--behind the garden wall of William
Challoner, Squire of Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, behind the
square tower and the great wing which is entered by an arched door.

VI.

The laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in England.
England, in her Gothic legislation, seemed to be inspired with this
principle, Homo errans fera errante pejor . One of the special statutes
classifies the man without a home as "more dangerous than the asp,
dragon, lynx, or basilisk" ( atrocior aspide, dracone, lynce, et
basilico ). For a long time England troubled herself as much concerning
the gipsies, of whom she wished to be rid as about the wolves of which
she had been cleared. In that the Englishman differed from the Irishman,
who prayed to the saints for the health of the wolf, and called him "my
godfather."

English law, nevertheless, in the same way as (we have just seen) it
tolerated the wolf, tamed, domesticated, and become in some sort a dog,
tolerated the regular vagabond, become in some sort a subject. It did
not trouble itself about either the mountebank or the travelling barber,
or the quack doctor, or the peddler, or the open-air scholar, as long as
they had a trade to live by. Further than this, and with these
exceptions, the description of freedom which exists in the wanderer
terrified the law. A tramp was a possible public enemy. That modern
thing, the lounger, was then unknown; that ancient thing, the vagrant,
was alone understood. A suspicious appearance, that indescribable
something which all understand and none can define, was sufficient
reason that society should take a man by the collar. "Where do you live?
How do you get your living?" And if he could not answer, harsh penalties
awaited him. Iron and fire were in the code: the law practised the
cauterization of vagrancy.

Hence, throughout English territory, a veritable "loi des suspects" was
applicable to vagrants (who, it must be owned, readily became
malefactors), and particularly to gipsies, whose expulsion has
erroneously been compared to the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors
from Spain, and the Protestants from France. As for us, we do not
confound a battue with a persecution.

The Comprachicos, we insist, had nothing in common with the gipsies. The
gipsies were a nation; the Comprachicos were a compound of all
nations--the lees of a horrible vessel full of filthy waters. The
Comprachicos had not, like the gipsies, an idiom of their own; their
jargon was a promiscuous collection of idioms: all languages were mixed
together in their language; they spoke a medley. Like the gipsies, they
had come to be a people winding through the peoples; but their common
tie was association, not race. At all epochs in history one finds in the
vast liquid mass which constitutes humanity some of these streams of
venomous men exuding poison around them. The gipsies were a tribe; the
Comprachicos a freemasonry--a masonry having not a noble aim, but a
hideous handicraft. Finally, their religions differ--the gipsies were
Pagans, the Comprachicos were Christians, and more than that, good
Christians, as became an association which, although a mixture of all
nations, owed its birth to Spain, a devout land.

They were more than Christians, they were Catholics; they were more than
Catholics, they were Romans, and so touchy in their faith, and so pure,
that they refused to associate with the Hungarian nomads of the comitate
of Pesth, commanded and led by an old man, having for sceptre a wand
with a silver ball, surmounted by the double-headed Austrian eagle. It
is true that these Hungarians were schismatics, to the extent of
celebrating the Assumption on the 29th August, which is an abomination.

In England, so long as the Stuarts reigned, the confederation of the
Comprachicos was (for motives of which we have already given you a
glimpse) to a certain extent protected. James II., a devout man, who
persecuted the Jews and trampled out the gipsies, was a good prince to
the Comprachicos. We have seen why. The Comprachicos were buyers of the
human wares in which he was dealer. They excelled in disappearances.
Disappearances are occasionally necessary for the good of the state. An
inconvenient heir of tender age whom they took and handled lost his
shape. This facilitated confiscation; the tranfer of titles to
favourites was simplified. The Comprachicos were, moreover, very
discreet and very taciturn. They bound themselves to silence, and kept
their word, which is necessary in affairs of state. There was scarcely
an example of their having betrayed the secrets of the king. This was,
it is true, for their interest; and if the king had lost confidence in
them, they would have been in great danger. They were thus of use in a
political point of view. Moreover these artists furnished singers for
the Holy Father. The Comprachicos were useful for the Miserere of
Allegri. They were particularly devoted to Mary. All this pleased the
papistry of the Stuarts. James II. could not be hostile to holy men who
pushed their devotion to the Virgin to the extent of manufacturing
eunuchs. In 1688 there was a change of dynasty in England: Orange
supplanted Stuart. William III. replaced James II.

James II. went away to die in exile, miracles were performed on his
tomb, and his relics cured the Bishop of Autun of fistula--a worthy
recompense of the Christian virtues of the prince.

William, having neither the same ideas nor the same practices as James,
was severe to the Comprachicos. He did his best to crush out the vermin.

A statute of the early part of William and Mary's reign hit the
association of child-buyers hard. It was as the blow of a club to the
Comprachicos, who were from that time pulverized. By the terms of this
statute those of the fellowship taken and duly convicted were to be
branded with a red-hot iron, imprinting R. on the shoulder, signifying
rogue; on the left hand T, signifying thief; and on the right hand M,
signifying man-slayer. The chiefs, "supposed to be rich, although
beggars in appearance," were to be punished in the collistrigium --that
is, the pillory--and branded on the forehead with a P, besides having
their goods confiscated, and the trees in their woods rooted up. Those
who did not inform against the Comprachicos were to be punished by
confiscation and imprisonment for life, as for the crime of misprision.
As for the women found among these men, they were to suffer the
cucking-stool--this is a tumbrel, the name of which is composed of the
French word coquine , and the German stuhl . English law being endowed
with a strange longevity, this punishment still exists in English
legislation for quarrelsome women. The cucking-stool is suspended over a
river or a pond, the woman seated on it. The chair is allowed to drop
into the water, and then pulled out. This dipping of the woman is
repeated three times, "to cool her anger," says the commentator,
Chamberlayne.

now imagine The Comprachicos working on young minds, with their vicious educational system.