keramalusundeep

[keramalusundeep]

THE GOD’S LEGIONS

What you are about to read does not have the blessings of God. He has made it clear that I am on my own on this one. So be it. He thinks I am crossing the line.

This time, I want to be the judge of it. Not him.

April 3, 2015.

I am standing with my wife in a large playground. There are a thousand others. The Good Friday’s service is in session. Veneration will soon follow. Hymns are being sung. Wife is mouthing the lyrics. I just stand solemn. By birth – she is an ardent Catholic, and I am a liberal Hindu.

The tempo picks up in the air. So many people at once. All dressed up. Prim and proper.

The weather is wealthy. Perfect for the open-air setting. My arms are ambushed by a dense army of goosebumps.

There is promise in the atmosphere.

Veneration commences.

In the distant background, as we are entranced in the gospels, I hear the maghrib (after sunset prayer) from a mosque that is five commercial buildings shy from the playground we are in.

Few notice. Rest ignore.

I wonder – it is just one day, can’t the Muslims leave it alone today! Dedicate the day to Christ?

The breeze romances the trees.

In a couple of seconds, from the far end of the street, bells from a Murugan temple start composing their rhythmic charm. It is Panguni Uthiram. A day on which Sri Deivanai married Lord Murugan.

Man, this is not cool.

I apologise to Jesus on behalf of the mosque and the temple.

He sacrifices his life for the people, and he can’t get a moment to himself?

Is the mosque doing this on purpose? There is no way for them to not have known that today is Good Friday.

What about the temple? Why are they playing foul?

I shut up and listen. It starts to grow on me. The collaboration. Hymns here. Allah-ho Akbarthere. Murgunakku Haro Hara in that corner.

–

The first thing I do is hate the mosque and the temple. If you ask me, Jesus deserves the full day to himself.

I see this kid running away from his mother’s lap. He stumbles on a chair and falls on his face. His mother runs to his rescue. The kid is not crying. The mother pats his knees and wipes his face. His mother tells him that he is okay. The kid acknowledges. He is not a fussy kid.

That is all the kid needed. He needed to be told that he is okay.

I think that is what they are doing. The mosque and the temple. Telling Jesus that they are with him. An act of compassion. Standing by him. Holding his hands.

I can only think of two options.

1) Neither the mosque nor the temple has any regard for its brother from another mother, despite sharing the same confederacy.

2) They feel for Jesus. That is their way of showing. Besides, how else will they? These guys are socially awkward and they never show up in person anyway. They might as well use their proprietary branch offices to send a message to the man who was crossed today 1,980+ years ago.

By all means, I will go with the second option. Sounds legitimate. Appropriate. Too candid to plead coincidence.

–

Don’t you see that?

They are all one. How do you know that all three of them are not playing scrabble high over our heads right now? I am sure if you look up you won’t see them. Invisibility is their speciality.

None of them hate each other. They are all celebrities in their own leagues. Think about it. If any one God was greater than the other, do you think he would allow the other newer or older God/s to evolve/survive? To be birthed in the first place? The way I see it, everything is God. Everything under the Sun is born and dead out of its own situation and discretion. It is not right to meddle with this sacred order.

Despite their prophecy being solid, how come the Jews denied the claims of Jesus? How come who they refused to accept went to on change the face of the calendar for mankind? If Jesus is the ultimate son of God, how was prophet Mohammed allowed to jump into the picture?

Religion is purely an art form. Each with its own structure, style, subject, and configuration. Each religion comes with its own painting. All subject to interpretation. Every picture is engineered with a special stroke, colour, depth, ambience, motive, and imagination.

Regardless of their origin, form, or appeal, they share one common attribution. The quality of being unique.

Art is to be cherished. It is not to be fought for, kill for, or be killed for.

–

“I love to eat ISIS. They are full of protein. They are my favourite meal morning, afternoon, and night.” – Leishmaniasis

They say that there are 100,000 ISIS people. Now, I don’t know if I should be sad or happy. I think I am happy. But again, I can’t tell for sure. That’s a lot of people.

I mean, I can never understand what in the world gives you guys this burning desire to wear your G.I.Joe-gone-rogue halloween costumes and threaten people toward the blunt decoction of your religious rigidity.

Anybody surrenders to a gun, man. You give me a gun. I will make you pee. It is not the question of who holds the trigger. The concern is what the trigger is going for. When it is for your uptight state of affairs, I feel that I should strangle your balls. Eyes, I mean. You don’t need them, since you don’t see the world you ought to be seeing it like.

–

All the people, who are not captured by you and videotaped by your ‘Jihadi John’ make fun of you. I am sure you know that. They call you heartless. No wonder it doesn’t get to you. I even made a joke about you guys once.

Q. You know why ISIS takes heads? A. Because they don’t have one.

Some kids pick up your flag on the streets and what do they become? The Boko Haram. Brilliant.

There are several other insurgency groups. But I am going to pick on you guys, since you guys seem to have excellent PR, world over. Even Kim Kardashian is your twitter follower. Rad.

