Triumph en' Cheval

Whanne gnarly groves and knotted Weald

Stoode grene and callow 'cross the feld,

Whanne raging river and brawling brooke

Crept and crawled through every nooke,

Times were black, the skies were grea

Sōls that naught, was ever gay.

For a fær maiden had borne

A heart broken, another torne;

Split asunder, slit in twain,

'Twixt two knights of valour magne.

We battled on, I and he,

Death in life had come to be;

We did spar through day and night,

Sabre pierced with all its might.

Arms were clashed and armour crashed,

Steeds crippled and sore skin gashed.

"Death to thee!" did I crie,

As we stepped, eye to eye.

Like Chaucer's verse I wanton trie,

In owen grese, to make him frie.

Steed caught steed and steele met steele,

Lances snapt and plates did keele.

I thrust his left on my vile blaed,

As my own arm was unmaed.

The crimson tiff went on on foote,

The blaed, my knee was firmly put.

Till the worthy foe was smote,

Knife was hacked and gyred abote.

There he lay, skewered and hewn,

Half myself away I'd strewn.

The rest in me revelled with pride,

Of bloody venge for my dear bride.

I had won, with chivalrie,

My own pyrrhic victorie;

Bled and spent, I shut my eye,

Nevermore'd I open, aye.

A Dream come True

'Twas a grey Saturday, clouds looming low over the sombre city of Madras, (I don't care what the old fart who simply refuses to die thinks, it'll always be good ol' Madras to me) and it was decided that it was time we saw another movie. We got a bunch of equally jobless oafs to accompany us, and Satyam Cinemas got itself filled with die-hard Nolan fans who gripped their popcorn bags tight to hold on to their little anchors of reality, their own mass produced mouth-watering totems, as the iconic Warner Brothers shield wobbled into corporeality. Inception is an epic movie, the much awaited event of the year when Christopher Nolan, the genius of our time, unleashed the latest behemoth that steamrolled into the box-office, taking the world by storm, pushing through the sky high expectations that weighed upon his shoulders. As an undeclared work on science fiction, unlike others in its genre, it refuses to explain the science, focusing on the fiction instead, leaving the physics of his wonderful world to our imagination, something that his Prestige set the stage for earlier. Nolan has a standard cast, good actors are a gem too few, and Leonardo DiCaprio wormed his way into this elite club of silverscreen heavy-weights through a flawless performance in his role of an architect of dreams, the "extractor" of intelligence, devoted husband, loving father, and a curious analyst of the mind who burrows into the deepest crevices in the human psyche. He is tasked upon the inception of an idea in another's mind, I simply won't reveal more, a tricky and dangerous journey into a mind willing to defend itself at all levels of invasion. As dreams build on, the complex storyline unseen since Memento grips you by the neck and plunges you into a world where anything is possible, from the streets of Paris folding unto itself, to dead wives sabotaging your every move.. The scale is huge, the budget limitless, and cast impeccable and Nolan; all your ingredients for the perfect movie. Watch it, or God kills a puppy everyday you don't.

Ars Archerica

September is the month in which Festember is held. Ignoring the oh-not-so-clever portmanteau and all the snide comments that surface, I'd prefer concentrating on Festember's gallant efforts at equipping our students with state of the art technology and pseudosciences and holding mundane workshops for said purpose. The two workshops that stand out this year are the archery and hypnotism workshops, but not the alchemy workshop which was planned initially, as the world-renown alchemist Nicholas Flamel was not available on that date due to the fact that he went kaput five hundred years ago when he foolishly drank copper sulphate solution mixed with rat poison thinking it was the elixir of life. Apparently he was spotted hanging upside down from a streetlamp, stark naked, singing " Found a Peanut" at the top of his voice, a few minutes before he snuffed it. Bereft of the alchemy workshop they had planned, they resorted to the next weird sounding word in the dictionary, Archery; the word Astrology was consciously ignored as it was mistaken to be Astronomy, a real science which apparently is frowned upon. Unlike hypnotism, people have actually witnessed the effects of an arrow jutting out of a loon's spleen and hence I have a soft corner for this tried and tested, albeit completely pointless art. The poor lambs failed to realise Archery wasn't fictitious. Therefore, on behalf of the clowns from the archery workshop that is to be conducted in lieu of better things to do this Festember, I would like to brush you up with some tips on how to shoot people in the most inappropriate of places in hours of dire need for said target's scarcity. The first step in shooting projectiles into mid-air is the acquisition of a target. A target can be anything from a dartboard to the dire rear of the sore-headed loser with a sense of smug superiority, strutting about you getting under your skin. It can also be the poor unfortunate chap at a distance doing nothing to annoy you but you want to shoot him anyway. So, with the target set, our next move is to equip ourselves with a shooting instrument. It can range from snipers and crossbows to blunt pencils and maliciously shaped stones. We cover all these tools and the techniques and how to use them and inflict the maximum damage with special emphasis on day to day objects like the crossbow.

