Notes

Audience requests are something I love to abide by, only because I know that at least one person will be reading and hopefully enjoying. I don’t know how many people really care about my taste in music, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

Usually, whenever anyone asked me, “So, what kind of music do you like?” I'd respond, “Oh anything and everything. I just love music of all types.” But recently I’ve realised the term music is used way too vaguely. Nowadays, noise constitutes music. A line repeated over and over again constitutes a song. A word repeated in varying speeds constitutes a song! All this just proving the fact that the world is indeed going insane.

I was made to learn music from almost the age of 3. I’m not saying that that makes me any better than anyone else. In fact, I still won’t be able to tell what Raaga a song is being sung in. But I will be able to tell if something is being sung in tune or not. For this, I am completely grateful to my parents, specially my mom who made me join these numerous classes – music, dance, art, organ etc. (No, mommy does not read this blog!) Today I realise the importance of it all. But let me not digress. (Can’t believe that I of all people am saying that, eh? But I told you so, mommy really is not reading this stuff.)

I hate the way the word ‘music’ is being blatantly abused today, and the people whom we idolize as great ‘musicians’. “Something which is music to one’s ears may not be music to another’s” – is a statement I will never make. Because I believe music is universal. If it sounds good, it sounds good. Period. Whether you are white or black, whether you are 10 or 70, whether you are male or female, whether you are sane or insane, music is what sounds good to everybody.

Before I go on, let me take a moment to say that I am so grateful for the family I have been born into. This way I get to appreciate Hindi, Tamil and English music. I also don’t fall asleep during Classical, Carnatic or Hindustani performances. In fact, I love music in any language. Spanish music is quite famous because of Latino music and Ricky Martin who always had a Spanish version for every English song, which you inadvertantly ended up hearing when you played his CD. But there are some Italian and French numbers that I listen to and love! I have no clue what the songs are about but that’s irrelevant. I also enjoy music in all Indian languages.

With regards to English music, there are just way too many genres, that it has become utterly confusing to classify a single song under just one genre. Rock, techno, disco, death metal, alternative, jazz, R&B, pop, blues etc. I don’t really have a preference for any of these genres. As long as the stuff sounds pleasant, it’s good music. I’m not saying that I must like everything I hear, but if something is in tune, then it is music. Good music obviously is what I like hearing. But I do want to discuss one genre, popularly known as metal – death, heavy or otherwise. Metal is NOT MUSIC. And I don’t care what anybody else has to say about this. In fact, I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again. If someone were to enter a kitchen, drop all their stainless steel vessels down at the same time and then scream in the midst of it all, that’s metal. In fact, I do metal all the time. Never been a day when I have entered the kitchen and not dropped something down or burnt something or cut myself. And my screams are way more bloodcurdling. I believe metal is for people who are just highly frustrated and they find a way to vent that frustration by listening to people who are also highly frustrated and are venting it out. Just that the latter gets paid for it and the former pays for it. Because, seriously, if metal is music, then I wonder what noise is. Today I’m open to all kinds of music, but when I was younger, I had my favourites and Bryan Adams was my music idol. My favourite band was MLTR. I also loved Enigma. My love for all 3 of them has not decreased in any way, but I can’t say they’re my favourites because then I’d be stereotyped as someone who likes to listen to slow romantic music when I equally enjoy loud, crazy numbers.

