Dear Violet: A Love Letter to Violet Evergarden

NB: Post number 555! It's been one helluva journey. Now onwards 

Dear Violet,

I do not know when you came into my life, just that I didn't know I was capable of forgiving myself until I saw you. You were doing the rounds among the people I knew, the new kid in town with the blonde hair and blue eyes and mysterious case. Nobody knew where you were from, what your story was, just that you were beautiful and mysterious and somehow you didn't seem to exist, except in our hearts and minds.

And then one chance night, wracked with insomnia, I pulled you out and I talked to you and I listened to you too. And Violet, you have my heart now. I saw your journey, of how the Major came by you, of how you fought by his side in the war and how he ordered you to live, how his choice to treat you with dignity and not as a tool affected you, confused you and set you off on your quest to find out about emotional quotient and empathy and in that process, how you found yourself.

At first, you made me cry. It was as if I was watching A Farewell to Arms unfold in front of my eyes. Then, I found out about the things you did in the war and I was reminded of your elder associate Battousai the Manslayer, although in his time things were different. I remember tearing up when the Major bought you that brooch and how you would keep it tied about your neck at all times.

It is difficult to describe how I feel about you, there are layers to you I have yet to discover. I think I will have to go back and experience meeting you again even though I'm told that the first time is always the charm with things of beauty such as you.

Most of all, what you did as an Auto Memory Doll stayed with me. How you learnt to respect your work, how you proved that Hodgins wasn't wrong about you and how, in the process of writing those letters you learnt to come to terms with your humanity and proved to your own self that yes you do have a right to live. And the crises of faith, when you were in the war, holding a gun and taking lives, the memories that haunted you, the ghosts from your past- you overcame all of that and proved you are not just a tool to be used for killing.

It is quite evident that writing letters is important, delivering them is important. Just today, I am slated to get a book in the mail. I appreciate the courier that will bring it. 

I love how you make simple things seem so profound and I am reminded of O'Henry when I think back to the experience I had while watching your story being told. I have now mentioned one of my favourite books as well as one of my favourite authors in this letter. 

I also owe you one for reminding me that when I started this now 12 year old site, I did it because I was arrogant and angry and wanted to prove people wrong. I was acting under orders. Like you, I have come to find that in my own way, by being able to touch so many lives through this site, by communicating with many like minded people and by making friends who appreciate the written word, like you, I too no longer need orders.

And so, Violet Evergarden, I ask that you live. For in living you have taught me how precious life is and that the life given to us should not be wasted or frittered away. 

In Gratitude 

The Bilge Master

Why I Like Fantasy Fiction

As an avid reader of any genre on the planet I’ve often come across an argument from people slightly senior to me about fantasy fiction. My parents for example, never understood my fascination for vampires and werewolves and zombies as a teenager and they thought I would “outgrow it”; my mother particularly, and read real literature like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (which I found to be unreadable) or War and Peace (which she bragged to have read 17 times and probably had, who knows?). While I am aware that these books are considered to be and are perhaps some of the greatest works ever to have been written, I must with all due respect say that I did not enjoy War and Peace and I feel that as reading is something very personal and intimate (for me almost as personal and intimate as sex) it’s up to me what I want to give time to or time for!

 Does this mean I did not like any of the “classics”? No. I loved Jane Austen, I adored Bernard Shaw. I found Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham to be fascinating and humane, despite its length. I was so affected by it that immediately upon finishing the book, I picked up The Moon and Sixpence and lost myself again and refused to be found until the book’s last page had been turned. I think Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever come across.

 So, I do read classical literature. But- and this is a significant but- so I’m going to rephrase it. But.

 I also believe in faeries. I believe in Ents and in Balrogs and dragons and wizards and swords that can suck out your soul and spellcasters and tantrics. Why do I do so? It’s as Neil Gaiman points out

 

 

And now we come to a part of the writeup that makes you the reader understand why fantasy matters so much to me. I was diagnosed with depression in 2014 and I am still on medication for it. So, the quote above about fairy tale dragons and how they can be beaten resonates with me on a very personal level.

