The Chess Paradox

The major problem with most of the theories of metaphysics is that the questions of who we are and why we are here, are looked at mostly from the point of view of Man. 

(God was indeed created because of his usefulness to Man in answering those questions. And a rather small word, you have to say, for the huge purpose it serves.

Except it hardly answers any questions or serves any purpose than to discourage further questions. It's a bit like when we are asked why the apple falls, we are told about gravity. But that's just putting a label on the phenomenon. That doesn't explain the why. 

Why does the apple fall? Because things attract each other; it's called gravitation. Why? I just told you, it's called gravitation. What?

The mystery still remains as to why would a body attract another in the first place and what is this property that has been labelled weight -- something, for example, string theory has been trying to answer. 

It's another matter if the purpose was to discourage further questions.)

So what if we look at these questions of who we are and why we here from the point of view of God (whose origin we take as axiomatic for the moment) i.e. If there is a God, what purpose would creating us serve for him?

Here I am, God, sitting in my pretty little heaven. Why would I create the world? Don't know. To entertain myself perhaps; it's been a lonely couple of eons anyway.

For something more relatable, imagine this: you are locked in a nowhere room which you cannot get out of, with nothing but a chess board. You begin to play both the sides because you are getting bored but soon you are back to getting bored because you know the opponent's moves because the opponent is you. After a little time you realize that you have trained yourself to partition your brain and the pieces are now autonomous and are thinking their moves independently (yes, God as a shared consciousness). However, it's beginning to get so decentralized that even you don't know what the next move is going to be. Naturally, it's getting really engrossing for you. But some of the pieces get conscious of your presence after a while and stop playing and start praising you, building temples and churches for you, theorizing about you -- everything except playing the game. Would you like those pieces? Some of the pieces, however, say they don't believe in you and keep playing. Which pieces would you prefer?

Hence the Chess Paradox: If there is a God, is it possible that he likes the atheists more?

How Marxism is more of a religion than we think

Religion is merely a bestselling philosophy of life. An oft-quoted example is how Bible is the most selling (philosophy) book of all time. It makes sense though. If there was a Founding Your Personal Religion for Dummies by John Wiley & Sons, they would have stressed no ends that a good Religion should be based on the same principle as  a good design: KISS i.e. Keep It Simple Stupid.

A Religion is a product that has to be sold to a lot of people in return for their conviction. It's hard enough to make people part with their money, it gets harder to make them part with their unconditional support and faith. So, it becomes even more essential to keep the fundamentals of a religion simple than those of, say, a webpage or a smartphone. Don't steal. Don't lie. et cetera. et cetera.

But now we run into the real problem: Is Harry Potter-ism a religion? Is Da Vinci Code-ism a religion? They are simple and have gone on to become immensely popular. If yes, should we begin to call them religion now or should we wait for a century or two? If not, how are they not a religion?

We cannot discount them on the basis of being hilariously unbelievable and suitable for twats because of two reasons: One, most religions are unbelievable to those who don't believe in it and are believable to those who are ready to believe in it. That is more important than and different from believing: the readiness to believe. Two, most people are twats in -- and it may sound contradictory -- unique and different ways.

Granted that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is as ridiculous as Heaven or Hell, how is Harry Potter-ism not a religion? Because Hogwarts is open to criticism and ridicule. And that is the other essential principle of designing a religion besides simplicity, and the center of this babble of mine: A religion cannot be open to criticism.

A religion needs to have sanctions against those who aren't ready to believe in it so as to give something to those who are ready to believe to cling on to in the face of criticism. So, if someone makes fun of my beliefs and even if they sound logical to me, my internal argument would be: don't worry, he will soon be thunderstruck. Or something like that.

This is an important process: an immensely popular philosophy turns into a religion only when it cloaks itself against criticism. Jesus definitely didn't say that those who aren't listening to me right now are going to hell; it was part of the evolutionary process as his philosophies of life became popular and became a religion. Probably somebody said it in anger to a non-believer and it got added to the pantheon of Christian beliefs. However, it is not important how the sanctions come into being, what is important is that it is the evolution of sanctions that makes a religion religion.

Marxism is more of a religion than we think. It is simple. Not as simple as Love Thy Neighbor, but still. It's black-and-white: there are two kinds of people in this world, thus leaving no space for complexities and blanketing the nuances. Jesus, should we love our neighbor if he listens to Pitbull?

But more importantly, Marxism, instead of letting evolution do its job, has an inbuilt cloak against criticism. If you think the world is fair as it is and you don't need to revolt, it goes two ways: If you are well off, you *are* the ruling class. If you are poor and still think it's fair, it's false consciousness. It's the oldest trick: attack the critic, not his criticism.

History Lessons

Today I remembered a wonderful account by an Indian journalist of his chance meeting with Gandhiji. It went like this:

I saw him looking at my English trousers and a smile came on his lips: Gandhiji always urged people to boycott English clothes, to wear Swadeshi and to use charkha. 
'Sit down, young man. Tell me, why do you wear English clothes and not Khadi?'
Awed by the presence of the great man, I honestly replied, 'I find Khadi thick and coarse.'
Gandhiji laughed and asked me, 'Tell me, how does your mother look? Is she heavy or is she thin?' The word for heavy was in Gujarati.
'Yes, she is heavy,' I said.
'Do you love her any less for that? Swadeshi cloth is our mother, should it matter if it is thicker than English cloth?'

Hence, we can clearly see from this anecdote that apart from devising the ingenious methods of Satyagraha and Ahimsa, the great man also started 'Yo Mama So Fat' jokes.

The Cycle and The Parking Space

The parking space is a product of the modern world. It had no place in the ancient world, innit? Why would someone else stack his horse right beside yours. And in the basement of your fucking hut too.

But no, let's not trash the concept so much. Because it's certainly one we enjoy on a daily basis.

We, the humble residents of Block L, recently received the notice that our Arab Spring was over, that the days of anarchy and lawlessness were gone, and we were now together gonna move forward. Three words: Allotted Parking Spaces. In this regime, basically you drive around the whole fucking space to find your fucking rectangle even if you can possibly just park right about anywhere. But no, let's not lose it people. Let's a get a hold of ourselves. Remember. Order rather than chaos. So we started parking everyday inside the same fucking rectangle, the size of a double-bed mattress, painted on the floor with yellow paint. That's right.

The anti-climax came soon after. We were by now so attached to the rectangle, emotionally I should add, that when a cyclist began to choose our rectangle for resting his cycle quite regularly, we got a little angry. Yes, we felt that little anger. We left polite pink post-it notes on the bicycle but our cultured pleas fell on deaf ears. The kids at home skipped meals for days, then cried in Czech when alone: Y U NO UNDERSTAND. PARKING IS ELSEWHERE.

So one day we broke the cycle's lock, rode it from the ground floor to the minus-first floor basement and locked it up with another cycle though there was no definite malice directed towards the latter cycle. Always good to do something unbelievably silly.

Image source: Saucebrain.com

Another Year

It's widely accepted in the movies, both desi and phoren, that it's liberating to live the day as if it were one's last; especially if one has Cancer, the preferred choice among the terminal diseases. So when doomsayers, after being in hiding for twelve long years having been failed by the ignoramus Nostradamus, pointed out that there was no 2013 in Mayan Calendar and thus 2012 was hopefully the last year of our lives, I decided to stop being logical, go with the popular sentiment, and have some fun while I am here.

Not that 2011 was any different.

*

But yes, I could not have imagined how 2012 would pan out except its end, you know, with me eventually ending up among the rubble on December 21st. As I look back at the year ... well, I cannot remember any of it and the chief reason for that has been the abundance of -- and since it is a public blog and my sister is probably aware of its URL, I would use a rather restrained term -- soft drugs in my room. The last time I had plentiful of it at home, I was soon plagued by severe toothache and even though it alleviates (physical) pain, the irony got just too unbearable for me then and I was off it for a long time.