With regards to Hindi and Tamil music, A.R. Rehman is GOD. I’m sure there are other music directors who come out with good pieces of music once in a while too, but every key Rehman hits on his keyboard sounds like heaven. My Hindi song tastes go as far back as Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi and Manna Dey. I love the simplicity in the music of those days. Today’s songs are more intense but that’s because today’s youth is more intense. And apparently more stupid, because there are music illiterate fools who go around calling Anu Malik a great music director. I don’t even want to get started here because I will only lose my cool and he’s not really worth my time or energy. And it’s sad that when you mention that Anu Malik does nothing but copy other people’s music, all that his fans have to say in his defense is that Rehman or Lalit or Shravan or Reshamiya have also copied tunes from somewhere or the other. You’ll never hear them say, “No he does not copy.” But what they fail to understand is that it’s okay to pick a tune or two from here and there, but to copy entire songs and take credit for it is not only pathetic but outright disgusting. All those who listen to Hindi music would have definitely heard of this song that took the nation by storm – “Bheegey hont tere” from the movie ‘Murder’. I myself love that song to no end. But when I found out that Anu Malik was the music director, I knew it couldn’t be an original because it was way too beautiful a piece. It’s impossible that overnight he was gifted with the talent of music-making. So after immense Googling, I found what I was looking for. The song is an original by a Pakistani music director ‘Najam Sheraz’ in the year 2000 and the Hindi song has not been ‘inspired’ but copied note for note. That is the height of shamelessness. And this is the case for even “Kaho na kaho” and a few other songs in the same movie, in fact, almost all Anu Malik songs. It just makes me so mad that someone gets credit for not even trying to make music. Speaking of Pakistani musicians, Adnan Sami is someone I admire, more for his piano playing skills than his music. Although “Tera Chehra” makes me go all mushy inside. Another thing that bothers me a little are all these stupid actors and actresses who have now started singing a song or two just to add that to their list of ‘things I have accomplished in my life’. (I will use my bias here to say that I still adore Aamir Khan and consider him the best actor today without a doubt.) Coming to Tamil music, I have only heard Tamil songs from around the year I was born. I enjoy today’s songs more because I can understand them better. Half the lyrics are in English and the other half are in screwed up Tamil, which is how I speak. So I feel right at home. SPB and Hariharan are my favourites. Their voices… sigh! It’s nice though nowadays to hear Bollywood and Tollywood (?) singers sing songs in either language. Thanks to Rehman for the most of it, I guess.

I cannot talk about music without talking about the greatest kind of musicians - the instrument players. They’re the musicians who relay music merely by virtue of its melody, and not through lyrics or other accompaniments. Pandit Ravi Shankar, Kenny G, Zakir Hussain, Yanni – no words can express what I think about these great musicians. All I can say is that the day I’m able to pick up an instrument and mesmerize at least one person, I will consider myself blessed.

Two of the best moments in my life have been attending Bryan Adams concert (at the time when my love for him was at its peak) and attending an Adnan Sami-Asha Bhonsle-Vinod Rathode concert (just after “Tera Chehra” had been released). Great memories!!! I also want to take this oppurtunity to say that “Asha Bhonsle will always be the better singer of the two sisters. Always!”

And there is possibly nothing else I can say about music. I have exhausted myself of every possible opinion about music. I could list down all the songs I like in ascending order. But maybe I should save that for another day. They say too much of a good thing is bad. On that note (get it?)…

“I’ll be back, back again.
I’ll be back, tell a friend.”

Funny? I think not.

You might probably find this on a joke site. But is it a joke?

Last month, the UN conducted a worldwide survey. The only question asked was:

"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a HUGE failure.

In Africa, they didn't know what "food" meant.
In Eastern Europe, they didn't know what "honest" meant.
In Western Europe, they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
In China, they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
In the Middle East, they didn't know what "solution" meant.
In South America, they didn't know what "please" meant.
And in the USA, they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant.

Interesting, eh?

Random (hopefully funny) ramblings

Well, I can see people are not amused by my poetry, except for one of you of course! So since my readership is limited anyway, I will definitely put up some poetry later, just for you my friend, mushy or otherwise.

I usually look forward to summer. And now that it has arrived, I despise it. The bloody insects hound me. In winter, I can walk around on the streets and sip my coffee peacefully. Now I have to spend more time looking at my ice cream, to make sure that nothing that flies, slides or crawls finds its way into my food, instead of looking both sides before crossing the road. And I don’t want to die young. At least the thought hasn’t crossed my mind as yet. Summer makes me a sinner. I probably kill as much as Bush does. Though he has people to do his killing and probably even swat his flies. But I just can’t help it. They even manage “to boldly go where no man has gone before”, if you know what I mean.

