Arnab Mukherjee

Zombieland

Every day I see dead people,
Swiping their tags with a beep,
Hundreds and thousands of them,
Hordes, in buildings of glass, asleep

Their bodies move, their hands type,
Coffee drowns the blood in their veins,
I am surrounded by zombies, oh yes,
Lifeless multitudes with foreign reins,

Their own brains their only diet,
Little else their life contains,
No fear, no joy, no fight, no flight,
Creativity committing hara-kiri,
In broad corporate daylight.

Indistinguishable their faces at work,
Instead of missing an eye or a nose,
It’s aspirations that’s gone in chunks,
Now replaced by a look morose.

Each day, a piece falls off, until there’s none left,
Of their selves, once bold, ambitious and free.
Welcome to my tax free zombieland, honey,
SEZ they’ll call it for the world to see

As dawn breaks, more die to fill this land,
Until there’s none left to be alive and awake,
Cities of dead now proliferate freely,
While the journey from developing to developed we make

My people are great, we sell cheap,
We service the highest bidder,
Our dead brethren work for pennies,
And breed and toil and settle and litter.

The opportune moment to die, my friend,
Is at teenage’s sunset, when youth is born,
As seems to be the popular trend,
Of the very best years of your life, be shorn

Many live on, alive and healthy,
Some nursing and caressing their dormant dreams,
While the rest hold these zombies hostage,
And one by one they drown their screams.

Until all you see are endless hordes,
With motions identical, wishes too,
Their numbers growing, like wildfire,
Their disease spreading, like a viral floo.

Kill them, shoot them, hack them apart,
Till there are none left, with dreams damaged,
Then rebuild my nation, give me a hand
Only then will my zombieland be salvaged.

Once again we’ll be a land of poets, of artists,
Dancers, warriors, philosophers as well,
With bodies alive now striving hard,
With minds set only to bejewel.

Then the world will see, the world will turn,
When testaments of servitude are burned,
When we discover, when we invent,
Heralding a golden age’s advent.

Image Courtesy: http://www.ibtimes.com/citizens-united-has-no-place-big-sky-country-montana-supreme-court-390302

Right Or Wrong?

The distinction between right and wrong is a distinction we have to perceive every single day. Yet one doesn’t see it getting any easier each time they have to make it. Why is it that some of the most obvious reasons are the most difficult to reason with.

That does sound confounding and depressing doesn’t it? Long story short, I was having a good time. And to say that someone else marred it won’t be correct. But that is exactly what happened. Maybe they did not do it intending to achieve this result, or any result at all. But aren’t responsible adults supposed to consider things like that? Sometimes I feel that both adulthood and responsibility are overrated. It really all boils down to who you are as a person and what you want to do. Because no matter how much you do for someone else or with someone else in your mind, in the end what will be making you feel good about yourself is what you do to make you feel good about yourself.

I am not saying that doing things for someone does not matter. Do it, by all means. But please make sure that they are aware of it. Sounds quite selfish even though it is true. You don’t have to worry about the ones who already know. They are the ones who are probably beside you right now.

The distinction between right and wrong is a choice. And perhaps sometimes, wrong is more right than right itself.

Protest

Fan the flames, ignite the fire,
disruption is imminent now,
my state of being, being in my state,
has descended to moral hell somehow
Raise your hands and make some noise,
Raise some chaos with your voice,
Not some music, but some din,
Why? Because democracy, that’s why.
Rabble rousing renegade rebels,
burning effigies right side up,
barking up all the wrong trees,
But it’s the bite, not the bark that frees
Isn’t it the norm now, and we the followers?
The norm to be abnormal
To dwell and revel in all anarchy
yet complain at the lack of progress
Be sad be sad, for when you’re over
The firing squad will be long gone ,
Sell your placards for scrap money,
The days of rebellion are done.
Protest is art, protest is freedom,
protest is our disturbance right,
Let us culminate this prestigious era,
in a riot of water cannon fights
Fight, fight, for what is right,
for when what’s yours is taken
But don’t cry wolf when there’s none,
A pack in the bushes is waiting

What Happened At The End of The Lord of the Rings

Little do we know, the story did not end there… Tolkien never ceases to amaze

Cobolhacker

Someone said to me, “You mean there is more at the end of The Lord of the Rings?” You better believe it. They had been watching Peter Jackson’s movies recently and being the Tolkien nerd that I am, I decided to tell them (and you).

