summer diary

Sunday Morning

2011-11-21T03:00:00.000+05:30

It’s not often that you wake up with a food allergyon a Sunday morning. A hang over is usual, so are digestion problems if you hadbeen trying to make the buffet worth every penny you had spent for it, andsometimes there is food poisoning if you had been wandering the city for thetemptation 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 extremelyitchy, I blamed it mentally on the non-existent ants, bedbugs, or someintruding insects, and tried to fall back asleep. I obviously couldn’t andrealized after a few minutes that it was quite intense. I walked to thewashroom, 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, andwill have to go to office unshaven on Monday.

I came back to bed, switched on the computer, andlike every twenty-first century person, googled and wikied for my symptoms. Itwas 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 wasreminding myself to not scratch more and instead slap near the area of sensation inorder to fool my neurons. The ‘research’ told me it was either of the two: Afood allergy or an insect bite. I ruled out the latter as it wasn’t hurting. Atall. 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 themirror again. I looked at myself and the first thought was: David Lynch, AnthonyHopkins, 1980, Elephant Man! My second thought was: Shit!

I was, sort of, looking like the Elephant Man. Mythroat had acquired, by then, magnificent proportions and had become continuouswith the jaw. I couldn’t see the windpipe. The blobs on the jaw and cheek fromthe rash had become larger and had turned colorless while the surrounding skinhad remained red. The right side of jaw had swollen and looked like I had an abscessor maybe two. And all the mass that my body had acquired in the past fifteenminutes was completely numb.

I returned to the Wiki page of Food Allergy as Iremembered reading one of the major symptoms was the swelling of throat. For somereason, I was relieved that it wasn’t insect bite. Some other symptoms of FoodAllergy were impending sense of doom and extreme anxiety. Now, being aneurotic, I have these symptoms all the time, but reading them in the list gotme even more panicky and I started thinking about the Mayan prediction about 2012and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and what not. I decided all the information was messingwith my head and closed the laptop and went back to the mirror. I was beginningto not recognize myself any more. My face looked like a candle that has beenextinguished 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 massthat Hollywood movies reserve for aliens, except they show it in green. Minewas wheatish – as the matrimonial ad would say.

I was beginning to feel heavy in my throat now withall 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 tilleight. Did my whole life flash in front of my eyes? Well, yes, some of it, atleast.

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 beingsold at medical shops. Not that it is not a suitable item to be sold there butthat I hate going over to the counter which already has a man who has beenbitten by a dog, a woman who has broken her arm, and an oldie who has lost hishead, and having to ask for a ‘pack’. No matter what the code word is, no matter how well thepharmacist wraps the pack in a small brown bag underneath the counter before handingit out, I always feel everyone muttering under their breaths: How can you makemerry amid the disease, the death, and the general misery? I feel like a rogue version of Buddhadeciding to ignore the three signs and getting back to the harem.

She squints as I came closer and then allows me alittle sympathy along with the disgust. I ask for Avil and she points in thedirection of the adjoining hospital and advises that I had better get aninjection. 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 thefirst woman and as I start my premeditated complaint 'I woke up with FoodAllergy' in English, I see a broom in her hand. She is the cleaner. I walksideways until I am facing the male attendant and he gets only the second half ofthe sentence: '... with Food Allergy.' The attendant nods at my throat and asksme to wait for the doctor. How long? Just coming only sir...

I look at the broom the cleaner has: it is made fromcoconut bristles. My maid has been almost pining for a year now for a broomlike that. The ones with plastic bristles just don’t make the cut for her. Shekeeps 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. Aposter announces that cervical cancer has beaten breast cancer in terms of victims the previous year, and thusdeserves more popularity. There is a poster for a blood donation camp. The dropof 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 stillnot arrived. The notice board has the doctors’ schedule and there is a noticeable pattern justlike at the multiplexes. The gynaecologists come at odd hours: the afternoonsand mornings; the dentists occupy the peak hours: the evenings; the psychiatristscome only on Mondays. Here is my doctor.

The night doctor looks nothing like a doctor notbecause of lack of the suitable clothing but because of the lack of suitablepretence. I suspect him to be an attendant too, but decide to keep it tomyself. But he is doctor-ish in a lot of ways: He opens his notebook before taking a lookat me the patient. Very bureaucratic. Name? Whatever. Age? Twenty-three. He picks up anEveready steel torch and directs it at my throat: He has been briefed about my condition on theway. Open you shirt, comes the polite command. The top button was not done inthe first place; I decide to undo two more. I congratulate myself silently on notwearing a tee in the event of which I would have been asked to remove italtogether. The attendants are lurking at the door. As I undo the buttons, Irealize something: There are hickeys on my chest. Three of them, I rememberlooking 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 thathe chooses to focus on my dietary habits rather than my sexual life. He shakes hishead. Not an insect bite. It’s food allergy. I thank God profusely. What didyou have last night? I try to recall. Was it Brownie Fudge Sundae? Should I sayBrownie Fudge Sundae? Would he be interested in knowing the particular type ofSundae? 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. Butit doesn’t matter; he will give me anti-histamines no matter which the allergenis. 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 ofan injection. I tell him of the pharmacist’s advice. He approves readily and calls thefemale attendant. Give him an injection. The nurse asks me to follow her and wego inside the O.T. Room II Remove Your Footwear Outside. I forget to remove thefootwear outside as the phrase ‘an injection’ keeps ringing in my head. Is it aplacebo? Should I tell the doctor that I have dabbled a little in bothstatistics and biology, and am quite familiar with the idea? I say sorry acouple of times or maybe even more to the nurse for not removing the footwearoutside, as one should do to a woman who is going to needle you in a minute. Isit 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’sthen that she motions to me to lie down. ‘Are you going to inject me in the hip?’ Iask her point-blank but without meeting her eyes.

