Yo
Sri Lanka at war with terrorism
Racism
But most of all
Sri Lanka at war with themselves
Buddha walks
God show me the way because Sinhala road signs are trying to break me down
Buddha walks with me, with me...
UH. You know what Ceylon is? Young and restless
Well, Tamil TIGERS might snatch your necklace
And next these TIGERS might anti-tank mine your Lexus
Somebody tell these TIGERS who Asia's best is
I walk through the bus stand where the shadow of death is
Total chaos, the fumes alone will leave you breathless
*Huuuogghhhh* Try to catch it *Hyuuurrkkkk* Hard as shit
Same time getting choked by Lankan English - check the chat-chit
They be asking odd questions, harass and molest us
Saying "Do you eat papaya or jackfruit for breakfast?"
"Hey where you going? What's the basis?"
I ain't going nowhere but I've got mad buns and pastries
A backpack full of coke and a pet cockroach named Davis
The theocracy used to say only Buddha could save us
...Well homies, I know I act a fool
But I'll be gone til November, I've got legends to prove
Buddha walks
God show me the way cuz parasitic amoebas are trying to break me down
Buddha walk with me, with me
The only thing I pray is my colon don't fail me now
Ghostfaace Buuuuddhaaa waaaalks
And I don't think there's nothing I can do to right my wrongs
Ghost-face Budd-ha walks
'Cept for give these girls back their saris, bras, and sarongs
Ghostface Buuuuuuu-uuuuuddhhaaaaa
God show me the way because raging elephants are trying to break me down
GHOOOOOSSTTTTT
The only thing I pray is my taser don't fail me now
And I don't think there's nothing I can do now to right my wrongs
Ghooostface walks
I want to talk to God but I'm afraid cuz we ain't Skyped in so long
Buddha walks So long...
Buddha walks with me, with me, with me, with me
UHHH, to the hustlers, killers, tea pickers, "Fancy" dealers
Even tuk-tuk drivers Buddha walks with them
To the victims of Halal fare cuz the food taste like Hell here
Hell yeah Buddha walks with them
Now hear ye hear ye you need to hear me more clearly
And shut the Hell up before my ears get weary
Cuz heroes like me is nearly extinct
I win fights with livestock - I act, I don't think
But I'm not here to tell you about my flawless features
We're here to turn haters into believers
I'm just here to say the way the people of Judah need kosher food-ah
The way oom-pah need tuba that's the way you need Buddha
So here comes my single, dawg, don't get the hype bent
They say you can rap about anything except fo' Enlight'ment
That means guns, sex, cows, and wickets-to-take
But if I talk about the Eightfold my record won't get played, HUH??
Well you can take from my fame but you can't take from my game
Which means you can't take away from my dames
And stop the day I'm dreamin' 'bout
Up in the Indian Sub' all the ladies screaming out
Buddha, come...
God show me the way cuz palm liquor is trying to break me down
Buddha come take me, take me...
The only thing I pray is Kama Sutra don't fail me now
God show me the way because patriarchal forces trying to break me down
The only thing I pray is Kama Sutra don't fail me now
Buddha come take me...
Showing posts with label Belles Lettres. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belles Lettres. Show all posts
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 3, 2010
Ghostface Buddha Hath Eaten Of The Cow
Greetings, revered Readers, for I do have News to tell.
As I recounted in these very pages not long ago, in the lands of Ceylon, aye, the wondrous isle of Taprobane indeed, it is permitted to eat Beef, the cooked flesh of the Cow.
And so, dear Readers, one fyne afternoon in Kandy, I did Consume of this Beef. Coalesced from the ravages of Strange and Uncouthe Oriental maladies, I walked, as is Salubrious, to a refined establishement by the name of Devon's in pursuit of Beef Steak with Fried Onions.
I waited and my Beef Steak with Fried Onions was served to me on a clean, white plate, along with Beans, and Potatoes crispened in the French manner. The steak was rather more Chinee of type than I had imagined, yet before no God shall I swear that it was not Goode. I ate of it fully, and reached such a Plateau of Satisfaction as can only be bestowed by the Goodliest of Meats.
In the days since, oft have I Partaken of the Cowflesh, and on all occasions it has been much to my Delyte. For truly, this Best of Beasts granted to us for the Relishing by the Almighty doth make a fyne fixing for many a dish and snackke. Place thee a strip of Beef in a Bun, with such Vegetables as Providence hath granted the lands in your surrounds, and indeed, ye shall find that it doth Savor of the very Ideal of Deliciousness. Else, place thee a portion of Beef in a saucerlet of fynely seasoned Sauces, and it shall make a most Wondrous Morsel of its own.
Let it be known that I harbor no ill will towards the Cows of the Island of Serendip, for Truth be told, they do not possess the Malice of their kin in the Hindoo domaines. Indeed, merely to be a Cow ought be fitting Karmic punishment for past Sinnes, the final Absolution of which is to be found Roasted upon a Plate, with Toppings and Sides, and by God's Grace.
Yours in Victory and Health,
Ghostface Buddha
As I recounted in these very pages not long ago, in the lands of Ceylon, aye, the wondrous isle of Taprobane indeed, it is permitted to eat Beef, the cooked flesh of the Cow.
And so, dear Readers, one fyne afternoon in Kandy, I did Consume of this Beef. Coalesced from the ravages of Strange and Uncouthe Oriental maladies, I walked, as is Salubrious, to a refined establishement by the name of Devon's in pursuit of Beef Steak with Fried Onions.
I waited and my Beef Steak with Fried Onions was served to me on a clean, white plate, along with Beans, and Potatoes crispened in the French manner. The steak was rather more Chinee of type than I had imagined, yet before no God shall I swear that it was not Goode. I ate of it fully, and reached such a Plateau of Satisfaction as can only be bestowed by the Goodliest of Meats.
In the days since, oft have I Partaken of the Cowflesh, and on all occasions it has been much to my Delyte. For truly, this Best of Beasts granted to us for the Relishing by the Almighty doth make a fyne fixing for many a dish and snackke. Place thee a strip of Beef in a Bun, with such Vegetables as Providence hath granted the lands in your surrounds, and indeed, ye shall find that it doth Savor of the very Ideal of Deliciousness. Else, place thee a portion of Beef in a saucerlet of fynely seasoned Sauces, and it shall make a most Wondrous Morsel of its own.
Let it be known that I harbor no ill will towards the Cows of the Island of Serendip, for Truth be told, they do not possess the Malice of their kin in the Hindoo domaines. Indeed, merely to be a Cow ought be fitting Karmic punishment for past Sinnes, the final Absolution of which is to be found Roasted upon a Plate, with Toppings and Sides, and by God's Grace.
Yours in Victory and Health,
Ghostface Buddha
Aug 10, 2010
Tao Te Bling
I.
The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way:
The names that can be named are not unvarying names
The Way that is nameless some call Tao.
The Tao in truth is called Melvin;
It is Melvin that is nameless.
II.
It was from the Nameless which is neither Tao nor Melvin
but more Melvin than Tao
that Heaven and Earth sprang.
And it was Heaven whence came the real OG's.
III.
It is because everyone under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty
that the idea of ugliness exists.
It is because all know a Baller for what he is
that there can be Haters who hate.
Just so, if every one recognized virtue as virtue
this would merely open new gates of virtuelessness;
That is where the Baller comes in.
For truly, Hustle and Bitching grow out of one another...
Difficult and Easy balance one another...
High and Sober determine one another...
Husband and Wife test one another...
Wife and Floozie-On-The-Side complete one another...
Foreplay and After-Snuggle give sequence to one another.
Therefore the Baller relies on Actionless Activity,
effortlessly doing what others say must be hard,
and is, but he makes look easy.
The Baller carries on wordless teaching:
Balling.
IV.
Pour a tequila flask to the very brim
And you will wish you had stopped in time.
Polish a pinky ring to its very finest
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When stacks of Franklins fill your hoarding-hall
They can no longer be made to rain.
Women and liquor breed carelessness;
That brings babies in its train.
Before the deed is done, withdraw!
Such is Heaven's Way.
V.
As the heavy must be the foundation of the light,
so idleness is lord and master of activity.
Truly, a man of consequence, though he travels all day,
will not let himself be separated from his BlackBerry.
However magnificent is the corner-office view,
he sits quiet and disconsolate.
How much so then,
must a true Baller be lighter than those around him!
If he is heavy, he is naught but foundation,
and the spirit is lost.
Best to be light;
Float as though borne by a palm leaf upon the ocean.
The ocean we call Sex
The palm leaf we call Drugs.
VI.
Can you keep the unquiet physical-soul from sleeping,
hold fast to the Unity, and never quit it?
Can you, when concentrating your breath,
pass a roadside inspection?
Can you wipe and cleanse your vision of the Mystery until you know
where you were the night before?
Can you love the people and rule the land, yet not forget
your cell phone at the bar?
Can you in opening and shutting the Heavenly Gates,
find your pants thereafter?
Fueling your appetites, then feeding them;
Doing dumb shit, but not being made to lay claim to it;
Impairing your wits, but always having your wits about you;
Buck wildin', but having everything under control;
That is called the Mysterious Power.
VII.
In Tao the only motion is Balling;
The only quality, flava.
For although it is said all creatures under Heaven and Earth
are the product of Melvin
We mislead you earlier:
Melvin itself is the product of Balling.
Balling produced Melvin behind a pool hall in Jacksonville, Florida.
Ask Melvin's mother.
The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way:
The names that can be named are not unvarying names
The Way that is nameless some call Tao.
The Tao in truth is called Melvin;
It is Melvin that is nameless.
II.
It was from the Nameless which is neither Tao nor Melvin
but more Melvin than Tao
that Heaven and Earth sprang.
And it was Heaven whence came the real OG's.
III.
It is because everyone under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty
that the idea of ugliness exists.
It is because all know a Baller for what he is
that there can be Haters who hate.
Just so, if every one recognized virtue as virtue
this would merely open new gates of virtuelessness;
That is where the Baller comes in.
For truly, Hustle and Bitching grow out of one another...
Difficult and Easy balance one another...
High and Sober determine one another...
Husband and Wife test one another...
Wife and Floozie-On-The-Side complete one another...
Foreplay and After-Snuggle give sequence to one another.
Therefore the Baller relies on Actionless Activity,
effortlessly doing what others say must be hard,
and is, but he makes look easy.
The Baller carries on wordless teaching:
Balling.
IV.
Pour a tequila flask to the very brim
And you will wish you had stopped in time.
Polish a pinky ring to its very finest
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When stacks of Franklins fill your hoarding-hall
They can no longer be made to rain.
Women and liquor breed carelessness;
That brings babies in its train.
Before the deed is done, withdraw!
Such is Heaven's Way.
V.
As the heavy must be the foundation of the light,
so idleness is lord and master of activity.
Truly, a man of consequence, though he travels all day,
will not let himself be separated from his BlackBerry.
However magnificent is the corner-office view,
he sits quiet and disconsolate.
How much so then,
must a true Baller be lighter than those around him!
If he is heavy, he is naught but foundation,
and the spirit is lost.
Best to be light;
Float as though borne by a palm leaf upon the ocean.
The ocean we call Sex
The palm leaf we call Drugs.
VI.
Can you keep the unquiet physical-soul from sleeping,
hold fast to the Unity, and never quit it?
Can you, when concentrating your breath,
pass a roadside inspection?
Can you wipe and cleanse your vision of the Mystery until you know
where you were the night before?
Can you love the people and rule the land, yet not forget
your cell phone at the bar?
Can you in opening and shutting the Heavenly Gates,
find your pants thereafter?
Fueling your appetites, then feeding them;
Doing dumb shit, but not being made to lay claim to it;
Impairing your wits, but always having your wits about you;
Buck wildin', but having everything under control;
That is called the Mysterious Power.
VII.
In Tao the only motion is Balling;
The only quality, flava.
For although it is said all creatures under Heaven and Earth
are the product of Melvin
We mislead you earlier:
Melvin itself is the product of Balling.
Balling produced Melvin behind a pool hall in Jacksonville, Florida.
Ask Melvin's mother.
Jun 8, 2010
Notes From The "Satluj View" Bar
So here I am sitting with a brand-new notebook in the Satluj View bar. It's called that because it's on a cliff above the Satluj river. I came in here for dinner, found that the restaurant portion had been requisitioned for the night by the Ministry of Energy, and I don't know why but I decided to go to the bar side and have a beer. They have a decent selection of rums and whiskeys, but I asked for a beer. The bartender, in a tone I now know was an apology, said "We only have Godfather beer, sir." So be it.
OK, I now start drinking the Godfather beer and it tastes awful. It has this guy who kind of looks like a young Karl Marx on the bottle and he seems to be having a good time. The bottle, which is large, also proclaims that it is "Super Strong" beer. We'll see about that. It might actually get me drunk. My tolerance for alcohol is at an all-time low. I rarely drink in India, mostly because the bars are vile, the booze tastes like crap.
Actually, now that I think about it, I puke considerably more often than I drink here. Questionable food and drinking water is probably to blame, but to me this reeks of SOCIALISM. In godly, American countries we firmly believe in a man's right to puke at most an equal number of times to drinking. LET FREEDOM RING.
Stray thought (I think there's going to be a lot of these): if I had to describe my "inner" "personal" journey on this trip using only well-known literary references, my life would be a mixture of Heart of Darkness, the Bhagavad Gita, and Where's Waldo?
Speaking of Where's Waldo?, you could produce a whole new Where's Waldo? anthology in any Indian city using only a bag of colored pencils, a dirigible, and about a quarter-dose of psychedelic mushrooms.
You know, I don't know if anyone has every said this before, but religion can, like, make people do really good things, but it can also make them do, like, really bad things. BARTENDER. ANOTHER GODFATHER.
It's impossible to get a good burrito around here.
I am drunk.
Catching the 6am bus is going to be a bitch.
Think about this: you can get to the end of a river really quickly if you just think of the "end" as the bottom.
You know what really sucks? Honor killings.
Jesus fuck, this beer tastes like detergent. From the makers of Tide, this shit. Come home drunk and puke in the hamper for savings on laundry. Compromises for a happy marriage. Wife send me back to the bar for a whiskey, clean the fucking dishes.
What's the rhyme Nas uses on that Ludcris song right before "Bartender, put a cosmo in that girl's hand!" ? I need to know.
I wonder if that cavity in my bathroom wall is supposed to be the shower.
Wait, have I even had a proper shower in this entire state?
No.
OK, Satan, here's the deal: if I eat less than eight unhygienic paranthas in the next week, you get my soul. Fair odds.
Google Maps driving time estimates are a perverse joke of diabolical origin.
That girl with the burnt ear on the bus was definitely hitting on me with the winking and the chewing gum.
Definitely hitting on me.
Awwwwwww I should call my girlfr.....ohhhh ho ho ho, no I shouldn't.