Listen, all I have to tell you is this. The ISIS, The Boko Haram, The Hindus who led the burn attacks on churches in Delhi, The infants of the future crusades . . . why the hell can’t we all be together? Come on, come shake my hand. I am a good guy. Come to my house, eat my mother’s avakai pongal. You will sell all your guns to me for free after eating it. I could come to your place (so long as you don’t kill me or put anything in my bum or mouth) and let me eat your fatteh. Let’s exchange cultures. Let’s exchange goodwill. Let’s give each other life. We have facebook. We could be on each others’ lists? You can even subscribe to my blog (request you to not hack it though). I write about some interesting things. I have a feeling that you will like some of them.

–

Word is that the USA is killing you guys using a sophisticated biological weapon, since you guys stirred a shitstorm in a pisscup. It might even be my own conspiracy. I even have vague theories to believe that you are the CIA’s bastard children. The Snows sent to guard the wall.

In the end all that matters is what you decide to do and do. If they or someone else asks you to eat shit, don’t.

If anyone out there is still waiting for the “real” son of God, well, you will only be spared the moon to dance with. It is just you and me now. Let’s be good to each other. Our natural time will come anyway. Until then, if you are still interested in fighting something, take care of that mortality of yours. But so long as we are alive, can we forget about your religion, my religion, and their religion? Pray in your will. On your bill. Don’t pry on another’s. Don’t tab another for your shit.

Gods don’t kill each other, man. That is why we have so many. We have billions of Gods. You are a God to me. So am I to this cause.

We upgrade weapons. Technology. Lifestyle. Why not our realisation?

The oldest and the foremost religion in the world is evolution. The rest is a combustion of mankind’s masturbation.

Let’s evolve for good. Let’s dissolve for the better. Let’s revolve around each other for the best.

How about that for a change?

Photo by Lucas Pezeta

#bible #catholicism #christianity #church #god #hinduism #isis #islam #jesus christ #son of god #terrorism

[keramalusundeep]

‘KABALI’ PEAKED AT THE TRAILER. HERE’S WHY

First of all, I don’t do movie reviews. I am the guy who just watches a movie and then maybe talks about it during lunch at work to avoid awkward silences. So, why am I writing this review about a movie I watched a half hour ago? Because you know, how sometimes when you have a near death experience, your perspectives change and suddenly you want to do all this good in life, save lives, be a better person? Yeah, I am in that zone right now. I have been hit by something powerful. And it’s time to share it with the rest of my species.

Two months before today, I accidentally came across the trailer of Kabali on YouTube. I was immediately arrested by the killer original soundtrack for the movie. That’s where it had begun, for me.

Every time I watched the trailer at home, I’d go on and on to my wife about how I would not miss this movie. I don’t know why I had suddenly become such an aggressive fan of Rajinikanth. My mom was always a diehard fan, though. Two decades ago, I stumbled upon a large biology drawing book that had cut-out pictures and childlike hand-drawn sketches of him at my house in Bangalore. The book belonged to my mother. When I confronted her, she said that she was supposed to get rid of that book after marriage, but somehow it had come along with her. Super jealous of the superstar, my father would often mock Rajinikanth. I don’t blame him. He was just an ordinary South Indian man born in a conservative family. He is well educated and open-minded, yes, but he is still a man. I mean, when my wife used to look at Jason Momoa’s buttocks in Game of Thrones, I would run to the bedroom and do 50 squats and come out like I was all chill.

When you watch a Rajinikanth film, you better go to a local theatre. Not the multiplex ones where one is too shy to even release a silent fart. No, go to a local theatre. The kind where women best not venture. That’s the kind of place where you will know what it is like to be a Rajini fan.

In these theatres, as the lights dim, a new wave of energy crackles to life. Whistles, throat-burning screaming, firecrackers, shirtless dancing on seats. The entire room becomes a five-dimensional stimulation ride. Your seats rock. The walls vibrate. You smell smoke. It’s exhilarating to witness the madness, but deafening and annoying beyond a point as you can’t hear shit. Because from the time Rajini’s name pops up in the opening credits till the interval (where the fans begin to get a little tired), it’s a war zone. You would be lucky if you came out of the theatre entirely unbroken.

When you are watching a Rajinikanth movie, there is a 3000% chance that you will see something superhuman. Death-defying. Nonconforming to every law of nature. But you tell your mind to hush. During a Rajinikanth movie, only his fans can make a sound. If you are a non-fan and say something mocking, well, leave the address to your coffin.

Well, this time, I watched the film in a multiplex. Families and kids. So even if I had said something, I probably wouldn’t have got my ass whooped. Still, I watched quietly and saved everything for my keyboard. So now I’m going to spill my shit out. Here, I am Spartacus. Unyielding. Veracious.

Being 2016, being Kabali, being Rajini, you’d think, mafia being the spine of the story, it’d have all the beef in the universe to make Martin Scorsese take note. The opening scene, is the ending scene. When will writers learn that when you are showing Rajinikanth to be the gangster (especially when he is being released from jail), you know for sure that all his enemy gangsters will be dead, no matter what! Keep a little surprise, man! Henceforth, I want Santa Claus to write all the scripts for Rajini movies.

