Sriram

Long time since the last post. I had given up this blog for dead, my fingers not really talking too much to my brain these days; but Sriram mailed and he's subsequently allowed me to put up his profile on the page. He wrote this himself, intending to put it up on Wikipedia but I think that the thought that it might be a hit appalled him and put him off the whole project. I assured him that no one reads my blog (a lie - I do), and if he seeks anonymity, this is the right place to hang out and smoke cigarrettes or whichever disguise he adopts. Without a lengthier prologue, here's Sriram on what is probably not his favourite topic: Sriram. (I only modified the opening sentence on request, the rest of it is all him.)


After a long period of walking around the world and kicking about small stones out to the side of the road, Sriram has decided to come back to Bloomington. He just had to come back because he loved the town so much. Sriram likes Bloomington for its wealth of natural beauty and the diverse opportunities it affords. He partakes of very few of these but appreciates their being there nevertheless. In a perfect world, Sriram reasons, Bloomington would represent all that is good pure and beautiful about life. Some of Sriram's favorite places in Bloomington include Dunn Meadow and the sections of campus between Ballantine Hall and the Black cultural center crisscrossed by wooden bridges, tinkling streams and leafy banks. Sriram often experiences a deep sense of peace while looking into the sky high trees and only regrets that the moment is fleeting. He actively fantasises about playing frisbee with his dog on the lush green slopes of the meadow and then taking his dog for a drink to the River Jordan. But since he doesn't have a dog or a frisbee, this has yet to come to pass. Sriram is also acutely aware of the fact that the world in which he resides, and probably will continue to until he dies or is killed is one marked by severe and chronic imperfection. Sriram often despairs of life, looking on it as a thankless job that he really can't weasel out of. Some of his most plaintive complaints revolve around the choice of life. Sriram claims that having seen all (or most) of what life has to offer, he would rather not live at all. He whines incessantly about not having any choice in this matter and often loudly complains that death has no business being so elaborate and painful a procedure. He often shudders at the cost of coffins and is somewhat miffed to learn that his body won't just vaporise when he dies. Because of this 'unfairness', as he terms it, of life, Sriram often affects an attitude of non-co-operation with life.
This does alternate with periods of hope and longing especially for sex, friends, food, a good time and the over arching ideal of happiness. Since these longings never actually materialize, Sriram's brooding depression is often exacerbated by them.

With the passing of time Sriram has come to accept a few vital facts of life which form the basis for his fledgling moral code or covenant of values as he terms them:

1. Sriram is resigned to being a mildly fat, usually ugly, cheerless, diffident(where girls are concerned) individual who despite his visions of grandeur will not amount to much ever. Sriram immediately hurts his own cause by pointing out that there is no obligation on the part of human beings to amount to much simply because they are alive. As Sriram sees it, it is bad enough having to put up with the world without having to bend over backwards to please it.

2. Sriram in his spare moments of reverie envisions a money less society preferring to look upon money as the root of all evil, competition and selective happiness. This ties in pretty squarely with the trivial opinion he holds of life in general. If you don't really need to be alive, you really shouldn't have to work or be rich or disciplined to subsist. Sriram has decided that as long as his basic necessities are taken care of, he won't really run after money. Sriram is enough of a hypocrite to admit that in this period of not running after money, he will probably make some money in order to avoid running after it.

3. Most people who listen to Sriram talk about the preceding conclude that he is a lazy, listless whiner who has never had to go hungry a day in his life, has never seen his loved ones being killed or molested in fromt of him, has never known what it is to be poor and hence must be shot for his impudence. Sriram happily points out that he is all for it, if the shot is painless.

4. Sriram is frank enough to admit that the utopian society he envisions will probably never materialize. It is all very well to populate your world with green grass, blue skies, pretty girls, cool breezes, pineapples, dogs, volleyball, walks on the beach and so on but this state of affairs however transient, can never persist. Sriram understands that people are ultimately selfish, heinous creatures whose depths of iniquity should really surprise no one. Hence any such beautiful world would be instantly trampled upon by new yorkers, ass kissing corporate types, fundamentalist muslims or some combination of those factors. Sriram fervently believes that in view of the number of women being raped, children being maimed and animals being tortured, we really should let go of the civilizational pretense.

5. This is perhaps the crux of his ideology. Sriram reasons that we are probably not alone in being handed such a miserable excuse for a world. Lions kill deer even when the deer look cute. Snakes kill squirrels. Cows eat grass. Hence the notion of life attacking life is far more widespread than one would have initially presumed. Hence Life itself is intrinsically bad and irredeemable and a waste of time. There can be no version of the world which pleases or is fair to everybody as long as there is life. Accordingly, it is life itself that must be expunged if our consciences (non-existent after the expunging) are to be clean.

6. Sriram thinks that life should have the decency to supply a painless method of death for those wishing to opt out. Then, he agrees, he might not really want to inflict this sordid vision of his on the rest of the world. He has a somewhat unrealistic liberal streak in him. Hence working towards finding a means of painless death is a worthy pursuit for him.

Sriram has had to rethink his ideas about all life being intrinsically bad after evaluating the case of plants. As best as Sriram can tell, plants do not harm any other living form in their attempts to survive and reproduce. He does acknowledge the existence of parasitic plants but the vast majority subsist on inanimate nutrients. If you consider rotating electrons however, this theory might not hold up to closer scrutiny. But as Sriram says, logic and rationality be damned. He has of late been fascinated by existentialism for its eerie match with his way of thinking. It would be safe to say that Sriram is most excited about an impending painless death. It, in his opinion would be the best finger one could stick in life's face.