 I was nine years old when Gandalf broke the Bridge of Khazad-Dum and took on the Balrog. I am now 28 and I’ve read the book again when I turned 26 and my mother passed away. What changed was that it wasn’t Gandalf on that bridge, it was me and it wasn’t a Balrog, it was my depression. And the bit where Gandalf tells the Balrog that he is a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor and the Balrog will not pass and that the dark fire will not avail it…before demanding of it that it goes back to the shadows, yes that was also me, grieving the loss of a parent, dealing with severe mental strain due to the COVID pandemic having left me unemployed…I turned not to Wuthering Heights or Sherlock Holmes but to The Fellowship of the Ring. The book told me that I should hold on, that like Frodo, I would one day be able to destroy the Ring and reach the Gray Havens with the elves and that gave me hope.

 I recently tried to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again and revisiting that book as an adult with a condition made me weep at the blatant racism in it. I did not face this problem before and I am aware that as you mature, your mind grows with you and the mark of good literature is that it grows with you as well. So, it was for Huckleberry Finn and also for Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky whose protagonist I found to be a totally idiotic over thinker with too many silly decisions under his belt.

 So, if you will excuse me for this somewhat blasphemous post, let me point out that the world in which my parents grew up was one that was limited in terms of access to the kind of books we, the new generation has access to and therefore perhaps they are better versed in the classics and in the whodunit series of novels than we are and conversely, we are better versed in fantasy literature than they are.

 In an ideal world, we the next generation would reach an understanding with our seniors and they with us but there does exist a generation gap after all, and thus we must simply live, let live and read what makes us happy.

 And should the fancy strike me, maybe one day when I am about 35, I’ll revisit War and Peace and this time I’ll like it!

The Bilge Master

In Conversation With Oracle's Eye

 On the day I decided to leave Facebook for a bit, a young man reached out to me and asked me to listen to a song his band had composed. Seeing a lot of potential sounds in the record and the in your face influence that Mike Portnoy (Yellow Matter Custard and formerly Dream Theater) and John Petrucci (Guitarist- Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment) had on the record, I offered to interview them.

What follows is a brief interview with the talented musical act that is Oracle's Eye!

The Bilge Master

 

•       Tell us why you like music

 

Prince : Well, for us, music is more like a part of our personal and professional life both, so I guess answers like "Music is a really good way of stress relief" or "It makes us happy" will be understatements. So, for us, let's put it in this way, music is the very language or mode of expression that suits us, being a fundamental part of our lives now.

 

•       How were you introduced to music? I want each of you to answer with the song that made you fall for music and later influenced your decision to step into music

 

Prince : I was introduced to music at the age of 3 as far as I can remember, as my family has a cultural connection to Classical music, thus it's hard for me to pin point a particular thing which drove me into doing music, but I can definitely pin point the thing that drove me into Metal and Rock stuff. It was my elder cousin brother who first asked me to listen to an Avenged Sevenfold song, it was the title track of their album "Nightmare", and in seconds, the guitars, drums, bass, vocals everything made me speechless.

 

Baron : For me it was an influence by some of my known seniors who were into band music and stuff, I can still remeber the day I was invited to one of their jamming sessions and there I heard "Ghost Of Prediction" by Opeth for the first time. Before that I used to unknowingly listen to stuff like Linkin Park, Alter Bridge, etc... while gaming in my local cyber cafe.

 

Debarun : I used to be really into Bollyrock and Rap ( stuff like Eminem ), I remember one day YouTube randomly played song by Necrophagist while I was listening to some underground hip-hop, I believe that was the song "Stabwound", that was the first time I heard a metal song. Then curiosity made me listen to stuff like Bullet For My Valentine, Metallica, Nirvana and much more and it never ended.

 

Devjit : My Mom was into music very much which made me pickup my first instrument ever which was actually a guitar ( not bass that I play right now ), so that made me listen to western bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Avenged Sevenfold and more. The first song that got me really intrigued was 'Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica.

 

•       What’s the most frustrating thing about song writing according to you?

 

Prince : I generally write the lyrics for our songs, but considering what our genre is and how much the time signatures of our songs get twisted, it's really hard to directly write the lyrics for the songs. So I have to write the full story and progression of the song first, then we proceed with the composition and arrangements ( I know this sounds really weird ), and then it comes on me to somehow formulate the lyrics that fits the musical complexities and time signatures, out of the story script.

