Claw Machine Concept

Some stories start with a secret. Some lives too. Secrets have the power to make people descend into madness, but what if madness is what is actually sanity in this insane world? We live in a world in which everyone is crazy in a different manner, and those who are sane descend into madness to preserve their purity, to defend their secrets.

This is the story of a boy who had a few secrets and who once let himself lose at a claw machine so that the ones he respected could keep their respect. It turns out that the ones he respected didn’t deserve his respect at all, and now, all grown up, he misses the teddy bear he lost at the claw machine. But that teddy bear would never come back, nor would the time when he could play on the claw machine with the confidence that got lost with the teddy.

The past held secrets, and the future held promise, and the gods who once protected the weak became mute spectators of secrets getting defiled and futures being burned down. The claw machine at the hill station still waits for him to come and get a teddy, but he is hoarding gasoline to burn down the worlds of those who deprived him of the teddy bear, defiled his secrets, and burned down his future.

It’s not a story of revenge, and neither is it a story of madness. It is a story of what happens when gods become impotent. It is a story of a kingdom descending into a realm of madness when it is ruled by the incompetent and the criminally insane. It is a story of benign secrets getting defiled by demons.

The boy opens his storeroom and sees the canisters of gasoline he is hoarding to ultimately burn the whole thing down. A kingdom that has turned into an asylum, and kings who have been castrated. The kingdom has fallen, and the boy sits in his basement waiting to pour gasoline all over it and burn it down. Those who were meant to protect people now rape them, and the boy knows that it’s not the kings who should be castrated, but them.

The gods might not regain their power, the kings may not regain their vitality, but fire remains. It remains forever to purify. The teddy in the claw machine watches the boy with blood-streaked eyes. It’s not about secrets anymore; in fact, it never was. It is about purification, and the ritual involves fire.

The impotence of gods demands sacrifice, and the boy revisits the hill station in his head, in that particular arcade, where he inserts a coin in the claw machine and grabs the teddy by the neck and pulls it out. The teddy has waited for this moment for long — to come out, to meet his real master, to get tied to his back, and to go on with a canister of gasoline and a flamethrower to each and every building that prevented him from meeting his rightful owner.

Alha Udal on The Run

Portals are one of my favourite literary devices. Them and if we talk about space, wormholes. If I'm writing a story, portals allow me to keep the world that I live in intact and imagine or create different worlds. I noticed this in one of Anant Kushwaha's chitrakathas too, though he didn't use a portal but a tree, in his chitrakatha he used a tree which a bonded labourer climbs to find a whole new kingdom at the top. It was back in the 90s so back then the world still had a wonder, jungles still had mystique and magic was still possible so climbing a tree to find a whole new kingdom at the top was a good device. Magic, although it might exist, doesn't matter now because in my thirty five years of life I have realised that magic too only helps the privileged, if a poor man or woman contracts tuberculosis he is as good as dead and there is no magic coming to save them. I have had some experiences and I'm a rational man, so I didn't discard my experiences outright. I believe that any magic that is reproducible is science and the meaning of magic for me is something that can't be reproduced. Anything that has a structure and a process and can be reproduced is a science, just different than the normal internationally standardised science. Those who have seen cartoons in childhood know how witches in them used to create potions by different ingredients, mostly by odd ingredients like a bird's eyes or a rat's liver and such. I personally don't believe in witchcraft but I do get that systems might exist that are incomprehensible to the modern science and it is kind of fitting because I myself practice such a system. I read Harry Potter as a kid, it made my childhood great and magical. Platform 9 3/4 was a portal to the magical world and such portals as literary devices provide escape in literature which to me seems essential in the political era we are living in today. I am a physician so I know that there is no magic in real life, outcomes in real-life are pre-defined. If you get an infection and don't get treated you are dead from sepsis. Only real magic in the real-world is money. When you grow up and understand this thing you realise that you can mostly only make friends with people who have similar shared experiences as you, I mean you can befriend a genuinely good man or woman, but it gets easier if they have read the same 90s comics as you, or have watched the same cable TV shows as you or like the same music as you. Now, think about the people who didn't have money to buy comics, have cable TV or buy audio cassettes. You realise that it is all based on money. Our ancients had a system for them, it was called folk culture where they had their music, dances and stories and ways to recreate themsleves. This culture has now been destroyed by pizza eating, coke drinking motherfuckers and now they proudly present token remanants of the culture to whites and Arabs in five star hotels while enslaving those who practiced that culture. They did the same with the middle class, in North India they totally obliterated Hindi literature. My writing is not for sale, especially after realising the reality of the situation. It's open source so that people know the truth about the demonic assholes who govern our lives. I might still publish if I write fiction or fantasy but it won't be traditional publishing. I like the idea of Narnia's wardrobe and I like the idea of Alice's rabbit hole. We have to find our portals and wormholes because the earth doesn't have mystery anymore, it has been totally mapped by Google Maps. 

