On Gaming- A Guest Post by Runa Chatterjee

The post below is written by a good friend of mine and a fellow gamer, Runa Chatterjee. She’s been playing games her entire life and this is her take on gaming. As a gamer myself, I find there are points this article raises which are quite valid. Have a read, and welcome Runa to the blog people!

The Bilge Master

So I’ve played video games my entire life and it never struck me as something special. Not the playing video games bit and not the ‘girl-playing-video-games’ bit. I remember playing Prince Of Persia (the old ones!) with my father and then later migrating to different genres and different kinds of styles.

And that’s all it was. Just me and playing video games.

Later, this part of my life took on an importance I had never expected, both in my enjoyment of it and how others saw me doing it. I was a girl who loved playing video games, so many cried foul; and the other side, there were many who disdained the very thought of video games. Like, video games? Isn’t that what kids play?

God, I cannot tell you how tired I am of that argument. Tired of explaining myself not just as a woman who enjoys video games but as an adult who enjoys video games period. No, I’m not waiting for more ‘adult’ things to discover, I found what I love and fuck you for thinking I need more. Because seriously, random people who judge me, you need to check out video games.

Where you can be a sneaky assassin, teleporting through the alleyways of a steampunk-esque alternate London, a Ninja warrior from space, a white-haired gruff mercenary who rips monsters apart with the silver of his blade. A farmer in a small country town, raising her plants and maybe having a romance or two, a woman trapped with a crazy AI in an underground scientific lab forgotten to man, the second-in-command to an Evil Emperor who is plotting to take over the world. You can love, hate, fight, destroy, build, create. Video games are breaking barriers previously known only to your imagination, taunting the very narrators of their stories (check out The Stanley Parable y’all) and building a rich sense of history and culture within individual games (check out the history and lore of the Warcraft, Starcraft, Guild Wars etc universes)

When I’m happy, I played video games because I’m happy and it’s perfect. When I’m sad and I needed to hide, I found Geralt of Rivia (of The Witcher fame) waiting for me under the long shadow of an unknown wood, with a monster to slay not far away. For many of you (us) who are readers and book-lovers, we know this feeling and it’s an intoxicating feeling. But the problem with books is, lovely and amazing and wondrous as they are, all good stories come to an end. As they should.

And video games too come to an end, but not before endless hours of fun in between. Hours spent doing what you want. Hours you can only imagine between turning the pages of a book.

(Seriously, as a voracious book reader, let me tell everyone that comparing a book and a video game is pretty much impossible since they’re very different genres. I’m bringing books her as an example of so called ‘high art’ as compared to the ‘low art’ of video games.)

So guys, those who ‘mistakenly’ disparage people who love video games: How about you don’t and maybe find a game or two and see what they love about it so much? Maybe you’ll find a whole new world. Jussayin’.

The Door

Ten years.

Ten years is a long time. It’s enough time for thing to change, but some things remain the same, even after ten years have passed by. He met the sage ten years ago today in a toy store.

It was his birthday and he wanted the new Batman doll- Anti-Freeze Batman. He always had a soft spot for Mr. Freeze, but his favourite villain had to be Poison Ivy. Anyway, he met the sage in the toy store and the sage spoke to him and his parents.

The sage told them about the door. He predicted that one day, in the future, there would be a door that needed to be reached and that once it was reached it would either have to be opened or kept closed. This, he had said, while smoking a strong cigarette, was something that only he would know to do.

Thus, ten years ago, went his meeting with the sage.

Okay, let’s call him A. A is the man who had to find the door. A is the man to whom the sage spoke. Yes, let him be A. I like A.

A did not forget the incident, though he was not able to remember the face of the sage. He passed out from elementary school and then when it was time to pursue higher studies, he hit a stumbling block. A could not decide what he wanted to do. He had taken up 

science in his high school days, but his results were dismal.

His uncle counselled law, his father engineering and his mother literature.

In this interval, ten years had passed. A could feel something in his bones leading him on to a path. At the end of the path, he knew, would be the door.

A walked down following the path, to where it bent in the undergrowth and he took a left turn emerging onto a clearing with a wall in front of him. In that wall was set a black door, with intricate carvings in gold on it. It was not locked, but it did not have a handle either. It was smooth, discernible only by the gold carving.

