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The Hunter by Marcus Lord

O Hunter, Strong Hunter, O what have I done?
Many leagues, over mountains and dales have I run,
Yet you pursue me and you have slain my mate,
O pray tell me why we deserve this fate

O Hunter, Strong Hunter, I beg thee stop,
My bones ache and my tongue is dry,
My throat aches for a sip from the spring,
Why do you hate us? Please tell me why

Vile Hunter, I fear not your pitiful dart,
Strong am I in anger and in wrath,
Endeavour if you dare and block my path,
Every beast in the forest shall feed on your heart

Hunter, Poor Hunter, bleeding, here you lie,
My antler through your heart, you prepare to die,
My heart bleeds for you as you fade,
Your voice is weak, yet your eyes remain clear,
Alas! Had we known each other in love and peace,
We would not have been brought this way together, now, and here

Deer, Noble Deer, your fair visage brings joy to my eyes,
I shall not insult you with guile and lies,
My means are scant and i have four mouths to feed,
Now do you see why there could be no love and peace?

नीद का निर्माण फ़िर फ़िर

This was a poem we learnt at school. Complete dickheads that we were then, we failed to recognise the sheer beauty of it. The resonance of each word which conveys so much meaning yet fits with almost criminal snugness into the meter completely escaped us. Shri Bachchan could move mountains with his words. Without force. They would bow down and make way.
Here goes.....

नीड का निर्माण फिर फिर
नेह का आव्हान फिर फिर

यह उठी आँधी कि नभ में
छा गया सहसा अँधेरा
धूलि धूसर बादलों ने
भूमि को इस भाँती घेरा

रात सा दिन हो गया
फिर रात आई और काली
लग रहा था अब न होगा
इस निशा का फिर सवेरा

रात के उत्पात भय से
भीत जन जन भीत कण कण
किंतु प्राची से उषा की
मोहिनी मुस्कान फिर फिर

नीड का निर्माण फिर फिर
नेह का आव्हान फिर फिर

क्रुद्ध नभ के वज्र दंतों में
उषा है मुसकराती
घोर गर्जनमय गगन के
कंठ में खग पंक्ति गाती
एक चिडिया चोंच में तिनका लिए
जो जा रही है
वह सहज में ही पवन
उनचास को नीचा दिखाती

नाश के दुःख से कभी
दबता नहीं निर्माण का सुख
प्रलय की निस्तब्धता में
सृष्टि का नवगान फिर फिर

नीड का निर्माण फिर फिर
नेह का आव्हान फिर फिर

Things that piss me off

Note: Only the author gives a shit about this article. Readers are welcome to though. Group solidarity. The author has no idea what induced him to write this article. He blames it on peer pressure. He feels the pressure to be more wannabe and self righteous in his writing.

1. Religious fundamentalists
2. Religion
3. Tiny cramped cars
4. Violation of traffic rules
5. The look which most girls give you when you go to a nice 'hang out place' in shorts and an old tee
6. Ill founded pride in Marathi culture
7. Computer programming
8. Being force fed health biscuits by mum and sister because I've become something they call 'scary thin'
9. Summer training
10. Enclosed spaces
11. Pseudo-savvy T-shirt quotes
12. Being scared of two-wheelers on the road when you're driving a car. There ain't no David Goliath situation in real life.
13. Precocious children
14. People who are cruel to cats
15. The the entire dirty great field of engineering

Roadpati se Karodepati

Imagine you're sitting in front of Anil Kapoor trying not to look at his repulsive moustache. You're on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He asks you questions whose answers eerily fit into your past life. You know the answer to Question 1: "Name a popular three wheeled mode of conveyance found on Indian streets?", only because you almost collided with a rickshaw on your way to work. Question 2: "What is two plus two?" escapes you because your office is five miles from your home and not four.
Slumdog Millionaire expects us to believe a street child speaks English with Received Pronunciation when he grows up. It expects us to believe that Anil Kapoor can actually pull of even the easiest roles in which he has but to assume his natural expression, that of dumbfounded amazement with his moustache underlining his most odius physical feature. It also expects us to believe that Alexandre Dumas is taught in run down municipal schools, and that the school teacher actually gives a shit.
Here's a smooth segue into a joke. What do you call a man who has sex with a lot of women for money, and makes millions? SlumDONG Miliionaire. Well, at least the movie's worse than the joke.
When the hell have you seen Bombay come to a complete standstill? Well personally, i've seen it only in the aftermath of the horrible attacks on 26/11. It certainly won't halt everything just to watch some moron will a crore rupees while most of the city starves.
Girl: Mom, look he's gonna win a crore rupees!!!!
Mom: Sit still beta while i extract enough blood from your arm so that i can sell it and we can have some food today.
If you go to the average Mumbaikar and tell him to drop everything and go watch some TV, he'll probably say, "Kyun bey maaderchod? Teri shaadi hai kya??"
Most of the things shown in the movie absolutely never happen. First of all, you can't expect to dance on VT station and expect to get away with it. A girl whom you abandoned ten years ago doesn't welcome you with open arms. More likely with a left hook to the jaw. It is impossible to run through a Bombay train station during rush hour at the speed shown. There are too many people to negotiate. Amitabh Bachchan doesn't visit transit camps. Nobody in their right mind would jump into a pile of doo doo just to get a fuckin' autograph. Oh by the way, the word 'slumdog' is a direct transliteration of the Hindi term 'galli ka kutta'.
I hate the cocksure condescending attitude that the West adopts towards India. Probably the best made movie about India, made by Hollywood is Gandhi. I'm sure a lot of money changed hands within the Academy to make the printer look the other way while the words 'Slumdog Millionaire' were printed on all the envelopes. In their hurry, they likely missed a few, and that is why Benjamin Button and Milk could scrape a few notches on their walls. The Academy is headed down a steep slope if it consciously chose to get rid of its Oscar statuettes to that monstrosity. I mean, if you don't want the statuettes, melt then and send them to Fort Knox man!! What'll movie lovers like me do if Hollywood goes down the poop pipe?

