Why I Think It's Totally Okay To Believe In Superheroes and Other Unrealistic Stuff

My brother and I weren’t the sort of kids that liked to step out of the house and engage in that game of street cricket which our parents liked to think were ‘friendly’. We were the weird kids in the new house at the end of the street that got to watch WWF (later WWE) unsupervised in the evenings and whose parents got them to do most of the Sunday gardening (taught us responsibility they said). But as a five year old girl and a ten year old boy, you are expected to fulfil certain social commitments to avoid being called names in school and hence, we forced ourselves to go play with the other kids once in a while. Half an hour into a game of Catch, my brother would snatch my arm from amongst the other 5-10 year olds in the group and announce in the manliest voice he could muster,

“We have to go.”

“But you’re it!”

“Sorry, Batman’s calling.”

“What?” the 10 year olds would say while the 5 year olds, myself included, gaped on with stars in their eyes.

“Yeah on our phone.”

“I don’t hear your phone ringing.”

“Not THAT phone silly. The other one.”

“But you said that last week.”

“Yeah well, they call us every week. Right, Ammu?”

He’d shoot me a glance and I’d nod in hasty agreement. You simply don’t disagree with your big brother publicly when you’re five. We did this every week and all the kids we used to play with believed us, a little less bright as they were in the pre-internet era.  My brother would hold my hand and lead me up the steps to our house. We would go to this little cupboard that we had under the stairs (I know right!) and he’d pick up an imaginary receiver. Smart as I was, I’d venture.

“But they aren’t listening anymore.”

“Shh. Batman’s waiting.”

I would shut up. Nobody kept Batman waiting.

I like to think that that’s how everyone started off – believing they could have a superhero at the other end of a phone line tucked away in a cupboard under the stairs. That it’s everybody’s first real dream to own a cape, a mask, be able to wear their underwear over their pants and have a symbol across their chest. When you’re five and having your cheeks pulled everywhere you go, there is nothing more empowering than waving a plastic cricket bat in the air, shouting “I have the power!” and imagining your resident stray turn into the Mighty Battle Cat.

Superheroes are important when you’re growing up. They defy all logic, defy high-school norms and defy unnecessary rules like gravity. They fly, wear masks, fight the bad guys, champion the nerds in the cafeteria corners and more often than I’d like, they lose. But then they get up, all bruised and battered, and summoning their last reserves of awesomeness, proceed to kick some serious bad-guy backside. They then simply walk away, alter-egos intact, leaving ordinary humans still guessing as to who they really are. Unless you’re Tony Stark.

I am not and never have been a super-hero aficionado and I have never owned a substantial enough number of comic books. I am the kind of fan that stuck to the cartoons and gaped at the movies and like all the people that take that route, I have never known the internal workings of any super-hero universe. So yes, there’s me. And then there are the other super-hero fans who know and understand Peter Parker like he was their sibling. Now, these are the people that take personal offence if you even mention Stan Lee without talking about Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko first and who scoff at you if you believe that Spiderman had webs shooting right out of his wrist. He had a web-shooter! How dare thee!

They are the oddities that laughed at Zack Snyder’s Krypton while you sat there open-mouthed in innocent wonder and whose very souls were broken by Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin. They are the ones that noticed how Spiderman had blue hands in The Amazing Spiderman and oh boy, did they disagree. All this while you were probably preoccupied drooling over Andrew Garfield and/or Emma Stone. They are the ones that will break your throbbing heart and tell you Wolverine looks nothing like Hugh Jackman because “He’s much shorter – a little over 4’ maybe.”