If India was a moment in stereotypical "hippie" recorded music it would be like getting really high and listening to Dark Side Of The Moon and forgetting about the part with all the fucking clocks and then jumping out of your sofa in surprise, except it happens every five minutes and whatever's causing the commotion is either completely unnecessary or it can kill you.
India has a plethora of crazy, mystical, super-yoga ascetic saddhus. India also has a space program. These need to be put together. SHIVA IN SPACE. I would so go on that mission.
If Indian bus drivers were football coaches, they would run the quarterback sneak three times in a row and then set the ball on fire on fourth down.
Hell, if Indian bus drivers were cricket players they would still move farther in a a day.
Dude, saddhus in zero-gravity. I'm still on that.
You know, I think I like sky-blue saris the best.
Where the fuck are my keys?
OK, I now start drinking the Godfather beer and it tastes awful. It has this guy who kind of looks like a young Karl Marx on the bottle and he seems to be having a good time. The bottle, which is large, also proclaims that it is "Super Strong" beer. We'll see about that. It might actually get me drunk. My tolerance for alcohol is at an all-time low. I rarely drink in India, mostly because the bars are vile, the booze tastes like crap.
Actually, now that I think about it, I puke considerably more often than I drink here. Questionable food and drinking water is probably to blame, but to me this reeks of SOCIALISM. In godly, American countries we firmly believe in a man's right to puke at most an equal number of times to drinking. LET FREEDOM RING.
Stray thought (I think there's going to be a lot of these): if I had to describe my "inner" "personal" journey on this trip using only well-known literary references, my life would be a mixture of Heart of Darkness, the Bhagavad Gita, and Where's Waldo?
Speaking of Where's Waldo?, you could produce a whole new Where's Waldo? anthology in any Indian city using only a bag of colored pencils, a dirigible, and about a quarter-dose of psychedelic mushrooms.
You know, I don't know if anyone has every said this before, but religion can, like, make people do really good things, but it can also make them do, like, really bad things. BARTENDER. ANOTHER GODFATHER.
It's impossible to get a good burrito around here.
I am drunk.
Catching the 6am bus is going to be a bitch.
Think about this: you can get to the end of a river really quickly if you just think of the "end" as the bottom.
You know what really sucks? Honor killings.
Jesus fuck, this beer tastes like detergent. From the makers of Tide, this shit. Come home drunk and puke in the hamper for savings on laundry. Compromises for a happy marriage. Wife send me back to the bar for a whiskey, clean the fucking dishes.
What's the rhyme Nas uses on that Ludcris song right before "Bartender, put a cosmo in that girl's hand!" ? I need to know.
I wonder if that cavity in my bathroom wall is supposed to be the shower.
Wait, have I even had a proper shower in this entire state?
No.
OK, Satan, here's the deal: if I eat less than eight unhygienic paranthas in the next week, you get my soul. Fair odds.
Google Maps driving time estimates are a perverse joke of diabolical origin.
That girl with the burnt ear on the bus was definitely hitting on me with the winking and the chewing gum.
Definitely hitting on me.
Awwwwwww I should call my girlfr.....ohhhh ho ho ho, no I shouldn't.
If India was a moment in stereotypical "hippie" recorded music it would be like getting really high and listening to Dark Side Of The Moon and forgetting about the part with all the fucking clocks and then jumping out of your sofa in surprise, except it happens every five minutes and whatever's causing the commotion is either completely unnecessary or it can kill you.
India has a plethora of crazy, mystical, super-yoga ascetic saddhus. India also has a space program. These need to be put together. SHIVA IN SPACE. I would so go on that mission.
If Indian bus drivers were football coaches, they would run the quarterback sneak three times in a row and then set the ball on fire on fourth down.
Hell, if Indian bus drivers were cricket players they would still move farther in a a day.
Dude, saddhus in zero-gravity. I'm still on that.
You know, I think I like sky-blue saris the best.
Where the fuck are my keys?
May 26, 2010
Hollywood Films For India
Live Free Or Repeatedly Die Hard
The Devil Wears Fake Prada
Terminator! The Musical!
Office Space: The Dream Job
I, Sexually Repressed Individual
The Matrix: Adaptable Networking Revolutions
I Know What You Did Last Lifetime
Mission Incomprehensible
Batman Begins A Lengthy Sermon On Moral Rectitude
Complacent Bull
Shiva And Butthead Do America
2001: A Semi-Motorized Odyssey
The Maharashtran Candidate
Peddling In The Rain
Star Trek: My Name Is Khan
Rickshaw Driver
Speed 3: 3rd Gear
Endlessly Vacillate About Killing Bill
No Country For Sane Men
The Devil Wears Fake Prada
Terminator! The Musical!
Office Space: The Dream Job
I, Sexually Repressed Individual
The Matrix: Adaptable Networking Revolutions
I Know What You Did Last Lifetime
Mission Incomprehensible
Batman Begins A Lengthy Sermon On Moral Rectitude
Complacent Bull
Shiva And Butthead Do America
2001: A Semi-Motorized Odyssey
The Maharashtran Candidate
Peddling In The Rain
Star Trek: My Name Is Khan
Rickshaw Driver
Speed 3: 3rd Gear
Endlessly Vacillate About Killing Bill
No Country For Sane Men
May 3, 2010
The Critique Of Pure India
A.K.A. Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India
First a note to my Indian readers: this is a labor of love; do not worry overmuch about the terms with which I describe your noble land to these Firangi worms.
I have begun penning a manifesto of sorts, a Compendium of Truth, you could say. Though I did not know it at the time, the first instalment of this work was my ethical treatise Ghostface Buddhism, which conclusively answered the age-old question "How ought Man to live?" Though no doubt ennobling, it did not answer the more wordly question that Ghostface Buddha has made it his life's work to address, "So how about that India?". I now proudly present to you Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India, also known as The Critique Of Pure India.
The Indian's view of the cosmos is highly deterministic; so too is any adventure in this country. There are but three paths your life can take here, depending upon the station of your birth; that is, how much money you've got when you splash out of the spiritual darkness of the heathen foreign womb into the motherly arms of the Indian subcontinent.
If you are of the spoiled, dumbass strain of the larger hominid species Homo Hippis, you will come to India and immediately sport "Indian" clothing that no South Asian person has worn since the age of the last Levitating Sages. You will find many other pseudo-hippies and form a herd. You may even mate. You will cross the dessicated land together from watering hole to watering hole: the timeless migration in search of Bob Marley, tabla lessons, and pancakes.
If you are a wealthy, over-leisured jackass, you will also form a herd, crossing the parched, poverty-ridden wastes in an air-conditioned bus from one repository of medieval sculpture to the next. Men in safari hats will teach you to recognize the esoteric figures of Hindu art, such as cows. Men in turbans will serve you tea. Weeks later in your well-appointed home you will look up from your self-soiled hands and your glossy copy of Vanity Fair and lay eyes on the reproduction Chola bronze you purchased at the Sai Krishna Antiques Emporium. You think to yourself, "I am well-travelled, and aye, well-learned." Suddenly, you are gripped by a moment of guilt and self-doubt. "No!" you exclaim inwardly as you feel a spot of seminal fluid on an open magazine page nearby. "Not the latest Foreign Affairs!".
The third path is the most treacherous. If you find yourself walking it, you are in many ways like Ghostface Buddha. You are of no great means, yet you make ends meet, and you have come to sample whatever India has to offer, except perhaps opium. And fucking paan. I just don't get that shit.
Close your eyes and travel with me. Now open your eyes because this will require some reading.
You arrive at the train station. There is an entire village of peasants residing on the platform. They arrived here two days ago, all sharing the top of two overloaded tractor-pulled grain wagons and a single donkey, and they have been here since, apparently waiting for the day for which they have train tickets. Most of the adults are permanently sleeping on tatty blankets while their insectoid multitudes of offspring crawl over them like logs. A handful are awake, opening mysterious cement-shipping sacks to produce from them all 5 pieces of the village's metal cookware and about a month's supply of loose barley. A handful of women have been sent around the city to random roadsides, offering to sell 500 leftover onions for $0.20 per metric tonne.
You get on the train. It is crowded beyond all reason. You realize that not all human beings are identical, but they enough alike to tessellate. Through the forest of limbs and wobbling luggage you see the source of a warbling melody: a blind minstrel shaking a tambourine and singing a timeless tune from the hearts of the people in such a voice as calls to question the accepted theories of heightened acoustic awareness among the visually impaired. A saffron-robed saddhu squats in the hallway while seven small-town cousins huddle together, their closeness to one another made all the more urgent by the fact that they are hanging to the outside of the train. A sticky brown glob of fried dal falls on your head from the inattentive hands of a youngster fiddling with the tuning of his cellphone-radio up in the luggage racks. A smile beams towards you from between a tangle of sequin-studded jeans. "This is crowded train," the smile says, "you are seeing Real India!"
You arrive at the the terminus sometime the next afternoon. After fighting your way off the bus, repelling waves of maddened humanoid creatures who for some reason wish to board the sweat-rusted rattletrap without first allowing your escape, you burst forth into the city street and the blinding light of the Indian day. The throng is hardly any less dense, and are joined by a boisterous menagerie of camels, cows, and goats going whither they will at their own particular paces. You first cross paths with a wedding, where a single powdered transvestite leads a gaggle of flailing men who are far worse at dancing despite trying much, much harder. Cutting through the back alleys and jumping hopscotch-like around the open sewers and the piles of animal shit which have missed that half of the street, you make it to the next avenue, where a horde of drum-rattling and banner-hoisting men approach, signalling the vanguard of yet another utterly pointless political rally. "Wow, the Nationalist Progessive Aloo Paratha Party have snare drums!" you say, "I was wrong to be a Muslim Socialist all along."
The monsoon begins. There are torrents in the streets. As you struggle to make progress through the rushing channels it begins to not only rain with the power of the heavens, but also to rain coconuts. "What the fuck?!?!" You shout as you duck between the trajectories of the fuzzy but distinctly hard projectiles that are shattering against walls all around you and falling to be swept away by the currents forming eddies around your knees. A voice shouts through the pounding of water on metal roofs, and you see a man leaning out of a window. "Many coconuts are being thrown! Rejoice, sir! Surely we shall be safe from the floods this year!" You pause for a moment as a piece of driftwood floats by on the water that is rising to the top of your shins and wonder if you have time for sarcasm. "Doesn't it flood most years?" you ask with a smirk that is obscured, with the rest of your face, by drenched bangs. "Last year was bad. The Divine Mother was angry. This year, more coconuts will be thrown."
"You are lucky, sir! This is Real India!"
You spend the night stranded in a hotel, your laundry laid out in the hopes that the inevitable sweltering heat will dry them in time for your next nautical expedition to centers of public transport. There are roaches in the toilet. You are lucky; this means they haven't been eaten by mice living in the shower. The echoes of a thousand throat-clearings vibrate through the city. The Real India is purged of sputum.
Now you are on a bus. You take a seat. Somehow, a backpack can't fit comfortably on board but a used air-conditioner in a broken chicken-cage can. You cross hour after hour after empty brown fields. It is just brown, with ireegular outcrops of brown rock and brown farms. The monsoon is a thousand miles away, a thousand years ago, but the Suck, like God, is all-pervading. The weather is always terrible. You cower in the bone-slicing cold, flounder in the diluvian rains, or stew in the barbaric heat. Life moves in the bursts of heedless children, the walrus-like lounging of the men with their walrus-like moustaches, and in the interminable shuffle of the women engaged in "housework" carrying a pile of firewood across the poor land which looks increasingly like a desert. In the height of summer, countless piles of combustible brown cakes remind you that the earth is scorched and cow shit has become its only marketable commodity.
You reach a provincial crossing. A mere 20 buses pass through a week, yet there are 18 frenzied hawkers awaiting your arrival. All of them board the bus at once and scram "CUCUMBER! CUUUCUUUUMMMMMBEERRRSSSS!" All 18 vendors pass by. 5 cucumbers are sold. You decide, what the hell, to buy one. It is served in an old newspaper at $0.05 a pop. You are satisfied with the transaction and assume that people can now stop hollerin' about vegetables. You blink...you blink and no matter what kind of fruit or vegetable you have just purchased, the hawker whips out a bottle of red powder and coats your produce with the annual paprika production of a small Malayan isle. You claw your ears at the sound of a nearby mobile phone scratchily playing Hindi pop hits. There's always one. Then the bus's sound system turns on and drown out with an audio Uberblitzkrieg of its own, indistinguishable from the sound of a million distressed animals. This is particularly confusing, since the bus may actually contain distressed animals. A man with paan-rotted teeth shakes your hand and offers to host you for dinner and a night of rest at another, even more provincial crossing 50 miles into nowhere. As a Tata truck barrels headlong towards you and the bus swerves, only to narrowly miss a trio of buffaloes, he says "You must come at my house. You have taste the Real India!"
Seventy miles more and you are sure your ass bones have worn through your flesh and buried themselves somewhere in the seat "cushions". Finally you alight in a small village, and no more than a minute away sit the towering remnants of one of the mightiest empires to have ever ruled in this world. Your jar drops at the immense mass of stone and its exquisite detail, and wonder how the whole world has not come to see it. By a small subsidiary shrine you just make out the fringes of a conversation amongst people who have just noticed you.
"Noooo, noooo, you are too wrong! Loke, Stoke, And Two Smoking Barrels is too much better than the Reserwaar Dogs!"
"Have you heard the new Linkin Park?"
"Yes, he is a very good rapper, but I think he is almost like rock."
You can feel yourself gawping at the massive granite pinnacle which has loomed over the surrounding fields since before the invention of the words that are currently failing to come to you. You are unable to snap out of it, until you are interrupted by one of the garrulous Indian tourists. "Hello. Your name?" he asks as you half-listen. "My name is Some Bangalore Fucker" he says, or whatever. "Aaaahhh, come, come, my very touristic friend," he says with a hint of condescension as he himself stands beneath a placard of the State Tourism Ministry. "You must not see only the touristic sites. Come to Bangalore me with you. Can you have some cocaine together? I must show you the Real India!"
Awake now, my friend, from your journey through space and time and rejoin me in the present moment, for I have something I must tell you.... Don't come to fucking India. Seriously. What a pain in the ass. You are much better off staying at home. Might I recommend an alternative interest? Anime, perhaps? Here is Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India: by far the best way to travel in India is to sit on you lazy fucking ass, read my blog, and let me do the hard bits for you. And when I leave India, still yet you may read these words and in them find Guidance and Wisdom. Fear not, for though we know not what realms and planes we visit upon departure from the soil of Blessed India, we surely know there will be a Second Coming, when Ghostface Buddha walks upon these trails once more, and the Cow shall be sent to realms and planes where it belongs: that scorching, acidic Abyss.... my stomach.
