Random notes from a seaside town :
"We all start our lives with scruffy furniture" - a former landlady had once told me. Some are condemned to live with it and lead complicated lives. Count the number of Eddie Stobart trucks they spot in their lives. And listen to the old car guzzle gas by the gallon. And get used to semi-sympathetic looks when loading the trolley with bottom-shelf cans. And rub shoulders with lap dancers, ex-plumbers and multiparous thirty somethings at the job center waiting for the fortnightly sign-off. And take pride in saving money buying used designer apparel at the charities. And use Peruvian banana skin to shine suede shoes for an interview whose outcome is a bygone conclusion. Then come back and read 'History of the Future'. And learn to live with the "This is embarrassing" page than risk a rip-off. Talking of unequal distribution of wealth - during the run up to the royal wedding, someone commented that all the kingdom's tax-payers were cordially invited. What a beautiful thought ! Marx would have stirred in his London grave at the ostentatious display of wealth, his seminal work lost in translation. I had no plans to hang by a lamppost in union jack boxers just yet. Half-a-million public jobs to be axed as a result of largest ever spending cuts since WWII is not a reason to be merry for us commoners. But there is something so reassuring about the sound of the kettle.
Contemporary wisdom says that to keep life reasonably fluid, men must keep 3 things in top nick - wives , computers and cars. With them three occupied, insured and oiled, you are pretty much sorted. An ozzie friend leading a colorful life claims to exploit 'loop holes' in female psychology and insisted that i download gigabytes (of theory and techniques) on his love guru's work. Ever persuasive, he turned up at my door with a memory stick expecting distressed vowels to emanate the following nights. Its been months since and i have never gotten myself down to reading it, never mind that the work's never been 'field-tested' under desi conditions ! The thought of not being myself doesn't gel with me. I have been toying with the idea of a new Freudian stage that he perhaps overlooked, and i want to call it "Sexuality v Spirituality". Maybe Freud called it something else, or maybe he was an atheist. Rubbished by the stalwarts, his largely rejected work does leave a void to be filled. Maybe my 2 cents fit in here and of course, i am a nobody in the field. If two abstract concepts have ever been so mutually exclusive yet so all-pervading, its these. The sexual excitement induced naughty thought bubbles are believed to obstruct the cosmic grace that God showers equally on us all. Hence the proponents of a 'thoughtless' state lobby for a thought-free (yet mindful) existence to fully harness God's love, enhance virtues and hasten spiritual evolution. Not as easy as making gluten-free crispies.
