Teenagers

Hello everyone, This post is for those teenagers who have EVERY OTHER PROBLEM in their lives. Almost every teenager, specially girls sound depressed to the core and their pet dialogue is "saari problems meri life me hi kyu hain?". This is for those teenagers who believe that popping sleeping pills or cutting veins is the only way-out to every petty issue in life. Yes, they do talk a lot about suicide. You're just 15 and you're crying cause your LOVER flirts with other girls and you can't stand the hurting. Have you ever, by any chance thought about an orphan girl, even younger than you, who sheds her tears helplessly, every night cause she miss the touch of her mother and she doesn't have a father to protect her from all the evil in this world. Cry, if your tears are more meaningful than hers. You lock yourself in a room and hurt yourself cause you didn't score that well in exams. Look at a poor kid who walks past your school every day and wishes that he was one of you. You're shattered cause your best friend is prettier than you and she gets more attention. Let me remind you of a blind girl of your age who lost the right to see this world at the very moment of her birth. While you are planning to take sleeping pills cause your father didn't allow you for a late night party, a kid who works as a house servant is being beaten in that house cause he tried to feel like a kid by switching on the TV to watch cartoons. You cry here cause you feel you deserve more love than you get, some girl cries there cause she was raped at an age she didn't know what RAPE meant. At the age of 15, you cut your veins just because your father won't let you marry the guy you have been planning to marry since you were 13. Think about the girls who are forced to marry any random guy at young age of 14-15 and get killed cause they are worthless without dowry

Batman and Joker explained.

No two characters in comic books complement one another quite like the Batman and Joker. At first, you assume they're on separate ends of the morality spectrum. Then you realize these two dudes are two very dependent versions of the same person. Sounds counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

Batman has one core tenet: Do not kill. Under no circumstance will he ever justify killing another being, even if his decision is irrational as fuck. Imagine how hard this is. The most logical man on the face of the planet, the greatest single detective, has to fight the reasoning and critical thinking he relies on. He knows killing a major villain would prevent a shitload of deaths. He knows it would bring a greater peace to Gotham for the time being. He knows the good it would do. He struggles with it. But he never acts on it. He brings every villain back to Arkham and goes back to his Bat-cave to plan for their possible escape. That's what he does. He plans.

This is a man surrounded by beings that can fly, run faster than light, use magical rings, and do other crazy shit. All he has is his brain. His powers are strategy, foresight, unshakable will, and a disturbing level of obsession. He has a contingency plan for diffusing almost any possible scenario. He has to. He’s so good at it that even Superman wouldn't fuck with him. And that guy can sit inside the fuckin' Sun. (And consider this… Who is Supe's arch nemesis? Lex fucking Luthor. A man who only has brains, money, technology and no superpowers).

Now The Joker. This guy is evil incarnate. Not just any evil. The kind of evil that has no purpose or goal. He wants to cause as much chaos as possible with as little remorse as possible. Sociopath doesn't even scratch the surface. Why does he call himself The Joker? Jokes imply lighthearted comedy and humor. You think of smiles and laughter. You think of joy. This shit is the exact opposite of what he does to people. He’s basically a walking, “Ha-ha fuck you.” The comedy and humor is still there. The smiles and laughs too. Even joy. But they are there for him and only him.

Then one day, The Joker meets The Batman, and his life suddenly has purpose. For the first time, his actions become planned and orchestrated. His chaos becomes more ordered and methodical. Why? Because he knows Batman is smart. But he also knows Batman is fighting some heavy demons. He understands Batman better than anyone. Why? Because behind that black mask and armor, he sees a sleeping Joker fighting to wake up. And he’ll go to any length to unleash him. How? By getting Batman to kill. But just any random murder isn't enough. He wants to be the victim. He wants to be the first person Batman kills.

But why is it so bad if Batman kills Joker? Wouldn't it save countless lives in the long run? Isn't Joker just gonna eventually escape Arkham and kill again? He's done it more than a few times. Why doesn't Batman just bend the rules this one time and rid the world of this evil fuck? People ask these questions, acting like Batman hasn't asked himself the same shit hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. And guess what? Batman is smarter than you.

After his parents' murders, Bruce Wayne dove headfirst into a dark, dark place in his mind. His entire reality pulled a 180 in the time it took two bullets to travel 10 feet. Over time, he willed himself out of this mental void by dedicating his existence to stopping the evil that stole the life he was supposed to have. And to stay on track, he set some ground rules. The most important? THOU SHALT NOT KILL.
Under that calm and cool demeanor, Bruce Wayne is teetering on the edge of sanity. He spends endless night obsessing over his duties, using The Batman to cling to the last shred of the real him. This is why he can never kill. He can't allow himself that privilege and that power. He knows that after that first kill, the second will be that much easier to justify. Then a third. Then inevitably a fourth. And suddenly he becomes judge, jury and executioner. No man should have that power… especially no Batman. Bruce knows that this shit would inevitably push his psyche past the brink and back into the darkness. And the last thing anyone wants is an unrestrained, mentally unstable Batman. Good fucking luck trying to stop that guy.