But what have we learned here, if we have learned anything at all? Where in fact does the Real India lie, and is it Good? We find our answer harmoniously in accord with the wisdom of the Ancients. There is no Real India. Verily, all is but an illusion, for surely no god would really make a country this fucking weird. This country can only be the product of thousands of years under the yoke of the warped and deluded human mind.
I reverse my judgement. Do come to India, because the greatest surprise of all is that, for better or worse, no other country has been made like it.
First a note to my Indian readers: this is a labor of love; do not worry overmuch about the terms with which I describe your noble land to these Firangi worms.
I have begun penning a manifesto of sorts, a Compendium of Truth, you could say. Though I did not know it at the time, the first instalment of this work was my ethical treatise Ghostface Buddhism, which conclusively answered the age-old question "How ought Man to live?" Though no doubt ennobling, it did not answer the more wordly question that Ghostface Buddha has made it his life's work to address, "So how about that India?". I now proudly present to you Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India, also known as The Critique Of Pure India.
The Indian's view of the cosmos is highly deterministic; so too is any adventure in this country. There are but three paths your life can take here, depending upon the station of your birth; that is, how much money you've got when you splash out of the spiritual darkness of the heathen foreign womb into the motherly arms of the Indian subcontinent.
If you are of the spoiled, dumbass strain of the larger hominid species Homo Hippis, you will come to India and immediately sport "Indian" clothing that no South Asian person has worn since the age of the last Levitating Sages. You will find many other pseudo-hippies and form a herd. You may even mate. You will cross the dessicated land together from watering hole to watering hole: the timeless migration in search of Bob Marley, tabla lessons, and pancakes.
If you are a wealthy, over-leisured jackass, you will also form a herd, crossing the parched, poverty-ridden wastes in an air-conditioned bus from one repository of medieval sculpture to the next. Men in safari hats will teach you to recognize the esoteric figures of Hindu art, such as cows. Men in turbans will serve you tea. Weeks later in your well-appointed home you will look up from your self-soiled hands and your glossy copy of Vanity Fair and lay eyes on the reproduction Chola bronze you purchased at the Sai Krishna Antiques Emporium. You think to yourself, "I am well-travelled, and aye, well-learned." Suddenly, you are gripped by a moment of guilt and self-doubt. "No!" you exclaim inwardly as you feel a spot of seminal fluid on an open magazine page nearby. "Not the latest Foreign Affairs!".
The third path is the most treacherous. If you find yourself walking it, you are in many ways like Ghostface Buddha. You are of no great means, yet you make ends meet, and you have come to sample whatever India has to offer, except perhaps opium. And fucking paan. I just don't get that shit.
Close your eyes and travel with me. Now open your eyes because this will require some reading.
You arrive at the train station. There is an entire village of peasants residing on the platform. They arrived here two days ago, all sharing the top of two overloaded tractor-pulled grain wagons and a single donkey, and they have been here since, apparently waiting for the day for which they have train tickets. Most of the adults are permanently sleeping on tatty blankets while their insectoid multitudes of offspring crawl over them like logs. A handful are awake, opening mysterious cement-shipping sacks to produce from them all 5 pieces of the village's metal cookware and about a month's supply of loose barley. A handful of women have been sent around the city to random roadsides, offering to sell 500 leftover onions for $0.20 per metric tonne.
You get on the train. It is crowded beyond all reason. You realize that not all human beings are identical, but they enough alike to tessellate. Through the forest of limbs and wobbling luggage you see the source of a warbling melody: a blind minstrel shaking a tambourine and singing a timeless tune from the hearts of the people in such a voice as calls to question the accepted theories of heightened acoustic awareness among the visually impaired. A saffron-robed saddhu squats in the hallway while seven small-town cousins huddle together, their closeness to one another made all the more urgent by the fact that they are hanging to the outside of the train. A sticky brown glob of fried dal falls on your head from the inattentive hands of a youngster fiddling with the tuning of his cellphone-radio up in the luggage racks. A smile beams towards you from between a tangle of sequin-studded jeans. "This is crowded train," the smile says, "you are seeing Real India!"
You arrive at the the terminus sometime the next afternoon. After fighting your way off the bus, repelling waves of maddened humanoid creatures who for some reason wish to board the sweat-rusted rattletrap without first allowing your escape, you burst forth into the city street and the blinding light of the Indian day. The throng is hardly any less dense, and are joined by a boisterous menagerie of camels, cows, and goats going whither they will at their own particular paces. You first cross paths with a wedding, where a single powdered transvestite leads a gaggle of flailing men who are far worse at dancing despite trying much, much harder. Cutting through the back alleys and jumping hopscotch-like around the open sewers and the piles of animal shit which have missed that half of the street, you make it to the next avenue, where a horde of drum-rattling and banner-hoisting men approach, signalling the vanguard of yet another utterly pointless political rally. "Wow, the Nationalist Progessive Aloo Paratha Party have snare drums!" you say, "I was wrong to be a Muslim Socialist all along."
The monsoon begins. There are torrents in the streets. As you struggle to make progress through the rushing channels it begins to not only rain with the power of the heavens, but also to rain coconuts. "What the fuck?!?!" You shout as you duck between the trajectories of the fuzzy but distinctly hard projectiles that are shattering against walls all around you and falling to be swept away by the currents forming eddies around your knees. A voice shouts through the pounding of water on metal roofs, and you see a man leaning out of a window. "Many coconuts are being thrown! Rejoice, sir! Surely we shall be safe from the floods this year!" You pause for a moment as a piece of driftwood floats by on the water that is rising to the top of your shins and wonder if you have time for sarcasm. "Doesn't it flood most years?" you ask with a smirk that is obscured, with the rest of your face, by drenched bangs. "Last year was bad. The Divine Mother was angry. This year, more coconuts will be thrown."
"You are lucky, sir! This is Real India!"
You spend the night stranded in a hotel, your laundry laid out in the hopes that the inevitable sweltering heat will dry them in time for your next nautical expedition to centers of public transport. There are roaches in the toilet. You are lucky; this means they haven't been eaten by mice living in the shower. The echoes of a thousand throat-clearings vibrate through the city. The Real India is purged of sputum.
Now you are on a bus. You take a seat. Somehow, a backpack can't fit comfortably on board but a used air-conditioner in a broken chicken-cage can. You cross hour after hour after empty brown fields. It is just brown, with ireegular outcrops of brown rock and brown farms. The monsoon is a thousand miles away, a thousand years ago, but the Suck, like God, is all-pervading. The weather is always terrible. You cower in the bone-slicing cold, flounder in the diluvian rains, or stew in the barbaric heat. Life moves in the bursts of heedless children, the walrus-like lounging of the men with their walrus-like moustaches, and in the interminable shuffle of the women engaged in "housework" carrying a pile of firewood across the poor land which looks increasingly like a desert. In the height of summer, countless piles of combustible brown cakes remind you that the earth is scorched and cow shit has become its only marketable commodity.
You reach a provincial crossing. A mere 20 buses pass through a week, yet there are 18 frenzied hawkers awaiting your arrival. All of them board the bus at once and scram "CUCUMBER! CUUUCUUUUMMMMMBEERRRSSSS!" All 18 vendors pass by. 5 cucumbers are sold. You decide, what the hell, to buy one. It is served in an old newspaper at $0.05 a pop. You are satisfied with the transaction and assume that people can now stop hollerin' about vegetables. You blink...you blink and no matter what kind of fruit or vegetable you have just purchased, the hawker whips out a bottle of red powder and coats your produce with the annual paprika production of a small Malayan isle. You claw your ears at the sound of a nearby mobile phone scratchily playing Hindi pop hits. There's always one. Then the bus's sound system turns on and drown out with an audio Uberblitzkrieg of its own, indistinguishable from the sound of a million distressed animals. This is particularly confusing, since the bus may actually contain distressed animals. A man with paan-rotted teeth shakes your hand and offers to host you for dinner and a night of rest at another, even more provincial crossing 50 miles into nowhere. As a Tata truck barrels headlong towards you and the bus swerves, only to narrowly miss a trio of buffaloes, he says "You must come at my house. You have taste the Real India!"
Seventy miles more and you are sure your ass bones have worn through your flesh and buried themselves somewhere in the seat "cushions". Finally you alight in a small village, and no more than a minute away sit the towering remnants of one of the mightiest empires to have ever ruled in this world. Your jar drops at the immense mass of stone and its exquisite detail, and wonder how the whole world has not come to see it. By a small subsidiary shrine you just make out the fringes of a conversation amongst people who have just noticed you.
"Noooo, noooo, you are too wrong! Loke, Stoke, And Two Smoking Barrels is too much better than the Reserwaar Dogs!"
"Have you heard the new Linkin Park?"
"Yes, he is a very good rapper, but I think he is almost like rock."
You can feel yourself gawping at the massive granite pinnacle which has loomed over the surrounding fields since before the invention of the words that are currently failing to come to you. You are unable to snap out of it, until you are interrupted by one of the garrulous Indian tourists. "Hello. Your name?" he asks as you half-listen. "My name is Some Bangalore Fucker" he says, or whatever. "Aaaahhh, come, come, my very touristic friend," he says with a hint of condescension as he himself stands beneath a placard of the State Tourism Ministry. "You must not see only the touristic sites. Come to Bangalore me with you. Can you have some cocaine together? I must show you the Real India!"
Awake now, my friend, from your journey through space and time and rejoin me in the present moment, for I have something I must tell you.... Don't come to fucking India. Seriously. What a pain in the ass. You are much better off staying at home. Might I recommend an alternative interest? Anime, perhaps? Here is Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India: by far the best way to travel in India is to sit on you lazy fucking ass, read my blog, and let me do the hard bits for you. And when I leave India, still yet you may read these words and in them find Guidance and Wisdom. Fear not, for though we know not what realms and planes we visit upon departure from the soil of Blessed India, we surely know there will be a Second Coming, when Ghostface Buddha walks upon these trails once more, and the Cow shall be sent to realms and planes where it belongs: that scorching, acidic Abyss.... my stomach.
But what have we learned here, if we have learned anything at all? Where in fact does the Real India lie, and is it Good? We find our answer harmoniously in accord with the wisdom of the Ancients. There is no Real India. Verily, all is but an illusion, for surely no god would really make a country this fucking weird. This country can only be the product of thousands of years under the yoke of the warped and deluded human mind.
I reverse my judgement. Do come to India, because the greatest surprise of all is that, for better or worse, no other country has been made like it.
Apr 15, 2010
Ghostface Buddhism
Sitting beneath Bodhgaya's great bodhi tree, nurturer of Enlightenment, I realized...There is a Middle Way. My friends, I tell you these things:
Do not believe anything because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. If you don't listen to grandpa's senile ramblings about he almost became a shortstop for the Chicago White Sox at the dinner table, nor should you give heed to his exhortations that on every second Wednesday of January the family must dress up as lumberjacks and roast a pig in waist-high snow. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many, 'cause bitches talking shit. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books, especially if you are Mormon. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders; life does not hand out rainbow stickers for providing the convenient answer with proper punctuation. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then ask Ghostface Buddha 'bout that shit and he will tell you what is what.
Know this first about your tutor: I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of mere weevils crawling on the flesh of those who care not a whit for the so-called legitimacy of their authority.
I observe the treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles fit for building only a house for bitchly bitch-ass bitches.
I look upon the finest silk as naught but a fragile encumbrance; a vault of ribbons around a hoard of booty.
I see the myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, probably infested by strange insectoid creatures bent on invading the Earth.
I perceive the teachings of the world as the illusions of men overly fond of tweed.
I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, a babbling creek in a luminous reverie, a flowering kangaroo in an acid trip, an anal bead in a non sequitir.
I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, assuming that mountains have pillars, like maybe when stalactites and stalagmites meet in a cave and form a pillar. Or like, if a stalactite grows all the way up from the ground and reaches the ceiling, that would be a pillar too. Wait, stalactite is the hanging one? G for ground, C for ceiling? Or is it lefty-loosey? I see meditation as unaffected by the Coriolis effect.
I look upon the judgments of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, in that they have a tendency to crush and/or ignite small villages, and the rise and fall of belief as traces left by the four seasons, in that both are overworn metaphors.
Before all else, one must know...
The Four Ignoble Falsehoods
I set forth in my teaching the following doctrine:
The Four Noble Truths
The Eightfold Path
1. Right Understanding of the following facts:
2. Right Determination to:
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Anatomy
8. Right Miscellanea
The Singlefold Glob of Wisdom
Be thee not a player-hater nor a poseur. To hell with snake-ass motherfucks who want to tell you what to do and what to enjoy. Be careful not to leave the oven on too long; nobody likes an over-crisp brownie. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a whale to enter the Kingdom of Termites. Dance in thought with your third eye attuned to the heavens, your second eye at the marked emergency exits, and your first eye on the hottie in the tight jeans. The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Look Life in eyes, perhaps crack a knuckle or two, and say "HO, YOU BEEN WORKING FOR ME? GET BACK OUT THERE AND BRING ME WHAT'S MINE. AND CURLY FRIES." At that moment you have pimped Life itself.
This is the teaching of the Ghost-faced Buddha. Spread the word.
Do not believe anything because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. If you don't listen to grandpa's senile ramblings about he almost became a shortstop for the Chicago White Sox at the dinner table, nor should you give heed to his exhortations that on every second Wednesday of January the family must dress up as lumberjacks and roast a pig in waist-high snow. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many, 'cause bitches talking shit. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books, especially if you are Mormon. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders; life does not hand out rainbow stickers for providing the convenient answer with proper punctuation. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then ask Ghostface Buddha 'bout that shit and he will tell you what is what.
Know this first about your tutor: I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of mere weevils crawling on the flesh of those who care not a whit for the so-called legitimacy of their authority.
I observe the treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles fit for building only a house for bitchly bitch-ass bitches.
I look upon the finest silk as naught but a fragile encumbrance; a vault of ribbons around a hoard of booty.
I see the myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, probably infested by strange insectoid creatures bent on invading the Earth.
I perceive the teachings of the world as the illusions of men overly fond of tweed.
I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, a babbling creek in a luminous reverie, a flowering kangaroo in an acid trip, an anal bead in a non sequitir.
I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, assuming that mountains have pillars, like maybe when stalactites and stalagmites meet in a cave and form a pillar. Or like, if a stalactite grows all the way up from the ground and reaches the ceiling, that would be a pillar too. Wait, stalactite is the hanging one? G for ground, C for ceiling? Or is it lefty-loosey? I see meditation as unaffected by the Coriolis effect.
I look upon the judgments of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, in that they have a tendency to crush and/or ignite small villages, and the rise and fall of belief as traces left by the four seasons, in that both are overworn metaphors.
Before all else, one must know...
The Four Ignoble Falsehoods
1. The color of a person's skin is an indication of that person's ability to pilot a zeppelin.Know these and think on them well, then turn your mind to the higher understanding.