Failures, Hopelessness and Cream Pie

I'm twenty now, and my list of failures in life has reached alarming proportions. I was probably one of the first people to scoff at the term 'quarter life crisis'. I thought it was a neologism thrust upon us by greedy faceless money churning corporations so that they could squeeze every penny from us by making us buy droves of useless paraphernalia. But it apparently is very much alive and pumping. I seemed to have avoided this landmine though. My friends seem to have been hit hard. While i sing like a canary and look for unsuspecting god fearing citizens on whom i might inflict my 'Good deed for the day', my friends are mired in a cesspool of their own negative energies. I inhale ice cream by the gallon while they choke on every morsel. I skip (the annoying kind) to the bus stop while my friends can't seem to drag their poor helpless bodies out of bed. Feeling left out of all the group solidarity, i have decided to present a compilation of my failures.

1. Hit an all time low as far as prowess on the football field is concerned. The team i get chosen into makes no secret about their displeasure about being stuck with me and conveniently tells me to wait outside so that i don't get hurt. I don't blame them

2. Came in sixteenth in a nine mile marathon.

3. Never can i get a waiter to pay attention to me. I'm always left jabbing my finger in the air like I'm gauging the wind direction. Of course, this always happens when there are girls at the table.

4. My GPA finally said, " Its getting hard to breathe up here. Houston, I'm bringin' 'er down." I went from a robust 9.7 to a ghastly..no..my cultured education doesn't permit me to utter it's negligible magnitude.

5. My guitar playing sounds as if someone just gassed a whole chamber of cats in heat. Simple chords escape me. I try to play a C and it comes out a G#.

6. I'm twenty and not that magical age of ten. Must obtain secret from Peter Pan

7. I'm the butt of all jokes. On a good day, I spot a joke I could have been made the butt of , but nobody else does, so they let it pass.

8. I can't drive a car. Neither can i ride a bike. I can walk though.

9. I'm twenty.

10. My frantic chants and yells seem to make the Indian Cricket Juggernaut sputter and retire with an Aspirin by its bedside. Why don't they worrrrk?????

11. My two minute noodles get done within the specified time, but it takes another ten, to scrape them from the vessel.

12. I sing like a rake on chalkboard.

13. I'm born on the longest day of the year.

The above list will regularly be updated so my imaginary readers may enjoy new material.

A few quotes

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on
the concept of God as a senile delinquent and, by God, I will not and
cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this,
this... this... yeah, this angry, petulant old man.

-- Tennessee Williams


I do not believe in any revealed religion. I will have nothing to do
with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without
the absurdity of speculating upon another.

-- Lord Byron

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

-- Charlie Chaplin

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor
should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God

-- George Bush (Sr.)

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy
is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

-- John Adams

The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as
President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they
believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this
is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion

-- Thomas Jefferson

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed
and distorted by religion.

-- James Buchanan

My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of
salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer
and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I
shall ever change them

-- Abraham Lincoln

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the
absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

-- Havelock Ellis

Surely you don’t believe in the gods. What’s your argument? Where’s
your proof?

-- Aristophanes


Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

-- Epicurus

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am
not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

-- Epicurus


Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear, religion's tyranny did
domineer. At length a mighty one of Greece began to assert the liberty
of man.

-- Lucretius

Fear is the mother of all gods.

Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling
of the gods.

-- Lucretius

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to
religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a
ruler who they consider god fearing and pious. On the other hand, they
less easily move against him, believing he has the gods on his side.

-- Aristotle

In this subject of the nature of the gods the first question is: do
the gods exist or do they not? It is difficult, you will say, to deny
that they exist. I would agree, if we were arguing the matter in a
public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind it is
perfectly easy to do so.

-- Cicero

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
false, and by the rulers as useful.