I read an interesting comment in the Saturday supplement some weeks back. Jeet Thayil, the only Indian in what is going to be the last Booker shortlist, called his Bombay days, spent doing drugs and discussing arts, a 'wasteland'. Probably it's true for anyone with the habit. I think the term 'recreational' (though it is more often used for the big brothers i.e. the chemicals) is accurate in that you never 'create' anything under the influence. You merely re-create. You re-create old stories, anecdotes, watch favored movies, listen to the music you already like, or discuss stale theories on life, universe, and Narendra Modi. You never create anything even vaguely original and even if you do, of what use it is if you don't remember any of it in the morning. I tried taping myself but once sober it sounded like a long David Foster Wallace passage to even me, forget trying to get others to understand it. I know I am being hard on soft drugs as the moments of originality are anyway rare and look, just look around on the internet, on the blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan, how everything is derivative, how there is not even one joke which can stand straight without leaning on to the rails of the popular culture clutching them desperately. It wasn't like this when I was a young boy in the 60's. 

I will stop doing drugs but can someone ask Snickers to stop being tasty during munchies and the sex from being so good.

*

I bought my first motorbike this year and since I don't see myself buying another till December (and you can easily guess the rest of this joke which has been flogged so hard that it will not even last till the apocalypse). Even though I was supposed to fall in love with the first automobile bought for me with my money, I didn't. I have fallen in love with new shoes more deeply, even though after a week or so when they have gathered a little dust and lost a little shine, I often found that true love was hard to find. Probably the lack of passion owed to the extremely utilitarian cause for which it was bought: commuting to office. 

One fine day the bus dropped me at the circle just three and a half kilometers before my office as it was going the other way and I had been too lazy to ask. As I began walking in the Sun delving on the historical similarities between what had just happened and that Pietermaritzburg incident, as fate would have it, the showroom was right there taunting me. The bike arrived the next day and the first three accidents happened in the first week. (Don't worry, I was unharmed. It mostly involved other people I didn't even know getting injured.) As I gradually got used to the different seating position and braking (20 points for guessing it's an Avenger), the Warning posters have since been removed from the neighborhood and the accident count is still stuck at three. More recently, I avoided a major one on the highway, after an SUV tried to run me over from behind, understandably so as I had mocked him after overtaking. I don't usually do it; in my defense, I was pretty drunk. 

The good thing about having a heavy bike and having to park everyday in the overcrowded common parking area of a business park is that I don't need to go to gym.

*

This year, I went to Goa for the first time and it was terrible. It had to do with the company I had and it wasn't that they were bad people but that they were eight in number and that brought out the mob behavior from two of them. I threatened to beat up one but people thankfully intervened saving me from further embarrassment. Later, however, they sided with him, and most of them are on nodding-while-passing-by terms with me in office since. On the brighter side, as a budding misanthropist, I borrowed from this experience to develop a theory (and I know I am up to something with it) that the degree of misanthropy can be defined as the minimum number of people you think are required in a group to have an idiot in it. If you feel that a group of 7 people are bound to have an idiot, you are a Level 7 misanthrope. Obviously, the larger the level, the more you are like Bill Gates and less like Steve Jobs. The biggest of the misanthropes would at Level 2 as he or she cannot even stand a group of two  people, and thus is forever alone. There is no level 1: If you think everyone is a fool, including you, well well ... By the way, I am Level 4 misanthrope, in line with the South Park 1-in-4 rule.

I hope when the test becomes popular like the Kinsey Scale, you can say you were the first to read it.

*

As for the miscellaneous section, it was a year of major failures and minor stumbles. My self-worth took a dive when I got a Zippo of all things as the farewell gift from my old team, only to resurface when the new teammates told me how cool my lighter was. What else, I bought better and more books, read little, and wrote even less.

Hugo

I watched Hugo and didn't love it. For all its beauty and loveliness, it couldn't sustain my interest. Saying 'I just didn't like it and every moviegoer is entitled to his opinion' is a flimsy reason to put a movie down in any case and I don't intend to do that to Hugo, a movie I was convinced I would love. So where did it go wrong (for me)?

There is a scene in the movie 'King Fisher' that has got me thinking for quite a while now, sadly about all that is wrong with it. It comes early in the movie and until that point the movie had been very Gilliam-esque, that is to say it's very hard to tell whether all of it was happening on the same planet earth we live on or somewhere in a bizarre parallel universe. And then a man walks up to Jeff Bridges as he is coming out of the basement where Robin Williams lived and after asking him angrily not to come there again, the man explains the back story of Robin Williams' character to him. Or to us. I cringed so hard that my face fell off.

I think it has to do with the beautiful paradox that is writing, whether for screen, or a play or a novel. While you have to write exactly you want to write, and that' what I think they mean by being honest about it, you also have to keep in mind the invisible reader or audience. So, when it gets too obtrusive, you have to bring in a prop that explains the situation. Remember when they say 'Let's go over the plan again', or 'Don't you know, he has cancer', well, it's always been for your benefit.

Now, while the prop might not seem out of place in some movies, it's the first non-surreal character in the movie and the conversation also has most of the few straight dialogues that are there the movie. All for the simple-minded viewer.

Hugo, to my mind, has a similar problem: It has a plot (and its twists) inserted just for our convenience. But the story need not have a plot I say, you have read the invisible reader wrong. Not that it's wrong to have one, but to have the run of the mill twists in the beautiful premise of a boy living in a clock just doesn't feel right.  

Sunday Morning

It’s not often that you wake up with a food allergy on a Sunday morning. A hang over is usual, so are digestion problems if you had been trying to make the buffet worth every penny you had spent for it, and sometimes there is food poisoning if you had been wandering the city for the temptation that is street food. But food allergy is rare; at least, for me. So, when I woke up at about seven this morning with the upper half of my body extremely itchy, I blamed it mentally on the non-existent ants, bedbugs, or some intruding insects, and tried to fall back asleep. I obviously couldn’t and realized after a few minutes that it was quite intense. I walked to the washroom, peed, came back, and looked in the mirror. My chest, my neck, my jaw, and the lower halves of my cheeks were covered with rash. My first thought was: Shit! My second thought was: I should have shaved yesterday, now I can’t, and will have to go to office unshaven on Monday.

I came back to bed, switched on the computer, and like every twenty-first century person, googled and wikied for my symptoms. It was just seven-twenty on a Sunday morning and the nearby medical shop opens at eight, so I had a good forty minutes left. The itch wasn’t dying down and I was reminding myself to not scratch more and instead slap near the area of sensation in order to fool my neurons. The ‘research’ told me it was either of the two: A food allergy or an insect bite. I ruled out the latter as it wasn’t hurting. At all. Anywhere. Therefore, it was allergy. I decided to get an Avil tablet, which was what I was going to do anyway before the research, and walked to the mirror again. I looked at myself and the first thought was: David Lynch, Anthony Hopkins, 1980, Elephant Man! My second thought was: Shit!

I was, sort of, looking like the Elephant Man. My throat had acquired, by then, magnificent proportions and had become continuous with the jaw. I couldn’t see the windpipe. The blobs on the jaw and cheek from the rash had become larger and had turned colorless while the surrounding skin had remained red. The right side of jaw had swollen and looked like I had an abscess or maybe two. And all the mass that my body had acquired in the past fifteen minutes was completely numb.

I returned to the Wiki page of Food Allergy as I remembered reading one of the major symptoms was the swelling of throat. For some reason, I was relieved that it wasn’t insect bite. Some other symptoms of Food Allergy were impending sense of doom and extreme anxiety. Now, being a neurotic, I have these symptoms all the time, but reading them in the list got me even more panicky and I started thinking about the Mayan prediction about 2012 and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and what not. I decided all the information was messing with my head and closed the laptop and went back to the mirror. I was beginning to not recognize myself any more. My face looked like a candle that has been extinguished midway and the molten wax remained exactly where it was at the end, shapeless, threatening to drip, but never doing so. My face looked like the glutinous mass that Hollywood movies reserve for aliens, except they show it in green. Mine was wheatish – as the matrimonial ad would say.

I was beginning to feel heavy in my throat now with all the numb mass. I wrapped a towel around my neck in the manner of a boy scout to cushion it and sat down on the bean bag with my face against my knee. I had no option but to wait till eight. Did my whole life flash in front of my eyes? Well, yes, some of it, at least.