Mangal

I write on this blog because I faced severe writing block while writing fiction and fantasy and so I make do with writing a blog post about writing. If I had the drive to write fiction I wouldn't have been as direct as I am on this blog and would have used metaphors in my fiction as the published "authors" do. But as have realised in the past couple of years that time of metaphors has passed and anyway I like and enjoy writing direct even if it makes me a target of persecution as I personally know that persecution in this nation doesn't really need a reason and is totally of whimsical nature. Existence is basically about saving your ass as long as you can, of course it is a political design so that the ones who live in airconditioning can permanently live in airconditioning, well at least till the sun explodes which is still quite a long way to go. I was young, I believed in scientific journals, I believed in United Nations, I believed in terraforming other planets until I realised that UN, like my state of Uttar Pradesh is just on paper,  and scientific journals are at least seventy percent hogwash, and terraforming planets is of no use without freedom which will always elude the common man. In this process I also realised that most of history too is hogwash and at present it is primarily a tool for going back in time and finding reasons to oppress and discriminate against groups of people. When true reality of the world, which is of course of a political nature, confronts a person one has no option, if he is family man, but to give in to it. Love is the greatest force and the greatest bondage humans experience. As I have experienced life I prefer death and personally think it is a better option than to live in slavery but then love is something that keeps people alive, the safety of loved ones in the big bad world is the biggest motivator to keep on living. And since one has to keep on living why not live happily. I realised that all that matters is now, one has to learn to live happily in the present. Past might come to haunt, and if politics is involved, in more ways than one, but it is present that matters. Future is unsure. Like when I was a kid I used to think about flying cars in future and Artificial Intelligence and sure we have Artificial Intelligence but we also have Only Fans. Flying cars would have been cooler than Only Fans though. I realised that future is not going to be better, and I would love to be proven wrong, because life is already better for those whom it is. Future has always been here and it is rationed. Only way to access the future in this arrangement is betraying your own. My problem is not this though, my problem is that assholes neck deep in pleasures of all kinds and "psychological air-conditioning" (you can only understand this phrase if you are acquainted to it) prevent people from experiencing even the natural breeze, one most people would say God has made. The goal is not just having it all, the goal also consists of deprivation of others. It's sad but it is what it is. When I was a kid I had read a story about a bird having a nest to stay during a thunderstorm and two monkeys destroying it because they didn't have somewhere to stay. This story not only works in this country at a social level, but also at a level way deeper than that. Terraforming Mars would mean nothing if it involves hiring cheap labour from Bihar to go and die there first and that probably would happen. You might say I'm pessimistic but it's been more than 2000 years after Jesus and humanity has not only not learnt but from what I have seen, it has become demonic in ways that are hard even to express. Escape, then, becomes the only way. I advocate for healthy ways of escapism and not alcohol, sex and drugs. I escape with fiction and fantasy and people must find their own but healthy ways to escape. Happiness is of prime importance, and creating happy memories is the best thing one can do for their family and themselves. 