The story takes place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s a beautiful city. But they decided to show only the dark world. The Tamils. Their dark skin. Their dark labour problems. Their dark mafia. In all of this darkness, the only contrast in the colour palette was the ostentatious bling that these gangstas flaunted from start to finish.

After all these great movies in the West about drugs and gangsters, you’d go on to have this divine hope that the Tamil industry would go easy on making every hero a superhero. But nope. First of all, what kind of a gangster is comfortable with only a handful of business associates who also moonlight as security? I comprehend the fact that it is Rajinikanth and he can take care of himself, but he is old now. Besides, he carries only one gun. Not even an extra magazine!

When you are out of commission for 25 years, don’t you need money when you come back? Don’t you still need to be in business? Apparently, when Rajini is a gangster you don’t need to do gangster business to earn money. You just have it all sorted. Somehow he is able to run a free school for drop outs, drug addicts and ex-gangster kids. The funny part is, he himself is a gangster and hires kids on his team. So the point is that when you are in Kabali’s gangster squad, you don’t need to be rehabilitated, life’s all good.

P.A. Ranjith, before I forget, take this — you suck. You suck big time. Basha, for that time, had so much more swag than you have managed to squeeze out of Kabali. To a gangster, his family is very important. I mean to all of us, families are important. But to a gangster, it’s more of a prestige issue. If a gangster has let his enemy harm his family, it would convey that he is weak, incapable of protecting his own family . . . how then will he protect his business and other people who are dependent on him? But you could have involved his family saga in the movie in such a better way. There was no need for all the flashbacks. You have permanently ruined “once upon a time” for me.

I still cannot digest the fact that the director completely omitted to show us or explain Kabali’s business model. Maybe every time Kabali and his men whimsically went after the villains and delivered some soggy dialogues the producers would give them some candy money? Also, I think Indian movies should stop making the villains troll the hero and his affiliated people with dummy guns. Can’t take that shit anymore. If you want to shoot, just pull that plastic trigger and be done with it. Why do you have so many extras pointing all those useless toy guns at one old guy and still end up getting laid low by his stunt double?

Radhika Apte, who plays Rajini’s wife in the movie is a good actor. However, in this movie, she is a bad actor. When you have a bad script and a dumbass director, even a lion becomes a pig. I was happy to know that she was killed by the villains. Good riddance, I thought that’s what she must have thought. But no, she was brought back from the dead 25 years later and made to run for her life again. What torture, marrying Kabali!

Dhansika has tried to play a version of Rooney Mara in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but the result is extremely unpleasing. The director concluded, perhaps, that if she is a girl and an assassin, she’s got to sport a punk bob cut and a lot of badly done temporary tattoos (which keep drastically changing and moving places). By the way, she is Kabali’s daughter, who he reunites with. Sadly.

What’s with the suit? I thought when you wore a suit, you had the license to kill. Oh, wait a minute! That was 007. In Kabali, if you wore a suit, well, you have the license to get killed.

The villain gangsters are real pussies, I tell you. I can’t fathom why they are so scared of Kabali. He is just a vintage chap with a few old friends who masturbate on the rusted bullets in their guns. Then again, it is Rajini. He can get bin Laden to marry Gandhi if he wanted to.

Movies in the south always thrive on comedy. In Kabali, there is nothing to laugh about. Nothing to cry for. Absolutely nothing to rejoice about. The soundtrack was the only saving grace. The movie was a drab, unsexy 150-minute quest for finding his family, which he could very well have done without us having to sit and watch. I liked the free trailer on YouTube. Not the full movie I spent 200 bucks for. Kabali, no magizhchi for you.

Reminds me of the famous Bruce Lee quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With all due reverence and respect for you as a great human being, I am afraid, Rajinikanth Sir, we are no longer afraid of your 10,000th kick. You have overdone it. It’s the same kick and it doesn’t give us any kick anymore. I know it’s the directors asking you to do lame stuff, not you per se. However, you could say no to them, yes? Maybe make meaningful cinema? You have earned that. But not the right to disappoint us, after all that hype.

P.S. Watch out for Tony Stark. He makes a sensational cameo.

Photo by Soloman Soh

#kabali #kollywood #radhika apte #rajinikanth #hollywood

[keramalusundeep]

THE BAD GOD’S GOOD SON

The red cross on the church’s nave roof embraced the moon. Like a brand logo on a poster. If only the Pink Moon lingered on for one more day, the sight would’ve been something to behold. Because a red cross on a white Moon is no special track on a hot night & clear sky album.

Before we left, sitting on the sofa, she held my hand and told me, “Pray to him. Tell him to take charge of your life. Ask him to be the driver. Tell him that I am surrendering myself to you, for you to show me the path. All these days I’ve never asked you to pray to him. Because I was praying for you. But today, I am asking. The prayer . . . is more powerful, when you do it yourself. Because the Bible says, ‘ask and ye shall receive’. So step up, kneel down, and ask. Everything that you dream of.”

Tonight is not my customary sabbath visit. Certainly not at this hour. It’s a tragic night to the people of the world’s largest religion. For one man began his journey toward the salvation of suffering, so that he could redeem the sins of those he knew and didn’t, those who respected him and trespassed him, those who will be born to be human and raised to be beasts. He didn’t differentiate between them. He wanted no distinction. He preached oneness. He prayed for love.

