Thursday, May 17, 2007

Tragic Flaws # 1


So there’s this likeable character, a protagonist if you please, in a narrative but she’s got this one major flaw: a tragic flaw, a character fissure, a crack in her personality that will eventually split open, wider and wider until she’s forced to commit a blunder serious enough to force circumstances around her to collapse and the story to end on a tragic note. This is what Aristotle defined as the essence of a tragedy, and this is what Shakespeare apparently used in most of his famous tragedies. I’m discovering that though my personality and character are not worth analysing except occassionally on my own blog, I also have terrible character flaws that God forbid might lead to my collapse, my self-destruction, my life ending in tragedy. (I said God forbid.)

1. I do not know the art of keeping in touch, maintaining contact with people, even people I absolutely admire and adore, even people I love.

2. I do not have the ability of being blunt, of blurting things out as they are, of taking a strong personal stand – and fast.

3. I’m inherently lazy, and I very rarely and only on certain occasions have the ability to get on my feet and do something.

4. I do not have the ability to take major decisions that steer the course of my life in a different direction. All the radical changes – if any – in my life are happening, verrrryyyyyyy, verrrrrryyyyy slowwwwwwlyyyyy.

So why’s this post titled # 1? Because now that I have already found 4 tragic flaws (Four! Tragic indeed.), I’m sure I will find more as I sit and ponder over my character. Then it’ll be time for another post – titled, appropriately enough, ‘Tragic Flaws # 2’. And I really, really, really hope to the heavens that it would be the last ‘tragic flaws’ post.

Friday, May 11, 2007

PappuPhookingPuzzlingPonderngParanoia

What’s with Pappu and his phooking? He used to be your sweet, average, good-intentioned, bad-looking geek. Of course, he still is. Except that out of his many always-harboured intentions of personal inversion, subversion and perversion, one, let’s say, came to ‘light’ in the past year: leading to his incessant phooking today. Oh how banal the reasons for starting were, and oh how exciting it became over a period of time, and oh how dangerously addictive it runs the risk of becoming. Though not entirely oblivious to the risk he’s running, Pappu is detached, vulnerable, and undecided – just like he is with other issues of life. It’s strange how Pappu is always a long-term thinker in all other matters (sometimes too long-term, some might argue!), but when it comes to this, no amount of second-thoughts can save him. In the last eight months of silent-slacky-smoky-sad evenings, Pappu has tried to escape this crazy hazy maze twice. Both times, to put it mildly, ‘Pappu pass nahi hua.’ What a tragedy for such a sweet, average, good- intentioned, bad-looking geek. Now he’s living with it. Do you know that Pappu likes sitting down in a dark quiet place while performing his phooking? Long, long ago, when Pappu was on the other side of the philter, he heard from a Sarkari friend that rather than walking about with a butt, he would rather sit down on one’s own while phooking. Although amusing at the time, Pappu totally subscribes to this theory now. Pappu loves phooking when it occurs in a silent, gloomy, nostalgic environment. He has rationalized his behaviour by associating his act of phooking with his act of silent meditative contemplation. One he wants to continue throughout his life, and the other he doesn’t want to. Pappu’s predicament is that the situation has reached a stage where one is unthinkable without the other. And then on the other hand, Pappu ponders whether this is just paranoia? People phook, and Pappu shouldn’t? What does Pappu do? Pappu is stuck. Another disastrous personal problem to add to the list of disastrous personal problems of life. Poor Pappu.
But maybe paranoid Pappu over-reacts. There is still hope. There will always be hope.
Sometimes quitters win.