Hip: that’s how an averageIndian 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 whilepronouncing it, so it’s better to be safe and say Hip.

Yes, she says. Loosenyour jeans.

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

I amtransported to the Medical Inspection Room (M.I. Room) of my Alma mater. It hasbeen in news recently. For wrong reasons albeit. All the major news channels havebeen 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 breakingice ritual as in the engineering colleges. Rather every day for the rest ofyour stay. Why? I am not advocating it but it is kind of a Making Men Out ofKids thing. So, what about me: Well, there are always a few bad apples.

Anyway, comingback to the M.I. Room. There were a lot of stories about the place and when youheard 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 hisshorts till his knees (unnecessarily, he had added), and put the needle inthe hip with his right hand while holding tobacco in his left hand, and then he sawan ant crawling on his right foot. The doctor began to flail his legs around trying toget the ant off his leg, while his hand remained on the syringe and the kidcried in pain. When he finally managed to lose the ant, he decided to chewthe tobacco in celebration, and began to beat it using both his hands. The syringe was still in thekid.

This particular anecdote instilled in us anunshakable fear of the M.I. Room for the rest of our years there. People wentto 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 ClassTeacher, 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 tellingeveryone ‘it was in the arm, fuck you’, while the walk belied the talk.

I remember that and feel okay. I conjecture alittle 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, orthe left, or offer both the cheeks and let the lady decide. She is ready. She asks me todraw a deep breath; I can see her approaching with the syringe in the reflectionin 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 thecotton, I ask her but she won’t turn back. Her Sunday Morning was already badenough.

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 Ilooked remotely human, but of a different race or tribe or nation. The maid studied thesurf 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 merelyan obese version of myself with a double chin and all. The newspaperwallah withthe 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 noreason to bunk office tomorrow.

Wednesday

2011-11-09T13:43:00.001+05:30

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

2011-11-04T22:45:00.000+05:30

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

2011-09-30T03:30:00.000+05:30

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.

2011-09-14T10:54:00.001+05:30

"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

2011-09-11T11:55:00.001+05:30

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)

2011-08-31T22:47:00.002+05:30

Google "Gazetted Officer in Bangalore".

T.V.

2011-08-21T12:23:00.005+05:30

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

2011-08-20T14:20:00.003+05:30

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

2011-08-05T08:22:00.004+05:30

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

2011-07-19T12:18:00.001+05:30

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

2011-07-18T02:08:00.001+05:30

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

2011-06-27T10:10:00.003+05:30

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.

2011-06-03T16:05:00.003+05:30

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

2011-04-09T03:09:00.003+05:30

'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

2011-03-01T23:20:00.000+05:30

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

2011-02-08T18:00:00.007+05:30

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

2011-02-04T13:13:00.004+05:30

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.

2011-01-09T02:40:00.002+05:30

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.”

2010-11-29T19:06:00.002+05:30

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

Overheard at the Coffee Machine

2010-10-22T20:19:00.003+05:30

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

The Office Parable

2010-09-23T21:40:00.000+05:30

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

2010-09-20T16:15:00.001+05:30

"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

2010-09-15T23:30:00.005+05:30

"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

2010-08-17T15:28:00.004+05:30

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

2010-08-11T13:00:00.001+05:30

"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

2010-07-21T16:21:00.004+05:30

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

2010-07-19T15:28:00.003+05:30

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

2010-07-15T17:48:00.003+05:30

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?

2010-07-13T18:03:00.005+05:30

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.

2010-07-11T12:47:00.003+05:30

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.

2010-06-12T08:08:00.001+05:30

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?

Lock, Stock, and Barrel

2010-05-17T14:27:00.008+05:30

Phew! It's all over. The last day of the last summers in college.

I had planned wrapping up this blog with a formal post where I would have tried to make up sober reasons for the title, told you about my favorite books and authors, defended the deletion of this blog, talked about my views on God and meaning of life, deliberated on the dearth of thematic blogs in India, but then I decided to fuck a donkey instead.

Anyways, thanks for listening, and thanks for not commenting, and thanks for not ripping poor me.

Bye.

Of Friendship

2010-05-12T16:00:00.004+05:30

----
Of Chance and Banality

Partners-in-crime in search of brevity, or rogues in search of respectability, what exactly is friendship?

People often say that we don't choose our parents and siblings, but we choose our friends. But look at it without your glasses smudged with tears, and you will see how incidental even friendship is.

I wanted to have Groucho Marx, Oscar Wilde, and Woody Allen as my friends, but they are all dead. Except Woody who just doesn't reply, but the point is I didn't get to choose my friends.

One more correct (or incorrect) answer in the entrance examination and I might have been in an entirely different place. Had the train on my date of arrival not been on time, which would have been rather expected, I would have been allotted a different room, a different wing, and would have been part of a completely different gang in college years.

I would have lived the rest of my life without even knowing the set of people I would, on this day, call my friends. I would have met different people, and I would have told the same stupid things, and maybe I would have got along with some. It's all incidental, and I am being banal.

----
Of Old Friends and Answering Wassup

I don't go around with an umbilical cord. I am the kind of person that burns diaries on new year's eve [which reminds me that deleting this blog is due]. The past is past, and no matter how much you romanticize it, it has, well, passed.

I dread running into old friends. It's always awkward. It's awkward because it's not just the time that has passed, but more importantly, it's me who has been changing all this while. Simply, I am not the person they were friends with.

I have absolutely no qualms about listening to all that is going in your life, but I am just not sure how much you actually mean to hear when you ask me- 'Wassup?'

Should I start with how many times did I masturbate yesterday? Or should I tell you about the existential crisis that I am going through for the past year or so? Or should I tell you about this girl I have been checking out for last seven days, would probably never talk to, and most likely forget in another week or so? This is my life with all its lameness. Why would someone be interested? It would be scary if someone would be.

