The Monthly Elixir

It’s a seemingly unrelenting and unremitting

Wait for the impending inflow of my monthly elixir

When it does quintessentially ooze in, I revere it like a souvenir

According it a grandstand arrival totally befitting

As thirty days of penance comes to a fruition

To hail the red letter day thru a red carpet reception

Bearing on his neck the poundage of a dead albatross

Just like the weary ancient mariner

I too cut a rather sorry figure

And I too have a rhyme to narrate, adding no gloss

Stop by if you care to hear lamentations in pain

Or by all means gently pass by if you choose to refrain

The moisture capping the coastal sands

Hope to linger a fleeting second more

As the lashing waves on the shore

Retreat into the waters kissing the tearful lands

Just as the villainous breeze sweeps away the moisture

Likewise my fugacious bank balance faces the impending gallows of expenditure

In periodic segmentations, my money hopelessly dissipates

By the 5^th, a quarter, thru the monthly rent and maintenance

Already wiping out my cheery countenance

By the 10^th, another quarter emancipates

Itself from the wretched account, popularly known

As EMIs of the educational loan

Half my income vanishes in effortless dissolution

In half a month, as I find myself clamouring for a fortnight's oxygen

Woefully wallowing within the contours of my salaried smidgen

As my heart hopes to seek new avenues of remuneration

The likes of home internet reimbursements and the modest Sodexo pass

Subsist but meagre commiserative emoluments not helping the impasse

As liquid cash gushes out like a foaming waterfall

With no end to the rainy season in sight

My wallet paints a picture of deplorable plight

Shred to pieces, no one to hear its pitiful bawl

Lies the poor, black, square tattered ragamuffin

As a barrage of invoices is hammered into its coffin

I however do pander to occasional indulgences of recreative diversion

The odd movie or two, or to procure an utterly useless gadget

Violating the sacrosanct rule book of my shoe string budget

Which serves to remind that I am still Homo Sapien

Between taxing shopping rigmaroles to SPAR

Topped by embarkations on holy pilgrimages to ATMs near and afar

The rusted debit card edges which bore the brutal onslaught

Stand out as wounds of valour in the epic battle of 'Sustenance Eke'

While my overheads surmount peak after peak

By the end of the month, I am singularly fraught

As quarter after quarter passes with no promotion in sight

A plethora of unfulfilled promises have turned daylight into night

As the final week wearily trudges towards the finishing line

Streaks of light gratefully appear at the distant end of the dark passage

The day eventually arrives, an ointment applied to assuage

Typically day number Thirty or one less at Twenty Nine

When the employer graciously refills my parched coffers

"Poor chap lets atleast keep him alive while he suffers"

Salary day is the only day, looking back in retrospection

Have I looked forward to in Sixty Three months of corporate melancholy

As a heady concoction of blood, sweat, toil and tears lies in the trolley

To a lower form of existence, I have yielded to, in candid introspection

Nonetheless, this one day I will cheer for the nonce, casting aside my throes

The ineluctable cycle will resume tomorrow to spin its monthly quota of woes  

So the rent, the cable, the…Right I won’t go all over it now again!

But moans and sobs will soon start to reign

Morbid ruminations whether I choose to talk or feign

Will fall on deaf ears, and eventually flow down the drain

As efforts to augment my paltry savings go in vain

Bill after bill will continue to rain down with disdain

Plastic vs Steel - A Comparative Analysis of Two Tamil Gangster Movies Released Recently...

One is absolute candyfloss and made up of non-existent characters - people who simply don't exist in real life but nice to watch-, unbelievable storyline - a story which never happened & never will happen but still nice to watch, language/dialogs/accent/intonation all fake but nice to hear, and so on... you get the wind... a movie which was conceived to look good, made up of fake characters who would be nice to watch, and a storyline which is intended to please... I can go on but suffice it to say "CCV – Chekka Chivantha Vaanam" is indeed plasticly plastic... impressive glossy plastic, all the way.

And NOW let us turn to STEEL... A movie that hits you so hard that you reel under the impact... that has characters who jump out of the screen or you jump into the screen, whatever but excoriating by their brutal true-to-life authenticity.... a scorching real depiction of people who are goaded by survival, necessity, and pride to pander to their animal instincts of violence as a way of survival and operating under the simple philosophy of "kill or be killed", and a story so stunningly back-fleshed that each motivation, each turn, each act, each inflection stuns you with its authenticity! And for once, such an authentic local story, such fiery local characters, such unbelievably apt casting, such stunning turn of events... all add up to a modern "tour de force", arguably the best ever Indian movie.. Vada Chennai by Vetrimaran! This is a cult classic that was finally waiting to blast out of the Indian movie world, with such ferocity that we're left flabbergasted!! A STEEL that hits you hard, that pierces your senses, and that shines luminously... a movie experience of a lifetime. This movie is comparable to God Father, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Raging Bull, and the like. A movie that needs to be cherished and watched several times over and over again. And of course, in a country of favoritism, lobbying and regional biases, whether it will gain its due share of awards and Oscar nomination are all big question marks. But for us, the audience, this is a rare treat and no one can prevent us from savoring every moment of it. The movie boasts of uniformly radiant performances by all actors, the best ever background music score in Indian movie annals and research/authenticity which is unparalleled. I'll leave this with a mention of the Carrom Tournament in the Central Jail culminating in a prison riot, that is easily the best ever scripted, staged and executed sequence in Indian movie history. 

Take a bow Vetrimaran! You're the king of Indian cinema. It is more than 25 years since the greatest movie maker from India (Ray) died... and the mantle falls on you!  We're waiting for more!!!**

Inveigled

Disrupted by the telephones rankling harp

Our sleep broke off at Five Thirty Sharp

The somnial interruption motivated

By what lay ahead for us,

Soon we were off on the Safari

Climbing on to an open jeep

With the zestfulness of a seasoned Shikari

We were made to listen to a surfeit

Of instructions, the preparatory dos and do nots

Eventually it would end nothing short of deceit                                                          

Despite our ventures into bio-diversity hotspots

But for the nonce these were the frills

Adding to the morning thrills

Taking the middle road between a groggy Briton

And a bunch of exuberant wildlife shutterbugs

Strengthened by a chilling wave of frisson

We embarked on pursuit of spotting exotic wildlife

Expectations though far-fetched and bombastic

Weren’t altogether unrealistic

Sightings of big pawed feline

Creatures turned out to be no more than mere cervine

A few peacocks, scattered groups of boisterous monkeys

A couple 'o' snake pits, sans the snakes themselves

One solitary serpent eagle scrutinizing in close proximity

And a volery of birds replete with euphonious chirping

But we couldn’t, care any less for ourselves

We were least impressed

Only keen to see the much vaunted tigers

Trying to discern a rustle from beneath the vegetation

And hoping one would jump from the viridescence into our midst

After two hours of peregrinating in circles

The circuitous journey concluded

Metaphorically speaking, on retrospection the only tigers we experienced

Were the marketing tigers at the resort

To whose effective inveigle we easily fell prey

A premonition which I had earlier sensed

Had our intuitions been more adept

We might have not gone in search of wild fauna

We might have as well as slept

Or tooled off to the waters of the sauna

So much for a bloody Tiger

Rues the pen of this blogger

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

In the forests of the night

Sung Blake in his antediluvian panegyric

To honour the noble animal

To us not a trace, nowhere in sight

Back at the abode, we snuggled back into the bed feeling contrite

Putting back the hours into our sleep, abandoning our revile

Seemed like the best thing to do by a mile