Many people are familiar with Jackson’s adaptation, but its smooth, Hollywood ending is actually not the end of the story, nor is it the same as Tolkien’s books. The professor actually wrote in great detail about what happened to everyone after the War ended.

‘FO’ means ‘Fourth Age’. This first day of the Fourth Age was March 25th, 3021 TA, the day the Keepers of the last Rings of Power left Middle-Earth.

The End of the War of the Ring
Jackson’s movie suggests the Battle of Pelennor Fields and Battle of the Morannon (the Black Gate) are the only battles in the War…

View original post 2,131 more words

Light and Dark

Look at the bright side, they said
What harm had the dark done,
Was it not pretty enough to be seen,
Under the light of a moonless night
Condemned to eternal invisibility,
Can you not see how the darkness tries?
The writhing, heaving sludge moves,
to shun its past of gore and murder

Yet the moment it touches the hopeful rays,
It’s done, it can go no further,
Is darkness not the yin to the yang?
the vacuum in which the whole resides,
our very own original abode,
now evil declared, forever deplored.
Yet if you peek under the curtain of sunrise,
you can still see them kiss, the light and the dark,

and in their progeny proliferating,
the unfinished journey of an extinguished spark.

Image Courtesy: Self

“Welcome Back Mamoni” ( Ep 3 : The Enigma)

“Mamoni! Eta dekho. This is the Sonar Killa”

She was sitting on Gonga Kaku’s lap, looking at the vast picture-book spread open on his hands. “Is this killa really made out of gold, Kaku?” she asked.

“No no! It would have been stolen by now if that were to be true. It is for it’s golden sandstone that it was bestowed the name.”, Kaku said.

“Oh!”, sighed a disappointed Pritha. “I thought this would be a real treasure”, she said.

“No. But you know where the real treasure is? It’s in Kaku’s trunk, way over there across seven seas. When you become all grown up and wise, you will see it. For now, it is bedtime Mamoni”

“Mamoni..”

“Mamoni… Pritha Mamoni.. wake up! we reached!”

Pritha realised she had fallen asleep staring at the ever changing face of the city she left ages ago. They had sent Hari da to pick her up in the family ambassador car. Even though Hari da must be almost 70 years old, nobody in the family had ever called him anything but Hari da.

“Here’s the villa. I have heard it is yours now. Take good care of it Mamoni”, said Hari da as he escorted her to the house.

She could almost still feel the happiness of her childhood memories, although vague now, right in this very place. Her stupor didn’t last long.

Gopal kaku was standing at the door. Behind him stood the mother-son duo who looked distinctly out of place. “Your flight was on time apparently. Hari, keep her bags in the room next to the thakurghor for now. The house is a mess due to number of people who actually did come on time, but don’t worry, we will have enough place for the owner”, he said.

Evan was standing behind him; he looked visibly uncomfortable, fidgeted in his place. Gopal Kaku turned back, recalled something, and tersely walked in. An exchange of awkward smiles couldn’t supplement the much-needed introduction from Gopal Kaku. Pritha failed to piece words together to break the ice, thinking to herself, “Had Ravi da been there with his family, would’ve been a lot easier.”

Amelia took the initiative as they walked into the villa, “Hello. Pritha, right? Let us go to my room for now”. Evan followed behind closely. As Pritha absorbed the surroundings, she felt that she had taken a time machine back to the glory days of the city. The place hadn’t lost any of the old Kolkata charm over the years. It felt as if someone had taken care of the place as their own child. Her star struck gaze betrayed her awe as she took in the surroundings, from which she had been disconnected as long as she could recall. For a few moments, the fact that all of this was hers now and the weight of the responsibility that accompanied it, were forgotten. As her fingers traced the balustrade on the stairs, she could almost feel the heritage of the place flowing through the wood.

“This is my room,” said Amelia, unlocking a door as they reached the first floor landing, “Evan, get Pritha di anything she might need. You take rest Pritha. Must have been a tiring journey”, said Amelia.

