Archive for October 26th, 2009
I finished my assignment with Ivy where I was playing the role of the zombie. It was late, I walked towards Singapore River, buying myself a pack of beedi along the way. The wind was blowing. The night was restive
I sat down by the river where I lighted my stick. Sitting there by the river, I relapsed into a thoughtful mood.
I imagined myself a orphan with no kin in this world and no home to return to, surviving by etching out a living on the streets with my wits. Today was one of those fortunate days where I managed some penny in my pocket. This evening I will not go hungry. Puffing away on my beedi, I smiled to myself. Was such a life a sad and miserable one or was it one free from the shackles of kinship?
I seeked further into this imaginative world of mine. Such a person must indeed feel terrible loneliness at times, however such profound sense of loneliness must be intermittenly mixed with a deep sense of peace, a peace which is hard to be found when bounded by ties and kinship but only in solitude. To live this life perhaps demands a great fortitude then. Such a life must perhaps be one that is bitter but yet at the same time sweetness, one that must be very beautiful indeed.
I brought Alena the other day to town with the intention of catching a movie, however Jim called somewhere along the way to invite for a networking session with some SEO gurus and our movie excursion was shortlived. Instead we ended up in Borders bookshop.
I always knew that books was for me greater source of temption than other commodities like cars, alcohol, branded goods or even girls. Unlike other stuff, each and every book was like a door way into some alternate reality, chance to dump here and now for something other worldly. A world of imagination where anything is possible.
Once in the shop I was spoilt for choices. There were so many books all over the place, taking a glance at their prefaces, most of them looked really inviting. Fixing my eyes on the wide selection, I eventually picked for myself “Dracula – the undead” and a book from “A series of unfortunate events” for Alena.
Thus I spent the next two days devouring my book from cover to cover. It is a sequel to the 19th classic Dracula by Bram Stoker.
This sequel is authored by one of his descendent and written based on notes left by the departed author presented Dracula in a different light.
In a sense it seems that societies’ notion of reality and attitued has changed very much over the past century. This change is evident when contrasting the monster then and the monster now. 19th century presented Dracula as an all powerful inhumanly blood thirsty creature of the night, 21st centruy presented this familiar monster in a humanified manner along with human strength and weakness. No longer was he presented as the absolute evil, he was instead presented as a living breathing entity with his own character, thoughts and emotions. He seemed to me to be pretty much like the Vampire Lestate in Anne Rice’s chronicals of the vampire. A creature lost in this fast changing world where traditions get eroded faster than they were built, full of fear, slowly finding his way about. He seemed a reflection of the 21st century human.