Going by my own experiences, the majority of people share my lack of enthusiasm in these matters. But there will always be these odd old friends who will surprise you with their over-eagerness to tell you about their lives and to learn about yours, and make you wonder if you, in all your senses, actually befriended the same person once.

----
Social Networking Not working

It doesn't help that you are search-able on the internet, and the people you thought some five years ago that you would never meet again, are just a click away from you on Orkut or Facebook.

Now, for me, Facebook and suchlike are places for screwing around. As simple as that. The place for doing lawlz, and muhahahaz, and hate groups, and hate messages, and voyeurism, and spam ... everything except social networking.

I would rather let my granddad have a look at it and ask me for explanation than having an acquaintance, who added me just because we are in the same college or we once played table tennis together or something, look at it all.

And, think about it- With enough water under the bridge, doesn't every one would turn into just another acquaintance?

----
Of Chat Strategies

Over the years, I have followed an effective strategy of chatting with people (read guys) I didn't want to chat with, and was forced to do so because Google loves to integrate everything. Most of it is what I have learned from the girls I was a sucker for, or, as in indie-net-speak, I wanted to be fraands with. Here is how I go about it.

Query: Hi/Hello/Hey
Reply: Hi/Hello/Hey
Strategy: ctrl+c, ctrl+v

Query: How are you?
Reply: fine fine. How are you?
Strategy: The repetition of 'fine' is important as it makes it sound insipid and somewhat rude. And then the usual- ctrl+c, ctrl+v.

Query: Aur kya chal raha hai?
Strategy: Now, this is the most crucial part. Starting with 'nothing much' or 'koi khaas nahi', I begin to bombard him with a lot of facts he didn't ask for. Mostly academic calendar dates. When are my minors got over, when will the next flurry of quizzes come, when are the majors scheduled, when are the vacations starting, when are they getting over, and any other dates that I can think of making up.

And then, the masterstroke- asking the person on the other side to provide me the same details.

If properly followed, about two minutes later, the person would be making a mental note of never pinging you again ever.

Somehow, if the person still sounds excited and, instead of the academic calendar you asked for, you get another query to the tune of 'Yo, how come no chicks man', you know the khatam shud option.

[...]

Of Remembrances

2010-05-06T02:00:00.004+05:30

I wonder if I should start with asking you to excuse the sappiness and incoherence that is to follow, but guessing that you share with me a fond distaste for apologetic writing, I won't.

----
Of Pronunciations

"Calming." The bus conductor announced.
I got down from the bus, juggled with three bags to what was going to be my hostel for next four years.
"Is it Calming?" I asked the security desk.
"Yes. It is Calming."

The college website had said my hostel was Kameng, not Calming. I had been pronouncing it Kameng, not Calming. However, once in Mongol, I decided to do the Mongoloid, and so Kameng became Calming. For a few days, at least. On the next weekends, during one of the ragging sessions, one senior asked me to stop with that, and I dutifully did.

----
Of Maturity (and Malaria)

The security guard walking me to my room noticed I had no one accompanying me.
"You are alone?"
"Yes."
"Your parents didn't come?"

I could have lied that they had stayed back in the city, but why lie small, right?
"My dad is ill these days. So, he couldn't come. He wanted to, obviously."
"Ill? Very ill?"
"Yes, malaria."

Malaria occurred to me because I had been reading about Guwahati in the geography books back home and all of them had declared unequivocally, and in no uncertain terms, that Assam was as much the Land of Malaria as Finland was the Land of Lakes.

Ever noticed how visitors tend to pick up one local word, preferably the word for welcome, or hello, some greeting, and then use it over and over to show how hard they have been trying to get along?

Malaria happened to be the first local word I had picked up.

"Malaria? Really?"He sounded, in right proportions, sympathetic and suspicious of me.
"I mean, he had Malaria. He is okay now. Recovering."

So, when ma'am kept insisting that I would miss this place for this is where I have matured, I couldn't resist a smile.

----
Of Khushwant Singh

Bringing parents along for the hullabaloo of admission had one advantage though- while their sons and daughters got on with the classes and labs the very next day, they could queue up for a million petty things: New bank account, library card, identity card, bicycle, bucket, brooms, and so on.

They never seemed to mind though. Because it gave them a chance to interact with the other parents. The interactions mostly comprised of bragging about the academic exploits of their offspring over the past decade or so.

By the time I queued up for a library card, all the texts had already left the library shelves, and I had to settle with one Khushwant Singh after another for all of my first semester. For some reason, the college library here has, barring the joke book series, every Khushwant Singh ever published. Including The History of Sikhs- part one, two, ad infinitum

----
Of Aloofness (and Advertisements)

“What’s the point of allotting memory storage for 500 contacts? It’s a cell phone, not a gmail account. Hahaha.”

During the winters that followed my first semester in college, I and my uncle were, one afternoon, at our usual pastime- poking fun at TV ads- when I made that remark. Uncle stopped smiling and asked what I meant by that. I showed him the contact list of my phone which had about 20 contacts, of which, I told him, 10 were you people only.

The Uncle in question is a BE-plus-MBA and changes swiftly switch to manageresque. He deliberated a little on how I would need networking in life unless I manage to write a path-breaking theory about time and space while working as a clerk in a patent office.

Four years later, I am yet to start networking. The only people I can somewhat call friends are very few, and all of them fall neatly into two categories- the ones I smoke and have tea with, often referred to as classmates, and the ones I share bathing and shitting space with, called lobby mates.

---
Of Farewells

About two weeks ago, we had a very light farewell. Zero drama. As I struggled to find comfort in leather shoes, that were borrowed, I remembered myself sitting somewhere in the back row in the farewell of the passing out batch, three years ago, wondering as to why were the people so painfully cliched and unimaginative. "It [four years in college] was wonderful."

