Kaustubh Dudhane > Recent Status Updates

"Dad smiled. "At least not on purpose. Look, Rambo. Heaven."
They all looked at the television. On the screen, Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont were dancing cheek to cheek."

Wow! This was so smooth that if I hadn't looked up Top Hat and its songs, I could never have understood it.

After defeat to South Africa in the group stages in Nagpur, India's biggest stumble in the World Cup, Yuvraj told a friend, 'I have to take us to the World Cup final. Just you watch. I'm going to take them there.'

The glass is never half-anything with Pakistan. It's either empty or full.

For four manic overs against Pakistan, Ross Taylor became Sehwag, Viv Richards and Shahid Afridi bundled into one.

Matches, though, are not won by passionate fans, though they play their part at times. Matches are not won because countries need it. Matches are won by deserving teams, and tonight Bangladesh were nothing if not deserving.

In layman’s terms, the more people looked forward to something, the more likely that tragic circumstances will prevent it. This principle was famously reinforced when Nove’s experiments designed to demonstrate it failed on stage at the Academy of Essenpi, simultaneously proving and failing to prove the philosopher’s point.

If Federer were to simultaneously play tennis whilst hoarding gold and providing banking facilities for dubious dictators, perhaps the fervour of his support would match that for Sachin.

When Sehwag says he wants to bat 50 overs, you should shudder as you think: what if he actually bats 50 overs? 👹

Other jobs put you on notice or gave you a performance improvement plan, but professional killers got the loose ends speech. Either way, you knew you were on the path to an early termination.

There is a critical distinction between fear and desperation. Fear is the knowledge that something dreadful might be, the awareness of a horrible possibility. Desperation is the knowledge that something dreadful isn’t just possible but probable, and that escaping misfortune is becoming increasingly unlikely.

“I’ve heard it said that gear does not make the hero.”

“Aye, but gear does make the hero live longer,” said Gorm.

“Ah,” said Gorm. “And we have a choice?”

“Oh, there’s always a choice. Choice is a constant.” Flinn grinned, a cold glint in his eye. “It’s consequences that vary.”

A Goblin’s skin is pale green and oily, and reeks even when it’s clean, which is almost never. Their large yellow eyes constantly run, their mouths bristle with serrated teeth, and their stunted, piggy noses are always dribbling something disgusting. Like a bad hangover, a Goblin can make any experience much more unpleasant.

This was art. Something the machine, however capable in the technical details, could never understand. Because art is, and always has been, about what it does to us. To the one shaping it and the one experiencing it.

Human exhilaration is a renewable resource. And you can generate it with cheap stuffed animals and fried foods.

She smiled, eager. It was an intoxicating smile, for how genuine it was. Smiles, like radiation, are made more potent by proximity.

Art is about feelings and emotion. It’s about letting them escape, so they can be shared. It’s about capturing a truth about yourself. Like you’re ripping a hole in your chest and exposing your soul.

There’s a certain insanity that defines artists. The willful ability to ignore what exists. Millennia of evolution have produced in us not merely the ability to recognize and register light, but to define colors, shapes, objects. We don’t often acknowledge how amazing it is that we can tell what something is simply by letting some photons bounce off us.

Nightmares are a fluid terror. Once you get the briefest handle on one, it will change. Filling nooks in the soul like spilled water filling cracks in the floor. Nightmares are a seeping chill, created by the mind to punish itself. In this, a nightmare is the very definition of masochism. Most of us are modest enough to keep that sort of thing tucked away, hidden.

I was a failed artist, a pitiful excuse for a cop, and a passable boxer.

But I was a great liar.

“You misunderstand, Runian,” he said. “Killing is desperation, not strength. To live without killing…that is a strong society. If the reverse were true, my lands would not be withering away, like crops long without water…”
Damn, that guy could be profound. And depressing. Five stars. Should be narrating documentaries about disasters like Chernobyl. Or my love life.

Any sufficiently trained modern person can become a god to those from previous eras.

Yazad ushered us into a storehouse populated by sacks of grain and prowling cats. One rubbed against my leg, then nipped at me when I tried to pet it. Cats. The same in every dimension.

A progressive, secular State that, correctly, removes discriminatory practices from the Hindu religion but cowers behind a lamppost like a wet cat when it comes to removing discriminatory practices from other religions is not a progressive, secular State - it is a scared State.

In Hinduism, religion is an offshoot of the way of life, while in Islam, way of life is an offshoot of religion. Because of this distinction, one is amenable to change and reform while in the other, leave alone reform, even changing a punctuation in the holy verses and commandments is expressly forbidden. And herein lies the dichotomy that plagues our State.

Kashmiri Hindus are the Jews, but unfortunately, India is not Israel. They call Kashmir the Switzerland of the East. Wrong. It is the Srebrenica of the East. And it will remain so till such time every Kashmiri Hindu is returned home.

Every invader has known, that to dismantle India, you need to first dismantle this temple ecosystem. And every invader has managed it. What sets the British apart is that they managed to also pass this dismantling on to those who they ruled and subjugated; and now the latter are continuing with the dismantling.

We get the word “wizard” itself from the same root as “wisdom.” While modern pop culture has co-opted the term to evoke the image of long beards, pointy hats, and the occasional bescarred boy with a wand, in ancient times it wasn’t so much the magic that identified these individuals. It was knowledge.

He was leading the donkey, which seemed to like him. Animals tended to like Nobby. He didn't smell wrong.

No-one likes being told it's their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it's your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.