 And then there are some sections of our population so grounded in reality that they question the sanity of us imaginative folk who love holding on to our fictional idols even after we’re legally adults. They call it ‘Escapism’ – a situation where we escape into a non-existent world because we’re probably too chicken to cope with ‘real’ problems. Well, what is wrong with a little escapism may I ask? I believe that sometimes that’s exactly what we need. I like being able to look at an awkward-looking guy in a crowded place and have my brain involuntarily wonder if he has a cape tucked away in his bag somewhere. It makes me extremely weird but it brightens up my day. I will not venture to say that superheroes teach us some very important life lessons. Maybe they did at some point, if you were a smart kid back in the day. But once you’re a certified adult, nobody pays much attention to the moral of the story when, instead, you can gawk at angry green men beating up demi-Gods.

I adore the extra-ordinary and thrive on the unrealistic. I am escapism personified. The way I see it, real-world problems do not get sorted out because you dwell on it. They get sorted out because you act and nothing gets my adrenaline pumping like a good super-hero story. Peter Parker dealt with abandonment issues, bullies, unpopularity, Uncle Ben’s death and being bitten by a radioactive spider. I am so going to resolve this toilet on that floor!

My mother never understood why I go absolutely ballistic every time Robert Downey Jr says “I’ve successfully privatised world peace” or why, at one point of time, my biggest dream was to get bitten by a radioactive spider. Sometimes, the 21 year old realist in me makes me forget too. Just when I begin to question my fitness to be in sane society a little after watching the latest Spiderman movie, I look to my side and see my friend waving her wrists, first at me and then all around, making “Tchoo!” “Tchoo!” noises and shooting her imaginary webs all over. You see, childish as it may sound, we’re the ones with the alternate realities in our head where we are wand-wielding wizards or masked vigilantes with the super-power to fight everything that’s wrong. We go there quite often and come out with minor quarter-life crises. It is our means of escape from the physical reality we live in that can get a little too mundane at times.

Super-heroes are important when you’re grown-up. They fly, wear masks, fight the bad guys, champion the social misfits and kick some serious bad-guy backside. And then if you have as much awesome as Tony Stark in you, you can go ahead and call that press conference.

'Happy' @ Faculty of Architecture, Manipal University

Architecture isn't one of the easier majors you can take up in college. However it goes without saying that even in the middle of the consecutive all-nighters, soul-crushing reviews and the unhealthy amounts of caffeine in your system, there is still something bright to be found especially in a place like Manipal. This is a little something we, being the outgoing batch, compiled to show just that. Enjoy and share away! :)

The Aarushi-Hemraj Double Murder Case - Guilty?

I am a self-confessed media junkie with an (until recently) unshakable belief in the system despite its obvious shortcomings. I like to believe there is such a thing as unbiased media, that the spirit of responsible journalism is not dead and that mainstream media is, in these times,  the most powerful weapon in the hands of the common man. I also like to believe that the system has been designed with a view to protect our interests as citizens of this country and hence, it cannot be used to work against us if not for us. I am forced to rethink my convictions now.

The Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case has garnered a tremendous amount of media attention in the last five years or so. Now I have not been to the scene of the crime to review the evidence for myself nor have I any means at my disposal of verifying their credibility personally. I have not spoken to anyone associated with the case. What I know, like every other person, is what I read in the print media and watch on TV. This is an article I happened to read - a 10,000 word investigative report on the case as published in the Tehelka magazine. (And no, I'm not willing to listen to anyone question the credibility of this report because of the charges against Mr. Tarun Tejpal because honestly, this has nothing to do with that. If you have ANY other grounds to do the same, I am very much open to it.)

http://www.tehelka.com/framed-the-aarushi-hemraj-murder-case-an-investigation/

What I also saw and heard of, were exclusives on televised NEWS channels that put forth strong allegations regarding Aarushi's 'promiscuity' as a teenager, her 'questionable' relationship with the 45-year old house-help, her fathers extra-marital affairs, wife-swapping (I don't even know what that is) and her mothers failure to break down on national television while talking about her deceased daughter. That proved to be their undoing in the eyes of the general public. They did not cry enough. Forget the mystery behind the pillow-case that was put down to a typo, the suspicious and drastic changes in the CBI's view of what happened, sudden retractions on statements given by the doctors who examined the bodies, the three helps, once the prime suspects, and not given a second thought following the change in the CBI team investigating the case and the fact that the Talwars urged for the investigation to be carried on after a closure report was filed by the CBI admitting it did not have enough evidence to convict the father. But they did not cry enough!