2. Blueberry cobbler is best served out of the refrigerator.
3. The cow is anything other than an obese, ruminating poop factory with a hyperinflated sense of self worth and a tendency to get wet leaves tangled in its genital hairs.
4. Love.
I set forth in my teaching the following doctrine:
The Four Noble Truths
1. All Things and Experiences are marked by a quantum of Suffering, Disharmony, and Frustration; that is to say, Suckage.
2. The arising of Suckage comes from Life being a Bitch.
3. To achieve the cessation of Suckage, pimp Life, the above-named Bitch.
4. The way to pimp that Bitch is walking the Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path
1. Right Understanding of the following facts:
Life's a bitch (The Four Noble Truths).
Everything is impermanent and changes. To wit, the entity once manifested under the names "Puff Daddy" and "P. Diddy".
There is no separate and individual self. This is an illusion. We are one. I am an adolescent mallard. You are the Governator. Together we are Will Smith.
2. Right Determination to:
Give up what is some weak-ass shit.
Undertake what is the illest.
Abandon thoughts that have to do with bringing suffering to any conscious living being.
Conveniently, any conscious being that crosses a real OG can be considered walking dead.
3. Right Speech
What's the use of the truth if you can't tell a lie sometimes?
Abstain from slander. Man up and commit libel. If you ain't willing to put your defamatory remarks to the written record, you don't deserve to be defaming at all.
Abstain from obsequious and flattering speech; give your every utterance the kindness or malice it deserves. For instance "Madam, pardon the intrusion, but would you like white or brown sugar with your tea and crumpets, you domineering banshee harlot?"
If you use the word "literally" to precede a figurative statement, you are literally a goddamn idiot.
Never use a congregative adverb prior to a transmutative prerogation. Thus, "Cry such malevolence! Cocksure be either they yet none a ploughsman!" should be rendered as a crescendo of ululations, or better yet, ululizzles.
4. Right Action
Hustle and ball.
No snitching.
5. Right Livelihood
Engage in the trade for which you are most suited.
If you are a lazy bastard, find a job appropriate for lazy bastards and spare your human brothers and sisters the pain of moving you to fulfill your offices.
There is no assignment of labor by one's birth into hereditary castes, save for lute-players and beekeepers. If these should wed, the punishment is death.
6. Right Effort
You may foster iniquity, so long as you destroy inanity.
7. Right Anatomy
The buttocks should be be firm but not hard. A man's chest should be larger than his nipples; a woman's foot longer than her nose.
There should be exactly seven internal organs; these should be chosen with care.
8. Right Miscellanea
Nothing is made less interesting by being set on fire.
The full path to Enlightenment is actually found in the Singlefold Glob Of Wisdom.
The Singlefold Glob of Wisdom
Be thee not a player-hater nor a poseur. To hell with snake-ass motherfucks who want to tell you what to do and what to enjoy. Be careful not to leave the oven on too long; nobody likes an over-crisp brownie. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a whale to enter the Kingdom of Termites. Dance in thought with your third eye attuned to the heavens, your second eye at the marked emergency exits, and your first eye on the hottie in the tight jeans. The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Look Life in eyes, perhaps crack a knuckle or two, and say "HO, YOU BEEN WORKING FOR ME? GET BACK OUT THERE AND BRING ME WHAT'S MINE. AND CURLY FRIES." At that moment you have pimped Life itself.
This is the teaching of the Ghost-faced Buddha. Spread the word.
Mar 16, 2010
Gangaikondacholapuram
The History of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
There is a mighty temple of Shiva in the ruins of the city they call "the town of the Chola king who conquered the Ganges", Gangaikondacholapuram. Now deserted, all that remains is the temple itself, its precinct walls, and the village of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram was for a long time the capital of the Chola empire at its peak, when its northern frontier lay in the Ganges basin and it dominated southern Asia. From Gangaikondacholapuram the emperors even launched expeditions of pillage and conquest as far as Burma by land and Indonesia by sea, whose spoils added to the wealth of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Getting to Gangaikondacholapuram
Lying in a small village in the middle of a rural delta where there isn't a whole lot to see besides rice, I was forced to make do with local transportation. I walked into the Kumbakonam bus station and asked "Excuse me, which bus to Gangaikondacholapuram?"
"Gangaikondacholapuram?" the inquiry official asked.
"Yes, Gangaikondacholapuram" I answered.
"Go to Gangaikondacholapuram you take bus to Anniyaikarai then you take bus Anniyaikarai to Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Thanks", I offered, assuming the conversation was over.
"...You want Gangaikondacholapuram?"
As slowly as I could, I uttered "Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Gangaikondacholapuram this bus."
I took the bus and rode it across an unchanging expanse of paddies all the way to Anyakarai, or whatever it's called, a village squashed on an island between two dams in the delta. I braced myself for another tedious inquiry and raised my eyebrow to capture the attention of a passerby who looked like he might know how to get to Gangaikondacholapuram. He didn't. I asked another man "Gangaikondacholapuram?", waving my finger at the the chain of buses struggling to maneuver in the tight confines between the dams. He merely shrugged and said something which I believe means "I only speak Tamil, but Gangaikondacholapuram is that way."
Just then I heard a voice. "Gangaikondacholapuram?" it beckoned. I turned to see who had uttered the word 'Gangaikondacholapuram'. It was clearly meant for me. You don't say "Gangaikondacholapuram" in casual conversation. It was a rickshaw-wallah and he took me to Gangaikondacholapuram without any fuss.
Visiting Gangaikondacholapuram
We arrived in Gangaikondacholapuram in the late afternoon, late enough for Gangaikondacholapuram's famous temple to open after Tamil Nadu's customary sleepless afternoon siesta. "So this is Gangaikondacholapuram..." I mused.
On all sides there was litGangaikondacholapuramtle to be seen except the odd row of coconut trees lining the Gangaikondacholapuram edge of a rice paddy, and the widely spaced briGangaikondacholapuramck and bamboo cottages that occupy the land once part of great GangaikondacholapuramGangaiGangaikondacholapuramkondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
Gangaikondacholapuram
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
!!$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$!!
"Captain, sir, we can't stop it! The Gangaikondacholapuram....it's escaped the Gangaikondacholapuramcontainment field! It's in our brainapurams....OH GOD... GANGAIKONDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHGHHGHHHHHH"
"Lieutenant Smith! Lieutenant ondacholasmith...my God... Someone start the override!"
"Which override sir!?!?"
"The Gangaikond.....NO, NO....start the Snoop Doggapuram, the Snoop Dogg override, before it's too late!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 187
GANGAIKONDACHOLAPURAM SNOOP DOGG OVERRIDE
----Tha Gangaikondacholapuramshiznat--
##Poppin, stoppin, Gangaikondacholapuram like a rabbit ##
##When I take the Gangaikondacholapuram ya know I gota ta have it ##
##I lay back in Gangaikond retain myself ##
##Think about the shit, and I'm thinkin wealth ##
##How can I makes my Gangaikondacholapura ##
##And how should I make that Gangaikigga straight slip ##
##Set trip, Ganga get him for his grip ##
##as I kond around the corner, now i'm on a-nother ##
##mission, cholapuram, wishin, upon a star ##
##Gangaikondacholapuram with the caviar ##
##In the back of the limo no demo, this is the real ##
##Breakin niggaz down like Kondachola Holyfield, chill ##
##to the next Episode ##
##I make money, and I really don't love hoes ##
##Tell ya the truthuram, I swoop in the Coupeuram ##
##I used to sell looturam, I used to shoot hoopsuram ##
##But now I, make, hits, every single day ##
##With, that nigga, the diggy Dr. Dre ##
##So lay back in the cut, motherfucker 'fore you get shot ##
##It's 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin cop ##
----------------------------------------
"Sir! Listen, the Gangaikondacholapuram, the override's working!"
"Lieutenant Smith, is that you? Can you speak? Can you say it without..."
"Sir, I can say...I can say...not that town!"
"Try saying something else."
"Thiruvananthapuram."
"No, one with no shared syllables...we have to know it isn't dormant."
"Captain, I'll try my best...Tiruchchirappalli."
"....we did it, lieutenant, we did it!"
"Thank God!"
"No. Thank Snoop Dogg."
Gangaikondacholapuram is a trife bitch'puram. Represent your motherfucking set. Peace.
Gangaikondacholapuram
There is a mighty temple of Shiva in the ruins of the city they call "the town of the Chola king who conquered the Ganges", Gangaikondacholapuram. Now deserted, all that remains is the temple itself, its precinct walls, and the village of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram was for a long time the capital of the Chola empire at its peak, when its northern frontier lay in the Ganges basin and it dominated southern Asia. From Gangaikondacholapuram the emperors even launched expeditions of pillage and conquest as far as Burma by land and Indonesia by sea, whose spoils added to the wealth of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Getting to Gangaikondacholapuram
Lying in a small village in the middle of a rural delta where there isn't a whole lot to see besides rice, I was forced to make do with local transportation. I walked into the Kumbakonam bus station and asked "Excuse me, which bus to Gangaikondacholapuram?"
"Gangaikondacholapuram?" the inquiry official asked.
"Yes, Gangaikondacholapuram" I answered.
"Go to Gangaikondacholapuram you take bus to Anniyaikarai then you take bus Anniyaikarai to Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Thanks", I offered, assuming the conversation was over.
"...You want Gangaikondacholapuram?"
As slowly as I could, I uttered "Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Gangaikondacholapuram this bus."
I took the bus and rode it across an unchanging expanse of paddies all the way to Anyakarai, or whatever it's called, a village squashed on an island between two dams in the delta. I braced myself for another tedious inquiry and raised my eyebrow to capture the attention of a passerby who looked like he might know how to get to Gangaikondacholapuram. He didn't. I asked another man "Gangaikondacholapuram?", waving my finger at the the chain of buses struggling to maneuver in the tight confines between the dams. He merely shrugged and said something which I believe means "I only speak Tamil, but Gangaikondacholapuram is that way."
Just then I heard a voice. "Gangaikondacholapuram?" it beckoned. I turned to see who had uttered the word 'Gangaikondacholapuram'. It was clearly meant for me. You don't say "Gangaikondacholapuram" in casual conversation. It was a rickshaw-wallah and he took me to Gangaikondacholapuram without any fuss.
Visiting Gangaikondacholapuram
We arrived in Gangaikondacholapuram in the late afternoon, late enough for Gangaikondacholapuram's famous temple to open after Tamil Nadu's customary sleepless afternoon siesta. "So this is Gangaikondacholapuram..." I mused.
On all sides there was litGangaikondacholapuramtle to be seen except the odd row of coconut trees lining the Gangaikondacholapuram edge of a rice paddy, and the widely spaced briGangaikondacholapuramck and bamboo cottages that occupy the land once part of great GangaikondacholapuramGangaiGangaikondacholapuramkondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
Gangaikondacholapuram
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
!!$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$!!
"Captain, sir, we can't stop it! The Gangaikondacholapuram....it's escaped the Gangaikondacholapuramcontainment field! It's in our brainapurams....OH GOD... GANGAIKONDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHGHHGHHHHHH"
"Lieutenant Smith! Lieutenant ondacholasmith...my God... Someone start the override!"
"Which override sir!?!?"
"The Gangaikond.....NO, NO....start the Snoop Doggapuram, the Snoop Dogg override, before it's too late!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 187
GANGAIKONDACHOLAPURAM SNOOP DOGG OVERRIDE
----Tha Gangaikondacholapuramshiznat--
##Poppin, stoppin, Gangaikondacholapuram like a rabbit ##
##When I take the Gangaikondacholapuram ya know I gota ta have it ##
##I lay back in Gangaikond retain myself ##
##Think about the shit, and I'm thinkin wealth ##
##How can I makes my Gangaikondacholapura ##
##And how should I make that Gangaikigga straight slip ##
##Set trip, Ganga get him for his grip ##
##as I kond around the corner, now i'm on a-nother ##
##mission, cholapuram, wishin, upon a star ##
##Gangaikondacholapuram with the caviar ##
##In the back of the limo no demo, this is the real ##
##Breakin niggaz down like Kondachola Holyfield, chill ##
##to the next Episode ##
##I make money, and I really don't love hoes ##
##Tell ya the truthuram, I swoop in the Coupeuram ##
##I used to sell looturam, I used to shoot hoopsuram ##
##But now I, make, hits, every single day ##
##With, that nigga, the diggy Dr. Dre ##
##So lay back in the cut, motherfucker 'fore you get shot ##
##It's 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin cop ##
----------------------------------------
"Sir! Listen, the Gangaikondacholapuram, the override's working!"
"Lieutenant Smith, is that you? Can you speak? Can you say it without..."
"Sir, I can say...I can say...not that town!"
"Try saying something else."
"Thiruvananthapuram."
"No, one with no shared syllables...we have to know it isn't dormant."
"Captain, I'll try my best...Tiruchchirappalli."
"....we did it, lieutenant, we did it!"
"Thank God!"
"No. Thank Snoop Dogg."
Gangaikondacholapuram is a trife bitch'puram. Represent your motherfucking set. Peace.
Mar 1, 2010
India Haiku, Vol. 3
Vast India,
home to one billion souls
And that's just the goats
Before marriage,
ask young bride "Will dowry
have cable TV?"
Why bother
owning buffaloes? Two words:
Free ketamine
South Indian food.
You want round rice bullshit
or square rice bullshit?
Steel bars for sale!
Steel! Please consider buying
steel bars from us.
Thiruvananthapuram.
Dravidian languages,
ill-suited for haiku
"Thali": set lunch,
intestinal roulette, play
for thirty rupees
Never ever
stand down the grade from a
peeing elephant
Hey sexy,
what's under that wet lungi?
Another lungi.
Kerala
All the evidence you need
Karl Marx loves Jesus
This cement
made using robots? Truly,
Astounding.
Mumbai: come for
the urban squalor, stay for
the train bombings.
Islam teaches:
Pray, fast, shave just the mustache;
it'll look great.
Just when you thought
your penis was safe, someone
goes and pinches it
Ketchup on
egg sandwiches; paprika
on sliced pineapple
Hey, did it hurt?
...
...
...
When your soul was reborn
in this world of pain?
I hear you have
a brand new India. Hope you
kept the warranty
home to one billion souls
And that's just the goats
Before marriage,
ask young bride "Will dowry
have cable TV?"
Why bother
owning buffaloes? Two words:
Free ketamine
South Indian food.
You want round rice bullshit
or square rice bullshit?
Steel bars for sale!
Steel! Please consider buying
steel bars from us.
Thiruvananthapuram.
Dravidian languages,
ill-suited for haiku
"Thali": set lunch,
intestinal roulette, play
for thirty rupees
Never ever
stand down the grade from a
peeing elephant
Hey sexy,
what's under that wet lungi?
Another lungi.