I get it now. You do not think of it as a farewell. You would wake up next day, take a piss, what farewell? People might chide you mildly to say something, but there is nothing you have to tell. And it's not you they want to listen to. I didn't want to know who my seniors were, I just wanted them to say something funny, or, if not that, maybe, I wished, they could start crying.

Some entertainment before the food was served.

[...]

What's With

2010-04-28T03:00:00.007+05:30

I find it ironic that insensitive people are referred to as dicks.

I mean, seriously, think about it. With a gazillion nerve endings to boast of, and ready to be aroused at the sighting of an awesome chick ... err ... at the mere thought of the sighting of justsome chick, if a dick is not sensitive, I don't know what is.

Won't it better if insensitive people were referred to as nails. Or hair. Or toes. Anything but dick.

After all, what's the logic for the amazingly inaccurate metaphor?
1. Men are insensitive. Women are not.
2. Men have dicks. Women have not.
Hence, it's dick that is somehow causing this sensitivity- correlation is causation. God, how I hate feminists.

Anyway, I, for one, have decided that in the event of having to praise a guy, who is mumble-mouthed, well-behaved, friend-in-need, and respectful indeed, I would, instead of drowning in incoherent adjectives, just tell her mom- "Awww ... your son is such a dick."

---

And what's with calling people assholes? I mean, seriously, think about it ... will you? :D

Adam-teasing and Meaning of Life

2010-04-03T15:30:00.000+05:30

College is not the place for touching stories. Sometimes people get bored of life, and jump off the roofs, or hang themselves (or lie on the railway tracks and wait, if not the industrious type exactly), and even in such a case, unless it happens in your circle of friends and immediate acquaintances, the conversation you are likely to overhear, or be involved in, would be somewhat on the following lines, the touchiness of the situation notwithstanding:

Next morning:
"So are they canceling the classes today?"
"No, just a condolence meeting in the afternoon."
"They should have canceled the labs at least, or postponed the assignment deadlines."

And, by evening:
"Did you see the debate on whether it's okay to hold a condolence meeting in the event of a suicide?"
"Yeah, some timing."
"No no ... yeah that too. But did you see the pro-condolence professor calling the anti-condolence professor a smart ass on the forum?"
"Yeah, that was hilarious."

I have been to just one college, and I don't know whether people everywhere else are as callous as in here. But I had maintained that College is not the place for touching stories. And that is why it was pleasant and heart-warming to recently listen to Raven's retelling of how DKS found the Lakshya of his life.

DKS had lately been spotted slogging far too often and much too hard. Which was surprising because, one, DKS is a rather colorful character (he was once overheard counseling one of our mutual friends to consider the career of a Gigolo, while claiming he had some contacts in case the answer was in affirmative), and, two, because the asses don't move an inch in college without a deadline, and the deadlines were conspicuously missing in March. So, the matter was duly taken interest in and probed by Raven. And, DKS told him this:

DKS and friends had a nice Holi. Post the quintessential mud, bhaang, and Brahmputra visit, they decided to wrap up their last Holi in the college memorably by getting some booze. So, they, eight in number, proceeded to the alcohol shop outside the campus. Once there, after having bought the booze, and after having been asked for money, they slowly came out of the utopic world of bhaang and recalled that, in the unfair materialistic world that they were living in, they had to have a certain papery commodity called money to complete the transaction. Reluctantly, five of them went back to get the money while three, including DKS, stayed behind.

To quote DKS here, the other two were the 'chikna' type. Why is that detail important to the narrative is because the two were soon approached by a small group of natives who were probably homo-curious, but more likely just plain doped. Young blood, that DKS is, could not be restrained for long, and the natives were dismissed with after a little shoving around and exchange of a few punches or so.

Tired and annoyed, DKS waited for the other five to return so that he could get back, get drunk and get over the surreal. But, alas, more was to follow, and people did return. But not just five, more than five instead. And not his friends, but the friends of the adam-teasers.

What followed is easily guessable, though what is mentionable is that DKS got more than the fair share of the beating, while the chiknas were handled a little less brashly, a little more tastefully than him, by the crowd.

Humiliated and angry, DKS and friends proceeded to the nearest Police chowki to report the incident. Evidently they were pooh-poohed squarely, and rebuked with a 'bura na mano, Holi hai'. And that was the moment of truth and awakening for DKS- He decided to become an IPS to overhaul the rotting police system and improve the law and order of the land, a la Sarfarosh. And that's why he had been struggling lately with ancient Indian history, structural reforms of '91, and Geography of Europe lately, he told Raven.

We all find our personalized meanings of life eventually, for some it takes a little adam-teasing, would have said a Zen monk.

Life Is Silverine

2010-03-27T18:12:00.008+05:30

They say every cloud has a silver lining. What if the clouds themselves are the silver lining?

It rained last night here, after ages. I am tempted to write 'after a long, long hiatus', but it's not the North-East that we learnt about in the Geography books, any more.

The drum roll and the jazz began around midnight, and I wished there wasn't yet another anti-climax in store. Hope is something we all munch on, and so I folded my blanket multiple times, turning it into one mega-pillow, and reclined against it, parallel to the bed-side windows which were thrown open to the winds, dust, and cockroaches alike.

When I woke up at three, I was in first stage of malaria. Almost. There was no electricity, and hence no fan, no mosquito repellent, and there must be a million mosquitoes going Dracula on me. The earthy aroma and the cool wind in my hair could no way make up for that.

I got out of my room, stood in the corridor, waiting for power, wondering if I would miss this place.