“No it’s fine Amelia. Thank you. Can you please tell me which way is the washroom?” asked Pritha.

“Sure. It is over….”, Amelia was interrupted. Bhavatarini dressed in an authentically bengali-style saree entered the room and looked straight at Pritha. “Eki what are you doing sitting around like this? We have waited for so many days for you to get here and you are wasting time like this. Come down to the living room, people have gathered there.”

“Waiting, but, for what?”, asked a befuddled Pritha.

“But.. she just arrived. Maybe a bit…”, said Amelia, drifting off when she saw the look in Bhavatarini’s eyes.

“Save all these nyakamo of your generation for someone else, Omilia. Sitting in AC cabins all day, all of you behave like heavenly maidens being forced to descend on mortal earth at the name of any work.” Bhavatarini said and stormed off.

“I think we should probably go,” Evan finally spoke.

“Yes, we should.” said Pritha. Closing the door behind her, she turned to Amelia, right when the power went off. It was pitch dark.

The darkness was ripped into two with a blood curdling scream for help from downstairs.

Glossary

Mamoni: an endearing way to refer to a little girl

Eta dekho: See this

thakurghor: Literal- god’s room. Room or area in house were god’s idols are kept and worshipped.

Eki: What is this?

nyakamo: fake display of emotions

Omilia: Amelia in bengali accent

The End

The days grew darker still,
steadily the black enveloped
our world
until nights rolled into day and
no one was the wiser.
And they knew
days will be darker still.
Quieter still, when the race is finished,
They all won and they all lost.
And they rest their tired bones,
tired minds, tired souls.
Merging into one another
Merging back into the being
the earthquake separated from
And we found ten thousand limbs
And we saw God with ten thousand eyes

A Guest Blog By

Silly Opinions (https://sillyopinions.wordpress.com/)

Image Courtesy: Rapture by Brian Oldham

Made in China

Probably there is no other phrase more popular in the Indian products and goods market. Although most of us remember this phrase being famously etched on the back of our more fancy toys, this phrase has been synonymous with cheap yet fancy products being sold in smaller shops (not showrooms) that provided no guarantee for performance and durability.

Then came the “chinese phones”. When Nokia and Motorola were busy ruling over the Indian mobile phone market, China was manufacturing and shipping phones into the Indian market which either were knockoffs of the brands mentioned earlier or something completely different. How many of you remember those bright lights and extremely loud speakers on a peculiarly shaped cellphone your local panwala, and gradually, someone in your friend circle was using and recommending? I myself owned one which was the size of a lighter yet had a VGA camera, dual sim support, MicroSD card slot, color screen and a music and video player. It cost me Rs.2000 roughly 4 years back.

Eventually, Samsung had arisen with its vast array of touch screen wonders. Soon, the entire market was going crazy over touchscreen phones and owning one of those was a definite symbol of affluence and prosperity. This changed with Micromax, an Indian mobile manufacturing startup which made owning cheap but good phones a reality for most of the rural and some of the urban population. Even then, owning or buying a comparitively expensive Micromax phone used to be made fun of occasionally.

Then, an explosion happened. China upped its game. E-commerce helped. All of a sudden, the smartphone market was flooded by manufacturers with names and models so unfamiliar to the common people that their mere mention brought out laughs. But the last laugh was to be theirs as a company like Xiaomi becomes the third largest mobile phone vendor in the world and Oneplus directly challenges Apple on the technology front. Now, thanks to the breaking of the social stigma regarding Chinese phones, almost everyone has a more than decent smartphone with capabilities comparable to those of their high end brethren.

Interesting tale? Wasn’t it? It isn’t over yet.

We often look at the costs of these phones and wonder how are they making them so cheap yet competing with the top brands. Do we ever actually stop and try to analyze the facts to determine the answer to that question? I guess not, as we are too busy staring at our new cheap smartphones and waiting for the next version.