Kerala
All the evidence you need
Karl Marx loves Jesus
This cement
made using robots? Truly,
Astounding.
Mumbai: come for
the urban squalor, stay for
the train bombings.
Islam teaches:
Pray, fast, shave just the mustache;
it'll look great.
Just when you thought
your penis was safe, someone
goes and pinches it
Ketchup on
egg sandwiches; paprika
on sliced pineapple
Hey, did it hurt?
...
...
...
When your soul was reborn
in this world of pain?
I hear you have
a brand new India. Hope you
kept the warranty
Jan 31, 2010
Lab Report
Introduction
Research has established that Indians are capable of squeezing hundreds of individuals into a train carriage or bus, and that other forms of transportation are often similarly overloaded (G. Buddha, 2009). Unfortunately for the state of science, to date little research has been directed to quantifying the number of persons Indians may fit in a jeep. The most popular jeep-like vehicle in India is the Tata Sumo, a 4-door off-road vehicle.
Research Question
How many Indians can fit in one Tata Sumo?
Note that here it is necessary to define the phrase "fit in". By some Indian definitions this would encompass individuals hanging on top of or from the sides of the exterior of the vehicle. Colloquially, however, this definition is rarely applied to jeeps as in the field jeep operators are less apt to permit this means of transport as are bus, train, and rickshaw operators. The distinction also arises of whether or not the doors are open, as jeep overcrowding has been shown to sometime prevent the proper closure of the side doors and rear hatch (henceforth "the doors"). In this experiment we shall use the definition suggested in the unpublished paper "Vehicle Door Closing In The Indian Field Environment" (G. Buddha, 2010), which is as follows: a vehicle door shall be considered closed if it is functionally closed at the 95th percentile of maximum theoretical closure; that is to say, if the door is ajar no more than 5% of its total swinging arc.
The question we wish to answer therefore is "How many Indians may be transported by a statistically significant distance while confined within a single Tata Sumo with its doors ajar no more than 5% of their opening arc?"
Hypothesis
Allowing for the extraordinary cramming abilities of Indian transport sysems, and the apparent designed capacity of 8 passengers, we hypthesize that no more than 17 Indians can fit within a single Tata Sumo.
Materials
20 Indian rupees
1 Tata Sumo
Method
We shall purchase passage aboard a Tata Sumo. While aboard the Tata Sumo, we shall periodically count the total number of passengers therein.
Data
Table 1.1: Number of Passengers Within Tata Sumo
Analysis
The total number of passengers almost immediately exceeded our estimate. For the duration of the journey after departure and before entering the limits of the destination city, the data shows there was at any time in excess of 20 people in the jeep. The figure peaked, on two occasions, at 26 people.
Conclusions
We are forced to accept that our hypothesis was greatly in error, and that Indians may cram at least 26 people in a jeep.
The design of our experiment has, however, revealed a number of flaws. Though we have now critically revised our knowledge of the capacity of Indian jeeps, we have failed in any way to satisfactorily establish the true maximum level of Jeep cramming. Due to the frailty of the human observer, no attempt was made to experimentally add more Indians to the jeep.
We are also forced to acknowledge that the observer was not himself an Indian, and thus may have introduced a confounding variable. We speculate that as the ratio of Indians to total passengers approaches 1, the total capacity of the jeep approaches infinity. More research is clearly needed.
Though we have failed to arrive at a complete understanding of Indian jeep dynamics, we have demonstrated the potential scope and urgency of further experiments. The field of Indovolumetrics is as yet a young science, but no doubt holds great value in mankind's everlasting pursuit of knowledge.
This article will appear in no peer-reviewed journals, because Ghostface Buddha has no peers
Research has established that Indians are capable of squeezing hundreds of individuals into a train carriage or bus, and that other forms of transportation are often similarly overloaded (G. Buddha, 2009). Unfortunately for the state of science, to date little research has been directed to quantifying the number of persons Indians may fit in a jeep. The most popular jeep-like vehicle in India is the Tata Sumo, a 4-door off-road vehicle.
Research Question
How many Indians can fit in one Tata Sumo?
Note that here it is necessary to define the phrase "fit in". By some Indian definitions this would encompass individuals hanging on top of or from the sides of the exterior of the vehicle. Colloquially, however, this definition is rarely applied to jeeps as in the field jeep operators are less apt to permit this means of transport as are bus, train, and rickshaw operators. The distinction also arises of whether or not the doors are open, as jeep overcrowding has been shown to sometime prevent the proper closure of the side doors and rear hatch (henceforth "the doors"). In this experiment we shall use the definition suggested in the unpublished paper "Vehicle Door Closing In The Indian Field Environment" (G. Buddha, 2010), which is as follows: a vehicle door shall be considered closed if it is functionally closed at the 95th percentile of maximum theoretical closure; that is to say, if the door is ajar no more than 5% of its total swinging arc.
The question we wish to answer therefore is "How many Indians may be transported by a statistically significant distance while confined within a single Tata Sumo with its doors ajar no more than 5% of their opening arc?"
Hypothesis
Allowing for the extraordinary cramming abilities of Indian transport sysems, and the apparent designed capacity of 8 passengers, we hypthesize that no more than 17 Indians can fit within a single Tata Sumo.
Materials
20 Indian rupees
1 Tata Sumo
Method
We shall purchase passage aboard a Tata Sumo. While aboard the Tata Sumo, we shall periodically count the total number of passengers therein.
Data
Table 1.1: Number of Passengers Within Tata Sumo
Column A = Observation #.
Column B = Number of passengers.
Col. A...............Col. B
1....................12
2,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,15
3....................17
4,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,21
5....................23
6,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,25
7....................26
8,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,24
9....................25
10,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,26
11...................20
12,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,18
13...................15
14,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,7
15....................0
Analysis
The total number of passengers almost immediately exceeded our estimate. For the duration of the journey after departure and before entering the limits of the destination city, the data shows there was at any time in excess of 20 people in the jeep. The figure peaked, on two occasions, at 26 people.
Conclusions
We are forced to accept that our hypothesis was greatly in error, and that Indians may cram at least 26 people in a jeep.
The design of our experiment has, however, revealed a number of flaws. Though we have now critically revised our knowledge of the capacity of Indian jeeps, we have failed in any way to satisfactorily establish the true maximum level of Jeep cramming. Due to the frailty of the human observer, no attempt was made to experimentally add more Indians to the jeep.
We are also forced to acknowledge that the observer was not himself an Indian, and thus may have introduced a confounding variable. We speculate that as the ratio of Indians to total passengers approaches 1, the total capacity of the jeep approaches infinity. More research is clearly needed.
Though we have failed to arrive at a complete understanding of Indian jeep dynamics, we have demonstrated the potential scope and urgency of further experiments. The field of Indovolumetrics is as yet a young science, but no doubt holds great value in mankind's everlasting pursuit of knowledge.
This article will appear in no peer-reviewed journals, because Ghostface Buddha has no peers
Jan 4, 2010
Resolutions
During the many hours I spent lingering at the Golden Temple on New Year's Eve, I used some of the time to finalize my list of New Year's resolutions. These are all completely serious, feasible, and I consider all of these to be binding.
To leave India having learned something...but like, really learned something, you know?
To strive to speak the truth. I will keep it real no matter how real it gets.
To consume at least 10 liters of chai per month. (Perhaps this one is a bit too easy).
To achieve minimal competence in at least one Indian language. "Hinglish"(Indian English) doesn't count.
Tocivilize the pagan masses promote understanding between mutually misunderstood cultures.
To commit at least one act that is somehow subversive to the interests of the state of Pakistan.
To spread the spiritual teachings of hip-hop lyrics to as many places and mystical traditions as possible.
To uphold the same standards of friendship, respect, and so on as I would at home.
To shake my fist at the heavens with such fury that any god who crosses me shall tremble in his/her/its amorphous boots.
To set foot inside no marble shop nor purchase a miniature painting.
To commit at least one act sufficiently bizarre as to make a complete, street-clogging spectacle of myself (but on purpose).
To act out of a spirit of equality and fairness to all men. A cow, however, is nothing but a walking milkshake factory with an over-active butthole, and shall be treated as such.
To see this trip through to the finish. No. Matter. What.
To leave India having learned something...but like, really learned something, you know?
To strive to speak the truth. I will keep it real no matter how real it gets.
To consume at least 10 liters of chai per month. (Perhaps this one is a bit too easy).
To achieve minimal competence in at least one Indian language. "Hinglish"(Indian English) doesn't count.
To
To commit at least one act that is somehow subversive to the interests of the state of Pakistan.
To spread the spiritual teachings of hip-hop lyrics to as many places and mystical traditions as possible.
To uphold the same standards of friendship, respect, and so on as I would at home.
To shake my fist at the heavens with such fury that any god who crosses me shall tremble in his/her/its amorphous boots.
To set foot inside no marble shop nor purchase a miniature painting.
To commit at least one act sufficiently bizarre as to make a complete, street-clogging spectacle of myself (but on purpose).
To act out of a spirit of equality and fairness to all men. A cow, however, is nothing but a walking milkshake factory with an over-active butthole, and shall be treated as such.
To see this trip through to the finish. No. Matter. What.
Dec 25, 2009
I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
With no puja bells ringing or Filmi singing
Pounding from tuk-tuks on the go
I'm dreaming of a white...wait
naw naw fuck that shit let's keep it on the real
I'm loving tropical Christmas
With every Christmas post G Buddha writes
I feel my days are merry and bright
And remember that win-ter in America bites
Fuck dreaming of a white Christmas
I'm sipping lassis by my pil-low
I'll be pimp juice smuggling and sari snuggling
While you're frozen balls-deep in snow
So may all your chump-ass Christmases be white
मेर्री फुकिंग क्रिसमस
PEACE
Dec 22, 2009
Indian Rap Names
Indian Rap Names Available
Infamous Ruffian B.I.G.
Ice Lassi
Deputy Ticket Inspectah Deck
Ol' Dirty Brahmin
50 Paise
MC "Can't Touch This" Dalit
G-Unit Vitrified Tiles Mfg. Subdivision
Method-wallah
Malnourished Joe
Gorkha Boy
Mos Very Def Today, Good Sir
Jain-Z
Dr. Drenambooridipadajee
Pariah Doggy Dogg
Public Health Enemy
Utterly Ludacris
C.W.A (Cooliez With Attitude)
Indian Rap Names Already Taken
Immortal Technique
Brother Ali
Korrupt
Indian Rap Names You'll Have To Kill Me For
Ghostface Buddha
Infamous Ruffian B.I.G.
Ice Lassi
Deputy Ticket Inspectah Deck
Ol' Dirty Brahmin
50 Paise
MC "Can't Touch This" Dalit
G-Unit Vitrified Tiles Mfg. Subdivision
Method-wallah
Malnourished Joe
Gorkha Boy
Mos Very Def Today, Good Sir
Jain-Z
Dr. Drenambooridipadajee
Pariah Doggy Dogg
Public Health Enemy
Utterly Ludacris
C.W.A (Cooliez With Attitude)
Indian Rap Names Already Taken
Immortal Technique
Brother Ali
Korrupt
Indian Rap Names You'll Have To Kill Me For
Ghostface Buddha
Nov 24, 2009
Goat. Brain. Curry.
I read the menu. I was about to order the palak paneer, chunks of unfermented cheese in a mildly spiced spinach sauce. Then I saw it. There was 'Brain Curry', and there was no backing down. "Excuse me," I asked "what is the Brain Curry?"
The waiter shrugged, then attempted to jolt his memory and hesitantly described "It is a gravy, made first with tomato sauce and some masalas." Fabulous, we've determined that the dish falls within the broad parameters in which hundreds of barely-related meals are called 'curry'.
"No, I mean the 'brain'. What is it?" He shrugged again, curled his lips and shook his head. A great mystery, no doubt. "The BRAIN" I said, smacking upon my own in frustration. "Is this thing?" I asked impatiently, cradling my cranium, shaking my skull with my hands to draw his fleeting attentions thence. "This thing we are supposed to have in our heads?!" I sputtered as his eyes glazed over yet again.
He missed the insult. "Oh yes, is brain!" he recovered, eyes bright with pride.
I concealed my exasperation to speak with the utmost clarity. "OK then, I'll have the brains."
"You are wanting brain curry?" he asked, eyes squinting askance.
I thrust my arms out over the table and groaned "Braaaaaiiiiinnnnssss", then set my stare upon him in anticipation of his next witless remark. It was to the point.
"Brain curry?"
"YES...and a chai."
"Chai? You want Indian tea?"
You have to be fucking kidding me.
By this point the rest of the staff was taking some interest in my dining. I was the only customer, an odd foreigner with a pile of stained notebooks asking to be fed brains. The manager and other waiters, all Punjabis, took frequent breaks from listening to their unusually tolerable pop music to watch me scrawl in my notes. Sometimes they even ventured over to my table to read over my shoulder, only to be thwarted by my poor penmanship and the oblique manner in which I typically malign Indian cities. After a considerable wait, my Rajasthani waiter arrived with my chai.
Though I may as well have asked a blind Cambodian orphan in semaphore, I queried "Excuse me, from which animal is the brain?" He did not comprehend. I decided to break it down into multiple-choice. "The animal: is it sheep brain? Goat brain? ...Chicken?" This was still too much. I rephrased the question as a true-or-false. "The brain: mutton?"
"Yes sir! Mutton!"
Mutton is one of those English words, like possible, that Indian culture has somehow endowed with ambiguity. Its meaning is more or less "could be sheep, but I'd wager on goat." This was Ajmer. I've walked its streets. The mutton was definitely goat.
After further delay, a small metal dish was brought to my table. This made sense. I could not expect goat brain to be very large, because goats are fucking idiots. The dish was filled in a light brown slop. Roughly half of North Indian cuisine consists of various substances - chicken, cheese, potatoes, peas, ping-pong balls, refrigerator magnets - drowned in a brownish slop. I tasted the sauce first. It was curry. Everything is curry. Curry is an almost Orwellian word. Curry is the apex of the disassociation of language from meaning. All one knows is that there will be sauce and there will be spices. In India this is as redundant as calling a dish "banana fruit" or "bread food". A curry of eggplant here bears no relation to a curry of eggplant there, yet there is no name to distinguish these; there is just Eggplant Curry. Indian Restaurant menus, with their meticulously categorized offerings and minuscule gradations of price, are but a mockery of a gastronomical order, an ancient-ciphered hieroglyphic codex to be vainly examined by the gourmand. As a Mesoamerican scholar might say "This cryptic frieze is only known to be of Olmec origin" so too did I ponder "Indeed, this is a curry."