As I entered the nave, I wondered how few people had turned up. The day their saviour waited anxiously to be arrested for the welfare of all and sundry, was once again, as he had told his apostles, abandoned.

Entering the world from a spot next to the butthole, was not only God’s way of showing us where we truly belong, but also a way of realising our own potential of being incompetent in having shame.

I faced his crucifix. Knelt down. I wanted to ask him how he was. That’s what I do when I come to visit him on Sundays. First I’d ask him how he was, and then immediately afterwards I’d start asking him for favours. However, I changed my format. From last Sunday. The old form didn’t seem right. It was insincere, and he could tell. So, now, as soon as I close my eyes, I ask him to rectify the bumps in my ambience and watch my path for me. Then, just when I am about to leave, I ask him about his wellbeing.

As I clasped my palms and pressed my eyes shut in reverence, the tall, dark, and ugly burden of my barren existence crushed my knees. What do I tell you God, and how do I begin? You are punished on a cross, imprisoned by three nails that were created by the men you loved and shared your bread with.

You walked into the trap on purpose, had the last supper on purpose, defied the Pharisees on purpose, got beat up on purpose, and got crossed on the cross on purpose, all for the purpose of our purpose. I know. You are far too kind. And I am far too weak.

And that’s why I am here, God. To ask you in the fertility of your suffering to sow my seeds of destiny. You were chosen to suffer, so I could gain. I am not sure if it was predestined for you to stay on the cross for eternity or if it was someone’s powerful prayer to have you crucified. Either way, ironically, both eventualities were funded and sponsored by the same God. That’s the tragedy a common man like me has been waiting to cherish. For there is no elixir stronger than the ashes of an innocent man.

I want to smear your ashes on my body and beg for your forgiveness for I have sinned in the name of impulse and wreaked havoc in the chaotic obsessions of my ignorance. Please God, help me, for I have been, all my life, prancing around like a bunny in a turtle race. At first, off to a raging start, then, slowly but steadily I fell out of the race, for I carried a gun and it shot me in the foot. Heal me, God. Insulate me with your wisdom. Protect me under the bosom of your feet.

I know you will. You are a man of your word. I’ll be there to receive you three days from now. Hold my hand, God. I will take you to the altar. And you walk me home. To your heart.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon

#bible #catholicism #church #god #godthefather #good friday #heaven #jesus christ #son of god #theology

[keramalusundeep]

THE HOLY NARCOTIC

There are two types of places in this world. The first one is where you are happy. The second is where they are.

Our places are yet to be conquered. Even the ones who, among us, claim to have, are still in the process. Because happiness too, is just another step cousin of perfection – always a work in progress.

The places that are theirs are coveted, well-respected, and the holiest. In any way, I am not talking about the run-of-the-mill temples, mosques, monasteries and other mundane places of worship. I am picking a bone with the Woodstock of the Meccas and Medinas.

Very recently, the headlines from this year’s (2015) Haj pilgrimage grabbed the balls of our Amygdala – the ragpicker who hopelessly and endlessly rummages through the colossal garbage of fear-evoking data dumped by media corporations across the world to see which one specific news item increases our heart rate and decreases our chances of escaping, were we to encounter “something” like that.

First of all, these are the holier-than-thou places, right? Which means Satan will have his rear kicked by the bouncers here. So does any form of evil. These places have the greatest form of insulation from the bad things and blah blah.

However, what happens when the one you are going to take the purest form of blessings from, considering the place, is actually the bad boy in disguise? How can you verify the authenticity of God in that region? Or the miracle one is to receive from visiting such a spot at such a time (read: sacred) of the year.

The recent Haj (1,000 dead), Amarnath 1996 (256 dead), Kumbh Mela 1954 (800 dead), 1990 Mina Disaster (1,426 dead) shows that we, somehow, have come to believe that taking a dip, touching the stone, kissing the Pope’s ring is going to glorify the virility of our wishes and therefore tender a better reality for us. It is a beautifully civilised shortcut. No two doubts there.

The hard truth is that these places are so little in their land size radius, it makes it impossible and very inconvenient for the prodigal numbers of people trying to live their moment of pious obligation in the G-spots (God Spots) as set out in their mythological records that is deemed very legit and appropriate even to this date.

When we were kids, our fathers and mothers would tell us don’t do this and don’t do that. Back then, we were kids. We had to listen to them. If we didn’t, we were grounded or spanked. Then as we grew, we listened to them less and less. Eventually, we listened to them for nothing at all.

Our Gods have never been shy in asking for blood offering. Be it Abraham. Be it Muhammed. Be it Jesus. Be it Shiva. I feel bad for Jesus though. Because in his case, he was the offering.