Let me tell you the prequel to the story written above. China is one of the world’s largest manufacturers. In the last 20 years, their share of the world’s manufacturing market has grown manifolds at an alarming rate. According to quite recent statistics, 70.6% of the world’s mobile phones are manufactured in China. Putting that statistic into perspective versus the population of China, more than 800 phones are manufactured per 1000 people in China. And that’s just phones. The rest of the electronics industry also depends similarly on the magical anvil of Chinese manufacturing to produce its priced digital swords and armors for conquering the world. Let us have a look at the anvil.

TIME Magazine Cover

(Credit: PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDER CRISPIN FOR TIME. CGI BY HAYRI ER)

When it comes to the world of phones, Apple forms the nobility among the general populace. Nothing but the best is expected from them. By now it is almost common knowledge that iPhones are mostly manufactured (and sold in a high number as well) in China. The company that manufactures them is Foxconn. In 2010 alone, 18 Foxconn employees attempted suicide. Fourteen were confirmed dead.

To put that into perspective, that is one of your colleagues trying to kill themselves, at their workplace every 20 days, and one succeeding every 26th day. And that is distinct from the 13 leukemia cases in Apple’s factories in China last year.

Would you accept that? No? Too bad. They have no option.

With working hours ranging between 11 to 13 per day, the little time they have is spent on resting. As many as 24 people are compelled to share a room so the concept of privacy is almost nonexistent. Random raids, specific freedoms regarding possessions, sleeping in the factory during a new product launch, cancelled lunch breaks to meet quotas, these are all part of the workplace and work culture at Foxconn’s manufacturing factories. Nearly half of Foxconn’s employees in China work at factories manufacturing Apple products. Some have even been found to employ child labour. Most have been found to be lacking in basic health and safety amenities. For those of you wondering why they are explicitly necessary, kindly have a look into the harmful gases emitted during any industrial operation involved in the manufacture of semiconductor chips.

I could give you statistics. I could give you numbers. I could list down all the manufacturers in China and the conditions of their factories. But I wont. A life cannot be quantified in numbers. The lives of half a million workers and their families definitely cannot be explained in statistics.

And that is just one manufacturer.

All the android users out there have no reasons to smirk at apple. Samsung has been persistently in the firing line since 2012 up until as recent as last year for several issues in its factories in China ranging from child labor to improper working conditions. Most of these troubles have been shirked off their shoulders by the subtle cloak of sub-contracting which allows most parent companies to put the entire blame onto contracted firms, order a few audits, donate to a few charities and wash their hands off the deaths and ailments of thousands of lives.

What is even more alarming, is that these are the top names in the industry. Even though the others are catching up, native Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Meizu, ZTE, Coolpad, Oneplus have quite a long way to go before embedding themselves as deeply into our minds as the big two. Hence, the investigative eye directed at their manufacturing facilities can only wait for the show business currently going on to be over.

Source: chinalaborwatch.org

When I began writing this article, I set out with an intent to research this topic and provide cold hard statistics and facts. By now I have realized that human misery and agony cannot be quantified. Lives shuttered down forcefully into ghettos cannot be represented on pie charts and graphs. Deaths can be hidden, records erased. Especially when you are the most populated country on the planet with a reputation for secrecy.

Whenever the apathy of capitalism has faced the death of a child’s dreams, we all know what the outcome has been.

Oh wait! I have a notification.

Other Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
2. http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/90
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/business/international/children-found-working-at-samsung-supplier-in-china.html?_r=0

Prompt Sunday: Forgotten Sands

Prompt: You have moved from one place to another plenty of times ever since you were a kid. Write about one such memorable shifting experience.

{ Writer’s note: I am sorry but I couldn’t help writing this as a third person narrative, with someone else in mind, for reasons quite significant in my mind}

She had never imagined that the sound of tires rolling over gravel would carry an emotional value for her. Then again, the number of times they moved from one city to another in her living memory was more than she would have wanted it to be. Being a Railway officer, father got transferred quite often. Sometimes, a bit too often.

Some say that a transferable job has its benefits. You get to see so many places and have so many new experiences. There are a lot more things that you get to see. Like, a few minutes back, she got to see her room, once crammed with things of all sorts until it was a living testament to her teenage, now suddenly a vast and empty container of nothingness. It felt bigger than she ever imagined. To think that she had always wanted a bigger room. Some sights change your mind in ways that nothing else can. As she had glanced around the room for one last time before leaving, she couldn’t help the stinging in her eyes when they saw the childish scribbles of an infant as the sole inhabitants of the 8X10 bedroom.

