Art

Let us stand under this lighted space

And stare at the wall together

Let us imagine it to be a work of art

A paintbrush across canvas

Let us etch our ideas onto the wall

Under the light

Let us dance into the Louvre

Hand in hand and stare

At all the canvases there

And then let us be strangers once again

And drift slowly but steadily apart

Until one day, one of us stares at a canvas

And wonders where their better half got to

Let a stranger's art bring us back together

And remind us of the joy we felt in spending our lives together

Amidst all the art this world has to offer

The Bilge Master

Thoughts on the Ending of Tom and Jerry

My childhood was spent playing in the mud after a storm, reading fairy tales and fantasy, listening to Abba and watching Tom and Jerry or The Roadrunner Show. Pokemon came much later, in my pre teen years.

I want to talk about Tom and Jerry today. I want to tell you how a child's heart was captured by a cat chasing a mouse about a house ad infinitum. Tom and Jerry's antics, sometimes with a bird or a duck filled the child with so much happiness that he thought he would burst. I remember the child chortling as Tom slammed headfirst into a door while Jerry hid in the nearby mouse hole. I remember the first time I laid eyes on them and I remember being in my twenties and laughing fondly at the memories Tom and Jerry had given to me.

All of these memories are the reason why I was shocked to learn how the series ended. The wise Internet said that Tom and Jerry both threw themselves in front of a train. I couldn't believe that, I wouldn't believe that. But then my curiosity got the better of me and I logged on to the net and Googled Tom and Jerry Final Episode and (SPOILER ALERT) found out that it was true-that Tom and Jerry do indeed commit suicide by sitting on train tracks while we hear the whistle of an oncoming train as the scene fades to the credits.

I would like to pause here and ask a very simple one word question to the creators of Tom and Jerry; and that question is- Why?

Why would you end a children's cartoon in such a macabre way? There was no need for this. You could have just gone on giving us the same of what we loved. A cat and a mouse chasing each other around a house sufficed to fill millions of small hearts with joy. Why take that joy, sucker punch it and leave a gaping hole where it was?

Why kill Tom and Jerry and that too for such a stupid reason?

The last episode shows Tom falling for a cat and having a rival who stays one step ahead of him. If tom buys a bottle of perfume, his rival buys her a truck full of perfume. We see Tom squander his savings and his life insurance and we see him take on debt in the lower millions just to please some randomly introduced cat. She isn't even fleshed out like the other characters in the series. She's a one hit wonder. Meanwhile, Jerry narrates all this in a sad voice, filled with concern over Tom. But the producers and creators were not satisfied with creating such a dark episode as the finale of an iconic children's story. They took it to the next level by showing Jerry's girlfriend cheating on him with another mouse.

Let me pause here one more time and ask another question- Why make a children's cartoon so adult? Which parents would allow their children to watch such an episode? What were you guys even thinking? Scratch that-what drugs were you on when you made this episode? Is this how we are supposed to see Tom and Jerry end? Couldn't you have had the decency to just show them chasing each other in their middle age and left it at that?

Indecent. That is what sums up my feelings in a nutshell. I find this episode to be indecent and it has hurt me to watch it. I do not know why you took such a wonderful series and perverted it to this.

 I just feel very sad. The child in me is crying.

The Bilge Master

Thoughts on Friendship

When I was a child, I had no friends. I didn't know what they were or why they were important. My parents were my first friends . They taught me how to walk, how to eat, how to use the toilets and a lot more in the values section.

Then I joined school and sat at a bench with other human beings who were of my age. It was a revelation. I found people like me, facing the same math problem together. Back then one plus one (not the cellphone) equals two was fascinating. But I still didn't have friends. I saw some faces everyday in the bus to school and during my classes. That was all.

I must digress here and say that I am an introvert (I had no idea what being an introvert was about until a person elder to me did a psychology test on me) and I don't open up easily. I have excellent communication skills and i can get along with people fine, just not enough to call them my friends. The number of friends I have can be counted on my fingertips.

But they are each special.

Friendship is a funny thing. It challenges existing norms and channels positivity. Friendship taught me that you don't need to be related by blood in order to be brothers. It taught me that sometimes friends are more than just people, they're a support system wrapped around the tree that is your life in a non parasitic and more of a symbiotic way. I cannot imagine a world where I have no friends. I need them to survive, they are like the air I breathe.

My friends have been there for me through thick and thin. I remember calling one up when my grandmother died. He was at the ICU with a friend of his whose mother had to be freak admitted. He left that situation and reached my location within fifteen minutes because I had called him. I confided in a friend when the depression I suffered from was high and he counselled me on the subway back home and told me over the course of four stations (talking non stop) that I had to find ways to be happy even in the face of unhappiness. He said to me, "If someone gives you 100 reasons to be unhappy, find 101 reasons to be happy".  Wisdom I try to use to this day, sometimes succeeding and other times failing.

Another friend of mine is someone I had a small crush on. She used to study with me in school but we met outside of it when we were both adults. She's a wonderful person, fun to talk to, serious when the occasion demands, happy-go-lucky and a chunk of pure platinum. We talk everyday, be it on WhatsApp or on the phone.

But friendship is also about letting people go. It's about evolving, knowing that some friend of yours is toxic to your life and cutting them out. I have met people who have called me their friend and then slandered me. I have met a person who was inseperable, until he joined college and did a total U-turn on me, turning into a nasty and pompous human being. But, were it not for such people, I would never have developed the strength to sever ties and move on with my life, living it with peace as opposed to rage.

The thing is that friendship is a good teacher. It tells you to go for something you want to go for, reassuring you that your support system will be there. It's easy to take friends for granted and I think a little bit of that is healthy because it brings people closer, but too much of it can fracture the relationship. It is very important that you respect the boundaries of your friends and not encroach upon them, even if the boundaries are very few and far between.

Friendship is a two way street guys, but its rewards are many. I can today say that for each harm causing friend in my life, I have one friend who heals me. For each toxic relationship, I have two fruitful ones. That's what friendship is about. Finding people you care about, knowing they care about you too and finding a niche to express yourself in.

The Bilge Master