It’s obvious that people nowadays are having too many kids; way more than they can handle. What’s the reason? Are they trying to make a statement about their active sexual life? Or is it so that no partner is left lonely after divorce?

Variety drives me crazy, at least at the grocery store. I wish there was just one damn thing of everything. I go to the milk section and there are 10 different types of milk from 10 different brands. I just want milk. But then when I’m in the juice section, there’s cranberry-orange, or there’s strawberry-kiwi, or there’s grapefruit-lime, but there’s no peach-mango. And I want peach-mango. This part of the world definitely does not know how to exploit the exotic taste of mangoes.

I was waiting for the bus today and there were about 40 of us at the stop. Me, and one Canadian girl, and the rest all, Chinese! Oriental people to me are all Chinese. Seriously, Chinese AND insects? Summer is not fun like it used to be. In Muscat, it’s too hot for insects to survive, or for that matter, even the Chinese. It’s bliss out there.

Why does it take 21 days to form a habit? Isn’t that just way too long? 4 days is good, or maybe even 5. But 21? That’s asking a bit too much, don’t you think? I just need more incentive to be getting up at 6 every morning to go swimming. Cute guys don’t get up at 6. Forget cute, guys don’t get up at 6!

Why is Devil’s Food Cake called so? There is NOTHING sinful about eating rich, chocolaty, creamy cake. If anything is the Devil’s food, it should be broccoli. To be honest, I don’t hate broccoli. I don’t know why there’s the hype about it. I think bitter-gourd or probably even brinjal (eggplant for you uneducated people) should be it. Speaking of which, I hate not being able to call ladies-finger “ladies-finger” anymore. Where the hell did they get the name “okra”? Isn’t that some kind of whale?

Alarm clocks are the invention of the Devil. Waking up is such a pain. It hurts just to think about having to wake up tomorrow morning. Damn these wooden structures. People here need to make houses out of concrete and cement like our houses are made of back home. I can hear the man next door snoring. Isn’t that just awful? I have to play loud music at 4 every night so the guy wakes up and then turns over or something and thus stops snoring. I hope the other people in the building don’t hate me. But they all probably can hear him snore too! So I guess I’m doing them a favour. My cool music collection is way more pleasant to hear in the middle of the night. Tonight's choice is Fatboy Slim’s “Stop the rock”! And with that, I need to stop this post. Sleep beckons. When nature calls, you have to heed. You know what I mean.

Just the usual detective fiction poem

A few posts ago, I’d shared my poem “A Detective’s Life”. And I’d mentioned that there were 2 poems. This is that second attempt at detective fiction poetry:


Poetic Justice

A scream in the dark and silence ensues,
No one hears.
The victim lies still and her face is pale,
Only dried up tears.

The killer’s struck again, for the sixth time now,
Pattern’s the same.
A shock to everyone, in this small town of Starkville,
They wanted a name.

Detective Frank Burke had no leads to follow,
Every victim lay dead.
Police files say, “gagged; thrown amidst forest trees”,
“No witnesses”, he read.

No blood, no weapons, no crazy slashes;
Strangle and kill.
A victim survived was what he needed to find,
Other clues were nil.

An anonymous call, a frightened voice,
“I escaped from him.
Six-foot, black skin, jacket brown with white stripes,
Has a body trim.”

Townspeople are eager to help, one lady feels sure
“A black troublemaker?
Wears a hat and a jacket with grey stripes on its arms,
Name’s Terry Baker.”

A clue at last, a similar jacket described,
Know he must more,
Dusty files he rummaged until at last he found it,
Early at four.

“Terry Baker - sentenced three years; murdered girlfriend
Out on parole”
The same strangle and gag and forest trees;
Story same ole’.

Detective Frank’s confident, “He is our man and
Find him I will,
Motives he needs none, just dodging the law,
Is serial-killer thrill.”

A few taps on a keyboard and up on the screen,
An address he finds.
A few moments later starts the inquisition session,
Till dawn he grinds.

