MRR3

Dated 28th February, 2015
Self-preservation? Or outright selfishness?

Remember the scene in X-men, 'Days of Future Past', where Wolverine tells Magneto that he (Magneto) is just like him (Wolverine), a survivor? Well, Bullshit. Magneto is nothing like Wolverine,who's much, much better. Wolverine is the real survivor. The selfless, protecting, caring person.
Magneto, on the other hand, is just a coward who uses his past to justify his heinous present, future and animalistic nature.
Although one cannot deny some similarities in their past, but their attitudes towards it are poles apart. Wolverine lost his father, saw him killed in front of his own eyes, mutated and killed the murderer, only to learn that the murderer was his real, biological father. That he is a bastard. His own mother threw him out, partly because of her fear of his bone claws and mostly due to the fact that the boy killed her darling lover (so what if the poor boy had witnessed the man, whom he thought of as his father, being murdered in cold blood just moments back). But Wolverine didn't get back at the world for it by tearing apart every family he could get his claws on. I also never saw him go on a killing spree against all the mothers in this world, or even all the infidel ones!!!
He lost each and every women he fell in love with- each more tragically than the previous one. Jean, Kyla Siverfox, (maybe) Rogue; and (I'm presuming a bit, that he wouldn't have remained single all those years- before and after Siverfox, and before Jean) many more the movie series couldn't show. In fact, he lost Siverfox twice- both times to brutal murder by someone he once trusted.
And the worst part of the ordeal was his immortality. He couldn't even commit suicide when the pain became too much to bear. But he still remained (mostly) untainted. He is the real survivor. Not someone, who would commit any horrific sin, just to keep intact his cocoon of comfort; but someone who would preserve both himself and his ideals,with whom he wouldn't compromise, no matter what the world does to him.
I may not admire Wolverine totally, but I do love some things about him. Firstly, he knew about, believed in and protected innocence. He went against his own brother when the latter was about to slaughter the innocents. He fought the world for Rogue, and later for the granddaughter of Yashida, who wanted to take away his immortality and kill him. He even went out to avenge a grizzly bear. He didn't go on a killer rampage just because some people had been bad to him.
He was subjected to the most inhuman experiments in William Stryker's lab. That too, under a false pretext. And he did avenge himself most brutally, to which he was entirely entitled. But he did it against the right people, and not any random, innocent bystanders.

Magneto now. Yes, he did lose his mother, had to see Sabastian Shaw kill her in front of his eyes. Yes, he too was tortured inhumanly, was made an insignificant lab rat. But that justifies just the killing of Shaw and his henchmen- or at the maximum, firing those nukes against the human allied forces, who deserted and plotted against him. But whatever he went on to do later, was just him and his lust for power. He tried to kill a 16 year old Rogue to harness her mutant power, in order to kill humans. He manipulated Jean when she was mentally unstable, causing Professor X's death, for which he had almost no regret, and most certainly no guilt. He made Mystique, who was Professor X's adopted sister, poison his cerebro, thus poisoning the relation between a brother and sister as well. X had saved him as well, from himself in a feeble attempt to get back at Shaw. And how was the professor repaid? By being crippled, forced into hiding and having to fight a man who not only owed him his life as well as his greatest obsession- revenge - but also the one whom he loved the most in the world, more than a brother.

So, you see, it's not the circumstances, but what you decide to do after them- that has the final word in who you are. You can protect, and cherish innocence the way Wolverine did, or you can trample it and make people stop having any faith in it, the way Magneto did.
You can fight for what's actually right, like Wolverine, or you can conveniently drop them like hot potatoes, for your selfish ends, no matter what fancy name for them you might come up with. There's always a choice- between being Wolverine and being Magneto.