*

The pharmacist woman gives me a dirty look at first. The reason is I buy condoms from her shop. Now, I too am against condoms being sold at medical shops. Not that it is not a suitable item to be sold there but that I hate going over to the counter which already has a man who has been bitten by a dog, a woman who has broken her arm, and an oldie who has lost his head, and having to ask for a ‘pack’. No matter what the code word is, no matter how well the pharmacist wraps the pack in a small brown bag underneath the counter before handing it out, I always feel everyone muttering under their breaths: How can you make merry amid the disease, the death, and the general misery? I feel like a rogue version of Buddha deciding to ignore the three signs and getting back to the harem.

She squints as I came closer and then allows me a little sympathy along with the disgust. I ask for Avil and she points in the direction of the adjoining hospital and advises that I had better get an injection. I agree at once.

The hospital is a privately run one for the middling poor. The reception hall is huge, has blue plastic chairs arranged in rows, and there are three attendants in all, two women and one man. I decide to speak to the first woman and as I start my premeditated complaint 'I woke up with Food Allergy' in English, I see a broom in her hand. She is the cleaner. I walk sideways until I am facing the male attendant and he gets only the second half of the sentence: '... with Food Allergy.' The attendant nods at my throat and asks me to wait for the doctor. How long? Just coming only sir...

I look at the broom the cleaner has: it is made from coconut bristles. My maid has been almost pining for a year now for a broom like that. The ones with plastic bristles just don’t make the cut for her. She keeps asking me to buy one, and I keep forgetting. Buying a broom with coconut bristles for the maid somehow never makes to my Saturday shopping priorities. The doctor hasn’t come yet. A poster announces that cervical cancer has beaten breast cancer in terms of victims the previous year, and thus deserves more popularity. There is a poster for a blood donation camp. The drop of blood has two red eyes while it is white in color itself -- they can not make a blood donation poster look like an Eli Roth movie poster you know -- and hence it looks eerily similar to the Ghostbusters poster. I look around for more banal observations; the doctor has still not arrived. The notice board has the doctors’ schedule and there is a noticeable pattern just like at the multiplexes. The gynaecologists come at odd hours: the afternoons and mornings; the dentists occupy the peak hours: the evenings; the psychiatrists come only on Mondays. Here is my doctor.

The night doctor looks nothing like a doctor not because of lack of the suitable clothing but because of the lack of suitable pretence. I suspect him to be an attendant too, but decide to keep it to myself. But he is doctor-ish in a lot of ways: He opens his notebook before taking a look at me the patient. Very bureaucratic. Name? Whatever. Age? Twenty-three. He picks up an Eveready steel torch and directs it at my throat: He has been briefed about my condition on the way. Open you shirt, comes the polite command. The top button was not done in the first place; I decide to undo two more. I congratulate myself silently on not wearing a tee in the event of which I would have been asked to remove it altogether. The attendants are lurking at the door. As I undo the buttons, I realize something: There are hickeys on my chest. Three of them, I remember looking at them in the mirror in the morning. One each at the shoulder blades, and the third a few ribs below on the right side. I look at them and nope, they are not camouflaged against the the rash. I silently pray to God that he chooses to focus on my dietary habits rather than my sexual life. He shakes his head. Not an insect bite. It’s food allergy. I thank God profusely. What did you have last night? I try to recall. Was it Brownie Fudge Sundae? Should I say Brownie Fudge Sundae? Would he be interested in knowing the particular type of Sundae? I should just say Sundae. But I ate Sundae sounds like I ate Sunday, and what if he wants to guess the allergen? I should mention Brownie also then. But it doesn’t matter; he will give me anti-histamines no matter which the allergen is. What’s the point of saying anything at all? Just say Ice-cream. Meanwhile, the doctor, noticing my quandary, summarises- So you ate outside. Yes, yes, that’s right, I shake my head.

He prepares a prescription. There is no mention of an injection. I tell him of the pharmacist’s advice. He approves readily and calls the female attendant. Give him an injection. The nurse asks me to follow her and we go inside the O.T. Room II Remove Your Footwear Outside. I forget to remove the footwear outside as the phrase ‘an injection’ keeps ringing in my head. Is it a placebo? Should I tell the doctor that I have dabbled a little in both statistics and biology, and am quite familiar with the idea? I say sorry a couple of times or maybe even more to the nurse for not removing the footwear outside, as one should do to a woman who is going to needle you in a minute. I sit on the bed and try not to imagine the other patients that would have occupied it in the near past. I roll up the left sleeve of my shirt and it’s then that she motions to me to lie down. ‘Are you going to inject me in the hip?’ I ask her point-blank but without meeting her eyes. 

Hip: that’s how an average Indian addresses his or her ass when it is meant to be non-sexual and non-derogatory. Buttock is used sometimes but it’s hard to keep yourself from giggling while pronouncing it, so it’s better to be safe and say Hip. 

Yes, she says. Loosen your jeans.

Sunday Morning. Wake up and find yourself turned into the Elephant Man. Then open your shirt while a guy lights a torch at your bare chest, much like the jobless idiot with a laser at the cinema hall in 90's. Loosen your jeans and lie butt-naked in a room with the doors open, on a bed which is so blotchy that it seems to be suffering from leucoderma, while waiting for a woman to needle your ass. Well, it could be worse, I tell myself.

*

I am transported to the Medical Inspection Room (M.I. Room) of my Alma mater. It has been in news recently. For wrong reasons albeit. All the major news channels have been showing an MMS clip of what has been called ragging to third degree torture. I say ‘what has been called’ because people there will scoff at the term ragging: It's a way of life there. Not a breaking ice ritual as in the engineering colleges. Rather every day for the rest of your stay. Why? I am not advocating it but it is kind of a Making Men Out of Kids thing. So, what about me: Well, there are always a few bad apples.  

Anyway, coming back to the M.I. Room. There were a lot of stories about the place and when you heard them the first time you knew they had to be taken with a packet of salt but you, a ten year old kid, were scared nevertheless. A batch mate told us how he was injected: The doctor, who looked straight out of a late night Hindi horror movie, asked him to lie on his tummy, pulled down his shorts till his knees (unnecessarily, he had added), and put the needle in the hip with his right hand while holding tobacco in his left hand, and then he saw an ant crawling on his right foot. The doctor began to flail his legs around trying to get the ant off his leg, while his hand remained on the syringe and the kid cried in pain. When he finally managed to lose the ant, he decided to chew the tobacco in celebration, and began to beat it using both his hands. The syringe was still in the kid.

This particular anecdote instilled in us an unshakable fear of the M.I. Room for the rest of our years there. People went to great lengths to avoid it. They preferred to go to the town and pay despite having paid the annual medical fee. I was sent once to the M.I. Room by the Class Teacher, forcefully needless to say, as I had puked the porridge I had for breakfast in the assembly area. The doctor immediately announced I needed an injection. In my bum, of course. It was painful, but I decided not to be that kid, and strutted around telling everyone ‘it was in the arm, fuck you’, while the walk belied the talk.

*

I remember that and feel okay. I conjecture a little on whether to loosen my pants while lying on my tummy or to get up, loosen the ants, and then lie down again. Whether to offer the right cheek, or the left, or offer both the cheeks and let the lady decide. She is ready. She asks me to draw a deep breath; I can see her approaching with the syringe in the reflection in the steel surface of the Autoclave in the corner. Rub the spot with the cotton, she says and walks away. My fingers grope around the spot but the swab has already rolled off. Where is the cotton, I ask her but she won’t turn back. Her Sunday Morning was already bad enough.

She comes back after a while though, finds me still lying on the bed on my tummy, and is surprised. 'Done', she says.

*

The injection and the tablets have worked fine and by twelve I looked remotely human, but of a different race or tribe or nation. The maid studied the surf packet – she had specified that she wanted white Surf and not blue Surf – but didn’t ask me anything about my new look. By four in afternoon, my face has toned down to merely an obese version of myself with a double chin and all. The newspaperwallah with the monthly bill kept looking at it curiously and then the other way when caught. By nine in evening, it looked like I have been just punched on my right jaw. And now I have no reason to bunk office tomorrow.