God, as we have come to see, is no less than a bloody dictator. He wants this. He wants that. He tells us that if we didn’t give him what he demands of us, shit will fall on our heads. Or we will fall into shit. Either way, we are shit-fucked. See the obligation that the Gods put us through. Yet somehow we still want to bloody please them, even if we are grown, old, and haggard. Where is the dignity man is supposed to have? He is after all, a form of the God, right? We are made in his image. We may not be as broad, and as magical, and as mystical as him, because for one thing . . . we are here and we bleed. Whereas, he is hiding somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and simply follows the Rockefeller PR and exhibits that he is just planting his good seed for the human feed and that’s him doing his good deed without a shred of greed.

I think God is dead. Really. If those big stars up there have a shelf life, so do the Gods. They may be eternal. Again, eternity has a validity too. Ask your mobile service provider, he will tell you. They know what “lifetime” means. Even Hancock’s people died. I say – Gods live up to a maximum of 1000 years and that’s it. They get bored of life too. Eternity might have made esoteric arrangements for its afterlife like the Egyptians did with their ‘book of the dead’, but to complete the circle of life, they still have a coffin to answer to.

A classic rendition of the 40 days and 40 nights, the pilgrimages, the natural calamities, the deadly viral infections, the election of Trump, the Brexit, the ISIS, the crisis, the gamble of our dices – are all established protocols of cleansing. In one way or another, we end up being a casualty in their headlines.

The new technological superlatives which we spit and rhyme every other morning is only as strong as the last prayer we just made. I think as long as we have blood flowing through our veins, we will be superstitious. Because praying is believing that we may be, and we will be looked after by him. That’s a decent aspiration worth falling back on when you are punched in the face or kicked in the nuts.

Photo by Ona Bovollen

#christianity #god #hinduism #kumbh mela #pilgrimage #religion #theology #islam

[keramalusundeep]

THE SUICIDE OF HELL

He sets out with a prayer on his lips. Wired and beefed with bombs from head to the bone on his hips. There is no going back. The clock ticks on. He doesn’t need his specs on. Because by five, from one, two, three, and four, he’d be gone along with you in the vacation of your yawn.

He is not crippled by disease, society, upbringing, or education. He is just him. Sacked and hacked under a radical whim. Time is precious. The last moments are vicious. Biologically his ticker is alive. Spiritually he is dead. Because, only the dead can kill. And only the killed can be dead.

He is happy. The heaven is mapped in his favour. With the odour of the most beautiful untouched, virgin angels.

He has reached the destination. The nation from where he officially departs. The reaction in which his victims are casually censored in the aftermath graphic footage clip arts. Bodies are assembled in a scramble like broken eggs in a challenging scrabble. The curse is blessed.

THE LEGACY OF SUICIDE BOMBING

War is poetry for geopolitics. Most often it is a mystery who the poet is. It is always “poets”. War encourages the most collaborative commerce.

People are always unhappy with the existing government. Change becomes the staple food of the bourgeois. Their manifesto is smeared with the throbbing young blood of promise. Vibrant and striking. One that appears and feels better than that is today. It has to be. But if you just unwrap their juicy roll of delicious hope, all you’d see is an old fry dipped in new oil. Revolutions are baptised as the ‘Morning Sun’. Martyrs are autopsied as the ‘Memorial Sons’.

In 1869, the famous anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, and Sergi Nechayev, both Russians, published a book called ‘Catechism of a Revolutionist’. A passage from the book reads, “The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion – the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose – to destroy it.”

The book had a great impact around its epicentre. From the aftershocks, seven years later, in 1876, a group was created. It was called Land and Liberty. In this group, a considerable chunk voted for the system of state to go to the dogs. Then, hand over the land of Russia to its peasants. A reality that Mikhail Bakunin had been counting his beads for.

Three years from the inception of Land and Liberty, the group broke into two factions. One that had a sweet tooth for terror. The other that was diabetic to terror. The terror group went on to become The People’s Will, the Russian left-wing revolutionary organisation.

So the group built some muscle. And in 1881, Ignacy Hryniewiecki from The People’s Will was appointed to assassinate Alexander II. Not just in any manner. But with a human touch. When Hryniewiecki flung the bomb at the Tsar, he was too close to the explosion himself. The effect of the bomb along with tearing the Tsar apart, injures, wounds, and kills Hryniewiecki. Right this moment, the bomb conceives a new testosterone. It scribbles a ripple in the mystical ocean of its renaissance, spelling an endless and relentless wave of suicide bombing in an orgy of trance.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH

Before World War 2 was born, the Chinese and the Japanese had a warm up in 1938, with their Battle of Taierzhuang. Here, the Chinese soldiers strapped with grenades and explosives, dove under the Japanese tanks and blew what they could with the girth of their bombs.

When it was time for the Japanese to exploit the suicide hashtag, they soared high and cornered the market. Literally. During World War 2, Kamikaze pilots were engineered to fly planes into the navel of the Allied Forces’ naval fleet. Their planes were not built to deploy bombs as they were “the bombs”. From torpedoes to missiles to bubbling fuel tanks to aircraft, the Kamikaze pilots had only one role. To use the instrument they were in or on and take it straight to the flesh of the enemy’s ships, making them bleed hard, to grief.

To the Japanese, the philosophy of death was far more supreme and coveted than defeat. According to the principles laid out in their Samurai and Bushido code, everything else came second to loyalty and honour.