PS: After all this, if you come to my room to request me for switching off my lights as a symbolic thumbs up to Mother Earth, you might get a not-so-symbolic punch in your face. Other than that, I wish you a great weekend.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

2010-03-13T23:45:00.008+05:30

Yesterday, on March 12, I turned an year older. Once again. The evenings that precede birthdays, major festivals, new year eves, and suchlike, get me, just like a lot of other people I hope, depressed no end. When twelve o'clock is far, but you can hear the clock ticking, it gets impossible to smile.

I am not saying I reflect upon the time gone by, and the things that happened over the past year, and, hence, get sad. It's different. I don't remember particularly anything to reflect upon. 365 fucking days that just passed by are already a hazy memory. I still haven't learnt Urdu. Mind-fucking is still my favorite sport, with Football a close second. No value-addition whatsoever. And that I reckon should be a sad thing.

Floating in time, with no long-term desires, just immediate infatuations, interested in nothing particular, is okay. Until I get conscious of it. Until I am alone enough to sit and think about it. And that happens when people are pointlessly excited on Diwali evenings. And when it's gonna be my birthday the next day.

I crib about this aimlessness of mine to a lot of people. Except to my friends. I generally prefer people I won't meet, or talk to, or chat with, for another year, or a lifetime, or so. Because lack of ambition is sexy, but it's pompous to talk about. Some get confused, some even embarrassed thinking they caught me in a private moment, some go parental. I don't expect any solution or anything. It's just a meaningless thing that I do, inter alia.

Shashank had once caught me online on one such evening and said- "No great man ever knew what he was going to do with his life this early." But I fear I am not going to be great or anything. And, I suspect there was never a great man whose only fantasy, a fantasy that fell just short of being a goal, at some point of time in his early life was to coerce chicks into sending their nude pictures to him. And, I can't see a great man trying to formulate a theory on the differences between first-person porno and third-person porno.

Mostly, I fear that if I keep pursuing greatness by sitting on my ass all day, taking down America, I would probably lose the chance of becoming something ... something ... umm ... something that a reasonable mom would tick as reasonably successful.

Mediocrity is comforting, I know. Life is pointless, I know. I didn't secretly pledge yesterday to revamp my life or anything. What I am saying is it's depressing when I get conscious of it. As simple as that.

Anyway, I decided I had had enough of it, and that I won't get sad this year. So, I smoked four jays and watched Eminem videos.

Somewhere in Chapter 2

2010-03-09T18:05:00.007+05:30

... To which, she says- “But you don't have a mustache, do you, baby?” And then she licks his mustache.

There were other recurrent dreams too, but none of them were as scary. In fact, some of them were so bizarre that they bordered on being funny. In this one dream, I used to find myself in a rehabilitation center. You know the places they show in American movies, where one guy walks to the podium wearing an expression on his face that makes you think he will say- 'I have been sodomized, two minutes ago, backstage. Run.' But the guy somberly goes- “Hello my name is Bob”, and the junta around, that manages to look, in exactly equal proportions, sadist and bored, says- “Hi Bob”, and Bob continues- "I was a child molester once”, at which the listeners turn sympathetic and sigh in chorus, and gaining encouragement from that collective sigh Bob continues- “But not now sirs, not with the power of Christ on my side ... I am a changed man, I don't molest children now ... I lure them into having it, consensually”, to which the crowd laughs theatrically and turns to look towards the camera.

In my rehab dream, I used to wake up in a rather strangely purposed center. Bob starts- “Hello my name is Bob. I was in a relationship with a humanities student.” Bob waits for a moment before adding- “a film theory student”, to which the crowd lets out a grunt that reeks disgust, anger, and sympathy in turn. I can hear someone whispering- “the worst of the lot”. Bob continues- “She used to talk to me about how a girl shown driving a car in a movie is symbolic of her driving the relationship. Now, to me, her driving the relationship just meant that they liked to fuck with the girl on top. Why would any girl want discuss theories that smell of feminism to a crude man like me? Not that I am not blind to symbolism. I get it when a secretary is shown sucking on a pen, all alone in an office that has been furnished like a drawing room, or the other way round, in a porno movie, and I instantly know what's coming. But then she preferred to discuss the more esoteric and less subtle ones. Over phone, of all the places."

"She used to attend seminars of LGBT rights activists in which it was explained how one should see sexuality as a continuous variable, not discrete, with boundaries so fuzzy that it would be an exercise in foolhardiness to label someone absolutely straight or absolutely homosexual. But when I, reassured about her new found liberal views, messaged to confide in her how one of my friends once told me that I look like the male avatar of Nandita Das, she had messaged back- 'You faggots'. She used to talk pretentiously about the pointlessness of the institution called marriage, but, when all sappy, she used to tell me about how much she wanted to live all her life with me, and bear more babies than what the national average fertility was, and all that. It reminded me of how some atheists say- 'Science is my God', and even while they say that the irony doesn't occur to them.” Bob breaks down. Bob sobs.

Irony

2010-03-06T02:36:00.008+05:30

Irony is when there is a nip slip shot of Neha Dhupia on a movie poster, and the title of the movie is Utthaan- the Upliftment.

Now, go on, dig the original one, you pervs.

Taking Down America

2010-03-01T07:57:00.005+05:30

'I called you at 11. You didn't pick up. I guessed you would be sleeping so I didn't call again.'
'Uh huh.'
'So were you sleeping?'
'Dad, that would be too simple a way to put the herculean of a task that I was onto.'
'So you were sleeping.'
'Actually I was Taking Down America.'
'Really? How?'
'You see, dad, we the young generation work so much and so hard. We get the country to grow at such a fast rate. In turn, the economy expands and can print more money to pay us for that. But how does it do that? It builds its forex reserves. But in what form? Gold is old. So, they do it in form of US government securities. So, while we in Asia slog all day to earn some more money, the US just issues us govt. securities and the money it makes by selling them is lent to the white trash and the cowboys at impossibly low rates and zero collateral. They get houses in exchange for practically sitting on their asses all day drinking beer. And when the bubble bursts, we bear the brunt too.'
'So?'
'So if we don't work at all and sleep all day long, just like I did today, our economy would drown, and it won't buy any more of evil US government securities. Soon other countries will follow the suit, no more money would be pumped into US domestic economy. And one day the Sun will set in the West, and that will be the day when we would be working for us and ... just us. And that will also be the day when everybody will remember me as the person who slept all day and dreamed of Taking Down America.'
'That's like a good son.'

