Happy Birthday Sarah

No one in this planet does it better then the Koreans when it comes to pumping out tear jerkers – they are the indisputable Toyota motors of love stories; and when I first started writing love stories; they were simply inspirational in every way possible – from plot, cadence, speed and texture – I copied these masters unabashly, now you know why the brotherhood press love stories division is so prolific – some may balk at all this; and say most of these yarns are nothing more than superficial rehashed Mills & Boons reads – I disagree; the plot may seem trite only because you’re distanced by your prejudice and ignorance – but once you immerse yourself in them and get beneath the triteness and invest your heart and soul in them; they’re astonishingly beautiful, sensitive and heart warming in every sense – many years ago before the internet age began; I lost someone who was very dear to me to lymphatic cancer – she left suddenly and it left me with this incredible hole in my heart which I can only describe as an eternal abyss – at first, I tried to bring her back to life in the virtual; I scoured the world for the best animators, best mathematicians, best illustrators; money was no object; I even once stormed a replica of Taj Mahal with 100 Sardokhan elite troops to create paradise for her – despite their very best efforts no matter how real they fashioned her; they were never able to capture her essence; – her spirit always remained elusive and afar; and that hole in my heart was never ever filled – it was only when I sat down and began to write love stories and started churning them out like a cookie factory; that I began to understand for the very first time in my life – how pain and joy are in fact one of the same reality; and the rest is really grist to the mill; as I had to immerse myself into my characters and experience what they really felt – and with that came a deep spirited understanding of love and courage.

 

Someday my animators will get it right and she will smile the way I remembered her – till then while the story goes on – somewhere in amid the tears and laughter, there will always be a place called paradise and she will never be far away from me.

 

Happy Birthday Sarah,

 

Darkness forever – I’ve see you in my dreams.

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“The planters life is a very macho way of life. What you need to understand is this attitude is very climatic to the plantation industry. The idea of the alpha male man. The rugged individual. The man called Shane. All these qualities are still venerated and given their dues only in the planters world.

In the planters world cute yellow beetle Volkswagens, skin obsessed metrosexuals and men who fear the elements. They don’t exist. There are no grey zones in this world. Men are men. Women are women. Fainting like dueling is still very fashionable. Ceilings in plantation houses are still built 15 foot high exactly like in the days of the white raj. There are strict protocols governing conduct, behavioral norms and along with social conventions – if I visit you and the sun goes down, it’s given that you would stay the night. If you’re a gentlemen. You would hand me your revolver to lock in a safe.

It is a elegant world. A world that still has it’s quaint quirks like a nervous tic – technology is still frowned on. Air conditioners give way to Al Fresco. Women are never seen SMSing. They still gossip in tea parties. They still wear hats with Doris Day flared skirts.

Men on the other hand all wear only bush jackets and smoke a pipe. Play billiards and still have the privilege of enjoying men’s only reading rooms where women are strictly forbidden to enter – naturally we do so many things there except read, that I prefer not to divulge to save myself from an unnatural death. Men still sit on long benches like schoolboys shoulder to shoulder and chow traditional steak and kidney pie for lunch and fish on Fridays – they do so in a wood paneled hall with stern looking planters of lore depicted in oils bearing down on them – a hermetically sealed world that even the digital co-axial wire has yet to whirl it’s way into. An old world.

It is an elegant world. But it’s also a hard and brutal and relentless world. A world that if a man is not careful to treat like dynamite that had passed it’s expiry date can just blow him up.

I’ve seen many men who have become monsters in this world. Men who are so ruthless that they are even prepared to do anything to win, no matter what the cost.

And the more I marinade myself in this world. The more I find myself changing like a man who one day discovers a rash only to gradually see it spreading all over his body with each passing day. I feel as if sometimes many humanity is like feeble body before a hail of arrows. I try to hold on, but its so hard….I let go…I tell myself…only for this time. But I find myself going there again and again.

This is the part gentlemen they didn’t teach you in Harvard Business school. The very idea that by just living, breathing and shitting as a businessman, it can subtlety change your outlook in life. It can make you such a hard man. Such an asshole even to those who love you and you should never treat like shit.

So this idea of writing love stories for me like my lone violin concertos in the dead of night are really my only means to nourish the softer side of my nature. It’s my only way to ensuring that the good side of me doesn’t die in this hard, macho and muscled world.

People say it’s a waste of time. But I never see it that way. I’ve led expeditions deep into the jungle. I’ve seen how men can turn into animals after they get used to wearing the same underwear day after day even if that’s the only thing they wear – I’ve seen whole tracts of lands being sliced up like meat and thrown to vultures in the conference room where I hold my tongue as I fear to speak my mind. I know how it is to feel so small and insignificant like an ant before plantation owners who seem to own a continent of land.

I think the only drawback to my musicality and bad habit of writing sappy love stories is that it makes me stand out in the planters world like a distressed fish. Maybe that is why I seem to attract so much problems from rich plantation mistresses.

I can just tell sometimes by the mischief in their eyes when they look at me.

Do you think it’s my bush jacket? Should I get a baggier one? I really think that’s the only draw back. Other than that, I think every man should really take the whole idea of nourishing and feeding his softer side seriously – like going to the gym or brushing your teeth. As I happen to believe that if you’re really serious about making the world a better place than you found it. Then that goodness has to first come from deep down inside you. only then can it work it’s way outwards to light up the whole world. I really don’t see any other way how it can be done! That’s just the way I see it. So to me it’s never just a waste of time. Never!”