The Land of the Morning Sun, South Korea, who, cradled by the U.S.A, after the split of Korea in World War 2 was not all sunshine and rainbows when it came to the roster on suicide poll. Among the developed nations, South Korea ranks #1 in suicide rate. 14,160 people committed suicide in 2012.

As South Korea was still licking its wounds from World War 2 and the Korean bifurcation, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. As part of a strategic military tactic, South Korean soldiers wrapped bombs around their bodies and attacked North Korean tanks.

North Korea was not shy either. Using satchel charges, North Korean suicide squads attacked American tanks in the same Korean War.

When the suicide bombing ball rolled over to Asia, LTTE grappled it hard with its jaw like a mastiff on cocaine.

LTTE didn’t spare the government, civilians, Prime Minister or their own President. They were Tigers. Wild. All they knew was to hunt and eat. In their case, detonate and inspire for a cause. Between 1980 and 2000, LTTE rocked the stage of the suicide bombing concerts.

Once the middle east understood that it was beyond just snaking exotic bellies for the connoisseurs and cheering ships of oils with the west and the rest of the velvet states, it knew it could roll the dice on its golden plate of religion.

“Jihad” becomes the dictator. Everyone else obliged to press the Quran against their foreheads out of proclaimed duty and acclaimed piety, does as the Jihad commands. As we have come to see, with so many organisations and diverse mottos – LeT, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, and of course, ISIS, Jihad is just one person. But he comes with many tongues. Or could it be said, Jihad has many flavours, but the main ingredient remains the same?

It used to be a man’s game. But as the world is hell-bent on giving its word to extending the quality of equality, the men behind the keffiyeh, the convenient and fashionable facial burka for the man, he started inviting women. And children. To take part in the exploding arguments for their bereaved cause.

A 2011 intelligence analyst report in the U.S. army said, “Although women make up roughly 15% of the suicide bombers within groups which utilize females, they were responsible for 65% of assassinations; 20% of women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose of assassinating a specific individual, compared with 4% of male attackers.” The report also maintained that most of the women suicide bombers were, “grieving the loss of family members [and] seeking revenge against those they feel are responsible for the loss, unable to produce children, [and/or] dishonoured through sexual indiscretion.”

With the children it is easier. Unlike their older counterparts who are to be lured with vengeance that is turbo-charged with the tartness of political, regional, religious, and sectarian propaganda, and the promise of relentless whoring in the afterlife, all that the juvenile needs to be told is that “they” are the bad men.”

A child suicide bomber is like the icing on the cake. They are agile, effortless, and very smooth.

Invasions take up our personal space. Demanding us to change our face and base. Our surrender will include both the genders, including the one that is tender. In agreement, you are an ally to one. In disagreement, you become an enemy to another. In neutrality, you are “a threat” to world peace.

There is no such thing as the world’s most famous suicide bomber. A suicide bomber’s kid won’t come out and scream on the edge of rooftops, “I want to be like my father.” The world is not going to sing songs for suicide bombers. No successful suicide bomber will go on to tell his tale. There won’t be any fodder from the “horse’s mouth”. Just a handful who were able to target the renowned are worshipped. In their own circuits. However, they are just messengers who are impotent to issue commandments, as they are not sure what it means to be right, and what it means to be left out.

Photo by Christopher Farrugia

#china #isis #islam #japan #suicide #suicide bomber #terrorism #war

[keramalusundeep]

THE RAINBOW MATRIMONY

Meet the octogenarians – Jack Evans and George Harris. They have been together in love for the better of the latter half of the last century to this moment. 54 years.

On Friday, June 26, when the Supreme Court announced that the rainbow flag can be waved and hoisted at all lengths and breaths in the United States of America, Jack and George became the first gay couple to be married in the state of Texas.

“Ten years ago, this was not even imaginable. Had little hope it would ever come to Texas, still shocked that Texas is allowing it today,” An elated and emotional Jack Evans said.

Texas was one among the dozen or so states in the US that remained barren and dry without a wink of prospect from the clouds of law, concerning the legalisation of same-sex marriage. However, after last Friday, the weather has changed for the better.

Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji), often branded as the world’s first novel, illustrates eccentric plots of the erotic encounters of Genji, the son of an emperor, who, in one of the scenes sleeps with his concubine’s brother. Genji also felt that the boy was sexually more pleasing than his sister. Ouch (for the concubine)!

Literal renditions from official acknowledgements go as far back as the 11th century when it comes to purporting the reality shows of predominant homosexuality in the computational phylogeny of human society.

Religions, mostly, have always brandished a hard whip against the sexual discretion of men and women, who have taken refuge in their own gender.

“A man shall not lie with another man as he would with a woman, it is an abomination.” – Torah

Christianity, being pronounced with different syllables of denominations has mixed opinions. On one hand they classify homosexual acts as sinful. While, equally, the other hand has no qualms to accept same-sex relationships as “morally acceptable”.

“Do you approach males among the worlds and leave what your Lord had created for you as mates? But you are a people transgressing.” – Quran, Surah 26

Hindu temples, such as Khajuraho and Padhlavi endorse adventurous orgies of both heterosexual and homosexual natures alike as one would endorse fish magnets on a refrigerator.