With all the speculation that it created, all the unverified 'facts' it propagated and all the wrong sort of questions it raised, what the media created was a swarm of general public biased in their opinion on the case - a nation incapable of neutral thinking and objective assessment. It is only human that once an idea takes root in us, every thing we see and hear we use to strengthen our motive for acceptance of the same. I fail to understand when it was that the media went from presenting the NEWS as it is to attempting to manipulate and dictate our judgement.

What the Talwars had to deal with were an evidently biased team of CBI investigators, an investigation that was shoddy from the very beginning (The police did not open the terrace door where the body of Hemraj was discovered later on, because they weren't handed the keys to the blood-stained lock. This was later blamed on the Talwars.), a public that asked for justice without complete knowledge of the facts and a media that was speculating on why they did not cry enough. My opinion is also completely based on what I have read from multiple sources and while I am open to argument, I simply do not see the logic in this conviction when there are, apparently, so many glaring loopholes in the evidence. It scares me to know than an individual can be convicted of so serious a crime when there are so many questions that can be raised with respect to the proof of him/her being guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The Court has awarded them a life sentence. The Talwars will undoubtedly appeal. The outcome of this tragic case will go down in the history of our nations judiciary and it will not paint a pretty picture of it in the eyes of the country and of the world. In the meantime, I am left with a highly depleted sense of trust in the system and the fear that what happened to the Talwars could happen to me. 

TO THE JACKS OF THE TRADES

Whoever came up with the absurd notion that being the jack of all trades and the master of none is necessary a bad thing was, well, wrong. It is almost like telling someone that given you enjoy milk chocolate, you should definitely stick to milk chocolate and not try that strange chilly flavoured one. Or something along those lines. I’ll have all the chilly and curry flavoured chocolate as I please, thank you very much!

Are you one of those people blessed with an angelic serenading voice that can drive Lea Michelle crazy? Are you capable of doing a full mid-air split? Or are you one of those who play professional football while they take a break from the theatre group that they rehearse with when they find time off B-Boying or skateboarding or playing the Cello in the middle of their drawing studio? If you are, and I honestly mean no offence, you are easily responsible for my latest near-quarter life crisis.

You see I am a student of architecture who can sketch just about well enough to scrape by, dance quite decently enough, write a few lines when in the right mood, sing better than Celine Dion in the shower and cook a pretty neat Omelette under the right circumstances. Can I ever aspire to produce anything remotely brilliant on canvas? Nope. Can I do a mid-air split? Nope. Can I ever dream of creating something like Harry Potter? *Laughs at self.* Nope.  Hell, I sound like a dying walrus outside the shower and, left unsupervised, I will positively set your kitchen on fire. Winning Gordon Ramsey’s heart is a pretty long shot.

But hey the thing about being exemplary at one thing? The pressure to remain so. And people talk of you using words like ‘exemplary’ and ‘fantabulous’ because ‘fantastic’ or ‘fabulous’ cannot begin to describe how GOOD you are. The perks of being ‘ok’ at a lot of things? One. Nobody really expects a lot from you and that being so, you are allowed to screw up once in a while. Two. Nobody notices if you do screw up because they are all watching that kid who is exemplary at his stuff. Three. Despite the fact that you could potentially screw up, you get to test the waters everywhere anyway because face it, you’re not that bad either and they could always use you. Which is why I have a blog that not too many people pay much attention to but my content is still out there. I am not criticised half as bad about what I write as, say, Arundhati Roy or Shobhaa De. (Not that I imply I am anywhere in the same league). Also I’m allowed to write for the college magazine. I am part of the official college dance crew, forever positioned in the right corner, second line from front. And my mom lets me cook as long as it is just an Omelette.