 

Baron : As our genre suggests, we use a lot of Polyrhythms and Polymeters with twisted time signatures in our compositions, which is really cool and all, but on stage or even while composing, I become the one who is tasked to backup every individual time signature at the same time. Generally while using Polys, everyone in the band plays their own time signature which doesn't really complement each other, thus creating a really confusing pattern / musical illusion, but as the drummer it's my duty to  stitch all those different time signatures together to form one pattern that backs up everyone individually and also the song as a whole ( I know it sounds even more confusing but trust me that's how it works).

 

Debarun : Those filthy riff transitions man... it literally takes me a lot of time to figure out how to properly stich together all the very different verses, chorus sections, pre breakdowns, breakdowns, bridges and all the other ( don't have enough words ) parts that each sound like parts from different songs; to formulate one single song that makes sense. I know Prince being another guitarist, also faces this same issue. But it also makes the composition procedure much more fun.

 

Devjit : My brothers do have a weird fetish ( which I do like very much btw ) that is they prefers to have parts in the compositions that only has the bass accompanying the vocal and ambience, which is cool and all. But these dedicated bass parts also play a major role in formulating the storyline and progression of the song, which sometimes become a headache as our compositions do have a lot of twist and turns in the storyline itself, but I enjoy it too no doubt.

 

•       Why metal? Why not rock or pop?

 

Prince : Well, as listeners we do prefer both Rock and Metal, as they are more or less like long lost brothers in terms of expressions and feel of the music. But we do metal exclusively as it is a bit more expressive and aggressive and helps us portray our themes in a much bolder fashion which we intend for. Talking about Pop, with due respect to every artist from every genre, as musicians, we find Pop to be a genre targeted towards simplicity and mass appeal which actually restricts the growth and playability of a musician in general. And being a fan of rather complex music, we don't really prefer doing Pop. Although personally as I am a vocalist too, I do prefer some old school Pop stuff while practicing as being a vocal driven genre, it really helps me maintain the melodious aspects of my vocals.

 

•       I’m getting a lot of influences in this song- Mike Portnoy, Behemoth, a little Judas Priest…fill in the blanks

 

Prince  ; We are indeed somewhat influenced by bands like Dream Theater, Opeth, King Crimson, Tool, The Dillinger Escape Plan; a little bit of Gojira, Jack The Joker, Leprous, Symphony X; and artists like Mike Portnoy, Marco Minnemann etc.

 

•       What’s more important in a song- lyrics or melody or do they go hand in hand?

 

Prince : For our compositions, they are both equally important to us, as besides of all the musical complexities and twisted arrangements, it is really important to us that our song conveys the emotions and progressions of the theme and storyline properly.

 

•       What’s the way you approach composition? Melody first, lyrics second? Both at once?

 

Prince : It is a bit more complicated than that actually, we generally decide the tonality and overall theme of the song first, then I write the story, and after that we proceed with compositions and arrangements that fits the storyline progression. And then like crafting a statue out of a chunk of stone, we craft the lyrics fitting to the composition out of the story script.

 

•       Does your music have a message?

 

Prince : Definitely, it's one of the main goals that we keep in mind while making every song.

 

•       Let’s say you had to sell your song to a record label in 30 seconds. Pitch it

 

Prince :  We are Oracle's Eye, a Neoclassical Symphonic Progressive Mathcore band from India, Following the musical paths of bands like Dream Theater, Opeth, Tool, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd, The Dillinger Escape Plan we aim to form our own signature combining modern Mathcore with the essence of neoclassical melodies and classic symphonies presented through extensive storytelling that revolves around the darker corners of human psychology, self contradictory morals of society, dark alternate outcomes of human civilization and much more weird stuff like that, overall a dark atmospheric vibe some pronounced uplifting moments here and there. Being the very first kind of our genre from this country, we aspire to pioneer these musical influences of our kind if we're given the perfect opportunity.

 

•       Why should we listen to Oracle’s Eye?

 

Debarun : If you want to culture complicated musical stuff.

 

Devjit : If You want to hear something that defies the norm.

 

Baron : If you like brainstorming while listening to music.