According to Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2013, homosexuality is broadly accepted in North America, European Union, Latin America, Asia and Russia. The research discovered that the general average, in the richest countries where the religious gravity was relatively low, was tolerant and accepting of same-sex relationships. Age is also an influencer here. Younger respondents were seen to be more liberal than the older ones. Also, women were found to be less homophobic than men.

When it doesn’t harm anyone or cause any evil, acceptance is the most profound form of humanness.

Padma Iyer, who wanted nothing but the best for her son, placed an ad in a national newspaper, which allegedly is the first gay matrimonial ad to have appeared in mainstream media in India – “Seeking 25-40, Well Placed, Animal-Loving Vegetarian GROOM for my SON (36 5’11”) who works with an NGO. Caste No Bar (Though IYER preferred)”.

In one of her fund-raiser campaigns for equality, Ms Iyer says, “Sexuality is not a choice. Homophobia is.”

The social media has not been sitting idle on the sidewalks either. Facebook, with its pro-gay photo filter which colours your profile picture in rainbow with a click, is apparent to understand the importance of acceptance to an acceptance. A perfect way to acknowledge legislation.

Gay couples who are susceptible to social and moral wounds inflicted by their communities and countries need more than just a legal nod. They need a genuine hug from the hearts of the people they are surrounded by.

It has so happened that supporting a cause has come to be seen as a sign of progress. Be it the legalisation of marijuana or same-sex marriage. When there is a sizeable community or a pod of population that wants the rights for something, the ones supporting it are seen as advanced and in time or way ahead of their time. And the ones hostile are seen as backward and regressive.

Russia and the Arab world have maintained less enthusiasm toward the legalisation of same-sex marriage or for that matter even the pro-gay photo filter from Facebook.

Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor said that gay marriage “is not in harmony with society and culture.”

Anna Koterinikova, a Russian, after changing her profile picture to a rainbow flag wrote, “Sorry! I’m straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe!”

Muna Iraqi, Egyptian TV presenter gave his opinion, “I support people’s right to love freely, without any persecution.”

Gays are not from out of space. They are from here. Just as you and me are. That’s why, what we think about them matters in how they are able to think about themselves. If not individually, then collectively.

Speaking on last week’s landmark Supreme Court judgement, Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell Pritchett – a gay lawyer, father, and son in the hit television series says that the show has played a great deal in changing the perceptions of gay couples in general. Jesse is gay in real life as well.

Pope Francis, in July 2013, when asked about same-sex relationships, said, “if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. It is not right to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”

He further adds, “Tell me, when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”

I believe that this world is one big modern family. A family accepts its people for who they really are. The ability to maintain discernment toward one’s discretion and prerogative. Who are we to judge a verdict already pre-allotted by nature? We are famous because of our human nature. It takes one preposition to make us inhuman. Make us infamous. The ‘in’. It is that time now to put the ‘in’ in the inn of the bygones and position our prepositions toward the positioning of a free disposition.

After all, our world is supposed to be full of sunshine and rainbows. Isn’t it?

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon

#gay #gaypride #lgbtq #lgbtq community #islam #hinduism #christianity #love #same sex marriage #gay marriage

[keramalusundeep]

THE TRANSGENDER’S TRANCE

Let’s start with God. The answers are always easier that way. Someone I am most fond of once told me, “I pity atheists you know. Because they can’t ever blame God. They don’t have the privilege to ask ‘why God, why did you do this to me’.”

When the greater religions put a gun to our head and threatened us to jump in their well, we jumped. Who knew at the bottom of that well, we would find our superhero who went by the name Evolution!

Dismissing the need for any probation, evolution soon became the king of the jungle. When it roared, the jungle went into submission. But as we all know, no jungle worth its salt ever came without its poachers. The poachers came in the avatars of kings, queens, ministers, prophets, presidents, governors, our parents, our teachers, our communities, our whims, and our fancies. They drew the lines. The ones we were to not cross.

But, the thing is, our DNA came with an eraser, a pencil, a canvas, and a grave full of imagination. So even when we were put to rest, we dreamt. Our dreams made love to our mother earth, who politely went ahead and conceived the spiteful, incestual future of tomorrow, where we carried on the trend of effing our own kids with dreams and fantasies we were obliged to please.

When the tomorrow came, a man was born. He was named William Bruce Jenner. Six and a half decades later, in June 2015, he stood on top of the world and announced that he had changed his name to Caitlyn. Caitlyn Jenner. The world stood back in the stands and cheered him from all corners. Before the announcement, William had made all the required configurations in his biological geometry and aligned his chemistry to the integrity his new name would demand.

“I am so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can’t wait for you to get to know her/me.” Caitlyn posted on her twitter handle @Caitlyn_Jenner, which, along with the first tweet of her Vanity Fair cover went on to get a record-setting 1 million fans in less than 4 hours and 3 minutes straight. Whereas the most powerful man on earth, Barack Obama had taken 5 hours to pull the hanky 1 million in his @Potus basket, last month.