She wasn’t really too small when this had happened the last time. The house in Nadia, it’s surrounding garden, the echoes of her childhood friends were memories all too close to the brim of her mind’s waters. And now it was happening again. It somehow felt unfair that she had to go through all of this again. Having this job, its ever changing nature, none of it was her choice. Nobody had asked her for it. And she knew, that as long as she was living with her parents, nobody ever will.

After all, hadn’t she heard a bit too many times how lucky she was that her father was in government service? That her entire student life is now practically going to be a buffet of the choicest schools and colleges falling head over heels to serve themselves on a platter? The stereotypes made her chuckle helplessly. A jolt from a pothole on the road brought her back to the present, although not in a particularly pleasant way.

Their mini caravan comprising of Dad’s car and the moving truck pulled over at a Dhaba. Ma immediately ran to get some hot water for Nani’s hot water bag, her most loyal companion on such strenuous journeys. Dad started looking for a cigarette shop, albeit with less urgency, but as a necessity nonetheless. If she hadn’t already been in a state of nonchalance, she might have been irked by it now. She decided to take a walk.

The moving truck was quite big, one of those dog-faced trucks that have the weirdest horn-tunes possible. This one had a shrill nagin-sapera tune that jarred her senses every time they needed to overtake. She absentmindedly strolled to the back of the truck. It had all the signatures you expect: garish demon images to ward off evil spirits garnished with strands of lemon-chilli threads, a funny taunting message and a biri-smoking truck driver.

“Kya memsaab? Want to check the samaan? Wait wait.” Before she could say no, he had crushed his biri and was opening the latch. The semi-door fell open with a loud noise and there everything was. The last three years of her life, everything tangible she had attached to it, boxed up, taped and marked. She felt that if she looked carefully, she could see the memories flowing out through minute cracks in the cardboard.

“What happened Dharampal? Why is the truck open?”, her dad barked at the driver. “Sir, memsaab wanted to….”, Dharampal drifted away as both him and Dad looked at Memsaab, whose eyes weren’t strong enough to fight the stinging this time. Her dad approached her with open arms. She wanted none of it. She took off in the opposite direction, towards the car and shut herself in. She could never forgive him, for all the lost memories, for all the friends that drifted away, for all the hallways and bedrooms that still had the marks of her crayons and her creativity. She couldn’t.

“Beta, kya hua? Don’t cry beta. Look at me,” said Nani. She had completely forgotten that Nani was in the car. Her neck carefully placed on the bulging hot water bag, she said, “I know that all of this must be really tough for you. You youngsters think we are the old lot, but we also went through quite similar experiences. You must be cursing your dad, aren’t you?”.

She looked at Nani through the haze of her now moist eyes. She could only manage a nod.

“Beta, It must seem like the right thing to do right now. And I wont burden you with the same old words that it will be better with time. I just want you to think of one thing. If you dad wouldn’t have been transferred, you wouldn’t have made the memories that you have in the last three years now, would you Beta?”, asked the wise old woman, as she rested her head on the seat rest and closed her eyes.

She turned in her seat and looked out of the windshield at the highway, seemingly infinite into the horizon. Although it was too soon for the dampness of her eyes to dry, the pleasant memories of the last few years, some of which were in those boxes, seemed to make the world a lot more brighter and lighter.

She could see her parents sitting at a cot outside the Dhaba. They were exchanging worried glances, sneaking a few at the car. They were seemingly oblivious to their own worries at that moment. Haven’t they always been, when the choice was about her? Her dad, once a creative and athletic person, chose to oil the wheels of the Railways. Perhaps it was for her. At that moment, she felt the water of her eyes evaporate with the heaviness in her heart. They had made much bigger sacrifices in their own times, most for her.

She got out of the car, and closed the door behind her. Stretching her arms, she waved at her parents with a smile. The relief on their faces was quite unabashed.

Standing there, the horizon seemed to hold a lot more memories to come.