-- Seneca


I don't see any god up here.

-- Yuri Gagarin


There is in every village a torch: The School teacher.

And an extinguisher: The Priest.

-- Victor Hugo


In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the
humble reasoning of a single individual.

-- Galileo

To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own
observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them
not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do
understand, and to find what they do not discover.

-- Galileo


With our contentions their irreligious humour is much strengthened
- nothing pleaseth them better than these manifold oppositions upon
the matter of religion

- Richard Hooker


A person who does not believe the existence of a Deity. Many people,
both ancient and modern, have pretended to atheism, or have been
reckoned atheists by the world; but it is justly questioned whether
any man seriously adopted such a principle. These pretensions,
therefore, must be founded on pride or affectation.

-- Encyclopedia Britannica

Tis very questionable there ever was such a monster in nature as a
serious atheist who lived and died so, in the clear exercise of his
reason and senses

-- Thomas Curteis

An atheist is I think impossible, most who would be thought atheists
are so out of indolence, because they will not give themselves time to
reason

-- The London Magazine

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common
sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some
of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that
any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them

-- Puerre Charron



Religion is a Common Notion; no period or nation is without
religion. We have, then, to search for what is by universal consent
acknowledged in religion and compare these universal principles with
each other; and what is universally acclaimed as religious truth must
be recognised as Common Notions. Such a proceeding may be deemed
laborious, but there is no other way by which the truths of Common
Notions can be ascertained. I value them, however, so highly that I
think it is only in them that the inner counsels of divine wisdom can
be understood.

-- Lord Herbert of Cherbury

There is a supreme being. This sovereign power is to be worshipped.
Common consent ordains this though men differ as to the means, and
this has always been believed that all vices and crimes should be
expiated and effaced by repentance.

-- Lord Herbert of Cherbury


The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is
to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth
and depth. Every part of the universe is 'body' and that which is
not 'body' is no part of the universe, and because the universe is
all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.

-- Thomas Hobbes


Not one English infidel in a hundred is any other than a Hobbist,
which I know to be rank atheism.

-- Richard Bentley

Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone from the
last church falls on the last priest.

-- Emile Zola


Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night
God said: "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

-- Alexander Pope


It is therefore the third sort of atheists only (namely those who in
the way of speculative reasoning, and upon the principles of
philosophy, pretend that the arguments brought against the being or
attributes of God, do, upon the strictest and fullest examination,
appear to them to be more strong and conclusive, than those by which
these great truths are attempted to be proved;) these, I say, are the
only atheistical persons to whom my present discourse can be supposed
to be directed, or indeed who are capable of being reasoned with at
all.

-- Samuel Clarke


what would he have said, if he had known the
late discoveries in anatomy and physics, the circulation of the blood,
the exact structure of the heart and brain, the uses of numberless
glands and valves for the secretion and motion of the juices in the
body, besides several veins and other vessels and receptacles not at
all known, or so much as imagined to have any existence in his days;
but which now are discovered to serve the wisest and most exquisite
ends imaginable!

-- Samuel Clarke


So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.

-- Bertrand Russell


Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and
since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly
wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will
permit.

-- Adam Smith

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in
philosophy only ridiculous.

-- David Hume


His power we allow infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But
neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore he does not will
their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in
choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to
human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that
purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no
inferences more certain and infallible than these. In what respect,
then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy
of men?

Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent
evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing?
then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is
evil?

-- David Hume

No-one I am confident will ever mistake my intentions. No-one has a
deeper sense of religion or pays more profound admiration to the
supreme being.

-- David Hume


If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear
created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or
disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves
them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to
make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature
is calculated to destroy them.

-- Baron d'Holbach

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him
in ignorance of his real duties and true interest. It is only by
dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover
Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of
evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing,
it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them. Let us observe
with the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, that 'theology is the box of
Pandora; and if it is impossible to shut it, it is at least useful to
inform men that this fatal box is open.

-- Baron d'Holbach

Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but religious tyranny attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

-- Tom Paine

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear
to me to be no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind,
and monopolize power and profit.

-- Thomas Paine

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

-- Thomas Paine


Thomas Paine needs no monument made by hands. He has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty.

-- Andrew Jackson

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

-- Charles Darwin

Was it through his grandmother or his grandfather that he was descended from a monkey?

-- Samuel Wilberforce

...Tis is the crown and glory of organic science that it does through final cause, link material and moral... You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which, thank God, it is not) to break it, humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history... Passages in your book, like that to which I have alluded (and there are others almost as bad), greatly shocked my moral taste...

-- Adam Sedgwick

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one .

-- George Bernard Shaw

The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.

-- Sigmund Freud

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

-- Sigmund Freud

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

-- Karl Marx

I'm a good husband, I work hard, and I love my kids...why should I spend half my Sunday hearing that I'm just going to hell anyway?

-- Homer Simpson