Sunday, August 31, 2008

Of sins, canyons and poetry


So what does it take to be not tempted in the city of sins?
Blind eyes and deaf ears?
Well, what are all those women doing selling their bodies everyday?
doing the pole dance?
'All naked'... 'totally nude'..... these are the few adjectives used while describing a woman on the floor in Las Vegas...
Are you now curious to go to Las Vegas or are you totally disgusted??
Me? I feel neither.....
I accepted at Las Vegas that women here are there to entertain ...... and all those mexican looking men and women were having stacks of naked women's pictures in there hands on the road and showing it to all men walking single just to lure them to enter the "Gentleman's" club right behind the door.
I wanted to stand there, pick one card and enter that forbidden club just to see what it was all about .....
But what about my disgust for it?
Will i deal with it tomorrow?
Is this how men walk into those clubs?
deal with guilt tomorrow?
Will there be any guilt?
Why should one feel guilty?
Is it bad?
Is it really a sin?
It is just a feeling..... one is just gratifying one of their senses....
there... do you see the grey shades now?
Do you see reasoning fade away?
Do you see the line vanishing?
That is what Las vegas is all about...... a place where people let go. Where there is no right and wrong. Where everything is ok.....
Where the thick line becomes thin and then vanishes a little bit and probably reappears tomorrow when you have come back to you nest .....
This is what i saw in Las Vegas....... apart from the grand structures and tons of money spent on building a city that glitters ..... all that lingers in my mind are men on the streets selling women. No judgement here.......

Anyway i was on a road trip for the past 8 days .... Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Bryce canyon etc. The trip was awesome.......
But i'm not going to write a travelogue now, because most of my thoughts cannot be put into words, they stray, move, linger, die and rise again.... so am just going to give bits and pieces of this trip....

Grand Canyon of course was breathtaking and all other canyons were too but what is shocking is the totally strange landscape...... there i feel the earth has worked differently, as if another part was attached to it. Because land, mountains and canyons have grown in different shapes and sizes, almost alien. And me being an Indian, it was hard for me to see miles and miles of land on both sides with no people. Absolutely no one. I could not see an end to all those lands on both sides of the road and again and again the one single thought kept coming back, that someone had taken the efforts to lay roads, with warning signs, with maximum miles per hour laid at all the right places, so it wasn't wild at all. Infact it was a well planned tourist spot with 16 million acres of desert, canyons and just plain land with only 300,000 of the Navajo tribe covering the whole of it and the tourists of course. Mmmmmm......

That apart Tanya had a lot of fun in the trip. All she ever wants to do is climb on things. So mountains, canyons were her turf now..... she had a lot of fun and i noticed something else on the last day of my trip, she has totally shifted to speaking in english only. She doesn't speak her mother tongue anymore! I was totally shocked when i realised it. Now i'm working on talking to her in Kannada only! Extremely difficult for me too. You may think i'm lying when i say i did not notice the transition but i really really didn't....... I will keep updating all you guys on her language skills......

Well now comes the whimsical part..... as we were traveling to 'monument valley' in Utah i saw poetry on road. It was the name of a restaurant. It was right near the corner where Highway 160 and 163 met in a place named Kayenta in Arizona. It was named 'The blue Coffee pot restaurant' . It was coloured in blue, dark blue, white and red. There was something strange about the board, it looked as if it did not belong there. It cannot just stay on a highway! The name i thought is meant to be elsewhere with its colors and the way the board stood on the road....
it looked like the line had been plucked out of a poem to be discovered by me on a highway to be described about on a blog post. And i also intend to create a blog page by its name....
"The blue Coffee pot"........


Can you see what i mean? Don't ask me how i'm going to maintain 3 blogs when i don't seem to do justice to one. I don't know but all i know is i want to own this board in someway.....
There ......... that's how my trip ended..... with a feeling of a poem conjured but not delivered, yet....

17 Comments:

At 12:58 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

Yes it is quite difficult to digest these acts but I guess we dont judge them coz we are not aware of their circumstances.
Again no circumstance in the world shd reduce a woman to selling her body unless....ofcourse she is forced, helpless....
....I dont knw preethi tho I'm aware such things happen everywhere, its easier not to think too much....I'm ashamed now that I think like this:-(

 
At 1:19 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

I wrote 1 more comment abt Tanya spking only English....dunno where it disappeared....2 whole paras:-(.

 
At 3:50 AM, Blogger Salomie said...

You know, I have to wonder if "men selling women" is entirely right. Undoubtedly there would be some women who are maybe forced into it, or feel they have no other choice. But from certain articles & books I've read, I think that there are a lot of women who consciously choose to be a part of that world, and pursue it like you would pursue any other career.

We may wonder why any woman would choose a life like that, but that would mean applying our morals & values to them ..... in effect, judging them. Perhaps its the lure of easy money, perceived glamour, being the centre of attention.... who knows. But Vegas has spawned several huge, multi-million (if not billion) dollar industries and I don't think it could be run on the whims of men alone; women would have to be equal collaborators.

On a more pleasant note, your trip sounds fantastic.....would love to see some Grand Canyon pics :), and looking forward to the poem!

 
At 5:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi ,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘preeth's blog’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,

 
At 9:30 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

And the nominations are....

 
At 9:30 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 4:12 AM, Blogger Deepali said...

Hey Preethi how are you?

Glad you had a road trip and enjoyed it :)

Hehe they don't call Vegas sin city for nothing I guess. I get my dose of Vegas when watching CSI.

The Grand Canyon is something I would like to see in person (just like the Niagra Falls). I bet it's different looking at it in pictures, movies and looking at it when you are actually there.

 
At 11:42 AM, Blogger rainboy said...

more of grand canyon pics please..:)

loved that pic with stunning skyblue backdrop.

 
At 1:43 PM, Blogger Salomie said...

Tagged you!!!

 
At 11:52 AM, Blogger Cosmic Joy said...

It was interesting to read your description of the sin city. Forcing women into that trade is totally wrong. But if it is done by choice, is it wrong? After all every human has sexual needs, right?

And it was also interesting to read about your travels. I remember my trip to the GC. The drive up to the north side of the canyon was memorable. I remember the miles and miles of driving with no sign of civilization. It was truly a different kind of place.

And on a side note, hope you are doing well. Long time no see :)

 
At 12:58 PM, Blogger Salomie said...

Tagged you again .... you've got catching up to do :D

 
At 8:51 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

Seriously....u cant be tht busy:-(

 
At 7:56 AM, Blogger Salomie said...

Ok, hopefully you'll get time to put this up at least: you've been awarded!!!

 
At 1:06 AM, Blogger Reflections said...

Come on....u cant abandon ur blog like this:-S. U have a responsibility towards it;-P.

 
At 1:50 AM, Blogger m.flowerr said...

No updates since Aug 2008???

 
At 1:50 AM, Blogger m.flowerr said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 8:55 AM, Blogger imperfect said...

No updates since long?

 

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