Point is I thought a lot about it under the covers with the lights off and everything after watching the latest SYTYCD auditions where 18 year olds do all the things I had aspired to be able to do when I was 18. I am almost 21 now and I’m not even close. But I digress. Point is, it is perfectly okay, I guess, to not be exemplary at anything. The important thing is to be able to be open enough to try everything out! And being ‘acceptable’ at a lot of thing leaves you a lot of room to take a bite of every cake with minimum possible disappointment. Plus nobody pays you a lot of attention anyway so even if you fall flat on your behind on stage you can simply dust yourself and join in again like nothing ever happened! Does not work with being in the centre of attention. And you only get to be the centre of attention if you’re truly exemplary at stuff. ‘Exemplary’. What a funny word.

I feel better already!

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Ok so I am no poet. I only dabble in poetry in utmost secrecy.  I am just a person with a major issue with leaving things unfinished. I scribbled the first four lines on a sketchbook in class one day simply because I cannot draw well enough to make any sensible doodles. It took me three months but I FINALLY finished it! This piece has been the sole cause of my excruciating writers’ block lasting the said months. And that is the only reason I’m daring to put this up.  Here goes!

A cruel game of love it goes, cupid once chose to play

He, a dark knight and she, the fair queen - the story came to be

A lonely glance, not one word, consumed all lines drawn

A set of rules, a game of chess and all else in between.

It rained lives on the battlefield, the story goes to say

The stench of hope, a peaceful wind with haunting nightmares to keep

The moon in all his silver glory, bright over the crimson ground

Shone over the knight’s studded sword and the queen’s golden crown.

And soon enough they heard, it’s said, a strange melody in the air

A tune so slow, an eerie steady, much too silent to be

As walls collapsed, a fire so great it tore down the guards of will

The Gods of fate sat far above, conspired in misguided glee

A test of loyalty, a clash of faiths – the story then comes to speak

Of sleepless nights under glittering skies, a tale not meant to be

The gift of choice, a bane so great, the truth so wrong and yet so right

For what is choice but a fanning breeze in a storm when destinies collide.

She felled his castle and bishops too; he, her soldiers and her pride

In a perfect world they’d leave it all but not in here- not black and white.

As each raced towards the other’s king, neither did dare look behind

For what they feared was a ray of hope, a promise of release so divine.

His armour glistened in the sun, the rays danced on his shivering arms

A clash here and a quick swish there, the fair king’s neck under his sword

He caught a glimpse of her golden hair, soon swept away in a tide of victory

“Checkmate!” came a disembodied voice, a voice that quivered with boundless joy

The Gods looked down as they rejoiced in the triumph of scripted destiny

And so it ended, another game, another day, yet another loss

But their little game had changed it all, a divisive kink in the chain of fate

That bend all rules, even those of chess, should such a second choice be made.

Put in shackles with her head still high, she watched him lead the victory march

He, the dark knight and she, the fair queen – the story so came to be

He turned around, a second glance that yet again consumed all lines drawn

For today there were no more games and nothing else left in between.

Of Freezes and Falls

I am a dancer. In fact, if you ask me who I am I would probably shuffle between that and ‘I am a writer’ depending on who you are. But in the present context and with reference to this note, I am, first and foremost, a dancer. Because that is what I have been doing from when I can remember. 

There is no rush like the one you get when you are on that stage, the music so loud you almost feel the beat hit your heart and the crowd is cheering you on. Or when you get your ever first standing ovation. Or when in between a routine you look through the corner of your eye and find 8 others in impeccable synchronisation with you. Or when you get good enough to call yourselves a 'dance crew'.

This is my crew - my 'after-hour activity'. And this is one of the best and one of my last times on stage with them. With only 9 very average dancers and a fancy name nobody could really pronounce to start with, you could say we have come a decent enough way. Those 8 hour after-class rehearsal sessions weren't for nothing after all.