As I delicately sipped quarter-spoonfuls of this concoction, the Punjabis huddled in conspiracy around their audio system. They switched CD's and the melody became familiar. I thought little of it. Punjabis are generally the most internationally-minded of the Indian peoples; these men simply seemed to have a broader taste in pop music. I took my fork and pierced a small, nondescript chunk of yellow matter from within the depths of the curry. I took a moment to savor it but it remained unremarkable. I poked around my tray and began to suspect I had been given paneer curry in a kind and secretive act of Sikh hospitality, the contemporary American tune chosen specifically to ease my mind.
Disappointed and unsure how to proceed, I resolved to finish my meal in dignity. I forked a larger bite and directed it into my mouth. It was definitely brain. As I began to chew it squished palpably against my tongue, not oozing with juices, but merely soft and compressible like certain types of shellfish or other non-muscular animal organs I've tried. The texture, though unexpected, was unobjectionable. I had expected a more rubbery experience. The flavor was not too bad either, almost bland. I found I needed to coat bites with curry to make them more flavorful.
The truly disconcerting part of the meal was not its flavor or texture but its movement in the mouth. With each motion of the tongue and grinding of the molars it became more and more clear I was feasting on brains. As the brain piece tumbled in my mouth it began to unfold. Though I had not seen them, the intricate tucks and folds instantly recognizable as the anatomy of the mammalian brain began to unravel between my cheeks, flopping behind my gums, unfurling themselves like a damp carpet onto my taste buds. One by one my teeth tore apart the distinct nooks of the goat's mind. With one bite I severed its critical thoughts ("goat!"); with the next its uncanny sense for clambering upon rocks. I squashed and ground the matter and neurons that taught it to move in herds, to fear the stick ("biiiiiig stick"), and to leap on hind legs for bashing skulls.
At last, pressing a paste of cerebral cortex to my cheek with my tongue, I recognized the music. "I want to make love right now na na... Wish we hadn't broke up right now na na". I was eating goat brains to Akon. The Punjabis watched from the stereo console with shit-eating grins. This was an elaborate mockery, a pantomime of cross-cultural ridicule.
Piece by piece the brain disappeared into my undeterred oral cavity. A large mound protruded from the cream. I rolled it with my fork. It was a single chunk of brain and as sauce dribbled off from its underside it revealed to my eyes the curled labyrinth of snaking and spiraling brainflesh on my plate as clearly as in a textbook or a pickled jar. As I began my lengthy chewing of this specimen I wondered "To what extent do goats have memories?" Months among the Hindus stirred in me strange questions. Am I consuming the mind of a conscious being? Has this goat's soul been reborn or is it waiting for me to finish the last of its physical shell? Will my grisly devouring of its brain earn it some karmic reward, a lift from animaldom to perhaps being a humble street-sweeper or rural peasant? Is there some newborn baby across India unaware that I have pieces of its former consciousness stuck between my incisors?
The brain was almost gone and Akon wailed "You're so beaaauuuutiful...so damn beautifuuuu-ulll". Another Akon hit. The Punjabis' mirth at my expense was to extend to an entire Akon album.
The food could have been worse, and I was actually beginning to enjoy the relative restraint of auto-tuned R&B after months of screeched Hindi gibberish over too-fast basslines, cheap digital simulations of jangly Indian bells and stringed instruments, and poorly Orientalized euro-synth keyboards. Then, all of a sudden Akon's soothing robotic drone gave way to the frantic ostentation and outrageous lyricism of the hip-hop guest verse."... I'ma spend them grands but after you undress, not like a hooker but more like a princess". The pin on my cultivated self-restraint in the face of absurdity was pulled and I exploded in laughter, spewing curry all over my plate. The Punjabis rushed to my side, fearing the brain had done me in. I still rocked with laughter as a dabbed clumsily about with a napkin. "I'm all right, I'm all right" I reassured them, "it is because I laugh at the song. He is funny man." The Punjabis nodded and returned to their station. They rewound the track to hear the verse again. They were determined to understand it, as Punjabis consider themselves to be very funny men.
The brain was gone and I slurped at the last of the curry, cleansing my palate with mineral water and buttered bread. The Punjabis, now occupied with a large ledger and several calculators doing their daily accounting, left me to admire my conquests and rest upon my laurels. Sipping water, cooling myself from the heat of victorious battle in this gastronomic Coliseum, I was treated to the voices of the Empire's finest musicians. Almost as a tribute to a worthy foe, Akon sung "She's so dangerouuuusss, that girl's so dangeroouuuuuu-usss".
Dangerous? Danger? Bitch, please. My name is Ghostface Killah Gautama Buddha Maximus; Cow-Slapper of the West and Commander of the Army of the Just; a son in the Cobras' Lair and a brother in the Killers' Manse; and I will eat of Danger and shit of Victory, in this life and the next.
The waiter shrugged, then attempted to jolt his memory and hesitantly described "It is a gravy, made first with tomato sauce and some masalas." Fabulous, we've determined that the dish falls within the broad parameters in which hundreds of barely-related meals are called 'curry'.
"No, I mean the 'brain'. What is it?" He shrugged again, curled his lips and shook his head. A great mystery, no doubt. "The BRAIN" I said, smacking upon my own in frustration. "Is this thing?" I asked impatiently, cradling my cranium, shaking my skull with my hands to draw his fleeting attentions thence. "This thing we are supposed to have in our heads?!" I sputtered as his eyes glazed over yet again.
He missed the insult. "Oh yes, is brain!" he recovered, eyes bright with pride.
I concealed my exasperation to speak with the utmost clarity. "OK then, I'll have the brains."
"You are wanting brain curry?" he asked, eyes squinting askance.
I thrust my arms out over the table and groaned "Braaaaaiiiiinnnnssss", then set my stare upon him in anticipation of his next witless remark. It was to the point.
"Brain curry?"
"YES...and a chai."
"Chai? You want Indian tea?"
You have to be fucking kidding me.
By this point the rest of the staff was taking some interest in my dining. I was the only customer, an odd foreigner with a pile of stained notebooks asking to be fed brains. The manager and other waiters, all Punjabis, took frequent breaks from listening to their unusually tolerable pop music to watch me scrawl in my notes. Sometimes they even ventured over to my table to read over my shoulder, only to be thwarted by my poor penmanship and the oblique manner in which I typically malign Indian cities. After a considerable wait, my Rajasthani waiter arrived with my chai.
Though I may as well have asked a blind Cambodian orphan in semaphore, I queried "Excuse me, from which animal is the brain?" He did not comprehend. I decided to break it down into multiple-choice. "The animal: is it sheep brain? Goat brain? ...Chicken?" This was still too much. I rephrased the question as a true-or-false. "The brain: mutton?"
"Yes sir! Mutton!"
Mutton is one of those English words, like possible, that Indian culture has somehow endowed with ambiguity. Its meaning is more or less "could be sheep, but I'd wager on goat." This was Ajmer. I've walked its streets. The mutton was definitely goat.
After further delay, a small metal dish was brought to my table. This made sense. I could not expect goat brain to be very large, because goats are fucking idiots. The dish was filled in a light brown slop. Roughly half of North Indian cuisine consists of various substances - chicken, cheese, potatoes, peas, ping-pong balls, refrigerator magnets - drowned in a brownish slop. I tasted the sauce first. It was curry. Everything is curry. Curry is an almost Orwellian word. Curry is the apex of the disassociation of language from meaning. All one knows is that there will be sauce and there will be spices. In India this is as redundant as calling a dish "banana fruit" or "bread food". A curry of eggplant here bears no relation to a curry of eggplant there, yet there is no name to distinguish these; there is just Eggplant Curry. Indian Restaurant menus, with their meticulously categorized offerings and minuscule gradations of price, are but a mockery of a gastronomical order, an ancient-ciphered hieroglyphic codex to be vainly examined by the gourmand. As a Mesoamerican scholar might say "This cryptic frieze is only known to be of Olmec origin" so too did I ponder "Indeed, this is a curry."
As I delicately sipped quarter-spoonfuls of this concoction, the Punjabis huddled in conspiracy around their audio system. They switched CD's and the melody became familiar. I thought little of it. Punjabis are generally the most internationally-minded of the Indian peoples; these men simply seemed to have a broader taste in pop music. I took my fork and pierced a small, nondescript chunk of yellow matter from within the depths of the curry. I took a moment to savor it but it remained unremarkable. I poked around my tray and began to suspect I had been given paneer curry in a kind and secretive act of Sikh hospitality, the contemporary American tune chosen specifically to ease my mind.
Disappointed and unsure how to proceed, I resolved to finish my meal in dignity. I forked a larger bite and directed it into my mouth. It was definitely brain. As I began to chew it squished palpably against my tongue, not oozing with juices, but merely soft and compressible like certain types of shellfish or other non-muscular animal organs I've tried. The texture, though unexpected, was unobjectionable. I had expected a more rubbery experience. The flavor was not too bad either, almost bland. I found I needed to coat bites with curry to make them more flavorful.
The truly disconcerting part of the meal was not its flavor or texture but its movement in the mouth. With each motion of the tongue and grinding of the molars it became more and more clear I was feasting on brains. As the brain piece tumbled in my mouth it began to unfold. Though I had not seen them, the intricate tucks and folds instantly recognizable as the anatomy of the mammalian brain began to unravel between my cheeks, flopping behind my gums, unfurling themselves like a damp carpet onto my taste buds. One by one my teeth tore apart the distinct nooks of the goat's mind. With one bite I severed its critical thoughts ("goat!"); with the next its uncanny sense for clambering upon rocks. I squashed and ground the matter and neurons that taught it to move in herds, to fear the stick ("biiiiiig stick"), and to leap on hind legs for bashing skulls.
At last, pressing a paste of cerebral cortex to my cheek with my tongue, I recognized the music. "I want to make love right now na na... Wish we hadn't broke up right now na na". I was eating goat brains to Akon. The Punjabis watched from the stereo console with shit-eating grins. This was an elaborate mockery, a pantomime of cross-cultural ridicule.
Piece by piece the brain disappeared into my undeterred oral cavity. A large mound protruded from the cream. I rolled it with my fork. It was a single chunk of brain and as sauce dribbled off from its underside it revealed to my eyes the curled labyrinth of snaking and spiraling brainflesh on my plate as clearly as in a textbook or a pickled jar. As I began my lengthy chewing of this specimen I wondered "To what extent do goats have memories?" Months among the Hindus stirred in me strange questions. Am I consuming the mind of a conscious being? Has this goat's soul been reborn or is it waiting for me to finish the last of its physical shell? Will my grisly devouring of its brain earn it some karmic reward, a lift from animaldom to perhaps being a humble street-sweeper or rural peasant? Is there some newborn baby across India unaware that I have pieces of its former consciousness stuck between my incisors?
The brain was almost gone and Akon wailed "You're so beaaauuuutiful...so damn beautifuuuu-ulll". Another Akon hit. The Punjabis' mirth at my expense was to extend to an entire Akon album.
The food could have been worse, and I was actually beginning to enjoy the relative restraint of auto-tuned R&B after months of screeched Hindi gibberish over too-fast basslines, cheap digital simulations of jangly Indian bells and stringed instruments, and poorly Orientalized euro-synth keyboards. Then, all of a sudden Akon's soothing robotic drone gave way to the frantic ostentation and outrageous lyricism of the hip-hop guest verse."... I'ma spend them grands but after you undress, not like a hooker but more like a princess". The pin on my cultivated self-restraint in the face of absurdity was pulled and I exploded in laughter, spewing curry all over my plate. The Punjabis rushed to my side, fearing the brain had done me in. I still rocked with laughter as a dabbed clumsily about with a napkin. "I'm all right, I'm all right" I reassured them, "it is because I laugh at the song. He is funny man." The Punjabis nodded and returned to their station. They rewound the track to hear the verse again. They were determined to understand it, as Punjabis consider themselves to be very funny men.
The brain was gone and I slurped at the last of the curry, cleansing my palate with mineral water and buttered bread. The Punjabis, now occupied with a large ledger and several calculators doing their daily accounting, left me to admire my conquests and rest upon my laurels. Sipping water, cooling myself from the heat of victorious battle in this gastronomic Coliseum, I was treated to the voices of the Empire's finest musicians. Almost as a tribute to a worthy foe, Akon sung "She's so dangerouuuusss, that girl's so dangeroouuuuuu-usss".
Dangerous? Danger? Bitch, please. My name is Ghostface Killah Gautama Buddha Maximus; Cow-Slapper of the West and Commander of the Army of the Just; a son in the Cobras' Lair and a brother in the Killers' Manse; and I will eat of Danger and shit of Victory, in this life and the next.
Nov 20, 2009
Blue City Blues
My woman done left me
My caaaaamel toooo
The buuuus ride was bumpy
The buuuu-uuusss ride was long
The laandscaaape was saaandy
The skyyyyy was bright bright blue
Crossed the desert to Jodhpur
And now I've got those Blue City blues
Got lost in the ooooold tooown
A big mess of..... ALLeyways
No street signs I found
I triieeeed, OH I tried to steer by buildings
But they're AAALLLLL painted BLUE
Oh sweet LAAWD can you help me
I got them Blue City blues
I sit on a roof
A-waitin' for food
I look at them taaallll boxy houses
And I said to the Lord "LORD I must be dreaming
I must be losing my mi-ind
I see THOUUSSSANDS of giant Lego bricks
Grey, cream, and BLUUUEEEE
And a huge stone FORT them ol' Raaajputs built
To give me Blue City blues"
I walked to the FOOOOORRRRTT
But got lost a-gaaiii-aaiin
A gay Indian begged me to just FUCK HIM then and there
But I ain't got no friends a-nowhere
All I've got....OHHHHH ALL I"VE GOT
Is them Blue City blues.
Hey lovely lady, I see you over there looking at the sky. You've got the blues in you too. Let me just play you a little tune. I ain't got no saxophone. Sold it for spiced tea and opium. Makes the pain go away. So I'll just sing you my melody...goes a little something like this...
AAAaaaaabbwwaaada bwwaadaa bweee boom.
Aaaabwaadda bwadda bweee-eeeee. Baddabadaba baabba.
Aaaabweeeeda bwaaada bweeee.
Baaa daaa daaaa
BWAAAAAAAABAAADAABAAABWWAAABA
Aaabwaaadabwaddabwee
Oh, OH sweeet MAAAmaaaa
Why don't you just.... sliiiiiide on next to me
I'll make you QUEEN of MY KINGdom
Take you to my paaaaa-lace
Ha, well it's a musical palace, baby, just a little guesthouse
Small, but easy on the eyes...just like you
OOooohhh come in to my CAStle
And end our Blue City blues
Come in to my AAaaarmmss
And ennnd my blue-ball'ed blues
Now baby you just lie there, real comfortable-like, while I rub in this lotion, tell you a story about Jodhpur.