Vol. 2

It was early 2010s and I had gotten bored with women after realising that God (if He or She exists) had made a great blueprint but failed to execute it practically. I have had beautiful examples of women from my community but I hadn't been so lucky in personal life. The women I grew up around were filled with love and sacrifice, and it kind of forged myself for love and sacrifice. It's later that I realised that despite having such kind, generous and sacrificing women in my community, the control of my region and consequently control of women in my region is in hands of literal rapists and I think it's the case of most of India. Early 2010s was when I had stopped searching for a girlfriend and started hoping to find a mate. I wanted to find myself a girl with whom I could talk about the universe and wonders of nature, someone who was as broken as I was during that time so we could heal each other, at that time I was unaware of the political angle that a broken woman in this country means a prostitute. You live for quite a while and the political angle settles in. I have deep respect for femininity. Anyone who has had a grandmother knows what real love is. It was in late 2010s that I became aware that the hometown I loved so much is covertly a rapetown, it gave me a bigger picture about the state of this country but it was specially surprising to learn this about my hometown which I had seen steeped in tradition and it is here I realised that rape is a political tool which is used frequently for political intimidation and also because the motherfuckers involved are habitual rapists. I could apply the logic on the greater nation and the hypocrisy of this nation and the truth that we all know subconsciously but couldn't keep our fingers on finally came out for me. Rape, I realised, is never going to go out of fashion because power will always belong to those who use deception and brute force to acquire and keep it and they enjoy the sadism of inflicting humiliation and helplessness in the victim. The hidden structure that governs the lives of people in my region, I realised, is composed solely of rapists which I realised after direct confrontation with the power structure and obviously for no reasons. These motherfuckers aren't as skilled in their "jobs" (if at all we can call it a job) as they are in rape. I realised that different forms of rapes exist, brute force, coercion, raping and silencing through intimdation, I mean approaches are quite varied. I was a romantic guy but I gave up my romantic ideals after I realised that the deepest power structure of my region and this nation is composed solely of rapists. I have seen it so I know it. It means God in this nation is a rapist. There wouldn't be a girl with whom I can talk about the universe under the night sky and it anyway doesn't matter as I'm now as happily married as any common Indian man is.

Monopoly

Building fictional and fantastical worlds is something that I enjoy deeply. I also like to create superheroes for personal pleasure and even though I can't draw, I can use them in stories because there is no dearth of superhero literature in the West even if we keep aside comics and graphic novels. Superheroes empower kids and at present there is a dearth of indigenous superheroes. There have been indigenous superheroes in the past which still exist in this country though barely. I was travelling by train a few years ago and I saw a mom playing monopoly with his child, he might be eleven years of age. At that age I was reading comics bought from A.H. Wheelers and it kinds of sums up how this country is evolving, financially but not creatively. Kids do not read anymore, at least a majority of them which is evident by comics sales in this country. Most indigenous comics sales come from 90s kids trying to complete their comics collection rather than kids buying comics to read. Also, comics are incredibly expensive now, even Indian comics so they have gone beyond the reach of even the middle class and high class kids read Marvel, DC and imported Mangas and not indigenous comics. It was during a phase of terrible depression that I decided to create superheroes at a personal level to help me cope, these characters were made of my favourite traits and tailored to my needs, just like Lord Hanuman is for wrestlers. I like creating fictional and fantasy worlds, and I had thought about creating a space operas which got actively sabotaged during a low phase in my life. The point now is not about reading or creating fantasies or fantastical worlds, the point now is being capable of suspending the reality and actually being able to inhabit those fantasies or fantastical worlds. After the internet became from a tool of connecting people to a huge financial and propaganda machine, reality has been too on the face and the hyperreality and simulacra that had been built all through these years has, at least for those who are intelligent, collapsed. I have all the important fantasy series in my library from Tolkien's Lord of The Rings to Ursula K. Le Guins Earthsea novels and of course much loved Harry Potter series and even Neil Gaiman's dark fantasy books and yet I find myself incapable of escaping into those worlds like I could when I was a kid or even in my early youth. Only time I'm able to escape into fiction or fantasy now is when I am myself writing it which is not very often due to writer's block. I make my characters and superheroes, and I have lived with them in my childhood, Chacha Chaudhary by Pran, Fauladi Singh in Diamond Comics, the numerous superheroes of Raj Comics like Nagraj, Doga and so many others. I want to create and I hope to create something worthwhile, I'm not a monopoly kind of person and anyone who is knows that it's an unending game which ends up in murder. Superheroes don't murder, they save. 