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We should be ashamed. Each and every one of us should, right now, be bowing our heads in shame. I do appreciate us coming together in large numbers at the India Gate, shouting slogans in front of the CMs residence, holding all those vigils. Don’t get me wrong for I do laud the sense of brotherhood and comradeship that seems to have awakened in us. But I am ashamed. I am ashamed that it took one girl living out her worst nightmare to bring it out. I fail to comprehend what it is that makes this one girl different from all the others over all those years? That she was raped in a moving bus that plied through some very busy areas of the city while the assault was in progress? Or that she had her intestines pulled out by an iron rod that was thrust into her? Or the fact that she lay naked, exposed and bleeding by the road for quite a while before help arrived? Or is it that she is ‘a fighter’ as her doctor terms it because of her sheer will to live? Because I dare you to tell me that none of the other girls before her had the will to live or the spirit to fight.

‘Amanat’ – because that is what the fourth estate seems to have christened her – is fighting for her life in a lone hospital room. ‘Amanat’.  ‘A priced possession’. Seriously? She is a priced possession because she was brutally raped and violated to the point where she was barely alive? I can bet anything that if there wasn’t a legal clause that made it punishable to divulge the identity of a rape victim, her name, her photograph and almost anything you wanted to know about her would be all over the NEWS by now. The ethics of the media can be called to question here if you care to bring up the girl in Assam who was molested and groped by an entire mob of men as a Cameraman stood by and filmed the entire thing. The media portrays ‘Amanat’ as a heroic survivor. Well, let’s get this straight. She is no hero. She is the victim of a brutal assault that stripped her of more than just her dignity – a simple girl who now faces the horrifying prospect of not being able to eat even a single meal or lead a normal life. The last thing she needs is to come out of that hospital alive and find herself a national celebrity - the involuntary champion of a cause that should have been addressed eons ago. And face the fact that the gruesome details of the attack upon her are the objects of Facebook statuses all over the nation. That would definitely be therapeutic. Do not trick yourself into believing that we are doing her a favour by sensationalising her case and her story. In a way, we are effectively victimising her.

While the entire nation is at India Gate, in front of the TV in anxious wait for ‘Amanats’ recovery or busy changing their display pictures to black dots, there is yet another woman who claims to have been gang-raped in Delhi by five men who were no strangers to her. And an innocent THREE-year old who is fighting for her life in a Mumbai hospital after being raped by her own father. And yet another lifeless body of a girl that has been found somewhere with what the Police call ‘obvious signs of rape’. Tell me they suffered – are suffering - any less. I genuinely commend all those people who are pushing for a change now. Do I support you whole-heartedly? No. Because I feel guilty and guilt makes us want to stop and reflect. Guilty that we turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to all those other women before this. Guilty that we kept quiet as they were publicly and unashamedly blamed for what happened to them – the clothes they wore, the company they kept, the choices they made. Guilty that it took one girl to be assaulted in as brutal a way as had never been heard of before for us to get up from our couches and do something about it. Guilty that I kept quiet – keep quiet – every time I was teased or approached or touched inappropriately by some deprived guy in a very public place.

I sincerely do hope we change something. That we manage to effect more convictions in cases of sexual assault, that we agree on more rigorous punishment than the 7 years we now equal a woman’s dignity to, that we see safer streets and parking garages. But as we push for it all I ask is that we do not use that semi-conscious girl in a hospital bed in Delhi as the reason. All I ask is that we draw on our sense of humanity and morals and keep her out of it all, give her ample space and time for recovery while we fight the battle. All I ask is that we do not further elevate her celebrity status to the point where in the future, irrespective of whether we succeed or not, she will be known as that girl who got raped in a bus in Delhi. That we spare her from those looks of scorn and sympathy, the judgement and the sheer social stigma that comes with it all. Because after the furore has died down and the cause is yet another sheet for our leaders to ponder over, she will be alone in her pain and face it, having publicised it considerably, we will not be there to bear it with her. Hence, all I ask is that we do not fight for her. Instead if we are fighting, let’s fight for us.