You see, sugar, Jodhpur was built in the middle ages as a new capital for the most powerful of the Rajput kingdoms, Marwar, the Land of Death. Makes your spine tingle. Mmmmmmm....speaking of spines, your back is so smooth, honey. Let me massage that sweet caramel. Now, the Maharaja Jodh Singh founded Jodhpur and built a massive castle on the sheer cliffs above the city. Four hundred feet over the walled city, the hundred-foot walls encase palaces, reservoirs, and garrisons, making it an impregnable citadel for over six hundred years. When you get to the gates on foot, the walls there are twice as high. There's an audio tour and...sugar don't fall asleep, let me tell you about the audio tour. The audio tour is spectacular, a tour de force in historical narration enlivened by quotes from Kipling, spoken recollections by the present Maharaja and his family, trumpet fanfares, larger-than-life anecdotes, and a narrator who delivers his lines with near-Biblical drama..."The Meherengarh fort stands as the ultimate symbol of military strength and honor. Its halls and ramparts ring with the echoes of history and legend. In all the centuries no cannon has breached its walls...no elephant has ever battered through its gates."
There's a palace inside, a masterfully decorated tribute to pleasure, refinement, and power. It's the way a man should be for his woman, strong but gentle. You've got some tension built up in those shoulders. Baby you need that strong and gentle touch. Nod your head if that feels good. I knew you would. The palace walls soar mightily, while the lattice windows are carved as delicately as the lace in your bra....*Snap* You won't be needing that.
Somewhere along the way the Maharajas built a new palace. You can see it there, the graceful giant on the hill across town, lit up for all to marvel at on this breezy night. The blue city lies nestled, sprawling between these hills, a million people under their watchful gaze. Within the old city the many-floored homes and workshops form shadowy, blue-edged canyons, with the flow of humanity cutting between its walls like water slicing through ancient gorges. You'll see the new palace is far outside the walls. It has no weapons of any kind. Maybe it's a sign of hope, that we can all live together the way we should, no more killing, no more fighting our brothers. Baby, you feel what I'm saying? We need to make love, not war.
Oohh foooooooxxxy woman
My heart's aching for you, woman
Life, life it's been treatin' me so bad but you're smellin' so damn good
Let's loosen up that belt there
Run my hands on that beeee-hiiiiind
Gonna unFASTEN that skkkiiiiirt now
See what I can fiiiind...
Blue panties between your legs now?
Just...gonna...TAKE these.....foooorrrr my piece of mind
Oh baby your sooooft skin
It don't neeeed no cotton blues
Just MOOOVE with me sweeeetheeaart
And put an end to my....Blue City blues
My caaaaamel toooo
The buuuus ride was bumpy
The buuuu-uuusss ride was long
The laandscaaape was saaandy
The skyyyyy was bright bright blue
Crossed the desert to Jodhpur
And now I've got those Blue City blues
Got lost in the ooooold tooown
A big mess of..... ALLeyways
No street signs I found
I triieeeed, OH I tried to steer by buildings
But they're AAALLLLL painted BLUE
Oh sweet LAAWD can you help me
I got them Blue City blues
I sit on a roof
A-waitin' for food
I look at them taaallll boxy houses
And I said to the Lord "LORD I must be dreaming
I must be losing my mi-ind
I see THOUUSSSANDS of giant Lego bricks
Grey, cream, and BLUUUEEEE
And a huge stone FORT them ol' Raaajputs built
To give me Blue City blues"
I walked to the FOOOOORRRRTT
But got lost a-gaaiii-aaiin
A gay Indian begged me to just FUCK HIM then and there
But I ain't got no friends a-nowhere
All I've got....OHHHHH ALL I"VE GOT
Is them Blue City blues.
Hey lovely lady, I see you over there looking at the sky. You've got the blues in you too. Let me just play you a little tune. I ain't got no saxophone. Sold it for spiced tea and opium. Makes the pain go away. So I'll just sing you my melody...goes a little something like this...
AAAaaaaabbwwaaada bwwaadaa bweee boom.
Aaaabwaadda bwadda bweee-eeeee. Baddabadaba baabba.
Aaaabweeeeda bwaaada bweeee.
Baaa daaa daaaa
BWAAAAAAAABAAADAABAAABWWAAABA
Aaabwaaadabwaddabwee
Oh, OH sweeet MAAAmaaaa
Why don't you just.... sliiiiiide on next to me
I'll make you QUEEN of MY KINGdom
Take you to my paaaaa-lace
Ha, well it's a musical palace, baby, just a little guesthouse
Small, but easy on the eyes...just like you
OOooohhh come in to my CAStle
And end our Blue City blues
Come in to my AAaaarmmss
And ennnd my blue-ball'ed blues
Now baby you just lie there, real comfortable-like, while I rub in this lotion, tell you a story about Jodhpur.
You see, sugar, Jodhpur was built in the middle ages as a new capital for the most powerful of the Rajput kingdoms, Marwar, the Land of Death. Makes your spine tingle. Mmmmmmm....speaking of spines, your back is so smooth, honey. Let me massage that sweet caramel. Now, the Maharaja Jodh Singh founded Jodhpur and built a massive castle on the sheer cliffs above the city. Four hundred feet over the walled city, the hundred-foot walls encase palaces, reservoirs, and garrisons, making it an impregnable citadel for over six hundred years. When you get to the gates on foot, the walls there are twice as high. There's an audio tour and...sugar don't fall asleep, let me tell you about the audio tour. The audio tour is spectacular, a tour de force in historical narration enlivened by quotes from Kipling, spoken recollections by the present Maharaja and his family, trumpet fanfares, larger-than-life anecdotes, and a narrator who delivers his lines with near-Biblical drama..."The Meherengarh fort stands as the ultimate symbol of military strength and honor. Its halls and ramparts ring with the echoes of history and legend. In all the centuries no cannon has breached its walls...no elephant has ever battered through its gates."
There's a palace inside, a masterfully decorated tribute to pleasure, refinement, and power. It's the way a man should be for his woman, strong but gentle. You've got some tension built up in those shoulders. Baby you need that strong and gentle touch. Nod your head if that feels good. I knew you would. The palace walls soar mightily, while the lattice windows are carved as delicately as the lace in your bra....*Snap* You won't be needing that.
Somewhere along the way the Maharajas built a new palace. You can see it there, the graceful giant on the hill across town, lit up for all to marvel at on this breezy night. The blue city lies nestled, sprawling between these hills, a million people under their watchful gaze. Within the old city the many-floored homes and workshops form shadowy, blue-edged canyons, with the flow of humanity cutting between its walls like water slicing through ancient gorges. You'll see the new palace is far outside the walls. It has no weapons of any kind. Maybe it's a sign of hope, that we can all live together the way we should, no more killing, no more fighting our brothers. Baby, you feel what I'm saying? We need to make love, not war.
Oohh foooooooxxxy woman
My heart's aching for you, woman
Life, life it's been treatin' me so bad but you're smellin' so damn good
Let's loosen up that belt there
Run my hands on that beeee-hiiiiind
Gonna unFASTEN that skkkiiiiirt now
See what I can fiiiind...
Blue panties between your legs now?
Just...gonna...TAKE these.....foooorrrr my piece of mind
Oh baby your sooooft skin
It don't neeeed no cotton blues
Just MOOOVE with me sweeeetheeaart
And put an end to my....Blue City blues
Nov 19, 2009
India Haiku, Vol. 2
edit: forgot to type some, added them.
Vast India,
home to one billion souls;
A touch excessive
Is this a street,
market, barn, or sewer?
All of the above.
Child, I am deeply
aggrieved you lack candy. No, I
don't have ten Euro.
A veiled woman
walks up broken stairs, bowl
of bricks on head
Rudyard Kipling,
greatest observer of India.
Nah, he a bitch.
Solar-powered
desert vehicles; I dream...
No more camels.
Retired Frenchmen:
leave India. Take your wives.
Go drown in brie.
I witnessed it
with my own eyes: four goats
tied to moped
Oh Rajasthan!
After countless centuries,
still mostly sand
Sixty rupees?
Taj Mahal snow globe, with leak?
Thanks but no thanks.
Baa baa black sheep
Have you any wool? If not,
I'm eating you
In the desert
a nose twitch, strong now, a sneeze.
Gross clumps of sand
Attention rapt,
I turn. She offers bangles.
I misheard.
Personal space,
hygiene, silence, and Reason,
I miss you
Hey good lookin',
what's your spicy cookin'?
Oh, sounds dreadful.
Cutting through smog,
scent of incense...correction:
opium
Hey girl, your six
yard sari could be our
six yard bedsheet.
Hold up, did you
see that? That just happened.
What the fuck.
Vast India,
home to one billion souls;
A touch excessive
Is this a street,
market, barn, or sewer?
All of the above.
Child, I am deeply
aggrieved you lack candy. No, I
don't have ten Euro.
A veiled woman
walks up broken stairs, bowl
of bricks on head
Rudyard Kipling,
greatest observer of India.
Nah, he a bitch.
Solar-powered
desert vehicles; I dream...
No more camels.
Retired Frenchmen:
leave India. Take your wives.
Go drown in brie.
I witnessed it
with my own eyes: four goats
tied to moped
Oh Rajasthan!
After countless centuries,
still mostly sand
Sixty rupees?
Taj Mahal snow globe, with leak?
Thanks but no thanks.
Baa baa black sheep
Have you any wool? If not,
I'm eating you
In the desert
a nose twitch, strong now, a sneeze.
Gross clumps of sand
Attention rapt,
I turn. She offers bangles.
I misheard.
Personal space,
hygiene, silence, and Reason,
I miss you
Hey good lookin',
what's your spicy cookin'?
Oh, sounds dreadful.
Cutting through smog,
scent of incense...correction:
opium
Hey girl, your six
yard sari could be our
six yard bedsheet.
Hold up, did you
see that? That just happened.
What the fuck.
Nov 2, 2009
I Demand Justice
Today I have two special gifts for you: two articles I wrote for work that I am allowed to share with the public...because my employers refused to accept them. I find this mystifying as I don't even have an editor and the vast majority of my professional writing is swill. I fail to see why these don't pass the bar. Here is the first
1.)
2.)
His maditation to Almighty God & miracle spread soon on every common man & Raja. One day a famous wreslter named Samant passed through his meditation place. He saw a strange that crowd of people were listening to his preaching silently. The wrestler threatened Darvesh not to do so. Darvesh said to wrestler that to disturb Darvesh is bad. You mind your own business. On hearing this the wrestler attacked on Darvesh by sword soon after a sparkel of Dhooni of Darvesh went to Samant, Samant saw miracle and run away. Next day the place of Dhooni was changed near to common way. In the mean time a Goojri (Milk Seller) who used to carry curd to Raja's Kitchen passed away. Roshan Ali Darvesh asked goojri what you are carrying, she said it is curd for Raja's Kitchen, Roshan Ali Darvesh asked her what are you getting for it, Goojri said Two Ashrafiyan (Gold Coins) Darvesh asked what is special in curd for which Two coins you are getting. She said it is a tasteful curd. Darvesh took that curd for Two Coins. Darvesh tasted that curd & found it sour. So Darvesh returned curd to Goojri along with two coins. Goojri was gready and carried curd to Raja's Kitchen, By seeing the print of finger in curd it was established that curd is not pure. This news spread over & reached upto Raja. Goojri described the whole story of tasting curd by Darvesh. Hearing the story Raja got angry badly and order his police to present Darvesh before him. Raja ordered his Police to kill Darvesh. But Tara Bai the daughter of Raja who was expert in Astrology said to Raja that killing of Darvesh may cause the destruction of Kingdom. So Raja left his idea to kill Darvesh on the advice of Tara Bai and as a punishment he ordered to cut the finger of Darvesh with which he tasted curd. Darvesh returned to his place Darvesh returned to his place Ghoogra Ghati and buried his finger. Even today tomb of finger is still there. Hence Darvesh left Ajmer proceeded towards Madeena & reached to Roza-e-Mubarak of Rasool-e-Khuda. He described the cruelty of Raja. Faryad of Darvesh was accepted. He saw in dream and was direcetd to bring the matter before Meeran Sahib at Masshad & He will help you. At the same time Hazrat Meeran Sahib saw a dream to help Darvesh. So when Darvesh reached to Meeran Sb. at Mashhad The Marriage of Merran Sb. was being celebrated. He was in bridgroom dress, Darvesh presented himself before Meeran Sb. Meeran Sb. was already in the knowledge of arrival of Darvesh. Meeran Sb. also knew the MASHLEHATE Khunda vandi. So Meeran Sahib left his marriage and proceeded towards India. in his bridgroom dress and took the people with him in the way.
It is said by Abu Tayyab that when Meeran Sb. intended to proceed towards India. Sultan Mehmood Gaznavi send me a Message that Meeran Sb. has proceeded to India, for great Jehad so you Alakh Khan go at once to help him with great Lashkar. It is clear that Meeran Sb. was in Mehmood Gaznavi Period.
Devotees of Islam forwarded to India from a Balakh Bukhara Multan & Sindh with great courage under the guidance of Shahbuddin Bhole Alakh Khan and reached the destination Boodha Pushkar, where no water was available, the time of namaz was near at that time so ne threw "Neza" on the earth, water came out of the earth, and Ghazian-e-Islam did wazoo and offered prayers. After that they came to Ajmer and stayed at Anasagar Place where sodagars at that time used to get horses of different kinds. When this lashkar stayed there people thought them as sodagars group. When Raja came to know their arrival. He sent his two sons to know the facts. The saw a Horse Khing whom they liked too much and asked to purchase the horse. Meeran Sb. said that this horse is for my riding & not to sale. They said that we like this horse only on their repeated request Meeran Sb. said that you can purchase the horse procided you fill the depth by money caused by the hit of horse leg that will be horse price. Hearing this they got pleased and told the whole story to their father (Raja). Raja also got pleased and gave them too much money. But when Horse hit the earth it made too much big depth, the whole money was gone in it but the depth was not filled. Raja's sons got too much worried. The 2nd. condition was put before them by Meera Sb. that this horse is head (Sardar) of horses if the horse comes back to me from you then I will not give the horse back to you. Raja's son accepted the condition & they took the horse. They tied the horse firmly at their Astabal. But the horse came back to Meeran Sb. at mid night. In the morning Raja's son saw that the Horse Khing is not in astabal and many other horses in astabal are lying dead, and many other horses incapable. Raja got annoyed much & came to meeran Sb. & argued much. Meeran Sb. gave him the refrence of condition fixed between him and Raja's son. Raja was not satisfied and attacked on Meeran Sb. with huge lashkar. In the reply Merran Sb. faced the assault (Attack) & with the blessings of Allah Pak got the glorious victory. Meeran Sb. when he reached near fort He with all his forces offered Namaz-e-Zohar.