Joker knows all of this. He knew it the first time he looked past Batman’s mask, and into Bruce Wayne’s eyes. He recognized the anger and frustration fighting to explode. And another thing, who the fuck does this bat guy think he is? He thinks he’s better than me? Mr. High and Mighty thinks he's better than the silly impulsive Joker? WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT BAT GUY THINK HE IS?

I guess I’ll have to show him. And that’s the beginning of the most beautifully complicated relationship in comic book history. A chess game where both players know that inevitably only one will walk away. Batman will do everything in his power to prolong their match, while Joker obsessively commits his existence to ending it. Joker wants to die. He wants to push Batman far enough to break that mental dam holding back all the rage. He wants to show Batman that Bruce Wayne is no different than the scarred up maniac he fights against. He wants to win and he knows he can’t be alive to do that. His death will unleash a force more chaotic than he can ever hope to be. This will be Joker’s last gift to the world, and he’ll be laughing his ass off every second along the way.

Also, Robin sucks balls.

The Other Day.

He looked like a lost young man. He was slim, tall and had an unusually long neck. He took the same stairs as I did. He was sprinting on the stairs; a gust of gutkha breeze greeted me as he sped past me. He then cleared his throat, the sound echoed in the basement stairs. He coughed again to collect all the juices and gutkha remnants in his mouth and got ready to spit it out with force. He was going to spit near the sign which clearly read “Don’t spit here!” I wanted to stop him.

And suddenly he stopped. He then bowed to the wall and did a respectful Pranaam. When I got near the spot, I saw "Hanuman Ji" balancing a mountain on his left hand and holding a mace in his right hand. I am talking about his picture of course. I couldn’t suppress a smile. In a country where rules are broken for fun, where notice boards don’t mean a thing, where politics is appeasement, where voting is caste and religion based, where civic sense is zero, where cops can be bought for less than a hundred bucks, where judges can be bribed, where no one stops for nobody, where everyone has contacts, where people race on highways, where people don’t help accident victims, where harassing women is called “eve teasing”, where women are worshiped and raped at the same time, Religion probably is the only thing which is taken seriously.

I stopped and smiled at "Hanuman Jee" and did a respectful pranaam as well. The war of theists and atheists will continue forever but I wanted to thank him for saving the wall from being stained.

A trip to an Eco Farm

                A trip to an Eco Farm 

Usually, I hesitate to write (publicly) about my travels or anything. I usually hesitate until something really inspiring comes along the way. Most of what I write ends up in its rightful place in the recycling bin and then in the shredder or simply in the junk box on my computer (press shift and delete together).

Little did I know what was in store when I started for the Wada farm with my friends and teachers from Royal College, Mira road. After the usual traffic jams in Mumbai, we were out of the city and cruising towards the farm when I started noticing the western ghats mountain on one side. As we moved further away from Mumbai and into the countryside, the environment became serene and beautiful. After a 87 km journey on the expressway, in about 2 hours 15mins our bus finally took a halt and broke us from inertia. We were at the ECO FARM.

Away from all the hustle and bustle of the city, into the wilderness, lay this Eco farm managed by Mr. Hussain and his brother.

As you enter the farms you see a path beautifully decorated using various crop plantations on both the sides.

You see crops of different types planted around you, it all starts with capsicum-Pepper plant, as you move further along the path you see Snake gourd, Drum stick tree, Green Beans, Manila Tamarind, Fenugreek, Lemon Grass, Coconut, Guava, and Cauliflower planted and then in the middle of the farm, out of surprise, lies a huge Solar Cooker, Advanced Eco Solar cooker if you may.

Unlike the other conventional bulky ugly box type solar cookers this one looks interesting, is easy to assemble and does not require a lot of maintenance.

All you have to do is, Place the cooker on the holder, tilt the curvature of the instrument to focus the sunlight at the cooker and wait for the sun to do all the work.

The only downside you have on this cooker is that you have to change the focus of the rays after every 15mins due to the rotation of the Earth.

He then showed us VERMI COMPOSTING, the benefits of vermin culture and how the earthworm is associated as the farmer’s bestfried.

After this, Mr. Hussain took us further into the farm to show us more crop plantations.

 He introduced us to different types of plants like Basil, Aloe Vera, Fenugreek, Coriander, Green Beans, Areca Nut, Indian Plum (Ber), Gourd, Pink Pepper, Mother – In – Law’s Tongue, Hibiscus, Malabar Nut Tree (Adusa), Money Plant, Lemon Grass, Guava, Mango, Banana, Cauliflower, Coconut, Cabbage, White Brinjal, Hybrid Brinjal, Drum Stick Tree, Lemon, Manila Tamarind, Snake Guard, Capsicum, Onion, Chili, Garlic, Hybrid Tomato, Desi Tomato etc.

After the tour we had an hour long break in which we were served “Khichadi” prepared in the Solar Cooker.

 And post lunch there was a small seminar followed by Q and A in which we were asked about different measures we could and would take at individual levels to try and help the environment. 

  

                                                                 Written by Anish Nagpal.