• Choose your target with utmost wisdom. Remember, your ammunition is limited but the number of people you'd like to shoot is not. Therefore, discrimination is required to prioritise your targets from the most annoying to the least.
• With target sighted, your next task is to position yourself in the most prudent of poses. One would not like to lose the element of surprise. An arrow coming out of nowhere is our desired result, while propping yourself up on a bow larger than you and jumping around making an ass out of yourself is not. Remember not to look too obviously stupid with any weapon mentioned previously.
• If your weapon of choice is the notorious cross-bow, do not forget that you're wielding one of the coolest objects ever invented and using one without the characteristic evil grin will yield undesirable results. For best efficiency, smiling like the devil will help, on grounds of intimidating your enemy and rendering him helpless in the face of such evil and maniacal laughter.
• Get yourself an arrow, preferably not very sharp, to make sure the target experiences hilarious disfigurement. Why do a clean job while you can bludgeon his bones spilling pools of blood all over? So, with such an arrow acquired, position it on the cross bow and pull back until you hear the wood creaking uncomfortably under the stress. Do not pull too much as that would render the weapon useless even though, it is extremely satisfying to break something with your own bare hands.
• Now release the tension, and no, we do not mean going to the loo, stop sniggering at smutty toilet humour, and observe as the arrow darts forward lodging itself onto the target's posterior. Watch how the target writhes in agony trying to relieve his colon of the arrow. The aforementioned maniacal laughter would be prudent at this point.
• To improve upon the outlined technique, dress up in green tights, wear a funny nancy looking hat with a feather on top and speak with a comic sounding Shakespearean accent. Not only will this make you look cool, it'll also give you an excuse to steal your target's wallet and enjoy yourself at the food stall, calling it stealing from the rich and feeding the poor (yourself).
• Try the usual apple on the target's head routine. This will improve concentration as you will be faced by heavy distractions in the form of brightly coloured apples trying to catch your eye as you try to shoot the target's desired organ. Moreover, an apple next to a bleeding person is sure to keep doctors away ensuring said target's slow painful death in the absence of medical assistance.
• Remember, improvisation is the key, so try using poisoned arrows for enhanced malice, or one could even use longbows if one so much feels inclined to do so. They have brilliant range and ideal for shooting that poor unfortunate chap at a distance who did nothing to annoy you but you want to shoot him anyway.

P.S: Do not try this at home. Doing so will seriously hamper your prospects of mastering long distance shooting. Try it where you have free access to vast open spaces and plenty of morons to practise with.

P.P.S: The title Ars Archerica was inspired from Ars Poetica, a moderately, nay, extremely hypocritical treatise in verse by a certain Archibald MacLeish, written when he got sloshed after his girlfriend left him saying he was not manly enough for her. I just thought I'd mention his name and credit to keep those damn copyright harpies at bay.
-Tsfu

Great Expectations

I recently read a book, a good book, finally. Dickens can never disappoint, as it turns out, and as far as I'm concerned, he's the finest novelist of all time, in terms of plot, style, character and structure, and so many parameters that judge a good book. Although, he tended to be very autobiographical, he never failed to deliver, and he was at his best when he penned down The Great Expectations, a literary masterpiece that flows out of the pages and into your mind, woven into it the entire fabric of Victorian society, with all its hypocrisy and sham, to expose the vulnerable underbelly of the most industrious empire of its time. Dickens has always been keenly critical of his society, something that made him very unsociable, but also a piquant genius who saw through the veil of the Victorian elite. He brings out the human in every character of his, who are real people, with real emotions. The plot revolves around Philip Pirrip, or Pip, who, as a child, loses his parents and is brought up by Joe, his elder brother, and his odious wife, who, for all her bitterness, actually loves her family with all her heart. Orphaned at a very young age, he yearns for a sense of identity, characteristic of Dickens' own reflective and introspective proclivity. With a bit of Dickens himself and a lot others of note in him, Pip begins his journey as an apprentice in the workshop of his brother, a blacksmith, a job he despises. At the age of seven, he is interrupted rather rudely in the middle of his ruminations in front of his parents' graves, by a coarse convict, bound by shackles but seemingly not by the norms of civility. Pip is scared into stealing food, leaving a scarred sense of lingering guilt in the child's mind. He is constantly worked to conformity by his sister-in-law, and a noxious uncle, a Mr.Pumblechook, and his sense of guilt stems only from the fact that he stole some food, an act of wrongdoing by Pumblechook's standards, while Dickens consciously umbrages the act of giving food to a hungry man, in social criticism of the values held by Victorian society that chooses to overlook acts of charity in favour of idealistic forthrightness. This little act of forced charity sees Pip's life turned upside down, with the burden of Great Expectations on his shoulders, a cold, lifeless and yet stunningly beautiful Estella, and her disturbed guardian, Miss Havisham, who invites Pip as a boy to humour Estella, leading him to form a close bond with them, and later believing her to be the cause of his fortunes, well or ill. Plot stretches into the bowels of London from Dartmoor, a conspiracy to smuggle a convict out of Great Britain is also thrown in, and finally crashes with a twist only Dickens can pull off. It is a milieu of emotions, stark realism and social critique in Pip's quest of maturity when he finally understands who really matter in his life, and the evanescence of good fortunes are not to be ridden along, when he climbs up the social ladder leaving loved ones behind. Even when Pip takes Joe's gratuitous affections for granted, even when Estella cruelly breaks Pip's heart, even when Miss Havisham heartlessly manipulates Pip's desires holding a grudge as old as herself, they remain very sympathetic, with their vulnerabilities and passions, deep character and most of all, a very human side being the impetus for all their actions. On the whole, the book is a very deep treatise of human nature, a podium portraying Dickens' genius, and a literary machination that preserves the very essence of Victorian society that funnily takes place, actually, in the Georgian era. Great Expectations is a living fossil, that brings puffy shirts and pantaloons, and with it, the whole smoggy dank and derelict London, with its snooty elite and parallel indigence back to life.