Wednesday

I saw a girl today on road while running, thin, pale, fragile, probably Kannada, but maybe Maharashtrian, can be even Andamanan, if I had to put my money on it I will lose the money, nothing interesting about her, absolutely nothing, at one with the crowd around her and with the broken slabs beneath her feet and with the November smog, eyes lowered, small, rapid, abrupt steps, walking on an imaginary line as much as possible, wearing glasses, the kind of utilitarian frames that normal people reject on first sight, trying to get to office on time, out of habit, or out of fear, must be a lot of work waiting for her, and a coffee machine, and nothing else, yeah, probably a guy too, there is one for every girl in every office, parents calling on weekends, a job is good if it pays, don't really understand what you kids say, have found a guy of our caste, just three years older, has worked in Bangalore for six years now, was in Vancouver for six months once, that's in Canada, I know you know that, listen, you have to meet him at CCD the next Saturday, four years from now she will wait with her kid outside a small society for the schoolbus, there will be other women too, will tell her baby, say Hello to Karuna auntie, the baby will put its palms together, smiles all around, and then get back, get ready, walk the same road, to the office, past the crowd, oh fate you fucking joker, our paths cross in front of a chicken coop, puts her dupatta against her mouth, I am guessing she is vegetarian too, can inhale what the traffic offers but not the chicken stench, the green salwar accentuates her paleness, and then we pass each other, she walks to the bus stand, I run on, our eyes never met, what's there to tell about then, well, I kind of like her.  

Unorganized Thoughts

The vow of silence, that has been in news, was called by someone on Twitter as 'Talking Strike'. Is that the correct term? To me it sounds so right that when I read the term 'Hunger Strike' it makes me visualize a guy, dressed in all-white on a dais, hogging himself to death -- refusing to let go of the hamburgers until his voice is heard, which is getting increasingly difficult with his mouth full and voice muffled. 'Eating Strike' instead, anyone?
But the term 'Talking Strike' conveys what it really is: lame. Talking isn't a survival function. You can't die without talking. You can die without eating.

It really saddened me last year to read about the history of Pakistan and about the historical relations between China and Japan. I was sad that I didn't know much about them. And I blame this on the schooling system in India which is obsessed with Europe so much that I knew the meaning of the term 'Renaissance' by the time I was ten, but all I knew about China was that it's a strange neighbor that was conspicuous by its absence from the mythological epics as well as from the chapters on World Wars but eventually attacked us for no justifiable reason and despite Nehru being so charming and so friendly, in nineteen-sixty-two. Opium Wars sounded to me like two armies completely high on opium and struggling to find their feet, their guns, and their way back home. (Albeit less funny than the Boston Tea Party which, when the teacher told us about, convinced me that the history teacher was smoking something secretly as was every one's favorite rumor in school.) How many dictators had Pakistan seen before Musharraf? How many had they not seen? I couldn't remember and it was really humiliating.

But I have finally found the textbook that has almost everything one should know and therefore should have been used in my school and in your school too. I am glad to have finally found the book 'Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitaab' by Ibn-e-Insha which had been elusive, almost to the point of being mythic, to me for the past ten years. It had been claimed by one rather literary-minded senior to be the funniest as well as the most profound book ever written. The name, literally 'The Last Book of Urdu', had often suggested to me that it was a joke, an obscure joke funny only to the literary-minded, and I should stop making a fool of myself by walking into shops full of no-nonsense students and parents and asking for 'Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitaab' only to be told there is no such book. Anyway, I have found and read the book now and it was disappointing to find that the book has been so influential and seminal that most of the jokes have entered the popular culture now and therefore look stale. Despite most of the book being mostly in Hindustani, it's often a little hard to follow since all the proper-proper Urdu words haven't been explained in footnotes. Even though more often the not you get the drift of the joke, it can be dissatisfying to not know the language. The book, I think, ranks up there with Italo Calvino's 'If On A Winter's Night A Traveler' (though the former is not a novel) in terms of it being 'breathtakingly inventive'. The fake letter to the author from the chairman of the text books selection committee of Pakistan, the structure of the book being divided into subjects such as History, Geography, Algebra, and Animals etc., and the best of all: the questions at the end of chapters (like textbooks) the humor of which cannot be described by any of the words that I know. I think 'childish' comes close but I will let you decide for yourselves with a few sample questions:

• Write in brief about the Gakkhar tribe. But maintain a little distance: they are dangerous people.
• Name a few actors from the movie Sikandar-e-azam. If you can recall any song from the movie, sing us that. 
• When Humayun died after slipping from his roof, which stars was he looking at? Film stars or common stars? 
• Where is Samgarh? Write the name of its king, his father's name, and his residential address. There is no reason to panic.

And finally, the set of questions which had tears rolling down my cheek (TRDMC, in short):
1. Why did Mahmud Ghazni attack India seventeen times?
2. Which country did Mahmud Ghazni attack seventeen times?
3. Which king attacked India seventeen times?
4. Why didn't Mahmud Ghazni attack India eighteen times? Why did he get bored after seventeen?
Note: Question nos. 4, 1, 2, and 3 are compulsory.


The chapter on Grammar had an exrecise in which the reader is expected to turn the given sentence as dirty as possible. Example:
Q: Even a child can handle this equipment.
A: "Even a child can handle this equipment", said the pedophile.
Actually, I wish this exercise was there in the book, but it wasn't. A brilliant book, otherwise.

Thoughts on the Paris Review interviews

The dull hum of the overhead air duct. The sound of the coffee machine whenever the glass door of the break-out area swings open. The chatter of people. It's getting late in the evening and the mist of jargon has begun to set in. I too have a presentation to make in forty-five minutes. Can finish reading Milan Kundera's Paris Review interview once more perhaps. A senior, sitting on his desk instead of his chair, is looking at my screen. For a good camouflage, my already small Internet Explorer window is now open against the backdrop of a predominantly white-colored slide with two pie charts and two tables (each with three rows and four columns) ...

Why I love reading Paris Review interviews at work? Because nobody likes work.

Why I love reading Paris Review interviews in general? Because they spare you the kind of things that I wrote in the first paragraph (and The Hindu and Business Standard write in weekend supplements). The irritating personal touches. The odyssey of the interviewer reaching the writer's address. Whether it was raining that day or not. Whether the autorickshaw-wallah on the way was mustached or clean-shaven.

Every interviewer is trying to write his 'Frank Sinatra has a cold' and yet thinking he is being original.

If I were an interviewer and were to be reminded one thing before the interview, I want to be told: It's not about you, it's about him. It's not to confirm what you have heard and read about his works in the so-and-so critique, it's about getting him to talk.

Now, how to do that? A rather technical measure of it could be the ratio of the word count of the answers to the word count of the questions. But, I think, for a question to be good, more than short and succinct it has to be open-ended (although an open-ended question will inevitably be short). When the question is, "Your protagonist reminds us of Dostoevsky's creations except he is less bitter and hence is more post-modern. Why do you think is that?", it sounds like the kind of compulsive question asked after talks in college auditorium. Apart from being an example of the kind of question a self-absorbed interviewer will ask, it illustrates a closed question. The writer can expound only so much after agreeing or disagreeing to the proposed theory. He might even reply in 'Don't know.' A better question would be- "Do you like Dostoevsky?" And even better- "Which writers do you like?"   

It might sound silly. Asking David Mitchell which writers does he like. Shouldn't we be asking him about his theories on structure now that we have the great structuralist locked in the same room as us. This isn't getting published in a primary school newsletter after all. Why, which writers do you like, of all questions.

Because it's an open question. He might have read Dostoevsky in order to be educated, but he might not have necessarily liked him. He might be more into Dylan Thomas than Dostoevsky. So, what should be the next question- "Ah, the crushing sense of tragedy that the mere choice of his words convey. Don't they?" Or "Which poems of his do you like the most?"

It's also perfect because it's a simple question. Less likely to piss the writer off, more likely to get a wonderful reply. My favorite part of Paris Review interviews is when they ask the writers whether they type or they write. If they write, whether it is by pen or by pencil. The kind of hearty, long, and personal answers writers tend to give to these set of questions is unimaginable to the pointed questions pertaining to real literary theories: Paul Auster referring to writing as a 'very tactile' experience to explain his reason for using pen, and his story about hoarding cartridges of his typewriter when he learned that they were going out of production. Or Don DeLillo stacking the early drafts neatly in shoe boxes!

