Truth bent but not broken,

More dangerous than the lie not spoken -Rohan Sarode

Mumbai, August.

The streets have become waterways with hours upon hours of incessant rain. My car literally felt like a boat today. Poor Man's Venice, they call it now. My Dad was the Gondolier...

Brown teen rap! An interesting sociological phenomenon...

I was nerdy and pathetic when I was a teenager. The only Sikh boy in the entire school. Turbaned with unshorn hair with a sprouting beard, I was different from everyone else. Sikhs are a minority in India, and I was in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The capital of Hindutva politics. Needless to say, I got picked on a lot. A lot. I was angry, inside. Someone made me hear Eminem one day, and I got inspired to write my very first original poem. I stumbled upon it tonight and thought it was just silly enough to make public. Please keep in mind that I was a teenage Indian boy who had just been introduced to rap and was by no means an authority on Hip-Hop lingo.

Read it in the funny Indian accent the Americans are getting so good at these days.
Here goes funny:


My Hairstyle Rap

Hey you, asshole, whatcha lookin' at?
Yeah I got long hair, but then, so what?

Hey you, watcha laughing at?
Ya got yellow teeth, atleast I don't have that!

Ha Ha Ha Check Check Check Check
Kiss a snake on its neck neck

Ya gotta have guts to do it
But you can't, 'cos ure so full o' shit!

A dumb, cheap asshole, that's what I 'll call ya
I'll piss on ure dead skull, and then I'll damn ya!

'Cos u don't know no shit about
Where all the cool peeps of the town hang out.

Ure not cool, ure just a fool
Whenever you see a tit you drool.

I'll kick ure ass and ure mother I'll fuck
So get outta my face if you want some luck!

Every dood has the freedom to choose
If he wants to look like a goat or a goose

(A goat or a goose, a lion or a moose!)

Short hair or long hair, it doesn't really matter,
Its whatcha eat that makes yer ass fatter!

Hey you, watcha lookin at?
Turn yer head around or I'll kick your sorry ass!



Hope the intense emotions came through. Sky out.

Gagan Judge, 23.

Things I have learned this year:

1. My sister is a completely different person and I have to accept that as a fact.
2. I need to keep my mouth shut sometimes to avoid getting into trouble.
3. I am smarter than most people but they don't like being told that.
4. I love food and I hate exercise. I will never be as thin as I was in high school.
5. I like watching movies and talking about them more than I like making them. Teaching might be a good career choice.
6. I can't keep a job because I get bored easily and am too whimsical. I need to be my own boss.
7. Being in love and being in a relationship with someone are two completely different things.
8. Writing requires more discipline than talent. I have no discipline.
9. I may not be as creative or as talented as others, but I have my own unique way of looking at the world and understanding its people. The day I find my voice and I really want to express something, it will all come to me.
10. Time spent living is not time wasted.

whatever...

Happy Independence Day!!!

Sixty four glorious years of butchering minorities, blatant corruption, bigotry, rapid industrialization, casteism, green revolution, white revolution, insurgency, emergency, MCVeggie and Maharaja Mac, animal rights protection, humal rights violations, no first use nuclear policy, bullying of neighbors, wannabe superpower, extreme poverty, non-alignment, non violence, honor killings, equal rights for women, female infanticide, great food, religious extremism, discrimination, spineless foreign policies, moral policing, Bollywood, regionalism - and still going strong! This is India, folks. Take it or leave it.

And hey, atleast we are not doing as bad as some other countries(Pakistan). No terrorism, military rule, failed econonmy, failed state, heroin trade, child rape and obstruction of justice here, so shut up! We rape only grown women, and there are no gay people. We are all Hindus. We are all named either Raj or Kumar. All of us are vegetarians. We all speak English, albeit in a funny accent. Like us. Please.

Our forefathers who fought for our freedom; those people who went to jail, were tortured and beaten with clubs and then hanged without a proper trial. Fasts unto death. The Salt March. Civil disobedience. They envisaged a nation of freedom, made by free-thinking people that would be a shining beacon to the rest of humanity. What a shame.

On missing you...

I miss you in parts. Never as a whole. I miss your hair. Coarse and wild and golden, a lion's mane. Miss how it split the morning sun into a thousand shimmering sparkles. I miss waking up to your sea-green eyes looking at me. Those sea-eyes that had drowned so much sorrow that I could see my love in them, floating helplessly on the surface.

I miss your smell, that used to linger on the sheets long after you went into the shower. I miss the texture of your calves, the shape of your back , the back of your neck, the soft skin behind your ears and I miss kissing them. I miss your long, tapering fingers(you used to say you got them from your father) and the way they used to feel on my lips. I miss being. Just being, existing, in your arms. Those mornings were so warm. The world is so cold, now.