-----------------------

'I called you at 11. You didn't pick up. I guessed you would be sleeping so I didn't call again.'
'Uh huh.'
'So, were you sleeping?'
'Yes dad. I was studying late last night. I had to meet the Economics deadlines.'
'That's like a good son.'

The Cambridge companion to The Adventures of Fuckleberry Hinn, and to your life in general

2010-02-21T12:25:00.002+05:30

Dear Reader,

Thank you for bringing home "The Cambridge Companion to the Adventures of Fuckleberry Hinn in particular, and to reading, life, and shit, in general." We admit that's a heck of a long name. But we thought we would rather be upfront about what we do.

Now we understand that you got this book from your local library, and that perhaps you have an exam or a term paper or something, and that you have absolutely no flair for literature, and that you would probably end up rolling joints from the pages of this book and smoking weed after the exam is over. Also, we might take the liberty to assume that you are fascinated by Mark Twain's brand of humor or maybe it's just his moustache, and that you are hideously ugly with peanut-eyes, and you stink like rotten oranges.

It might appear to you that we are jumping to conclusions, especially after the last two unwarranted remarks, and you are right. Had you brought home the Cambridge Companion to Ulysses or something, we won't have judged you this fast and this low, but after your ransacking of a library for a companion to a lightweight like Fuckleberry Hinn, seriously man, you remind us of stinking rotten oranges.

So when we set about writing this book, we had a clear image of you and your brethren in our minds (which was a very sad thing at nights). And we decided, you don't need help just with your Fuckleberry Hinn, you first need help with the art of reading. Which is hardly an art, so we are basically saying- you need to learn to read, you retard. Later, as the title says, we would help you with the general life and shit, but that would naturally cost extra.

Reading is simple. All you need to do is to put yourself in the shoes of the author, obviously after looking out for spiders and insects in his shoes as your mom must have told, and try to look for the reasons in his choice of words and his decisions regarding the turn of events as well as the pace and shit at different points.

For example, when Fuckleberry Hinn tells Tom Sawyer- "Seriously dude, What the F?", you got to think about what made the author select 'Seriously' to go with 'What the F'.
A little reasoning will tell you it was not just a casual wtf from Fuckleberry Hinn, as in the conversation that follows:

Tom Sawyer: Do you know about my latest adventure? I watched and quite enjoyed 'My Name is Khan'. It's about tolerance and shit.
Fuckleberry Hinn: What the casual Fuck, dude!
Tom Sawyer: Hey you watched it too, you pretentious piece of shit.
Fuckleberry Hinn: Sorry.

On the other hand, it is a rather strong and hearty response when the character uses 'Seriously' as a prefix, as in the conversation that follows:

Tom Sawyer: Do you know about my latest adventure? I watched and quite enjoyed '3 Idiots'. It's a thoroughly enjoyable movie with a nice social message.
Fuckleberry Hinn: Seriously, What the F! We are through, bitch.

I hope the examples above set the tone for the book. We hope you become a better reader when you are finished. And how would you know that, you illiterate piece of shit? When there aren't any more pages, you are finished.

The young fisherman and the sea, and other FAIL stories

2010-02-12T16:57:00.008+05:30

Once a young fisherman went to the sea. Fishing. Just like everyday. As he pulled his boat along the shore, his ankles in water that lingered cold from last night, he realized that that day was going to be different. Even to this day he remembers to have felt in the faithful waves, in the silent wind, in his everyday boat ... he somehow remembers to have felt something odd about almost everything, that fateful day. What that difference was, he couldn't put a finger to that. Fisherman's omen, he had thought, but he maintains there was absolutely no way that he could have just returned back to his home. Partly because he had never done that before, mostly because he had a hungry wife waiting there.

Soon came noon, and he could see the unsaid prophecy fulfilling itself. As far as he could see, there was no fish in the sea. This was his tenth year in the waters- he had done this ever since his father brought him along on his twelfth birthday- but he had never felt as helpless. However, given the industrious young man that he was, he told himself, he shouldn't give up.

In the afternoon, still fish-less, he thought to himself, he had never actually felt physically spent doing this, and understandably so, for this was his love, his life- the sea, the fish, the boat- and how could one get tired doing something so endearing. Yet that day the only thing he could think of was getting back to his home and sleeping till eternity. Like a tortoise, he promised himself.

As the sun set, the defeated, deflated, and distraught young fisherman walked back slowly casting long dark shadows on the sand. Like sad French movies. Carrying not a single fish, he walked without much sound inside his house and sank into the bed. One look at him, another look at the empty net, and his wife knew. Obviously.

The caring, manage-ably good-looking, and, most importantly, fish-loving wife- whose only vice was that her voice sounded more like a frog's groan than that of a woman- walked to the shaky cot, sat by his side, and patted his shoulder ever so softly. And then she groaned the words of wisdom, the young fisherman would never forget for the rest of his life.

She had said- “You know, as they say, there are plenty of other girls in the world.”

Homemade Horror

2010-01-09T00:00:00.004+05:30

Somebody has switched off the lights. But who, I wonder, too tired to get out of the blanket and check for myself. Not that I am sleepy, or it's too cold outside, but that too much of beer and Football in a space of hours has had my body aching like never before. The switched off lights isn't much of a problem- I would get a better sleep in a dark room anyways- the problem is I am the only person living in my room and I definitely didn't switch them off. As far as I can remember.