The successive questions leading to the territory that the writer likes to go is more likely to make the interview enjoyable, both for the writer and the reader, as well as more insightful.

While one may argue that making an interview simple and template-based like Proust's Questionnaire will rob it off its surprise factor, I believe that the surprise should come from the answers, not the questions.
Do you remember the guy who drew the diagram of human digestive system in the space to affix photograph in the slam book you gave him in high school or do you remember the one who pasted his photo?

Punched A Horse? What A Dick.

"I don't usually make these sorts of posts, but I was horrified to read that he's claiming he punched a horse for 'being a bitch'. I always regarded him as a good actor. What a shame to discover he's an abusive nob." - Ava77 on Paul Giamatti

Dear Diary

Yesterday had me terribly sad. The kind of sadness that I experience when I (have to) talk to a lot of people in one day. Returning home, I thought of calling someone for a Friday night drink and then remembered- Oh wait, remember, I am a loner.

Near my home is a flyover, the buses stop at both its ends. I have to walk half its length depending on the side I get down at and then descend using a footbridge. As I was crossing the flyover yesterday and stood on the divider, I could see, in the headlights of the vehicles coming in my direction, dust being swept at them. There was suddenly a strong wind and one could tell it was going to rain heavily. For some time at least.

You have to be very careful while standing on the divider: the cable wires have fallen from the posts and now lie on the ground. If you trip on them, at the least you will break your face and at the most you will be run over by a heavy vehicle. You have to be very careful.

I cross the road and am ten feet away from the footbridge when I see the old hobo on the footpath. Wait, before you think I am about to bore you about the plight of a poor beggar sleeping on the footpath, let me tell you something about myself first. I am not a man of pathos. I don't generally care about the fellow poor or the ultra-poor (like her). Sometimes I resent the world the Chhotus at the tea shops and motor repair shops don't get to see: the world of schools and books and movies; but I keep that resentment to myself. I am, like everyone, jealous of the rich but am not sure what would I possibly do with the extra money. Not in the stoic way that what good is money, but mine is more of a case of the law of diminishing returns. Often I have told people about my lack of ambition and they have nodded with a suitable lack of interest. More recently, a rather no-nonsense colleague told in ambiguous terms that not having an ambition doesn't give me a moral upper hand over people (like him) who are pursuing commonplace goals. At least that's what I thought he told me with his smug smile.

Off the tangent. Let's get back to the old hobo sleeping on the footpath. It's about eight in the evening and the lights are not on. A box on the road about ten feet away from me. Or is it just a lot of trash? Oh yes, it's that hobo. It's her makeshift house comprising of herself, her belongings meaning the things she collected from dumps around the area that day, some rags to make the bed, and a tarpaulin serving as the roof as well as the blanket. People generally get down from the raised footpath on to the road, walk past her house, and then get back on to footpath. Are they just polite, or are they scared that they will step on her limbs somehow, or is it the general distance people like to maintain from hobos?

Hobo, that's a very American word. Homeless, that too. What can I classify her as, her being Indian and all? Beggar? But I heard some of the beggars do quite good and own houses. So the term beggar doesn't quite capture her homelessness. Okay, hobo it is.

I squeeze my legs in the narrow strip of footpath her house hasn't captured hoping she is asleep and doesn't have a knife or a blade if she isn't. She isn't asleep. Her eyes open and heavenwards. Of course, how can she sleep: She is on a flyover during the great Bangalorean evening traffic jam. All the honking and beeping and sirens and engines revving. Add to that the dust and drizzle in the air. What a terrible choice! Has she even considered sleeping under the flyover?

Oh, I get it. It's the dogs. The dogs, who hate the hobos, won't let her sleep anywhere else. Wow, at least we have that in common- the fear of the dogs.

What is she thinking, by the way? People are thinking when they are alone and have their eyes open and are looking at the sky, right? That's what I do when I stare at the ceiling. What does she have to think about?

Family? A son who went to work at the construction just outside Delhi and doesn't write back? Mom, Footbridge, Flyover, Bangalore, Karnataka. Is he alive? Is he happy? Has he married? Are the kids alright?

What else can she think about? Sensex? Corruption? Cricket? Bodyguard? Weekends? What do you think about when you have absolutely nothing to think about? When you are living as an animal -- wake up, hunt for food, eat that, sleep -- what do you think about at night then?

Childhood memories? Come on, she is so old that she can't have more than five snapshots of her childhood. It would be very boring to remember the same five incidents over and over. Youth? No one has any memories from the youth. And, anyway, what does childhood and youth mean for a hobo like her? There was no school and college and job and mid-life crisis to segment her life. It has been half a century in the dump. Every day for half a century. What does she think about the end of it? Does she have anything to think about? Why can't I think of it?

Reduced to the bare minimum -- not having to wonder about Marx and Trotsky -- what does the brain think about? Does she think? As she lies there on the road looking at the sky, is she any different from the cow who sits and ruminates with so much intensity in its big black eyes looking into nothing? Do cows think?

Of course, she is thinking something. What if it's the meaning of life that the brain thinks when at its simplest. Beyond the false web of complexities. Should I ask her what she is thinking? Could I ask her what she is thinking?

It's begun to rain. Get home.

I am Anna Hazare and am protesting against Quikr selling gazetted officers (in wholesale)

Google "Gazetted Officer in Bangalore".

T.V.

A: Are you planning of joining the protesters outside the office? I heard we can get a comp-off for that.

B: I am thinking of that but I am not pissed enough. It's hard to be pissed about these things when you don't have a T.V.

A: You don't have a T.V. at home?

B: No.

A: How do you watch Cricket on weekends then?

The Death of the Film Critic

A film critic dies and goes to heaven. After a week God asks him how is it going. He says, "Honestly speaking, the production values are great and the visuals are amazing but the plot is awful and all the characters are bloody do-gooders, merely caricatures of themselves, you know people want some twist, some shades of gray." So God ....

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A (getting philosophical): If you think about it, there is no such thing as Unexpected Loss: it's just *Expected* Unexpected Loss.
B (gets it, laughs, and then continues): If you understood probability and confidence intervals a little, you would have got the concept of Unexpected Loss. Never mind.

Poyem

The bed,
Rising in flames,
Red, yellow, red, red,
Like the Tuesday light,
That seeps through the curtains.

Ashes to ashes, stubs to stubs.

Lady Gaga

A: I was listening to Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way', and even though she is wrong about so many things, this song particularly repulsed me. She was saying that if you are a creep, you were meant to be born that way, so be brave about it. But tell me what's wrong with being pervert and cowardish about it? Aren't cowards born that way? If Lady Gaga can shout about herself, why can't one be silent about his transgenderness? There is so much of fuss over freedom of expression, but I for one would like freedom of not having to express myself.
B: Why the fuck were you listening to Lady Gaga? Also, are you saying you are gay?

It's hard to sell a seven-legged spider

A very flattering mail from annie*****@gmail.com to me:

Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 8:14 PM

heyya, i added you 'coz your id was in my contacts..i mean i don't recall you, do you've any idea?

And the reply:

Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 12:12 PM

Heyya,

No, I can't remember why you added me. I would have remembered had it not been for me being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and all, only last Monday. Oh yeah, it's dreadful. Tell me about it.

Most people would be appalled if not enraged at your question but I can totally relate to it. After the doctor told me about my condition, for a day or two I just kept looking at my gmail contacts wondering who these fifteen people were. Later I gained courage and wrote mails to all of them telling them about my condition and asking them who they were. However, all of them replied on similar lines - asking me to have sex with myself, and asking me to grow up, and that Alzheimer's is not funny. I don't get it; why would I find Alzheimer's funny: I have Alzheimer's.

I hope at least you will sympathize with me and won't tell me to get a life and to get a girlfriend and to have something better to do on a Sunday morning than writing long mails on Alzheimer's. Mostly because I have a girlfriend. Of course, I don't remember it. But she keeps calling me and whenever we meet she tells me that I used to love her but I can't see why.

Anyway, so the moot point is I can't really help with your problem. In case you figure out by yourself how we know each other, don't bother telling me because I would have forgotten this conversation of ours by then.