 

Prince : I guess all of the above, but mostly, if you love picturing a living breathing story with complex emotions and conflicting phases, ups and downs, rise and falls, while listening to a song, and if you love to imagine that you are actually a character in a story, then you are in the right place.

 

•       What’s next on the cards for you? Where can we see you or where do you see yourself in 2 years from now?

 

Prince : More songs to come, more stories to tell, several national shows to hit, and an entirely new era of musicality to form. 2 years from now, nothing will change really. Yes we will improve a lot, and a lot more people will know us at that time, but other than that, we will be the same band after all.

 

•       How important was the patience of your elders when you came home and declared that you wanted to make music?

 

Prince : None of us really faced any issue telling our families about our ambition, in fact, we do have direct or indirect influences by none other than our family members that helped us take the decision that we want to do music for the rest of our lives.

 

•       What is the one thing they don’t know about making music? (Does not have to be one thing. It can be multiple things)

 

Prince : Why the hell does it take this much time to make a song, seriously, sometimes I feel they know the answer but they are acting this way to passively motivate me.

 

Debarun and Baron agrees to the above.

 

Devjit : What exactly my instrument ( the bass ) does to the songs, they know it is important but don't really seem to understand how exactly.

 

•       In the age of rampant piracy and unaffordable music due to low financial strata, where do you feel the line should be drawn?

 

Prince : We do agree that music is and should be for everyone, but pirating music or anything for that matter is a slap in the face to those who are making the music for you It is exactly like not paying your bills or for the food at a restaurant etc. Thus, we think streaming companies need to be more strict in this matter. It's not like they don't know about the piracy, in fact they kind of let it slip under the table just to get people addicted towards their services as we do love free stuff even if it’s illegal. It is like a paradox of commercialisation which is kind of passively created by those very authorities who should stop these things.

 

•       How would you propose music is made more accessible, seeing as we have access to the internet?

 

Prince : As of today, music is already very much accessible to anyone in this world due to internet and technology, so no issues there, but we as listeners have to make a moral decision that art should not be free.

You can connect with Oracle's Eye on these platforms 

Facebook 

Instagram

Oracle's Eye can be found on these streaming platforms 

Spotify

Apple Music 

Contact Prince Samael @ +91 8240533061 for queries and bookings! 

The Three Books That I Came Across in Life

This post is about three specific books that have given me three specific things- a house abuzz with excitement was the first, when lending libraries were in vogue; a memory of a dear friend whom I lost in September 2019 (hey Billie Joe, I thank you for recording Wake Me Up When September Ends. You're the reminder that life goes on even after September ends) and lastly, the book that gave me my best friend(s).

Now then.

Book the FIRST

Dial a Ghost, Eva Ibbotson

Eloor was a lending library close to my grandmother's house and I would frequent that house during vacations to play Monopoly with my cousins, to engage in war games and to read. I discovered so many authors there. But to digress into that would make this post longer than it's going to be.

On a clear evening, I came to my grandmother's house (she's passed away now, but I can't call the house anything but thakuma-r bari or as the English would have it, paternal grandmother's house) and my cousin opened the door and said there was a new BOOK in the house . I came indoors to find my younger cousin reading it. When she put it away and went to do maths homework, my elder cousin handed it to me and bade me read it. And the book floored me. As I was lost in the world Eva Ibbotson created, a world where ghosts could be hired and little boys could be befriended by specters, who should walk in but my grandmother and what question should she ask but "Hey, where's Dial a Ghost?"

And thereby hangs the tale of a remarkable woman who gave me love, a poignant book that gave three children hope and a reunion with my English teacher who has my copy of the book and finished it in a day and urgently texted me and said she loved it! 

Book the SECOND 

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

This is not a fantasy book. This is a memory. It was suggested to me by a friend whom I met online, a supremely talented friend who made me fall in love with letter writing again, had a way with words and was  a member of a band. Now she's no longer in this world and has found rest (or so I hope), but the book remains on my bookshelf and it is one of the most haunting and enchanting books I have ever read.

The Circus arrives without warning, always at night, always unannounced. The Circus is a magical place and the magic is between a pair of star crossed lovers, forced to do battle to satisfy the whims of their guardians. It tells the tale of how the Circus came to be, how the lovers fell in love and what befell them. 