I remember to have picked up a book to read, got in the bed, read a few pages ... and nothing after that. So, I must have dozed off while reading the book, which must be right now lying on the floor among cigarette stubs as a proof of having been enjoyed alike. Now, for reading a book there must have definitely been lights, even if I was reading it for the fifth time, so how come they got switched off!

Okay, I get it. Paranormal activity. Forget it. I tell myself to think of something else. Ghost stories are to be sold to be other people, not to yourself, especially at two in the night, all alone in a dark room.

Okay, I get it. Prank. Someone hid under my bed while I was out to the toilet, and then waited until I fell asleep again and then switched off the lights. Good plan. But who would do that? Nobody I know would take that much pain for getting me freaked out. Maybe some save-electricity-save-water-hippie, who knows.

The door latch is up, so the trickster must be still inside the room. I scan the dimly lit room. No one under the table. The locker is always locked given my distaste for bogeymen. That leaves only one possibility- under my bed.

I try to think fast. What can I do? Get out of bed? What if he is waiting for that, and starts shouting 'got you' as soon as I get up. I got to outwit him. Okay, one second. I got the perfect idea. I should ask- Who is under my bed- in a very calm way, all of a sudden. That will freak the bastard out.

I stop myself. What am I doing? What if someone actually answers 'I am'? I would probably die from a heart stroke. What if nobody says anything, and then I get two heart strokes for that would mean there are ghosts in the room.

I wait a little. What if I never get to know who switched off the lights? What if this question haunts me for the rest of my life? I feel silly at the last thought. I would forget about it in a week or so. Aren't there greater mysteries that remain unsolved- meaning of my life, this world, communism, and so on.

I get a little philosophical. I know the lights should be on. But they are off. What can I do about it? A puppet in the hands of God, I feel small, insignificant. I feel tired, helpless. I can't think any more. I doze off. Again.

--

I wake up next morning. The fuse is blown. I register a complaint.

'Mark As Read' and other sad break-up stories

2010-01-03T16:00:00.007+05:30

A: How is your book going, by the way?

B: What? Why would I write a book? Who told you that?

A: You.

B: Me? When?

A: I don't remember exactly when, but you definitely said that to me.

B: I must have been joking.

A: No, you weren't.

B: Okay, I was writing then, but it didn't exactly work out.

A: How much did you write? First chapter?

B: Umm, actually it was supposed to be a collection of short stories, not a novel. Saddest Break-up Stories Ever. But I could write only one. Nothing since then.

A: Tell me the one you wrote.

B: It wasn't good.

A: I know.

B: Thank you ... The one was titled 'Mark as Read.' It was about a guy who begins to dislike his new girlfriend with time, and decides to break up with her. But he was too much of a chickenheart to say that to her in person, so he writes her a break-up mail. Next day, by the time he wakes up and rues over the stupid mail, the girl had gone missing. And the girl's family and police find his break-up mail in her inbox. As days pass by and she still doesn't turn up, her family and friends start accusing the guy of abducting and killing the girl. The guy, burdened both by the loss of his love and the false accusations, commits suicide. Some time later, the girl comes back from exile and tells the police she had been abducted by aliens and was taken to their planet and all. When asked about the break-up mail, she asks innocently- 'What mail?'

A: So ... who had marked the mail as read?

B: The aliens, who else. Did you like it?

A: Yeah, it was pretty sad. But I have a better ending.

B: Tell me.

A: As the guy wakes up and rues over the stupid mail, he gets a call from his friend that the girl had just left for his place to break-up with him, officially, in person. The guy knows that she won't reconcile with him after that stupid mail, and hence flees from the city to avoid the formal break-up and give himself a little time and chance to get her back. And the girl goes after him, wherever it takes her, and then finally they meet under Eiffel Tower. By then the love between them is obviously back. So they kiss. The End.

B: It's sad, but not sad enough. Okay, here is one that has the best of both endings- after the guy flees to avoid formal break-up and the girl sets after him, she gets abducted by aliens. And the police decides the guy has killed the girl since he was the last person she had left to meet. Finally Interpol intercepts the guy under Eiffel Tower and shoots him. In his balls. Like it?

A: Maybe you should seriously think about the previous career plan you had before this writer thingy.

B: So you think I would become a good journalist?

A: No no, the one before that. Remember you said you wanted to write a joke book for school kids in which every punchline would be derived by the abnormal size of male or female genitals of one of the characters. You should seriously consider that.

B: Maybe this conversation should have ended with you asking me- Do I share the writing credits for 'Mark As Read'.

A: Bye.

And now for something completely different : Stealing jokes from girls

2009-12-21T17:14:00.011+05:30

Back in 253 B.C.

A: Happy new year.
B: Yeah, whatever.
A: What? Aren't you excited?
B: It just doesn't make any sense.
A: What doesn't make sense? Choosing a particular day for celebrations and resolutions and all that depressing philosophy about birthdays and new year eves? Every day is a new day, a new awake...
B: No no, not that. It just doesn't make sense why would the year 253 come after 254?
A: Come on. Don't talk like i-wannabe-an-astronaut-when-i-grow-up ninth grader. You know it's BC, that's why.
B: That's what that doesn't make sense. And who the hell is Christ in Before Christ, anyway?
A: Now you are just being blasphemous.

Sometime, somewhere in the middle ages

A: BC was for Before Christ, alright, but who the hell is Domini?
B: May be that's latin for After Devil.
A: Now you are just being blasphemous.

And then in AD 2009

A: And the inscription on the main gate said that the college was founded in 1923 AD.
B: Hmm.
A: As if ...
B: Yeah yeah.
A: That's stupid, right?
B: Yeah, totally.
A: As if ... umm... had they not written AD, someone would have ...
B: Yeah yeah, I get it, okay? It's just not funny. BC AD jokes are not funny.
A: Now you are just being an asshole.