Thanks,
Wait ... who am I

Milan Kundera, Carl Jung, Me, and Girls. Also, Dostoevsky, Poems, and Disability.

Ever seen people in a group discussion on the TV: how they do not listen at all when they are not the one talking. I have become the same: When I write it's only then that I read.

I became acutely aware of it when I finally finished reading The Joke. Towards the end for an entire page Ludvik was trying to drive home a theory, through his lament about Lucie, which I had thought of independently a long time ago (of course the book is double my age so I am the sucker).

The theory is that the person you love is in your head. Why love erodes with time is because as you become familiar with the person in flesh, the image, with which you were in love to begin with, becomes blurred and soon it is beyond recognition and your love beyond redemption. (Kundera's theory is in essence the same, though not exactly. He says that love is a function of the circumstances. Hence it gets incomprehensible for you to understand your past loves.)

Why Carl Jung in this theory? Because he says that everything, how much ever real (see-able, touch-able, do-able), is to an extent inside your head (which is very logical and obvious once someone tells you that).

Back to the theory and me. I am shy, especially to girls, to the point of being neurotic about it. I have often gone out of my way to avoid social encounters- the efforts including but not limited to not boarding a bus if some female acquaintance is inside, pretending to cough with eyes closed when passing by. As a result there have been, as Larry David puts it, shy-asshole confusions concerning me. But I am shy not asshole and so as a person who nurtures a healthy respect for himself, I have often used the aforementioned theory for self-justification which goes something like this: what's the point talking to her? of course she won't be as good as I suppose she is. she probably reads Harry Potter.

*

Dostoevsky was fortunate to be a writer and not a blogger. As I tried to read him yesterday it occurred to me how easily the same content on a blog would have put me off. And how easily his rant about the modern man in the nineteenth century can be put in the same category as the twenty-first century teenage crib.

That has always been my problem with poems too: I can't tell between a good poem and a bad poem. And as I was laboring through the bores from underground and thinking about my poetic disability it dawned upon me that especially when someone is cribbing -- that is not exactly weaving a plot and not even making a point but just speculating, theorizing, contradicting, speculating -- the words acquire a certain lyrical quality and it may be good or may be bad but I can never tell.

To Explain A Hobby

'Crime likhte ho?' [Do you write crime?]

'Haan.' [Yes.]

'Romance nahi likhte ho?" [Don't you write romance?]

'Haan, wo bhi." [That too.]

'Matlab James Bond type?" [Like James Bond, eh?]

"Haan." [Yes.]

Larry Sanger and why Wikipedia loves those who hate it

Who is Larry Sanger?

If he was that important a person you would have known. So you might want to ignore the question altogether.

But consider this- his Wikipedia page has 120 citations. Noam Chomsky has 120. Even Jimmy Wales has 101.

Most importantly, he likes to be called as the co-founder of Wikipedia. Because he was the one who thought of using Wiki as the platform for the encyclopedia that Wikipedia was to be.

But then Wikipedia is not about Wiki software. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that you can edit. Wikipedia is about you.

Larry Sanger disagreed. How can you write the biography of Abraham Lincoln when you are not an expert on History? So, Larry Sanger quit Wikipedia in 2002, an year after Wikipedia was founded.

Jimmy Wales stuck to the idea that an infinite monkeys typing on infinite keyboards could, despite producing Lolcat jokes and 4chan, build the largest encyclopedia known to mankind.

Larry Sanger is still not happy. He is one of the biggest critics of Wikipedia.

Which is why he has 120 citations. Not because he is the co-founder of Wikipedia.

---

China didn't get it. Wikipedia got it. In the age of information, the more you try to suppress it, the more coveted it gets.

When you publish four pages focusing entirely on your criticism (without even caring to refute it), when you hand over the microphone to your biggest critic on your own platform and provide 120 citations, no one will care to read it.

Even boring diplomatic cables when leaked sound like scandals. Put them on your website, no one will care.

We like only leaks.

Scams Happen In Tandem

Celebrity deaths in the US happen in threes. What about scams in India?

While going through old newspapers last week, the exposé of the high-profile land scams had looked concerted to me. First Adarsh, then Lavasa, and then, the man himself, BS Yeddyurappa.

I had sanely brushed those ideas off.

But when yesterday's The Hindu claimed to have unearthed another spectrum scam- the S band scam- I thought to myself this has the potential to become one of those modern myths.

When you make a time line of major Indian scams in recent past and try to club the similar ones, you get: the land scams, the spectrum scams, the sports scams- CWG and IPL, the scams of educational regulatory bodies- AICTE and MCI. LIC Housing and UTI.

Be careful, however, to remove the stand-alone scams- that's how modern myths are built.

If one goes about exploring this 'phenomenon' the Paul Krugman way, who claimed in today's New York Times that Global Warming has caused the Egyptian Revolution, it may be logical to theorize this into a demand-supply situation. A scam comes out in open, the nation is shaken, and one of the media houses runs away with the credit for that. Other media houses ask their journalists to get on with it. And voila. New scams. Which are, of course, similar in nature.

When the Tehelka came into being it exposed about half a dozen major and minor scams in almost no time. And then, suddenly every one was doing a sting operation. Tehelka, soon, became a major force, no more a nimble start-up. Then Tarun Tejpal went about writing books and winning awards while scamsters went about their jobs.

The thing is when you look for a scam in a land of a billion you are going to find one.

Will You Please Type My Love Letters - I

It wasn’t until I actually had to stay at home all day that I realized that vacations, if not by choice, aren’t all that enjoyable. Every morning I would wake up at seven, only to remember that I don’t have an office to go to. From there the day was a routine failed struggle.

First, I would try to oversleep and fail. Then, I would think of my increasingly getting out of shape body and wonder if I should start with ab-crunches today. But that needs warm-up. What if I cramp some muscle and have to lie in bed the entire day in pain. But I cannot possibly go jogging now; the great Bangalore office rush would have just begun.

It’s often said that the mind knows no boundaries. But I guess that dictum excludes jaded office-goers like me. Even my thoughts, my excuses to myself, everything had been ironed crisply in a routine.

The routine also included trying to think of ways to make the day useful. First the ambitious ones. Like writing a novel. Like writing a short story. Like taking artistic photographs of unsuspecting strangers from my window. Like finishing that book “Maximum City” in one day.

Later, I would tone down to less ambitious yet equally difficult tasks. Like making a nice, aesthetic bread-omelet, the way they prepare it in “V for Vendetta”. Like trying to appreciate the day’s “Business Standard”. Like trying to intimidate the unwanted callers with even more fake accent.

By 11, I would give up on the day and begin to browse inane web articles on the lives of celebrities. I would stand near the window and try to locate the big fat rat in the dump who I had initially mistaken for a black rabbit. I would wonder if a bee hive was camouflaged in the tree by my window and how much time would it take for my swollen corpse to be located. Maybe on weekends when the maid would find me not answering the bell. But then she did not turn up last weekend.

*

But that is not what I want to tell you about. What I want to tell you is about how I managed to fall first in and then out of love during this lull.

On the fifth day at home ... [to be continued]

The Worst of 2010: Part 1: Things that just couldn't go beyond 2 pages.

The Man behind the Underwear

If you were born in or before the nineties, you have probably heard about it- the underwear with pockets. Bagharam was the man behind it.

It was all over the television, up there with the cola wars, the toothbrush with German design bristles, the hair oil with Vitamin K, the shoe polish with enriched coal for natural shine, and the beauty soaps. But deep down we all knew that air time aside, the others were no match to the genius of the underwear with pockets.

Maybe you never bought them, maybe you never saw anybody wearing them in the streets, maybe there are no available sales figures in the public domain, but you just have to look at it on the grounds of pure genius.

Most of what comes these days is just over-hyped improvisation- Floppy to CD to DVD to Blue Ray. Underwear with pockets is not an improvisation on underwear. It’s a revelation- Underwear. Can. Also. Have. Pockets. Wow.

That’s like idly sitting in a chair in the 18th century and then suddenly going- why just atom, there could be electrons in the atom.

Somewhat like that.