Stranger Than Fiction

It was in early 2010s I used to think of becoming a physician-writer. While I was college I wanted to get into writing comics, and I used to write on my blog, musings and short stories. What triggered that thought in me was an issue of a comic magazine named Comic Jump by Level 10 Comics and my history with comics as I used to have a huge comic book collection in my childhood which I let go to focus on my studies during highschool. It is at the same time the outline of the novel I wanted to write started forming in my mind and I started to write snippets of it on my blog. A whole decade later, I realised that writing is redundant and while I wanted to write my masterpiece I realised that writing a masterpiece is not really possible given the political repression and sabotage of skills. What people get in the literary echo chamber these days in this country is actually either approved propaganda, substandard literature or literature that furthers the narrative. I realised this after I got enlightened about the literary and creative circles of this country by mid 2010s and I realised that they are basically circlejerks of snobs with connection and reach and making it in publishing, even if one manages to do it is not really worth it especially now when we live in times of people getting biases confirmed by individually tailored social media algorithms. I still write though to let out the truth I know and for creative pleasure. The masterpiece I wanted to write is not only a far cry now but also redundant as I realised that whatever you write will be co-opted and weaponised against the intent you wrote it with. Level 10 Comics has shut down and so have many comics startups formed in the late 2000s and early 2010s and even most of the old comic publishers except a few. People don't get indigenous fictional and fantasy narratives anymore and are for most part entertaining themselves through social media especially through YouTube and Instagram reels. Real human connection is difficult these days and here books come in picture as they stand as the last bastion of real human connection and honesty, I mean since I have read quite a few books I can say that about books until the 90s and especially about 20th century's European and American literature. I still write, for informing people and for creative pleasure through fiction, though I don't have any plans of traditional publishing anymore especially now when we are living in times that are stranger than fiction.

Dispatch 21

Having the experience of the actual reality is important. The actual reality of the country and the world is purely materialistic and political. Spirituality is of no use when only select few can access it and majority has access to it in the form of a dogmatic and deluding religion. It's about the intent though and in the past decade I have realised that the intent itself, in this country, is to delude people. Though it doesn't take away the fact that religion gives relief and community to a lot of people. I experienced the actual reality of this nation and when I entered the blackhole of the cruelty and detravity that is hidden behind myriads of delusions I decided that I would send dispatches outside so that people who read me can get a clear idea and prevent themselves, I mean as much as it is possible, from becoming a prey of conspiracies and delusions. For good men, at least for a major portion of them, getting exploited is inevitable because the arrangement is mathematical exploitation of anything that can be exploited, be it poverty, illnesses, handicaps, inferiority complexes, insecurities and self-doubts and it is at a level at which it can't really be fought back. Goodness and weakness will be inevitably exploited and when one knows this country well they realise that goodness in this country itself is a weakness. What keeps people deluded though is that this country and those who control things here keep a facade of benevolence which doesn't translate into practicality, the arrangement for men is basically slavery and for women it is a harem like situation and there is nothing that can be done about this. Though it might be that it is a situation particular to Purvanchal, but I highly doubt it. The arrangement itself is such that anyone who has seen it, if they talk about it seem crazy as people's lives have been individualised and their ability of rational interpretation has been dismantled for the most part, I still take the risk of being labelled crazy because this is the bottomline and once one makes sense of the things and yet is unsure they have an example to compare their own life experiences with. I leave my writings as lighthouses or lifeboats for people suffering without any fault of theirs, as a doctor I know that even if someone is incurable merely giving them the diagnosis of their suffering greatly reduces the suffering. In short it's not God that is testing you and causing you suffering, it's rampant political exploitation at a level where people think God resides and where it can't be resisted. I wouldn't have bothered to write this kind of shit because I have my own life to pay attention to but then I realised that these motherfuckers are doing anything to anyone at this point and hence writing about it became necessary for me.