Wish Dora was here now to shower under the petals from the high gardens of Twitter. Dora, born as Rudolph R, was the first person to have gone under the knife in the first-ever recorded sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in 1931.

Long before Dora or Caitlyn, the mythologies blew mighty trumpets of accounts concerning legends who were both man and woman in one form. Tiresias, the Theban blind prophet is said to have compelling wisdom for his cursed gender transformations. Cupid, the God who makes our heart fond and stupid with our better halves, apparently, is a unisex God. Way to make a point that love . . . indeed has no gender. If that was not enough, hear this – Cupid’s high-profile mama and dada, Hermes and Aphrodite, were the inspiration for the term ‘hermaphrodite’ (a person with both male and female sexual characteristics and organs). And I believe that was Hollywood’s gospel when it came to spelling the Celebrity Supercouple Nicknames.

Even though the hand holding the umbrella for transgenders is the same, all five fingers of that hand are not. The race to attaining transgender nirvana has been chalked with 5 different tracks. The tracks are identified as transexual, transvestite, genderqueer, androgene, and bigender.

Writing about transgenders is hard. Being them is even harder. Imagine a left-hand drive car coming straight from the factory and claiming that it felt very much right-handed. Since nothing can be done about it, the car is now incapacitated and forced to pretend that it is indeed a right-hand drive car and just drive down the boulevard. Then we have the car that thinks that it is neither left nor a right hand drive, instead a centre-hand drive. Hey, don’t brag your eyes. I told you, already. It is complicated for transgenders.

Harry Benjamin, the famous German-American sexologist and chief medical advisor to Christine Jorgenson (the ex G.I., who, before Caitlyn Jenner, 60 years ago, became the pioneer in America for stealing all shows concerning her Sex Reassignment Surgery), said, “Our genetic and endocrine equipment constitutes either an unresponsive/fertile soil on which the wrong conditioning and a psychological trauma can grow and develop into such a basic conflict that subsequently a deviation like transsexualism can result.”

Let me give you an example. When androgen receptors (a nuclear receptor that regulates gene expression) is said to have a firm handshake with testosterone or dihydrotestosterone (sex steroid), it will lead to the formulation of primary and secondary male sex characteristics. Whereas, instead of a handshake, if the androgen receptors and testosterone have a face-off with each other, their alliance will be broken. Meaning, a person who is assigned as ‘male’ at birth will come to feel and identify that he belongs to the opposite sex.

Again, it will be a blasphemy to summarise the identity of one’s gender purely by a single theory alone. There are potent men with pornstar-sized penises who feel that they should be women, just as there are women who are super attractive, wear feminine clothes, and perfectly capable of conceiving, feel the urge to grow hair on their chest and dangle some testosterone between their legs.

Going by the biological complexity and psychological curiosity, it is evident that Agent X and Agent Y from the Sperm Maker Inc., when it comes to adjudicating the gender of a person, are futile as a burp in a storm.

Oppression, degradation, prejudice – a staple diet in the menu of transgenders, have been riddled with brutal attacks for merely holding a balloon called ‘me’.

In 1513, when the Spanish conquistador, Vasco Nunez de Balbao, found out that a village in Panama had men dressing up as women, he ordered his men to make sure the casual crossdressers and gay indigenes were “torn to pieces” by his pack of wild dogs.

In 2008, 15-year-old Lawrence King was killed by two bullets to the head. The killer was a 14-year-old boy from the same school.

Last week, Stephanie McCarthy, a transgender musician, who was just about to play her gig, was assaulted by five men at Newtown’s Town Hall Hotel in Sydney.
 Yet, if we have a little courage to overlook the barbaric repercussions the transgenders have had to endure, we have come nowhere as close as today, when it comes to fighting for transgender rights. With Poland’s Anna Grodzka, becoming the first transexual MP in Europe to Donald Trump changing the rules in Miss Universe pageant that allowed Kylan Arianna Wenzel, the first transgender to participate in a Miss Universe competition to Madame Tussauds, San Francisco, recently announcing that it will feature a wax figure of Laverne Cox on June 26 during the Pride Week . . . the world of transgenders is on a slow and steady and progressive track. Laverne became the first ever transgender to star in the prestigious museum.

From the Indian wave, we have Manobi Bandopadhyay, who became India’s first transgender college principal when she took charge of Krishna Women’s College in West Bengal earlier this month. In 2014, the Supreme Court of India validated ‘transgender’ as the third sex.

With Caitlyn Jenner’s announcement, the transgender community in America and around the world are positive that going forward they will be able to see better days.

Obama, the first African-American to hold the office, was the first chief executive to inculcate the word ‘transgender’ in a speech, also openly prohibited job bias against transgender government workers, replied to Caitlyn’s second-ever tweet when she expressed her joy about finally being able to come out, “It takes courage to share your story.”

History is an ambitious gold digger eager to marry the most sought-after bachelor – ‘first-ever’. This century, we have had the privilege to see the changes the yesteryears had been begging and crying and hopelessly getting whipped for, just so they could live to breathe the aroma of this hopeful day – where the floods of transgender insurrection will come to overwhelm our naivety, for good.

#transgender #transexual #lgbtq #gay #america #india #queer