Under the pressure Terry cracks, and guilty he pleads;
“You’re under arrest!”
Booms Lieutenant Kirk’s loud voice as he pulls out his handcuffs,
“Frank, you’re the best.”

The court has its verdict; “Sentenced to life”.
Justice is served.
Doomed to live forever behind prison bars,
No more a word.

Families of victims and all the townspeople,
Thanked him a ton.
Detective Frank smiled, pleased with himself,
His job was done.

A scream in the dark and silence ensues,
No one hears.
The killer’s struck again, for the seventh time now,
Silently someone leers.


I personally like this poem. I learnt a lot from just analyzing it after it was done. Here’s what:

I wrote it!!
If you ignore the last stanza, it’s still a complete poem and leaves you with a completely different emotion from the one you feel after reading the poem including the last stanza.
Detectives are not always right.
A confession should not be considered evidence for a crime.
And something I learnt courtesy of Dateline, NBC - there have been cases where some, usually first-time, murderers make their job look just like that of some well-known serial killer of the time, so as to throw the police off.
When you find a title that fits perfectly, nothing else matters anymore.

Celsius -12.78/-11.76

I just finished watching Fahrenheit 9/11. If there are two sides to a story, then this is the side I am sticking with.

I am so mad right now that this post is going to undergo no spell-check! Body temperatures are definitely far from 9 or 11.

How did Bush get re-elected? How? And more importantly, why?

I am trying my best to abstain from using profanity, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to abide by that.

It’s been a long time since a movie made me cry. Bawl, in fact. I just couldn’t control myself. The tears just kept on rolling down. I write this post as the tears are still drying up on my cheek. I am seething with anger too, but I can’t help cry for all those people who lost their lives over some goddamn oil. And I’m outraged because the fucking asshole who is responsible for these tears and for much more heartfelt, painful tears of thousands of people has been rewarded for the deed by the post for Presidency. Isn’t it amazing what the greatest country in the world is capable of accomplishing? This sure is a miracle, in my opinion.

Usually I could care less about the extra features on the DVD. But I am glad that I made sure I saw every feature on this one. There is a particular feature which showed a few Arab-American comedians who were trying to make the best of the “attack” they were under since 9/11. One comedian in particular named ‘Ahmed Ahmed’ joked “It’s a bad time to be named just Ahmed. So I’m really fucked!” It was probably the only time in the 2 hours that I honestly smiled. Oh, and also when they showed those really cute Iraqi kids. My heart just went out to them.

Michael Moore sure has the guts to come out with a movie like this. I call it a movie because it is obvious that majority of the Americans believe it is unreal. Because there is no way you could believe in this movie and revote this creature as your President. Maybe Moore should have appended to his title – “Based on a true story”. Maybe then the public might have taken him a little more seriously. Or maybe if Britney Spears had been a fan of the movie.

It probably shouldn’t concern me all that much because America is not my country and neither is Iraq. But I am positive that those who believed Bush was worthy to be elected President again didn’t have any family member killed in that war.

The footage of the soldiers abusing the “prisoners” was disgusting to the point where I can’t even find proper words to express myself. I realized that humans are indeed cruel beasts. We will point at a gay couple and laugh at them, but we will also find immense pleasure in fondling the penis of a prisoner. Fucking sickening. But who can blame them? That’s how most immature 18 year olds will act. No wonder they won’t question the validity of what they’re doing. “Yo dude. Isn’t it cool? We have guns! It’s just like playing Counter Strike but for real.”

This film is probably hardly 1/10th of the truth. The rest of it has probably never been filmed yet. Or even if it has, we’re going to need it to find its way to Moore because obviously no one else has the balls to stand up to the President of the United States of America. Except Osama Bin Laden, of course.

Those Americans who didn’t bother to watch this movie just prove the fact that they are content living in ignorance. If you’re a Bush supporter, then all the more reason to watch this movie and try to contend anything that’s been documented in it. Or attempt to put up a fight. Or just pretend to care even.

Even a movie based on Indian Independence hasn’t gotten me so riled up. But while I’m at that subject, fuck you British too!