I have read this book thrice and will shortly do so for a fourth time.

Book the THIRD

The Little Prince, Antoine de-Saint Exupèry

This book was given to me by my father and he asked me one question after I had finished it. Those who have read the book will identify with it immediately. "What is a hat?"

This book went on to become one of the most influential books I have ever read. It was as important to me as a Bible. In simple language, this book tells you about life. It stays with you, it grows on you and it grows with you. This book has gotten me through heartbreak, through flunked exams, it has given me many a happy hour (I finished it in less than an hour the last time we crossed eyes) reading on the last bench in class and has made me into the person I am today.

This book has also given me my best friend, a person who uses they/them pronouns, talks to me regularly and is the reason I am still alive. Not only that, this book has been gifted by me to another best friend who made it out of a hellish situation recently and I've begged her to tell me if she likes it. (Fingers crossed. I know you're smiling as you read this sentence). 

What was the point of this post? That my dear is a matter of consequence. There are so many more important things. What you should be asking is what is it about these books that makes a man with three stiff drinks in him an insomniac telling us about the films about ghosts in his head? 

Buy the books here:

1. Dial a Ghost

2. The Night Circus

3. The Little Prince 

I take your humble leave! 

The Bilge Master

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: A Review

 "This house is full of stories we both told

These rooms the very stage where they unfold 

These walls, they whisper secrets and memories thereof 

But this door no longer leads us to that love"

Poets of the Fall ~ Skin

The author credited with the first detective story was Edgar Allan Poe and apart from the flair for the mysterious, he also was known for a short story called The Fall of the House of Usher which is clearly one of the influences of the book The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, so much so that the premise is eerily similar.

Three people get called to a mysterious house by an even more mysterious doctor who is supposedly researching paranormal phenomena that the house is known to have exhibited. The house, the eponymous Hill House, lies on the outskirts of the village of Hillsdale and  is despised by the locals and they do not talk about it. There is an air of mystery about the place and suspicions are rampant when Eleanor from the city comes to take up residence there for an experiment proposed by Dr. Montague. Bringing up the rear end of the party are Luke and Theodora. Eleanor, oftentimes referred to as Nell and Theodora, nicknamed Theo run slightly afoul of the caretaker Mrs Dudley whom I found to be most robotic in her duties. About midway through the book, Dr. Montague's wife shows up as does a man called Arthur who is a schoolmaster. Shirley Jackson uses this cast of characters to weave a psychological horror novel which is at times humorous and over the top and at times extremely creepy. Apparently the original owners of Hill House, the Crain family had a very tragic history, involving jealousy between the two sisters, a suicide and the discovery of a tome signed in the blood of the father.

As the novel progresses, the sense that the house does not want the people inhabiting it to be in it is made stronger and stronger. Little incidents happen- Theodora's clothes are ruined and someone writes Eleanor's name in chalk on one side of a wall. The whole message is "Eleanor help. Come home" or words to that effect. This creates suspense beautifully as everyone suspects Eleanor of being the one who wrote that sentence on the wall as an attention seeking gimmick.

Further, the doctor decrees that nobody is to wander around the house alone, but every time this happens something bad inevitably follows. Mrs. Montague for upon her appearance in the novel, immediately sits for planchette and declares there are spirits in the house. There is an almost delicious spookiness to the atmosphere that is created in this novel, as from the very beginning it seems as if the antagonist, the supernatural entity is basically Hill House itself.

While The Fall of the House of Usher had a legitimate ghost in it, Hill House does not...or does it? This point is left moot and up to the reader to conclude as incidents of hallucination, disembodied voices and body parts are used to up the ante and make people feel...I would not say scared, rather uneasy.

Is The Haunting of Hill House a book I enjoyed reading? Yes it is. Is it a book I would like to keep? They jury is unfortunately out on this one. I think The Haunting of Hill House does some things incredibly well but at times does not succeed in pulling it's own weight.

I give this book a 3.7/5  

Buy the book here

The Bilge Master

Florence Library: The Place of a Thousand Stories and Where My Story Began (A Guest Post by Kunal Bhattacharya)

 Kunal Bhattacharya is a dynamo of a kid I met in Bookline one day just by chance. We struck up a conversation and I was immediately impressed by the maturity in him. He was silent and he was listening, while me being me, I was blabbering.