MRR2

Dated March 6th, 2015
Whoever thought that the simplest things in life lift the spirits in the weirdest manner possible? None of us hardly ever know how much can we get hurt by simplest things- things that our heart, deep inside, knows to be true, but often choose to ignore, pushing it back, simply because it's easier that way, rather than trying to accept the pain.
I dunno why people say owing up our responsibility for things gone wrong helps. I've tried it, am still at it, and have fared off worse, to say the least. Even though you do acknowledge putting all your eggs in a wrong basket, the heart never lies. It whisperingly reminds you, that you knew all this back then as well. Then why lament now, if the cup of poison was willingly chosen to be bought to the lips! But the same heart whispers again, this time reminding itself more than you, that what it hoped for was to be wrong at that time. But alas, it wasn't! Funny, isn't it? The moments when you wish to be never more wrong before- when you beg the universe, to make sure your calculations have been horribly wrong, lest your life would be- it's those very moments that you are most right in your life.
And you don't even know whether to laugh- at being right about it all along, even though you wished otherwise with every heartbeat you have got- or to cry- since you never wished to more mistaken and blunderous.
Sometimes, we don't even know whether we are supposed to be happy, or sad, due to a certain something. You just know that you can't live without it, no matter how addictive or depressing it is. Sometimes, there's no joy; we just gotta choose between two ways of getting miserable- by letting it go, or by holding on to it and suffering.
Everybody says joys and sorrows are both parts of our lives, and accepting one inadvertently leads to the introduction of another. As if we have a choice... What if somebody wishes to choose none, wanting to be done with joys, to escape the pain of sorrows! Is it possible to do it? If not, why the pretence of choice?
Why the hell are we hell-bent to make everything look like a by-product of our will and choices? Can't it be possible that we may not be, actually, having any choice at all? That when the veil finally gets unveiled, it might be the case that the course of the river of time was a set one all along?

MRR1

What kind of a world are we living in?
Man is evolving, societies are changing- but for better? I'm not so sure.
All around myself, I see moral depreciation, degradation and celebration of the same!
Honesty, loyalty, commitment, simplicity, trust (and its worthiness), hard work- not only are these becoming more and more 'old-schooled' and 'retrograde' values, but people adhering by them are actually getting nothing but sufferings in return.
The 'good guys' and 'good girls' are turning out to be the most (mostly the only) suffering people, who gain nothing and lose everything in the end- in real life as well as fiction.
But is it really the direction we want to head in- as individuals as well as a society? Is that the legacy we wish to leave for those who are yet to come? To thieve, lie, steal, cheat and then run away from the responsibility and owing up? Because being good means nothing to this world?
I've been reading 'best sellers' for some time- Indian as well as those of foreign authors. And, with a disturbingly high frequency, the most-loved books have one common element in their plot- the fickle, disloyal, cheating character always 'wins' in the end. They emotionally, and often physically as well as in the materialistic sense too, exploit the loyal, faithful, committed ones, and get away with it. First they 'fall in love', make the other one commit and emotionally invest their everything, and then 'fall out of love'. Without missing a beat or regretting or repenting for their actions, even for a single moment, they say 'Sorry', wish the other one 'all the best for finding real, true love' and 'move on'. So what if they meant the world for the other person, that the other person would be shattered and will never be able to love again? It's not their problem! All that matters to them is their own happiness!
But what really disturbs me is not the existence of such people, but the hailing that they receive. Not only most authors treat them as 'heroes (or heroines)' of their love-stories, but they also receive a treatment of sympathy and understanding as well! Dear authors and publishers, do you have any fucking idea of torment do the 'good guys (and girls)' undergo on reading such books? Does nothing else matter to you- apart from topping the bestseller charts, squeezing maximum profits and minting dollars?
Actually, why blame authors and publishers only? Authors write whatever is happening around, WHAT WE DO. And publishers publish WHAT WE WANT TO READ, WHATEVER WE TURN INTO BESTSELLERS!
We! The everyday people!
Is this the world that we want to live in? Where nobody can trust anybody? Where love is nothing but libido? Where the commitment to stay together gets busted with no reason! And where people doing such things, ruining lives, the cause of spiling of innocent tears, are accepted in the society just like that?
In that case, how exactly are we better than animals- who exist only to eat, sleep and have sex?
Actually, in this sense, even animals are better than us! At least they make no false promises of staying together, just to get sex! They go their separate ways right after 'having fun'. And which do stay, do so for ever- till death does them part. Swan is one such animal, I heard, and penguin another!
If commitment, honoring love by loving back, staying together, and owing up responsibility mean nothing; of what use are family, marriage and love? Wouldn't it be better to have a society where people come together only when they want to have sex, and go away immediately? Wouldn't a 'no family' be better than a torn family? Wouldn't it be better to be heartless society, than a one which celebrates breaking hearts?
Think, people! Think! 

MRR1 on the way!