A touched the door.

The door opened.

The Bilge Master  

Adios, 2016!

2016 has been interesting. It has not been a good year, what with the number of legendary people we lost, but it hasn’t strictly been a bad year. The Global Citizen festival in Mumbai is one highlight among a few and Dream Theater is rumoured to be coming to India next year.

2016 for me personally has been hard. I slipped into depression at the start of the year; or rather I carried depression forward from 2015. However, I beat depression in September 2016, so that’s a good sign. I do not intend to let it grab control of me again. Also, the blog crossed 300 likes on Facebook and 50,000 views in 2016. We also have three stray dogs living with us since the beginning of the year and watching them grow up has been a pleasure. I also have a new phone and I have never owned something so awesome.

So, I think we shouldn’t judge 2016 too harshly on this night, the last one of the year and instead be happy that the page is turning over and 2017 is at baggage claim at Heathrow Airport. Let us welcome the year with good thoughts, happiness and bid 2016 goodbye.

I’ll be blogging all sorts of stuff in 2017. I cannot wait to share them with you, my beloved readers.

Here’s to 2017. Happy New Year everyone!

The Bilge Master 

Childhood's End

I can’t sleep

My dreams are interrupted

I think back on my childhood

To Star Wars and Severus Snape

George Michael and David Bowie

Glenn

Bit by bit, I remember them

Sketched on the canvas of my mind

But, no matter how hard I try

Or how much I cry

I cannot change the fact that

My childhood is dying

One adult

At a time

The Bilge Master

The Season of the Savior

Pratap was nothing if not consistent. He had spent every December, the month of Christmas, and the months preceding it, begging for alms on a street corner, with a bench close by where he slept. Pratap was dressed in a frayed shirt and shorts, with a weather worn shawl around his shoulders, to keep the chill out of his bones. Unfortunately, it was a windy evening and therefore blasts of chill air kept buffeting his thin body.

But despite all this, Pratap was happy. He was a happy man and his life hadn’t been able to steal his smile away from him yet. It was the season for Santa Claus lookalikes to frequent the shelves of stores and the seats in malls. Green trees were also being sold starting from 10 rupees per unit and rising up to 85 rupees.

Pratap started to beg from 6 AM. He noted certain joggers pass him by, and collected five coins from them. Next came the office goers around 9AM who dropped maybe a rupee into his bowl. After this, pedestrians strolled by, too busy to notice Pratap amid the sea of faces and beggars. He had a regular patron however, who dropped by with five rupees. By 11 AM, Pratap had saved up enough money in coins to have a loaf of bread and a cup of tea at a footpath tea stall. This was lunch. He then repaired to his bench and slept a little, before being back on begging duty at 3  PM. Unfortunately, he didn’t make too much money for the first four hours, but from 7 PM, the usual office going crowd returned home and passed his station by, dropping coins as they went. He also had the night shift workers to look forward to at this time.

This was Pratap’s usual routine. But, this story is not about Pratap’s routine, it is about Christmas. Although so far the only mention of the season has been a fleeting part of the above paragraph, give me some more time to bring season’s felicitations to you, my dear reader.

Pratap knew a little bit about Christmas. It was a season of joy. The passersby used to give coins more freely during this time and the atmosphere was jovial if not breathtakingly joyful. However, something unforeseen is going to happen to Pratap this day. Santa Claus and his reindeer usually looked him over, but today he would not be cast aside.

The morning started as usual for Pratap on the twenty fourth day of December. First the joggers, and then the office crowd marched their beat past him. It was a Saturday, so the office crowd was a little thin, seeing as a lot of them took an extended weekend trip to some nearby resort. However, by the time Pratap ate his lunch at the tea stall, he had a fair amount of money with him. It was not sufficient for him to have a cup of tea however and he had to contend with just the half pound loaf of bread.

It was then that he noticed the dog.

The dog had snuck up on him from across the street and was wagging its tail at him. He had a hungry look in his eyes and looked expectantly at Pratap’s loaf of bread. Pratap tore off a piece and tossed it to him. The dog took it in his mouth and ran off, before Pratap could change his mind and demand the piece back. Pratap went to sleep a little hungry, but happy because he had helped a fellow creature.