So you take a man like Bagharam, and you think how nice it would be being Bagharam, and one day you are lucky enough to meet him and then he tells you that the best moment of his life was when he saw the then PM at some election rally. I felt him waving to me, he always said. I wish someone could tell Bagharam- grow up to yourself.

But most of us haven’t done anything half illustrious as underwear with pockets, so meeting Bagharam in person would justifiably be the best moment of my life. Like most people, I didn’t know the name of the genius behind the underwear with pockets, but as life would have it, I was one of the survivors of the November 8 bomb blast, and so was Bagharam.

However, calling it a bomb blast, and us survivors, I am deluding myself since it was hardly a bomb bomb and it never actually blasted. All that happened that day was a lot of smoke. It takes a week for the prime time news to let go of a full-fledged bomb blast, so ours would have barely made to the ticker tape.

The only bad part about it was that all of us survived. And that Police thought it had the suicide bomber, if any, in quarantine along with the rest of the survivors.

The good part about it was that I got to spend a little time with the genius of the decade. Although, I must tell you, talking to Bagharam doesn’t help much. The words come all warbling out of his mouth because he has no teeth.

We are all born that way- without teeth- he just stayed that way. That would be some esoteric medical condition the exact terminology for which even the doctors in the quarantine ward couldn’t tell. What we were told was it is genetic. His father never had any teeth, neither did he, and if he ever fertilizes somebody’s womb, it’s very likely that the kid would have no teeth.

One morning, the nurse asked Bagharam- “So, you got no teeth from your father’s side?”

“Yes.”

“So, that means you got your teeth from your mother’s side?”

“No.”

“So, you got your teeth from your father’s side?”

“No, I got no teeth from my father’s side.”

“That’s almost Catch-44.”

Which term came first? "Wearing glasses" or "Naked eyes"?

Overheard at the Coffee Machine

"What do you think HR people talk about at the lunch table?"
"Don't be ridiculous."

The Office Parable

I wish I were someone's boss. If you are a boss, you do not need to have a sense of humor.

---
Me: I finished the day's work.
Boss: Okay. So?
Me: So I am leaving for the day.
Boss: No, there is this ad-hoc report we are supposed to complete. It might take another three hours. You should be here for QC and all.
Me: Mmm ... Okay.
Boss: Hahahaha. Hey people, people, look at the kid, look at his face.
People: What happened?
Boss: I joked to him about staying for another three hours and I think he shat his pants.
People: Hahahaha. You are so funny, boss.

---
Me: I am leaving for the day.
Boss: There is this ad-hoc we have to do.
Me: No, we don't.
Boss: Yes, we do.
Me: Really? I saw no such mail.
Boss: You were not cc-ed, there was a request an hour ago.
Me: Mmm ... Okay.
Boss: Hahahaha. Hey people, people, gather around, and laugh at him.
People: What happened?
Boss: He fell for the joke again. I am pretty sure he peed his pants.
People: Hahahaha. You are so funny, boss.

---
Me: I am gonna have noodles for lunch.
Boss: Hey, get one for me too.
Me: One veg noodles please.
Boss: Ask for two. I forgot my wallet.
Me: It's not working boss.
Boss: Idiot, I will have to go all the way back to get my wallet.
Me: Oh yeah?
People: Boss, we can get you veg noodles.
Boss: Okay, thanks, this miser won't buy me veg noodles.
Me: Shit.

summer diary has a cold

"Early to bed and early to rise ... do you think the pun in it is intended?"
"I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"It would, in that case, make a man healthy, maybe, but definitely not wealthy, and, sure as hell, not wiser."
"But one could become a male prostitute and get very wealthy, if he were early to bed and early to rise. And that would be a wise decision. There."
"Yeah, that dirty sonofabitch ... you putting that in your book?"
"No, I was just wondering."


"You know there are two kinds of writers- those who write good and those who have something to write. Shakespeare had nothing to write, he just knew how to write good, and exploited it. Bloody trick-pony. But if you have The Trial in your mind, you might as well write in SMSese- Sm1 mst hv bn bching abt Joseph K., 4 jst like tht he wuz arrested 1 f9 mng :P - and it would still be a classic."
"Okay. So you are the type who has something to write."
"Exactly. Just that I don't know what exactly the something is that I have to write. Maybe I have a Writer's block. Of the second kind."
"No. You wrote the opening chapter of your last debut novel in one sitting last weekend, remember?"
"So?"
"So, it's not a writer's block. We might be dealing with something much worse here."
"?"
"You don't have a Writer's Block, of the second kind, you just have a Lazy Bum."
"Shit."

Asok days

"What's your first impression of her?" Asks the colleague who, after two weeks of struggle, has let go of his French beard for the love of all that is good in this world.

"A British-Pakistani porn artist who repulses you not only with her ugly body but also with her mannerisms- the stupid giggles she has on offer as the only response to the supposedly dirty questions asked and suggestions made by the White guy. You are so repulsed that you want to stop watching the video, but you cannot, because dispassionate White girls going about the whole humping business as if doing routine morning yoga have ceased to indulge you long ago, and because somewhere at the back of mind you know that this is the closest you are gonna get to watch the stubbles of a desi. At least, in the near future." I want to say about the girl with the harmless, round face.

"Silent type." I say instead.

"Ah, don't be so diplomatic." Nudges the colleague who ... you know.

Two and a half months into the job. Enough time for my impression on colleagues to go from 'Looks lost' to 'Silent type' to 'Different sensibilities' to 'Very bad sense of humor' to 'You suck', but not enough time for me to be non-diplomatic. Would one lifetime be enough for that matter? Or six months?

"How do you find the company?" Asks everybody.

"If life is meaningless, this is the place to be." I want to say.

"Good only." I say instead.

The Metamorphosis: Rushdie to Chomsky

Rana Dasgupta
You’re now sixty years old, and your first novel was published when you were twenty-eight. How is it different, writing now?

Salman Rushdie
Many things that I used to be very exercised by now exercise me less. The kind of language project I was engaged in at the time of Midnight’s Children, no longer really interests me. I’ve done that – I don’t want to go on doing it like a party trick. So certain things that were very central concerns when I was a young writer really just fade away. I’ve become much more interested than I used to be in the question of how people read. I’ve begun to have an almost theoretical view about the sequence in which you offer people information. If you can find exactly the right sequence in which you tell people things then the book remains completely open. It doesn’t have to be chronological or anything simple, it just has to be natural and instinctive. That’s something I didn’t really think about when I started out but which I think about more and more.

Complete conversation here

Sidney Sheldon type Fiction and other bestsellers

"What kind of books do you read?" A brief pause in speech before he adds Sir, probably as an afterthought than for effect. I am on MG Road, Bangalore, where one goes to hunt pirated books, so I was told.

I was anyway struggling to keep the mask of an expert, everyday haggler on, and then he asks me-"What kind of books do you read, Sir?" I am nervous.

"Classics. Err. Not Shakespeare, but still Classics. Err, like ... Umm ..." Am I being interviewed?
"No chance, Sir. Only Sidney Sheldon type fiction here. And other bestsellers."

I try very hard not to smile, lest he thinks I am being Mr. Uppity. But it's tough not to smile at that.

---

I don't read non-fiction. I don't dislike them though. I have read self-help books, here and there, two or three, and I did like them, and in turn hated myself for liking them. It's like the self-loathing you get after having gleefully watched a newly arrived bollywood movie with nothing else to do really.

The problem with non-fiction, and I don't mean Nietzsche or Freud by non-fiction, is that they are not really non-fiction. They are fiction minus imagination.

---

So, I didn't use to read non-fiction before I came to the office space. Not having read Malcolm Gladwell and being in work is like not having watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy and being in college. It doesn't really add any value, but people keep telling you- 'How come you haven't?' And you feel fucking illiterate. Every damn week.

So, I picked up two Gladwells. Though I bought Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, On The Road before them. It felt good to buy them as the first durables with my own money. Also, I never had their hard copies. I read Catcher in the college library; yes, yes, I am a late-starter. And better believe it, I read Catch-22 and On the Road in e-book format.

If you are cringing, well, let me help you more- I read 'Zen and Art of Motorcycle maintenance' in e-book format. I can probably read anything in e-book format, except Sid's class notes.

