On war, tongues and the Tour de Babel

Found myself with the Bible the other day. Which does not happen very often, I must admit with considerable guilt. Anyway, I read about the Noah affair — when Yahweh realised that he had made a mistake in creating man and sent 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rain, destroying all that lived or moved on Earth. Except for the ones in the Ark, of course.
Then I moved on to the Tower of Babel chapter, which had humankind attempting to build a tower that would touch the sky and protect it from the Great One, the next time he got into a destructive mood. And what did He do to stop them?
Fire? Acid? Big chunks of hail?
Naah, nothing so crude. Yahweh just gave them different tongues, and suddenly they were mouthing stuff that nobody could understand. The great army that set out to build the tower was reduced to becoming smaller legions that babbled nonsense, which others could not understand. And the project was doomed.
And so was man.
Many believe that Yahweh did this just to stop them from building the tower. But, according to me, it was to make humankind destroy itself — divide it into nations that spend all their energies in defending their kind, which are usually bound by language and skin. And apparently, Yahweh seems to be succeeding.
Now, one thing I’ll never understand is — why do we have to go all hoop-la over language? It was just meant to let you communicate with another (just like religion was meant to make sure you don’t go murder your neighbour), and that’s that. Why does anybody have to take so much pride in it, then go fetch a sickle to endanger your life as well as someone else’s? Simple logic, that.
And then there’s war. “It’s a beautiful thing,” they will make you believe ... “Die for your country. It’s a man’s life.” Crap.
How can murdering another person — even if it’s with the consent of the government — ever make you a better human being? Do you really think that having somebody’s blood on your hands is going to help the screaming little orphan that’s wandering down a dirty alley in your remote hometown? And do you think the enemy is fighting for a cause any less ‘nobler’ than yours?
No, the enemy has very similar reasons for fighting against you. And the orphan’s screaming because it has had to forfeit its lunch for the machine-gun in your hands.
But then, you are just a part of the great design; and it’s upto you to help humankind destroy itself...

The end?

She didn’t have no money,
No home to call her own,
No loved one to speak to,
On the other end of the phone.

But she had dreams... yeah,
Dreams that told her why,
Her life was too great to waste,
On tears and dried rye.

That’s the place to go,
The greenest there’s to be,
Rivers of milk n’ honey,
Flowing into a great blue sea.

So she packed her bags one day,
Figuratively, (of course) — coz she had none,
Then walked, a step at a time,
Slowly into the setting sun.

This is her story; not mine,
On what happened next I have but a worm’s clue,
Maybe she died, maybe she lived,
Maybe she became Mrs Gates - oh, wish I knew...

Chris Tucker must die (Or be gagged, at least)

Watched Rush Hour because they were showing it on some local TV channel. And, quite understandably, arrived at this sordid conclusion...

One last drink, and that’s it...

Everything must pass, and that includes the good ol’ days.
It was the summer of 2003, and I was sitting on the bridge connecting C and D block contemplating about the days gone by.
The sun, an unusual brilliant red, was slowly setting behind a silhouetted Heber chapel. And except for the cries of a few kites winging their way across the moody sky, everything was silent. Nostalgically silent.
Yes, I spent my last real evening in Heber alone. Because sometimes you need to be by yourself and talk to the wind.
In the distance — in the centre of the lawn — I could see the famous natural pond. Its water was still, obviously because nobody had been ducked for sometime in the near past.
Five years had passed since I was first cast into that stony pit full of man-made urea... because I did not know which department a certain senior belonged to. I had cried then — cried in shame — and vowed that one day I would be avenged. But that changed, with time.
The pond became a loving symbol of the hall, where I spent almost 1,553 days and enjoyed every moment of it. What’s more, at the end of it, I found myself justifying the act of ‘ducking’ before a college lecturer who could not understand why an ‘educated’ kid like me would approve of an act as barbaric as throwing someone into a pond full of pee.
But then, I had been there, done that ... and I knew that the view was a lot different from the inside.
The first year was spent in fear — the kind of fear you would like to savour, let tingle down your spine and hope that it doesn’t get over all too quickly. The fear that some zombie senior may hear you tip-toeing down the hallway in the dead of the night and decide that its time he let somebody have the infamous ‘upside-down’ (In this form of torture, they hang you headfirst from the rooftop — giving you a Man-Bat view of the world). The fear that the worm they have sent creeping down your shirt may actually have poison pinchers. The fear that you may, at any moment, have to go underwater just because some senior wants to see you play blue whale.
Back then, I hated every one of these moments. But, forgive me, I was just a boy then — too juvenile to know that I was having the time of my life.
And that day of June 2003 hailed the end of my stay in paradise. The beautiful friendships, the long walks to the maingate for a Muthappa tea, the nights of singing-along to the strains of a strumming guitar, the drunken brawls over that last drop of Old Monk, the cussing and screaming and head-banging while Pentagon played Ugly Kid Joe, the wall-scaling antics after a late night in the city — everything.
From the next day on, my life was going to be a whole new one. Maybe I would get a new job, maybe I would study further ... but whatever happened next, I knew it would never match the one I had in Heber.
“Hey! How about coming out for a tea?!” I looked up, pulled rudely out of my thoughts.
It was Fela, wearing his favourite orange T-shirt. I lifted myself up and we slowly walked to the maingate — and then to Star Wines — where we boozed ourselves senseless.
It was dark, and the crickets were having one hell of a time.