Andrew and Tania's Psycho-Battle

Tania says psychology is an exact science and legitimate field of study. People's motives can always be categorized and their abnormalities measured. Tests, questionnaires and background studies can always pick out the child-molesters and potential alcoholics.
Andrew contends that psychology is too subjective and infinite an area to be studied in an organized way. If you were to categorize motives and abnormalities, there would be as many categories as there are people in the world. If you're good with people, you know everything there is to know about psychology. And if you aren't, well, no amount of studying the subject is going to get you anywhere.

Madheshwara Homestay

The occasional bicycle or bullock cart or fork-tailed bird are all you'll see on the long road leading to the Madheshwara Temple & Home Stay, Chikyelcheti, in the MM Hills area.

The house and temple are at the end of a mud road on the edge of the forest, land marked by a huge and ancient peepal tree, and an unnamed lake. Behind the house, Mr. Subbanna's urli field stretches away in the afternoon sun, randomly punctuated by sunflowers. There are haystacks, calves, goats, and theirs are the only sounds and smells in the air.

Mr. Subbanna takes us deep into the forest, into stream beds and ravines, down paths only he knows. We see wild flowers and peacock feathers; tiger tracks, elephant dung and bear claw marks in tree trunks; the remains of tribals' campfires. We stare into the twilight for elephants on the distant blue-green hills.

In the guest room, the roof is only partial, made of red Mangalore tiles. The rest is a canopy of bougainvillea flowers from a twisted tree growing out of the earth floor, and the starlit night sky beyond. With the feeling of having slept in the pages of A Midsummer Night's Dream, you wake to the smell of woodsmoke and the sound of roosters calling.

Goa Poem

The tide must be calm and receded

From the lonely beach under the moon

The saudade is back and it has to be heeded

The memories as fresh as last June

Step on it harder

Across the state border

I can't get to Goa too soon

At this time tomorrow

I'll be in the vaddo

Writing in three-foot letters in the sand

Informing the shacks

That, "I'll be back"

And the coastguard, too, if they give a damn

At last it won't be just a waking dream

When I see the tall palms at first light

And the glowing rice fields by the Seventeen

I've been driving to Goa all night

Twisted Hysteria

A couple of stray dogs mauled a kid in a neighbourhood in Bangalore the other day, and an infuriated mob then hunted down and killed 20 stray dogs in revenge. It got me thinking, when innocent women got beat up on Rest House Road a few months ago, and the whole "moral police" campaign sparked off incidents of violence against women around the city, no one in the crowd ever lifted a finger to help them. The intent to spread hatred and disturb public order was pretty clear in those incidents of violence, while the dogs were probably acting out of natural instincts like hunger. Where were they, that same outraged and proactive public, when those girls got beat up? Probably somewhere valiantly meting out justice to something weaker than themselves, like dogs, that they know don't stand a chance against them. Running scared from anything resembling a real threat.

"When I was a young boy / My father took me into the city / To see a marching band"
[My Chemical Romance]

That was the song stuck in my head, and a marching beat, when I walked around the corner and down the street to the supermarket. Still playing as I roamed the aisles in a kind of reverie that supermarkets will put you in. Still, as I stepped out of the cool, humming shade of the store and stood transfixed at the top of the steps down to the footpath.
He came into sharp focus, everything else blurring into the background. Impossibly, incongruously, coming up the footpath from the Cambridge Road end. In a blue coat with epaulets and tassels and brass buttons catching the sun, blue pants with a silver stripe down the side, a blue peaked cap tucked under his arm, and black polished shoes.
It would be wrong to say he caught my eye. He just had it all along. As he passed by me, his face changed into a strange, knowing, half-polite, half-evil smile. I smiled and stayed, staring after him, till he walked on up the road out of sight.

I'm in a BlogSpot!

I always thought making a Blog was somewhat pompous and presumptuous, but now that I've been compelled to make one, I must admit I don't mind the pomposity and self-indulgence quite so much. It's like having my own little island out in cyberspace. (I'd rather have my own island in the Bay of Bengal, but with that, I probably wouldn't have a bunch of templates to choose from and the certainty of abandoning it as soon as my assignment was done.) Vet bloggers would have me believe there's no looking back once you've been down this pier. So here I go.