When Pratap woke, evening had started to spread an inky cloak across the sky. He noticed it was 6PM and he had missed the lunchtime crowd. Pratap swore. He was not a man of violent temperament but when you are a beggar, lunchtime crowds count for a decent 10 to 15 rupee intake. He squatted down at his spot and he waited for people to pass. Some ignored him, others tipped him. He was offered a piece of cake by a small boy, whose mother was looking the other way. He noticed people wearing red hats with white tips. Christmas was on the way.

Pratap begged till 10 PM that night. It got steadily colder. Then the wind started to blow in chilling bursts of air that buffeted against the beggar sitting cross legged with his begging bowl before him and a hungry look in his eyes. Pratap coughed- a wheezing cough- and cleared his throat. He decided to call it a night. He went to a shop that was still open and purchased a loaf of bread. Wrapping his shawl tightly around himself he hobbled to his bench. He had just unwrapped the loaf, when he saw that the dog from the afternoon was back.

Pratap broke the bread in two. One half he ate. The other half he fed to the dog. He then shook the crumbs off himself and lay down on the bench. The steel was bitterly cold against his back, but after about half an hour, it became warm enough to lie on without discomfort. Pratap slept heavily.

Meanwhile, up in the sky a fat man in a red outfit with a hat and a sled drawn by reindeers passed by.

Pratap woke on Christmas day, chilled to the bone. He yawned, and wrapped his shawl, which was also his blanket around him once again. He noticed the dog lying curled up under the bench. It stirred when it heard Pratap move and came up to him and licked his hands.

Pratap smiled. He was poor and it was going to be a cold Christmas, but he was not alone. It would not be a lonely Christmas.

Let us now repair to yonder church and listen to the service, while our two friends revel in each other’s company.

The Bilge Master

Grief

Facebook greeted me with the usual “What’s on your mind?” again today. The problem is, I don’t know how to express what is troubling me. I thought I’d write it out; take the battle to a plane where I am strong. That is why I am writing these words, spreading out like a spider scuttling across this MS Word page.

We know we are all going to die someday. But what about the people left behind? What about the boy who lost his father, the girl unable to deal with the loss of her dog? Do they pick up the pieces of the broken mirror and try to glue it back? Do they sleep to forget? How do they deal with the feeling in them? Do they bottle it up and leave it in a dusty old cupboard, never to be seen again? Do they lock themselves in a room and cry it out?

I suppose everyone has their own way of dealing with it. I have tried some ways myself. I have cried. I have remembered them in loving memory, but today none of that is working. So I have turned to the comfort of a keyboard and words. Bear with me while I pour my heart out.

I won’t pretend to be okay. I am not. I still do not understand why people die. How can a living being be there yesterday, and gone tomorrow? How does one fill the void? I suppose time heals all wounds, but if that were so, why does it still hurt? I suppose these questions will remain unanswered and I am not the only one who asks them.

Writing this is helping with the feeling. I’m getting a grip. I suppose everyone has gone through this at some point in their lives. I cannot be the only one to feel this way. I also suppose that tomorrow will be a better day.

What is important is that I remember, though there is some pain in remembering the departed. But, I like to remember my grandmother teaching me maths and cooking whenever I came over. I remember my dog drooling at me as I ate a bar of chocolate. 

I am indebted to these people for the happiness they gave me. The best way to remember them is by dwelling on the good memories.

After a while, you just have to let go of your grief

The Bilge Master

Just An Ordinary Joe

I’m just an average man

I do not have a tan

I wake up every morning

And put my coat and glasses on

I venture forth into the world

A world of my own creation follows me

Life is so much more

Inside my head

For there I can slay dragons and shit

I get on a bus and go to work

Meanwhile I kiss the princess

I sit at my workstation

Dying for a cigarette

Slowly bit by bit

My story unfolds

Unread and unmolested by you

The other folk

I have not seen your world yet

A world of fancy tea parties

And bowler hat attendances to operas

In my head, I am free

Despite my routine life I am someone

Outside, drops of rain are falling

I wish I could get wet

Inside, drawings and documents greet me

And I slog along with the tide

Of multiple, faceless Joes like me

This is my life

The Bilge Master