Rocking! Really?

Salman Khan and many in Bollywood, from somewhere have learnt this new word - 'Rocking!'. They blatantly use it to suggest something exciting coming onto their way. For Sallu, 'rocking' is to get onto the stage and thrust his hips in sync with other ten or twenty with him. While his feet thump the floor with electronica beats, he covers his left ear with his left palm and stretches his right hand horizontally to draw an imaginary arc. His funny face changing expressions from shock to awe, to itchiness to pleasure. Also, now Rakhi Sawant is hyped to dance as a cheer girl in the coming IPL cricket season. Phew! God bless America for you and me.

Determinator

Movie screens are amazing. They show you exactly how the 'Terminator' evaluates an unknown object or a stranger which suddenly appears in front of him. On the left corner a single row of equalizer type lights blink in sync with loud beeps, and a harmless laser beam is thrown on the object. A few seconds later, all the equalizer lights are green, and underneath appears the text 'FRIEND'. The Terminator draws his guns back into his holsters.

So, if you are as you are, a feeble human, without any weapons, appear in front of Mr. Terminator, he will quickly judge you as his friend. Simple ! But what happens when you encounter this specie called 'Determinator'? He/she is an adult human, wears ordinary clothes such as a jeans and a shirt, works and lives in the same society as you do. And then when a stranger suddenly appears in front, the invisible antenna feeds an input signal into the subconscious, and the back of brain starts evaluating - black or white? - rich or poor? - speaks English or not? How much rich? Beep Beep...No answer. Not a friend.

A Nomad by Choice

Wilfred Patrick Thesiger was a man I admire, because not only he reinforces my thoughts that freedom is found in empty deserts, I could see myself as a shadow walking word onto next word underneath his lines in one of his travel memoirs ‘Arabian Sands’. Amongst many unbeatable moments in this book; the penultimate para (in verbatim below, since, is easy to locate), knuckled a soft blow on my balls.

After a long trip in timeless waterless deserts for nothing material, it is the final goodbye time with his tribal friends cum guides in one of the British barracks:

On the last evening, as bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha were tying up the few things they had bought, Codrai said, looking at the two small bundles, ‘It is rather pathetic that this is all they have.’ I understood what he meant; I had often felt the same. Yet I knew that for them the danger lay, not in the hardship of their lives, but in the boredom and frustration they would feel when they renounced it. The tragedy was that the choice would not be theirs; economic forces beyond their control would eventually drive them into the towns to hang about street-corners as ‘unskilled labour’.