I know it wasn't perfect. Except my love for you. So unwavering in its stubbornness, its vanity. What went wrong I do not know. Those are the parts I do not remember. Or maybe I choose not to. It is there still, stubborn and vain. My perfect love.

I miss our mornings and I miss you and I miss loving you. In parts. Always in parts.

Nate's note on Facebook...

If my Memory Serves me Right: Sinulog
by Nate Zona on Monday, April 11, 2011 at 1:58am

When I was in the Philippines, there was a lot of buzz about this upcoming festival called 'Sinulog.' It is the biggest celebration of the year, and I just happened to arrive a month before it happened. The weeks flew by and before I knew it I had made plans to go to a "rave" the night before Sinulog. This "rave" was really more of a house/ebm night, and it was held at the Cebu International Convention Center. I went with my new friends Rozie Reyes, from Australia, and Vũ Ngọc Phượng, from Vietnam. I was very excited to be going out on the town, since I had basically just arrived, and to a rave nonetheless! We took cab to the venue and paid 500 pesos to get in. (Hunter told us later that we actually could have gotten in for free with our IAFT passes! Damn!) The night was still kinda young so most of the crowd was sitting in chairs surrounding the dance floor. It reminded me of a high school dance, but in a much bigger scale. Well the music was playing and Rosie, Vu and I laughed to ourselves at the shyness of everyone else, went directly to the middle of the floor, and just started dancing like fools! Everyone else started slowly making their way onto the floor and soon enough the place was moving! As the night rolled on and the music got "harder," the producers of the show brought out these four ladies in bikinis, holding chains in each hand, with a little cup at the end of them. They stood at the front for some time, and then a guy with a lighter came over and lit the cups on fire one by one. When they were all on fire, the music hit a crescendo and the chains began swinging! The lights were flashing, the music was pumping, the girls were swinging fire back in forth in a hypnotic gyration, and then along the sides of the stage fountains of sparks erupted high into the sky! The crowd was alive!

The night, however, was just beginning for me.

So we partied, danced, drank, and what not until about two-thirty. At this time Hunter Prescott and Gagan Judge had showed up and asked if I was staying until the end (4am or so.) Vu was ready to go home so Rozie left with him, and I ended up leaving with Hunter and Gagan around 3:30. If I remember correctly, Hunter is from Austrailia, but spent some time in the US as well, namely Texas. Gagan, or Sky as he is called, is from India! Both these dudes are super cool, and I had become kinda friends with them over the previous weeks. I would say more like acquaintances really.

Well, at this point, they decided we should go get some food at a fast food place called Andok's. When we got there they told us they weren't selling beer, so of course we went to a gas station, bought some and went back to Andok's!

Hunter and Gagan were adamant that I try Andok's version of the popular Pinoy dish "Sisig."

Sisig, let me tell you, is DELICIOUS! It's a fried/sizzler meat dish, served on a really hot metal? plate. It smells like bacon and has onions, red peppers, and really tasty spices! Needless to say, I loved it. (Only later did I find out sisig is made from carved pig's head meat, chopped liver, and traditionally, pig's brain! I'd still eat it, haha) The night was not over, and we hopped on a jeepney to get back to the IAFT campus. By this time, the school grounds were abandoned, with only the guards patrolling. We walked to the back of the school where the tiki bar is located, and on the way back there we crossed paths with one of the security guards. Hunter was immediately friendly with him, and they shook hands and happily exchanged pleasantries. I was surprised how well they seemed to know each other and as we walked to the back, Hunter said something I will remember for the rest of my life. "Dude, you gotta make friends with everybody. The cleaning crew, the security guards, the lady who does your laundry. When you step out of your own shoes and let other people in, you free yourself, but most importantly dude, you remember you're not alone in this life."

We sat, the three of us at the now abandoned Tiki Bar in the back of the school. The Tiki Bar sits up against a fence that overlooks the Bay of Magellen. You can see a breathtaking amount of sky from this spot. As we drank our Tanduay Rhum and A&W rooter, and our cans of San Miguel and Red Horse, we watched as the sky began to leech color from the sun. Gagan turns to me and says, "Dude, you will never forget this Mactan Sunrise." Even if he had said nothing and I had been there alone, he was absolutely right. The warm air gently blowing though the palm trees, the black water of the bay, slowly turning red and pink and orange, reflecting the clouds above which puffed in the sky like rolls of marshmallows. The sun slowly but unstoppably rising above the horizon, into the day. It was something I'll never forget. I tried to take a picture with my camera but it just didn't look right, and Hunter and Gagan said to me, "This is something that cannot be captured by our gear man, only with your memory."