Land of the free! What a load of crap. For people who brag about having a lot of freedom, they sure are making a lot of compromises. Give it a few more years, and the concept of hand luggage will be long gone. And make sure when you’re in the gym that you never mention the words “Al Qaeda” or “Bin Laden” and then say anything anti-Bush after that. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s a thing of the past, isn’t it? Now the magic words are … Oh God help me… I’m trying… not… to… say… it… butttttt……….

NORTH KOREA!

Oh fuck. Now I’m never going to be able to take an afternoon nap peacefully. Who knows? One of you will rat me out and I’m going to have the FBI knocking on my door interrupting one of my afternoon siestas, and interrogate me regarding this post on my blog.

And mind you, this is a highly censored version of what I originally had to say. It’s a human weakness. I still want my friends to love me. Maybe Moore does too. Imagine how much more there may be that we have not seen? Think about it!

Word games

We are all aware that this world is becoming more and more dependent on the Internet for every single thing like a blind man depends on his stick. What has brought about this “revolution” is what constitutes as the important component of our communication with each other and everyone else on the Web - the word. And the English language is a thing of beauty, which makes playing around with English words a joy forever.

Here is what resulted from my games with the type of words that fascinate me the most – the words that have various meanings, which more often than not lead to many an interesting drama if misunderstood. This post is hardly going to cause any drama but should be an interesting read nonetheless.

The ferry beats the wave.
A new adventure, a new high.
The waves beat the ferry.
Some people cry, some people die.

In the first line, beats = the act of hitting against something. In the third line, beat = defeat.

She slips.
He catches.
9 days later,
man and wife.
He slips.
She sighs.
9 months later,
a new-born life.

In the first line, slips = to lose balance or fall down. In the fifth line, slips = *censored*.

She likes him.
He’s like her.
This love story,
will end bitter.

In the first line, likes = to be fond of or love someone. In the second line, like = similar.
(What I’m trying to convey is that she likes him, but he’s like her. So he is similar to her. What is the only information we have about her from this quartet? That she likes him. So if he’s similar, he likes him too! This could be interpreted in two ways. Either he is so self-obsessed, like Reggie from Archie comics. Or if him in the first line refers to some third person, then he’s like her would refer to him liking this third person too. And obviously, depending on this third person’s sexual orientation, one of them is going to be unhappy! Or for a more twisted version, she likes him, the guy in the poem, and he likes a him who is some third person. So she likes the gay guy.)

The drill bore into the hole.
Bore bore bore.
The drill bore into the hole.
Bore bore bore.
The drill bore into the hole.
Bore bore bore.

In the first line, bore = to drill into something. And depending on your capacity to tolerate, either in the fourth line, or definitely in the sixth line, bore = dull and repetitious. Or if you have an innate dislike for drills or my poetry, you'll pretty much be bored by the second line.

You are but known
as a human being.
Yet what do you know
about being human?

In the second line, being = creature. And in the fourth line, being = conjugation of the verb ‘to be’.

I could have gone on but I didn’t want to write too many because then its novelty might have worn off. And I only gave explanations to each “don’t-know-what-to-call-it” as I didn’t want my words to be misinterpreted, and I did not mean in any way to undermine my readers’ intelligence quotients.

A picture may speak a thousand words, but words draw more than a thousand pictures. And if you’re not a good artist, it is something you might have to keep an I on. I mean, an eye on.

A Detective's Life

So there came a time when I was asked to attempt to write a poem on detectives or detective fiction, since it's something that we don't read a lot of poems about. The over-enthusiastic person that I am, when it comes to writing, gave it two ‘gos’. It’s not spectacular, but hey, I gave it a shot! Here’s the first one:

A Detective's Life

“He did it", says she.
"But she did it", he said.
Such are the confusing thoughts,
Running through a detective's head

Be it Holmes or Piorot,
There is no doubt,
Things would be so much easier,
If the truth be told from the victim's mouth.

