On Lolita

You have to be an artist and a madman, A Creature of Infinite Melancholy, with a 
bubble of poison in your loins & a super voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine, in order to perceive Lolita.

-Vladimir Nabakov

Lesson beside a Stream

The new generation's materialistic buying adventure is very compelling for market research analysts. It appals them. Consumer obsession with commodities, driven by aesthetically appealing advertisements, that aims to bolsters our ego is what will dominate the decision of us, buyers, in this decade. Its sad how we dream of travelling abroad,not to experience a new culture but for a few dollars more so that we can buy that Iphone which we don't need at all. 

iPhone and other similar products have become a style icon for this generation, it symbolizes our migration from the middle class into that social elite. It pleases our vanity. But truth cannot be farther than this. These products have the shortest longevity. There is always a new and better version in the market once we have purchased and thus we are once again kicked back into the rut, drawn into this never ending cycle of satisfying our insatiable vanity. What we miss here is an emotional attachment that we once had with our toys when we were a little kid. It feels sad.

I remember an incident from my childhood when I was 8 years old. I wanted a bicycle very badly. It seemed every child in the vicinity had one. It hurt my ego. I would throw tantrums around; go begging on my knees for one. It was utterly embarrassing for me to walk around when my friends would pass me by on their glittering vehicles.

I always wondered was it too much to ask my father for a bicycle. It was beyond my comprehension as to why I should not have one.

And then one Sunday, my father took me on a little journey to a nearby nursery maintained by forest department. We walked almost a kilometer on an uneven path through numerous bushes, thorns, stretch of mud to reach a small stream. The sound of water roaring down gave me Goosebumps. It was nature at its best. I had never heard something as beautiful as this before. I saw fish that were alive jumping out of the water and vanishing the next moment. I saw the branches of trees resting on the roaring water beneath.We sat down for a while and I played on the bank, enamoured by the beauty of the surrounding.

On our way back, my father said something that has remained with me forever, "You couldn't have come this far on a bicycle"

It still echoes inside me. I learnt the life's hardest lessons gazing at the roaring stream so filled with life. 

Profound Truth...

The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Maya-Lie."




de Casseres