At the mean time Jadoogar Jaipal Jogi got the chance of throwing a big stone of the Hill on Meeran Sb. He was busy in praying. Stone of the hill continued to moving on his head. After prayer as he started Dua He saw the hill stone moving around his head. He (Meeran Sb.) addressed to hill stone if you hace come with the order of Rasool & Allah Pak you are welcome & if you are sent by Jadoogar better you stop there. A voice from stone came Huzoor I have been thrown by Jadoogar but I am helpless & want help. So Huzoor Meeran Sb. gave help to stone by two fingers and also said to his horse to help stonse with knww moving stone stopped, till today the stone is in the way of Taragarh. This stone is known as Adhar Silla, Jadoo ka pathar. Today also the print of two fingers & driving stick horse knee is seen in the stone. Most of the devotees used to come & visit Taragarh & get their heart filled with joy.
With great courage the forces of Meeran Sb. Attacked on enemy with the the result enemy disheartened & began to hide & to run. When enemies found themselves helpless they close the door of Fort and started to throw "Teer" on Lashkar. But Lashkar-e-Islam went on going ahead & ahead with slogan "Allah-O-Akbar" Jadoogar did the hight of hill twice by Magic. Huzoor Meeran Sahib's Horse Khing "Tap" at Hill. The Taragarh Hill which was made twice in hight by magic was reduced half with Qudrat-e-Elahi & thus lashkar got entered in the fort & the fort was captured. In the mean time there was a time of Zohar Namaz. Namaz was got started. The enemies availed this chance they got united & attacked again and they succeeded to kill Huzoor Syed Meeran Hussain along with his fellow men during the Namaz time.
1.)
How To Cross A Busy Indian Street
You kind of just do.
This represents the sum of human knowledge on a very important subject. Their rejection of my work stings like a wound rubbed with salt. I take comfort only in knowing that many a great writer and artist was not acknowledged in their time. I can hope still for my posthumous anthology.
The second article, representing a great deal of time spent typing, is even more exhaustively researched. I don't know how a man can make an honest living if his labors are not rewarded
2.)
A Brief History About Hazrat Meeran Sb. Khing Sawar (R.A.)
The old name of Ajmer was Ajaymeroo. At that time the king was Raja Rai Pithora. In his kingdom there was a famous magician known as jadoogar Jaipal who was Rajguru of the Fort & was a proudy & cruel. In order to spread his famousness he used to set magic light daily. That magic light was seen from far & far distance. That magic light was also seen by Hazrat Roshan Ali Darvesh in Bukhara. Hazrat Roshan Ali Darvesh knew by his spiritual power the magic light was burn by Jadoogar in his proudness. This was not tolerated by him & made up his mind immediately to proceed India. He came to Ajmer and setteled at Ghoogra Ghati situated at Ajmer.His maditation to Almighty God & miracle spread soon on every common man & Raja. One day a famous wreslter named Samant passed through his meditation place. He saw a strange that crowd of people were listening to his preaching silently. The wrestler threatened Darvesh not to do so. Darvesh said to wrestler that to disturb Darvesh is bad. You mind your own business. On hearing this the wrestler attacked on Darvesh by sword soon after a sparkel of Dhooni of Darvesh went to Samant, Samant saw miracle and run away. Next day the place of Dhooni was changed near to common way. In the mean time a Goojri (Milk Seller) who used to carry curd to Raja's Kitchen passed away. Roshan Ali Darvesh asked goojri what you are carrying, she said it is curd for Raja's Kitchen, Roshan Ali Darvesh asked her what are you getting for it, Goojri said Two Ashrafiyan (Gold Coins) Darvesh asked what is special in curd for which Two coins you are getting. She said it is a tasteful curd. Darvesh took that curd for Two Coins. Darvesh tasted that curd & found it sour. So Darvesh returned curd to Goojri along with two coins. Goojri was gready and carried curd to Raja's Kitchen, By seeing the print of finger in curd it was established that curd is not pure. This news spread over & reached upto Raja. Goojri described the whole story of tasting curd by Darvesh. Hearing the story Raja got angry badly and order his police to present Darvesh before him. Raja ordered his Police to kill Darvesh. But Tara Bai the daughter of Raja who was expert in Astrology said to Raja that killing of Darvesh may cause the destruction of Kingdom. So Raja left his idea to kill Darvesh on the advice of Tara Bai and as a punishment he ordered to cut the finger of Darvesh with which he tasted curd. Darvesh returned to his place Darvesh returned to his place Ghoogra Ghati and buried his finger. Even today tomb of finger is still there. Hence Darvesh left Ajmer proceeded towards Madeena & reached to Roza-e-Mubarak of Rasool-e-Khuda. He described the cruelty of Raja. Faryad of Darvesh was accepted. He saw in dream and was direcetd to bring the matter before Meeran Sahib at Masshad & He will help you. At the same time Hazrat Meeran Sahib saw a dream to help Darvesh. So when Darvesh reached to Meeran Sb. at Mashhad The Marriage of Merran Sb. was being celebrated. He was in bridgroom dress, Darvesh presented himself before Meeran Sb. Meeran Sb. was already in the knowledge of arrival of Darvesh. Meeran Sb. also knew the MASHLEHATE Khunda vandi. So Meeran Sahib left his marriage and proceeded towards India. in his bridgroom dress and took the people with him in the way.
It is said by Abu Tayyab that when Meeran Sb. intended to proceed towards India. Sultan Mehmood Gaznavi send me a Message that Meeran Sb. has proceeded to India, for great Jehad so you Alakh Khan go at once to help him with great Lashkar. It is clear that Meeran Sb. was in Mehmood Gaznavi Period.
Devotees of Islam forwarded to India from a Balakh Bukhara Multan & Sindh with great courage under the guidance of Shahbuddin Bhole Alakh Khan and reached the destination Boodha Pushkar, where no water was available, the time of namaz was near at that time so ne threw "Neza" on the earth, water came out of the earth, and Ghazian-e-Islam did wazoo and offered prayers. After that they came to Ajmer and stayed at Anasagar Place where sodagars at that time used to get horses of different kinds. When this lashkar stayed there people thought them as sodagars group. When Raja came to know their arrival. He sent his two sons to know the facts. The saw a Horse Khing whom they liked too much and asked to purchase the horse. Meeran Sb. said that this horse is for my riding & not to sale. They said that we like this horse only on their repeated request Meeran Sb. said that you can purchase the horse procided you fill the depth by money caused by the hit of horse leg that will be horse price. Hearing this they got pleased and told the whole story to their father (Raja). Raja also got pleased and gave them too much money. But when Horse hit the earth it made too much big depth, the whole money was gone in it but the depth was not filled. Raja's sons got too much worried. The 2nd. condition was put before them by Meera Sb. that this horse is head (Sardar) of horses if the horse comes back to me from you then I will not give the horse back to you. Raja's son accepted the condition & they took the horse. They tied the horse firmly at their Astabal. But the horse came back to Meeran Sb. at mid night. In the morning Raja's son saw that the Horse Khing is not in astabal and many other horses in astabal are lying dead, and many other horses incapable. Raja got annoyed much & came to meeran Sb. & argued much. Meeran Sb. gave him the refrence of condition fixed between him and Raja's son. Raja was not satisfied and attacked on Meeran Sb. with huge lashkar. In the reply Merran Sb. faced the assault (Attack) & with the blessings of Allah Pak got the glorious victory. Meeran Sb. when he reached near fort He with all his forces offered Namaz-e-Zohar.
At the mean time Jadoogar Jaipal Jogi got the chance of throwing a big stone of the Hill on Meeran Sb. He was busy in praying. Stone of the hill continued to moving on his head. After prayer as he started Dua He saw the hill stone moving around his head. He (Meeran Sb.) addressed to hill stone if you hace come with the order of Rasool & Allah Pak you are welcome & if you are sent by Jadoogar better you stop there. A voice from stone came Huzoor I have been thrown by Jadoogar but I am helpless & want help. So Huzoor Meeran Sb. gave help to stone by two fingers and also said to his horse to help stonse with knww moving stone stopped, till today the stone is in the way of Taragarh. This stone is known as Adhar Silla, Jadoo ka pathar. Today also the print of two fingers & driving stick horse knee is seen in the stone. Most of the devotees used to come & visit Taragarh & get their heart filled with joy.
With great courage the forces of Meeran Sb. Attacked on enemy with the the result enemy disheartened & began to hide & to run. When enemies found themselves helpless they close the door of Fort and started to throw "Teer" on Lashkar. But Lashkar-e-Islam went on going ahead & ahead with slogan "Allah-O-Akbar" Jadoogar did the hight of hill twice by Magic. Huzoor Meeran Sahib's Horse Khing "Tap" at Hill. The Taragarh Hill which was made twice in hight by magic was reduced half with Qudrat-e-Elahi & thus lashkar got entered in the fort & the fort was captured. In the mean time there was a time of Zohar Namaz. Namaz was got started. The enemies availed this chance they got united & attacked again and they succeeded to kill Huzoor Syed Meeran Hussain along with his fellow men during the Namaz time.
"INNA LILLA-E-WA INNA ELE-HE-RAJEOON"
My employers are philistines.
Oct 22, 2009
India Haiku, Vol. 1
Vast India;
home of one billions souls,
twelve billion teeth
A rickshaw at night
plying calm and empty streets
honks at sleeping goats
Agra. Beautiful
as a slave maiden's bosom,
putrid as her stool
Bollywood movies
Much dancing and gibberish
but also wet shirts
Indian weather
hotter than a camel's ass,
wetter than fish pee
"Final price five hundred
rupees. Highest quality! ...
O.K., one hundred."
Great Faizabad
Abode of angels; blessed
with rich culture. NOT.
"What is your country?...
Blo Mi? Very good country,
many my friends there!"
A cricket match
"Three sixes this over!"...
Who fucking knows
"Excuse me sir, please
come to my silk shop, good price.
No? You like hashish?"
Clang clang clang clang clang
clang clang clang clang clang clang clang
clang. Hare Krishna.
What is that odor
on the afternoon breeze?
Surprise. It's cow shit.
Oct 14, 2009
Buffalo Herding: the Way of the Samurai
One can learn a great many things in India. I've been spending much of my time listening to people discuss the history of Varanasi, and the various metaphysical beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While this is all much appreciated, I strive also for practical knowledge and I have been blessed enough to speak to great masters in the arts of how to burn a corpse and how to herd buffalo. Corpse-burning is pretty much straightforward (get a crapload of wood, set it on fire) so I now present...
Sun Tzu wrote that in battle, one must know his enemy, and one must know himself. With this, victory is assured.
To know thyself, understand that you are human. You are small and fragile, but you are intelligent and you possess the power of tools, separating you from the animals.
To know thy enemy, know what a buffalo is and is not. A buffalo is not a cow. The cows of India are independent, aloof bastards content to sit by themselves or stand lengthwise in the most inconvenient spot possible. Buffalo, on the other hand, move in packs. This truth you must know. A buffalo, though like a cow, is not so holy as a cow, and may be treated with a corresponding diminishment of respect. The cow is shogun; the buffalo, wayward samurai.
A buffalo is strong, but it is dull. It is lethargic, and its bulk cannot be moved by the meager might of man. However, "Give me where to stand" Aristotle proclaimed "and I shall move the world." So too it is with buffalo. Stand then in the Field of Enlightenment, for it is from here that you shall draw your strength.
After knowledge of self and foe, one must possess knowledge of purpose, and knowledge of the field of battle.
One may have two purposes in herding buffalo:
Buffalo Herding: the Way of the Samurai
Sun Tzu wrote that in battle, one must know his enemy, and one must know himself. With this, victory is assured.
To know thyself, understand that you are human. You are small and fragile, but you are intelligent and you possess the power of tools, separating you from the animals.
To know thy enemy, know what a buffalo is and is not. A buffalo is not a cow. The cows of India are independent, aloof bastards content to sit by themselves or stand lengthwise in the most inconvenient spot possible. Buffalo, on the other hand, move in packs. This truth you must know. A buffalo, though like a cow, is not so holy as a cow, and may be treated with a corresponding diminishment of respect. The cow is shogun; the buffalo, wayward samurai.
A buffalo is strong, but it is dull. It is lethargic, and its bulk cannot be moved by the meager might of man. However, "Give me where to stand" Aristotle proclaimed "and I shall move the world." So too it is with buffalo. Stand then in the Field of Enlightenment, for it is from here that you shall draw your strength.
After knowledge of self and foe, one must possess knowledge of purpose, and knowledge of the field of battle.
One may have two purposes in herding buffalo:
- To productively herd one's own buffalo from one place towards another
- To defensively herd someone else's buffalo away when it is up in your shit
One must also understand the two fields on which this battle may be fought:
- A battle with buffalo in the water
- A battle with buffalo not in the water
Let us begin with a discussion of productive buffalo herding, for it is the finer art, and with it mastered all other buffalo arts are as but a child's game.
To herd buffalo one will need two items. The first, wisdom, we have already procured -- or all is lost. The second, a large pole can be found wheresover poles are sold. While the buffalo are in water, first shout at them and wave. The profound indifference of a buffalo extends to his own immobility, and he may move for lack of an inclination not to. When this fails, do as the master told this pupil and "take stick, make big splash". This will move most buffalo. If it does not, resort then to the Grand Master's Stroke. Shout mightily, as though charging the ranks of an army and hit the buffalo with the pole. The sound, graceful as a flute-wind passing over the thawing mountain snow, should be thus: HAAAIIIIIII*thwonk*. This will move even the stoutest and most stubborn of buffalo, unless it hath fatefully dared the Gorgon and been turned to stone.
When the buffalo is on land, clearly a splash will not do. First scream as one would when the buffalo is in water. Then, if reluctance is found, slap the buffalo heartily upon the flank with an open palm, as one would to a prostitute. Remember, though a noble foe, the buffalo has the failings of the common whore, its dalliances and indolence great nuisances to the master it serves, earning it this needed slapping. Should the buffalo muster such insouciance to refuse to obey even these violent ministrations, threaten it with the pole, and if need be, thwack it. Sometimes one ought beat even a seemingly cooperative buffalo, lest it lose its fear of the pole and forget the name of its daddy.
Live by these words, and your buffalo's will shall be aligned to your own.
Remembering that at times one must also confront buffalo that are not one's own, we turn now to that subject. Here we do not distinguish between the buffalo wet and dry, for we must know only that the enemy knocketh upon our castle gates.
If the buffalo approaches one's noble works, and the defense of one's livelihood from the trample of hooves, the vagaries of grazing, and the torrents of buffalo excretions becomes imminent, find thee also a large pole. As one does not care whence the buffalo flees other than that it is away from one's own business, the use of more graceful techniques of direction are superfluous. Wield your pole with honor, and charge headlong towards the beast, screaming as you go, pole brandished high over the head. This will turn all buffalo to flight.
By this path let the buffalo be herded. Go in peace.
edit: it might have been Archimedes who said that.
edit: retroactively making this a Ghostface Buddha Guide
edit: retroactively making this a Ghostface Buddha Guide
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