Alas, dead as a duck,
With a hole in the chest,
Mr. Morrison can say nothing.
One lone bullet to aid this quest.

Is it the butler or the wife?
A lover? Or a robber?
When? Why? How? Who?
Upto the detective to discover.

“To keep warm during winters,
Use a pair of gloves”, says mom.
A criminal's greatest accomplice,
Who knew it would become?

But wait, what's that?
A strand of hair, it seems,
Slightly gray, slightly curly.
Looking at it, the detective beams.

"Thank you", says everyone.
"We'd have never guessed it was the wife!"
TRRRING!!! "We need you on 5th Avenue."
And thus goes on, a detective's life.

Every little thing he does is .....

One of the beautiful things about being a child is that you look at anything you don’t understand or cannot reason in your head with a sense of awe and amazement. As we grow older, we become skeptical and cynical. Things or events don’t wow us anymore. Whether or not we know the reasoning behind it, we assume that there is nothing great about it because there is obviously a valid explanation for it. Of course, the richest man in the world is someone we are in awe of! The problem is that we, adults, “outgrow” things, or we convince ourselves that we are too old to be able to enjoy or be amused by certain things. Cartoons, lollipops, teddy bears, and amongst those many things, magic.

There has been a time in everyone’s lives (hopefully), when we were young, when we were awed out of our minds after a magic show. As kids, we’d look at the magician as someone who could perform any miracle. As we grow up, we know they’re just tricks or illusions created by the magician and we cease to be amazed anymore. But we must give credit where its due, and no matter how we feel about the magic “trick” performed, whatever be our age, we stop for one moment to think, “I wonder how he did that”! And that is the beauty of it all. You could be 20, 40 or 70, but for that one moment, it makes you wonder like a little child, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.

As anyone who knows me well can vouch for it, my favourite channel on T.V. is still Cartoon Network, I still love sucking on lollipops though for (maybe) slightly different reasons than while I was younger, and I still sleep with my teddy bear that I’ve had with me since I was 4 or 5. So it will come as no surprise that when I watch magic (and I don’t think of them as tricks), to this day I go, “WOW!”

When I was in school, there was a peon by the name Ashok who was a great magician. He performed tricks (for the lack of a better word) that blew my mind away. I would always run to him when I saw him and asked him to “Do magic, uncle!” I think I was one of his favourites because I would never pester him about how he did it or to teach me. And I know he enjoyed the look of awe on my face once he was done. At home, my mom had bought a few magic show tapes that I would watch a lot, over and over again. The magicians were different, and the tricks were similar – pulling something out of an empty hat, never-ending ribbons coming out of a tongue or some other body part, having a volunteer enter a box and cutting the box into two without hurting the volunteer, lots of card tricks, disappearing objects etc. – but my reaction was the same. In all my years as a child, I never thought one magician was better than another. They were all great to me. But today I idolize someone. And the most surprising thing of all is that he’s American!

“There is a fine line between life and death, truth and deceit, dreams and reality - magic blurs that line.” The day I heard him say that, I fell in love with David Blaine. Now for those of you who’ve never heard of him, I can only pity you. Anyway, it’s never too late, and why fear when I’m here to tell you all about him. Blaine is most famous for his “street magic” and his life-defying stunts. Street magic made Blaine really popular amongst the people as he would walk on the streets in various cities and towns all over the US and perform tricks (gosh, there’s got to be a better word!) for random people on the street. His levitation stunt became most popular. He has freaked quite a lot of people in the process. In certain towns he was shooed away because magic is frowned upon as it is related to voodoo and black magic, and so they wanted to keep away from him.

There’s one amazing incident that made me admire Blaine all the more. Once he went into the Amazon forests and approached one particular tribe (the name of which I can’t seem to remember suddenly) who’ve been famous for chasing away any foreigners who try to contact them by throwing poisonous spears at them. Now Blaine did not attempt to talk to any of them. All he did was perform “tricks”. And he soon had a captivated audience. That is another beauty of magic. He could not converse with them. Nor they with him. But his magic did the talking. He tried to show them card tricks but soon realized that they had never seen cards before and could not relate to the numbers and shapes. So he resorted to showing them tricks using leaves and sticks and other objects they’ve lived amongst.