---

A Gladwell is what one would call pop-economics. You feel you are reading something highly recommended, very academic and logical, and you still can breeze through it without getting stuck anywhere- You Feel Good.

As Gladwell would say, there is no doubt that Gladwell is intelligent and good at what he does, but there is more to pop-economics than clarity of thoughts and writing. There is manipulation.

Pop-economists drop a lot of statistics, which is bound to be correct, but even the correct statistics out of the original context or without discussing all the factors are liable to be far more dangerous than wrong statistics. [Simpson's Paradox]. This being pop-economics, they get a free hand to miss all that for the sake of the layman reader. How convenient!

Pop-economists cite publications and research findings. Eyewash again. These are sociological and psychological experiments. You want me to prove- Indians are aggressive. Consider it done. You want me to prove- Indians are meek. Consider it done. And then one day a pop-economist will cite me- "Once 100 Indians were made to fill a questionnaire ...." Would a reader care enough to go back and check the original research paper and its credibility?

I am not trying to say Gladwell, or any pop-economist for that matter, does it strategically, or on purpose. But I maybe saying exactly that.

---

I survey some 5-6 street side dens of Pirates of the Books. All done, I go to a semi-deluxe bar and finish one beer as fast as I can. Books rest on the counter.

Pono comes out of office and I happily display 'On The Road'. How much? On the Road for 75, I didn't feel like haggling, I tell her. Everyone learns, she says.

No cure for a dirty mind, except a send off

Instructor: What is a sampling distribution?

Striped Shirt: Use of multiple samples.

Instructor: What?! Can you give an example?

Striped Shirt: (straight faced) Err ... suppose I have three balls, for which I have to estimate the mean. (still straight faced) Now if I pick two balls at random and calculate their mean. (still straight faced) Now again I pick two random balls and ...

Instructor (interrupting): What's so funny, plain shirt?

Plain Shirt: Nothing. Just remembered an old joke.

Instructor: Can you excuse us and reminisce those fond memories outside?

Plain shirt: Sure.

Travel Diaries

I like it when people talk in tongues I can not comprehend. Apart from the fact that it reminds me of the unity in diversity and makes me feel vaguely happy about the simple truths of life and India we learned in school, I like it because it blankets me from the banality of the conversation and lets me free to make up what the conversation could be about.

So while the Oriya couple, that had to share the bay with me, might be bitching about the usual- quality of towels in Indian railways or suchlike- I can hear what I want to.

Guy: How come we never did position #42?
Girl: The page was missing. The maid tore it and took it away, I guess.
Guy: Shit. We can not even do anything about that. What do we ask her? Where is Position #42? Demonstrate to her the position?
Girl: Yeah. But why didn't she just take away the book in that case? Doing #42 everyday would bore her to death eventually.
Guy: Heh, yeah. Serves her right.

The couple look at me with a quizzing look. I point to the newspaper- I just got the pun in the headline. Very funny.

HuReaucracy

HR personnel: In case you wish to terminate the relationship with the company, you will have to give an advance notice of one month.

Employee: What if one has to quit due to unforeseen circumstances?

HR: Such as?

Employee: My death. On 25th day of the month, for example.

HR: In that case, you will have to submit your Death Certificate by first week of the next month. Else you don't get the compensation for the 24 days you were alive.

Employee: Do I have to come in person?

HR: No, you can send it by post.

Continue?

A chance meeting on the road.

"Hello sir, I was looking for you."

"Yes, I heard. You asked everyone in the company except me I guess."

"Hehe. You never come to the visitors' lounge sir, what do I do?"

"It's okay."

"I needed a copy of your PAN card."

"I don't have it now. Can you meet me tomorrow at 9?"

"Sure sir. Just give me a call. You have my number, right?"

"I don't know. Lemme save it."

"988...."

"Okay. What's your name?"

"Azhar."

Number already in use for: That Irritating Vodafone Guy. Continue?

We exchange embarrassed looks.

Seen this? Heard about this?

Why was Robinson Crusoe a guy, and not a chick?

Because in the latter case Crusoe would have a handbag Which would have, in it, everything one is gonna need for the next twenty-eight years.

When I grow up I am gonna be the coolest ghost ever.

In other news, one of my friends is categorically unhappy with the categorization one is subjected to, these days. It's as if, he says, there is no such thing as individuality.

The reason being recently he was asked to categorize his political orientation- Left or Right or Center or Center-left or Center-right or Left-right-left-right-left. But he refuses to yield to such black-and-white classification. Why can't one be, he argues, 62% Left, 33% Right, and 5% Can't say/Won't say/Not in mood? Or, Leftist in winters and Rightist in summers and Moral when it rains?

He finds support for the individualism drive from no less than Graham Lope, the acclaimed author of the recent bestseller 'Do Deaf People Dream in Dolby Digital', who said the following about his sexuality:
"I like attractive people. Attractive guys and attractive girls. Yet, I am not bisexual. Somewhere between being tastelessly bisexual and being tastelessly straight, I am choosy."

Was it not enough already, my friend asks, to be burdened by the innumerable generalizations and cliches, which are pointless to the S, which put the point in pointless, and so on? And this is where I counter him.

"I am with you on the argument against categorization. Even though the support is more out of my love for fuzzy sets than your logic, I am with you. But I think the generalizations generally hold some water. You know, as the cliche goes- the cliches are there for a reason."

"Okay, sample this- Asians are good at Mathematics. How does that account for this guy in my neighborhood who has been failing his senior secondary mathematics examination without fail. Year after year, that is to say. What does that make him? American?"

"Generally, I repeat. And there are examples for the motion too. Take the example of Bipasha Basu's right nipple."

"What about her right nipple?"

"Even though I saw it, just like everyone, only last week, I could have accurately told you the size, color, texture, everything about it even before that. You know why? Because everyone has the same nipple there."

"Where? On the breast?"

"No, the place. I don't want to sound like a prejudiced guy or anything but you know where does she come from."

"?!"


Anyway, so I told him that I was so supportive of his crusade against the lack of individualism in modern society that when I grow up I am gonna be the coolest ghost ever.

If there is one species that actually lacks individuality, it's the Ghosts. Seemingly every single one of them have the same motto of their ... umm... lives- scare the shit out of just about anybody. Same modus operandi of scaring the shit out of just about anybody, too. I would be a rebel ghost. When I grow up, and die, and become a ghost, I would go to nice nice places, I will do awesome tricks, flickering bulbs and all, and pick up some awed chicks. You see, if my soul is not at rest after I am dead, it's probably not because I didn't scare the shit out of enough people in my lifetime, so why keep doing it. Instead the likely reason for my soul being in a limbo would be the unfulfilled wish of fucking a thousand and one chicks. So I better get down to that, no?

Why, you must be thinking, am I suddenly so particular about what I want to do when I grow up. Well, it's due to my cousin. He is gonna be ten this June. He was cute and all, when he was younger. But then he managed to retain that cuteness even as he grew up, and now he is pain in ass. Or so thought his Fine Arts teacher after the following conversation:

"What's this?"
"A tiger."
"Looks like a goat to me."
"A brave one, nevertheless."

Anyway, this cousin of mine is exceptionally clear-headed, and that was what I learned when I tried to quiz him about his goal in life, more to confirm the hypothesis that every Indian kid wants to become an astronaut at age ten, than anything else, these days.

"What do you want to become when you grow up?"
"Cement Engineer."
"What engineer?"
"Cement Engineer. What engineer are you?"
"I am not exactly an engineer."
"Mom says you are an engineer."
"Well ... that I am ..."
"How does one become a Cement Engineer? Is it taught in your college?"
"No. I think you will have to go to IIT Roorkee."
"Where is that?"
"Near Haridwar."
"Where is your college?"
"Near... Very, very far."
"I don't think I can study that much. I will become a truck driver if I don't become a Cement Engineer."
"Excellent choice. Don't tell anyone that I approved."
"That would be one Fruit and Nut."

So, my cousin, currently nine, going to be ten soon, wants to be a Cement Engineer. If not that, he wants to drive trucks, not spaceships. I always wanted to tell people that the aim of my life was to become a firefighter -[pause]- a vaginal fire fighter. I had consistently said physicist instead. I am so proud of my cousin.

What do you want to become when you grow up?