Recursive

“And there we thought that SanctumV2 was the answer to all our questions!”, mumbled Calvin, rubbing his eyes, as the flashing red message indicated that their simulation had failed to compile again. “Can you please turn off that dumb beeper? What’s the point? I am trying to catch some sleep here!”

“But.. But this doesn’t make sense! There is nothing in this code that could be causing this! People have LITERALLY gone through it word by word! Damn it!”, Jammer exclaimed, poring over the seemingly inexplicable list of errors. No amount of coffee was going to get them through this.

Calvin swung his chair around to face Jammer. “As if it makes a difference. Fiddle all you want and it will still be the same. Look around you, we aren’t exactly setting benchmarks in employee retention”, Calvin stretched his arms out indicating the vast but empty development department.

Jammer didn’t respond. “Fine, suit yourself. I am going to get some more coffee. You want some?”, Calvin took his cup and got up from his chair.

“uh.. Oh.. Yeah I think some coffee would be good”, Jammer said as he locked his terminal and left with Calvin.

“You know what?”, Calvin asked as he took a sip from the over-sweetened machine coffee.

“Ohh.. Yeah, what? Tell me”, Jammer replied, his coffee going cold in his hands.

“Let us go catch a movie. That new movie about dreams within dreams seems to be doing quite well. What say?”, Calvin crumpled his cup into a ball and tossed it into the bin.

“Not really. I think I’ll try to tweak the Sanctum for a while longer. I am getting this feeling that I am onto something. Wonder what it means..”, Jammer drifted off mid sentence.

“What what means?”

“Max SIM Depth Reached. An error that keeps popping up every single time, along with a bunch of random errors.”, said Jammer, back to reality.

“I don’t know man. But one thing that I do know is that you are a lost cause. Have fun. I’ll call Stella from Accounting. She is better company anyways.”, Calvin said with a wink as he picked up his bag and turned to walk away.

“Yeah. “Better company”. You have fun.”, mumbled Jammer as he headed back to the terminal.

…………………………………………………………………

“What the hell! Don’t tell me you didn’t go back home!”, exclaimed Calvin as he hung is overcoat on the door.

Jammer turned with a start, “You almost gave me a heart attack there! What are you doing so early? And why are you drenched?”

“You would know if you looked at a different screen or , you know, maybe if this place had windows of the real kind”, Calvin answered as he sat down, “It has been raining relentlessly since last night. Both the internet and the cable are down at my place as well as most places in my neighborhood. I could check the news only at the reception. Some sort of a global flash monsoon”

Jammer was already back at the screen. “wait.. I am almost there. I am about to crack the code.”

“Code? Crack? What code?”, asked Calvin.

“The Universe!”

Calvin looked at the number of coffee cups all around Jammer, some piled up on top of the terminal, the barely eaten pizza on the floor, the half opened shoe on his left foot and the haggard lines on his face. Perhaps he truly was a lost cause.

…………………………………………………………………

“Its the same stupid issue again. Although, you might want to look at this. This time it looks like they may breach the ceiling”

“Hmm. Does look like that. I thought we had more time to go before they got this far”

“Apparently not. So, what do we do now? System says breach is imminent”

“We just need a little more time to finish our research. It would be a real shame to wipe it all out and start all over again. We have already had enough iterations”

“I guess we could pull up the Flush program, it would give us enough time”

“I suppose it would save us a lot of garbage cleanup effort too. Well, Go for it”

“Cool. Launching Flush . Initiating in 5…4….3…2…1 and it’s done”

“Nice job. Good that we caught it before the Sim bug could breach the code and cause a depth failure. Sometimes I wonder why they ever made the Sentience module if it was suppose to cause this bug every single time”

“Good point. Hey, wanna wager on how many religions the flush will start this time round?”

“I really couldn’t care less. All I need is enough time to figure out a solution to this other one. I can’t seem to figure out why the second simulation wouldn’t launch”

“Yeah, that one just seems to somehow stay out of our reach”

“Not for long, I think I’m on to something here”

“Guess that means you wont come for the movie tonight?”

“Nah, I’ll skip. You have fun”

“Okay, see ya tomorrow. Want me to get a raincoat for you? It’s been pouring down really hard since yesterday”