Recently, Blaine has become more famous for his feats of endurance. His first feat was being buried alive in a coffin for seven days in Trump Park, New York. His second feat involved being encased in ice in Times Square, New York, for almost 62 hours (called ‘Frozen in Time’). His third feat was standing on a 22-inch wide, 105-foot tall pillar in Bryant Park, New York, for 35 hours and later jumping off it onto just some measly cardboard boxes (called ‘Vertigo’). His latest stunt was his first stunt outside the US. He hung himself 450 feet above the Thames River in London for 44 days in a Plexiglass box with no food (called ‘Above the Below’). All his stunts were visible for the public eye to see. (For further details about any of the stunts including pictures, go to http://www.magicdirectory.com/blaine/)

Many of you might be reading this and going “hmph”. But that’s just because you’re looking at it all wrong. In fact, the British didn’t take too well with his stunts. They were quite rude and threw foodstuff at him etc. So much for their classiness! “You've picked the wrong town to be hung in, Mr Blaine," wrote The Sunday Times. "What is clear from the start is that Londoners are not taking Blaine quite as seriously as he takes himself. Really, it makes you proud to be British."The British are just so uptight! They need to lighten up. They were being skeptical and saying things like “Oh, he must be getting his food somehow” or “It’s probably an illusion”.

Now this is how I personally view Blaine’s stunts. It really doesn’t matter up to what extent these stunts are authentic, or whether he is being fed food through tubes, or whether there have been other people in the past who have done “crazy” things too! We first need to acknowledge the fact that David Blaine is a human being, as real as any body else alive. I find what Blaine does inspirational. People are focusing on the wrong aspects of his stunts if they’re more bothered about whether he looks thinner after a stunt, or if he looks like he’s been fed well. He is living proof that there is nothing in this world you can’t do if you put your mind to it. Maybe he proves them with slightly extreme stunts. But that’s his way of doing it. To quote him, “We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe. We are stronger and more resourceful than we know, and we can endure much more than we think we can. In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds." How very true. When you hear him talk, you will realize that this is not a crazy, stupid man who’s trying to create world records. Here’s someone who’s letting the world know that it’s all a matter of ‘mind over body’, and he’s proving it too. Now, that is something we can all learn from this young man. When I’m watching him on TV, I’m not trying to figure out the ways through which he might be breaking his own self-imposed rules. It’s not a joke to go without food for even a couple of hours. And I’m talking about us who are reasonably well off with no reason to want to be starving ourselves. His stunts are something that most of us would not take on. Isolation and starvation over long periods of time is not really fun, especially in claustrophobic confinements. I admire, respect and applaud him for his sheer determination to do such tasks. David Blaine is only doing what he loves most, and he is doing it with a passion. This is his way of making a living and maybe trying to touch people’s lives in a “crazy” kind of way. People will always be there to mock and criticize and pull people down, when they are doing something good, be it for themselves or others. Our generation and the coming ones can definitely benefit from the likes of Blaine who inspire us to achieve our goals, no matter how impossible they may seem at first. I really wish him all the success and good luck for his upcoming endeavors, as he is touching the lives of many people all over the world in some way or the other. It may seem stupid to risk his life for his “stunts” but it is part of his job that he chooses to do. As Martin Luther King Junior said, “If you haven’t found something worth dying for, then there’s no point living.” And this is how Blaine feels about his job. Call them stunts, call them illusions, call them tricks – to me, it’s pure magic!

Video links:

http://media.tlc.discovery.com/convergence/magic/videogallery.html - Here are 6 videos of Blaine performing street magic. There are two or three ads you might have to bear with but it’s worth it. By the way, boys, you are sure to like the last one!!!

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/7518/ - Warning! Warning! Warning! This video is quite gory. So if you have a weak heart, are pregnant or sleep with your lights on during thunderstorms, please think twice before watching.