 Since that day, Kunal and I have struck up an uncommonly rewarding friendship, whereupon he and I talk on a regular basis and have been moderating rooms on Clubhouse on weekends.

 Why should you care about Kunal? Let me show you something he wrote back in the day, that he nervously shared with me via WhatsApp. Let him speak, and let me step aside.

 The Bilge Master

 If there is one place that has shaped my childhood and made me into who I am today it would be the Florence Library in Alabama USA. I remember how my mom would drive me to the Library every Saturday and Sunday in our beat-up Plymouth Voyager. It was my only real source of entertainment since my dad was a struggling student and couldn’t afford a TV or a cable connection and our neighbourhood wasn’t the best for making friends, especially for a scrawny Asian kid who looked like a white boy. 

 The library was a magical place for me. You think you know the beauty of a library, but let me tell you that no library in India that I have visited can even hold a candle to Florence Library .

 The entire library floor was coved with carpets and for my 4-year-old self the shelves seemed impossibly tall. There was a special smell around the place, a smell that made you feel like this was where you truly belonged. My favourite part however, was the reading corner. There were massive indoor trees (artificial as I would later realise) under which were beanbags of every colour of the rainbow. They were a collage of greens, blues and reds which may seem garish to the eyes of an adult but to my 4-year-old self it was simply perfect.

 I would sit under the warm yellow light that the library seemed to be suffused with and lose myself in the world of Franklin the Turtle, Green Eggs and Ham and Bob the Builder. 

 When it was finally time to leave, I would beg my mother for just a few more minutes, clinging to her legs and crying. Sometimes she would give in and we would spend another few minutes that would turn into hours in that book filled utopia. 

 My love of books can be traced back to those hours spent in the library every weekend for 5 years. It must also be said that without my mother I probably would never have gotten into reading. While she had a hundred other things to do, she would always make time to drop me at the library every weekend. She would borrow 15 books every week from the library (the librarian undoubtedly bent a few rules to allow us to borrow that many) and over the week would read to me during breakfast, my evening soft boiled egg, dinner and right before bed. At that point my mom was pretty much supporting our family all alone since my dad would be in college most of the day. My mother still found the time to read to me.

 These daily sessions were undoubtedly where my bibliophile tendencies sprung from and they hold a special place in my heart. One of my greatest wishes is for me to one day be able to visit Florence Library again for it is a place of a thousand stories and where my story began.

 

You Only Hear the Music When Your Heart Begins to Break

 My Chemical Romance are back and I could not be happier. I was listening to Danger Days and I have to thank Anwesha for introducing me to the album properly. One song from that album that I adore is The Kids from Yesterday. I like it because it reminds me of the times I had and the line that makes me almost weep is the line in the title of this post.

I grew up surrounded by books and music. I grew up sheltered and  protected and as I grew up, my innocence left me. I lost my grandmother. I never knew my grandfather. Life hit hard and my heart kept breaking. But despite that, I found people. I found friends. I found family not related to me. Sometimes I found them in books, hiding in text. Sometimes I found them at the end of a song, because a person I met on the street liked Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits more than me, for different reasons than me and we talked and we talked and we talked.

They say that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. I've found that is very true. My mom used to say that sometimes strangers give you more love than family ever can.

So this is for the covenant. This is for those people I think about when life gets a bit too much to take. This is just me knowing that I will suffer heartbreak and that you will pick up all the pieces, put them back together and maybe smash them...until such time that my broken pieces allow me to be whole.

And to the people I am going to meet, to the relationships yet to happen, to the tears yet to be shed and the jokes yet to be cracked...well, let's shed em together, lets crack em together and lets make a film about the ghosts together.

At least that is something to look forward to when your heart breaks, some music to let in, some healing to do and some strength to draw from.

To the people who made music when my heart broke, to the people who never gave up on me, to the people I don't say thank you to enough...I am glad that you make being a kid from yesterday bearable. One day, it will be one of the last rides I take, and I'll hold on tight and not look back! 

The Bilge Master