------------------------------------------

Thoughts on Open source ... okay not exactly open source, but something on those lines ... okay, just read the damn thing

Whenever I am faced with a question, in examinations, that requires me to elaborate on some cellular pathway or function, or anything that goes on inside human body, I close my eyes and retreat within myself. In search for answers.

It doesn't work.

But it should, right? Be it voluntary function or involuntary, isn't brain supposed to be the executive head of our body and, therefore, shouldn't it know what's going on inside?

This denial of access of the working memory to the core system leads us to the only possible explanation:
Bill Gates is God. We run on Microsoft.

The metrosexual pickpocket

2009-12-12T14:20:00.010+05:30

This is roughly how scratching works: some of our neurons feel a sensation, we get an itch, we scratch the area 'around' it, the scratch evokes response from some 'other' neurons, and we are distracted from the first sensation. Problem solved.

For dummies, an analogous situation would be something like this:

Patient: 'Doctor, I got this horrible horrible pain in my left hand.'
Doctor: 'Why don't you get undressed and lie down on the table?'
The doctor pulls out a hammer. He strikes the patient's right hand once, and then again a little less mildly this time, and then again and again and again until it is almost crushed, starts bleeding, and the patient faints.
Doctor: 'How are you feeling now?'
Patient: 'Horrible horrible.'
Doctor: 'And how is the pain in the left hand?'

The Patient realizes that he had forgot all about the pain in the left hand, and silently wows over the genius of the technique. And then he says-
'But why did you ask me to undress, doctor?'

---

The doctor had a reason. Why did, in Fight Club the movie, Tyler Durden and the Narrator bathe together? To arouse homo-erotic feelings of the audience, and to keep them distracted from the obvious (in retrospect) climax.

And that's how modern-day pickpocketing works. If some guy is trying to fondle your crotch, your brain doesn't panic enough for the concurrent sensation of your wallet or cellphone being picked.

---
But then some of us are way too smart to be duped by such gay-ass techniques. Ahem.

Free advice

2009-11-26T22:24:00.017+05:30

Here is free advice on how to handle your friends who keep harping-
'Dude, you got to watch 2012. Awesome special effects.'

'Oh really? I would, but I am busy reading a book. Awesome fonts.'

Butterfly

2009-11-14T00:01:00.002+05:30

I killed a butterfly that flew into my room. With a notebook.
I put the butterfly above the reading table. Used some Fevicol.

Was a thing of beauty. Now, a joy forever.

Biology

2009-11-13T00:31:00.012+05:30

I pee, you pee. So do cows and dogs. Yesterday I realized, I have never seen a lizard pee. So I deduced that they don't pee per se. It was the same method of observation and induction that was exploited by Darwin, Mendel, and others, most of them with excellent sideburns, before being recently invoked by one of my friends, who decided that dogs lack menstrual cycle after his landlord's bitch (the pet) didn't bleed even once in the two years he got to see her. Her behind, rather.

So, do lizards pee?
WikiAnswers answers, as if it were a perpetually pissed person - "NO."

Okay, they don't. So, why don't they?
Yahoo! Answers says- "Lizard urine comes out of their vent, pretty solid and usually pretty white, some yellow. That's why lizard droppings often have white on them ... Birds too."

So, what class of organisms pee more often than they poop? Where exactly in the evolution did pee and poop get compartmentalized?

Can anyone google, wiki, or maybe read (duh) a little more on this, and shed some light on the pystery?

-----------------------------

Also realized that biology is interesting. Yeah, even Biology minus those pointlessly funny, unreasonably complex, yet vaguely erotic diagrams of the 'reproductive organs' in standard ninth textbook.

If you are the kind of person who is at peace with, and even secretly enjoys, his/her nerd tag, biology has got a lot of interesting information to offer. For example, a new animal if discovered tomorrow won't need to have mammaries necessarily to be classified as a mammal. Sweat glands on him would be just about enough.

Sweat glands are one of the classifying features of the mammals. Boobs being the biggest ... err ... most prominent 'sweat glands' of the body, hence the name.

In case a punchline is needed to get you to stop reading:
So the next time your partner says your body odor is awful, you know what to say.

----------------------------

PS: Maybe we would have been the same whiny us had the choice for Nobel Peace Prize been Baharita al Safhir Khan or Ming san Ju Piski, but then we won't have a clue about who the hell they were.

Note to myself: Is the reluctance to revere contemporaries unique to modern times?

Dropkicking Murphys

2009-11-02T10:10:00.008+05:30

There is such a small window of ways in which things can go alright, what we would deem as alright that is, as compared to the multitude of ways they can go awry. And still life goes on butter-smooth.

Murphy's law, what a fucking joke! Thriving on the no-good pessimists out there, who aren't amazed at how they were born with just two arms, two legs, two eyes, two breasts et al, and and have been living since then, despite the ultra-slim probability of that happening.

Consider this: One mistake at the molecular level and -poof- you are history, just like Murphy. Number of ways that can happen- infinite. You can die any second, and with no particular disease. You eat thrice a day, thousand must be the times you swallow, one tiny grain might just slip in the wind pipe, and coughing is not fool-proof. Things can go wrong and so Murphy says ... and by the way, how many times did you die today?

But the counter-argument was a para long, while Murphy said it in one uncomplicated sentence. So Occam's razor would probably uphold Murphy as the winner. Jerks all of them- Occam, Murphy.

Probably they were a part of some secret gang, somewhat like Bengali bloggers today, whose primary interest was mind-fucking lesser people like us, by formulating ridiculously oversimplifying laws of life over coffee at midnight, chuckling to themselves, and then maybe writing letters to each other, somewhat like this-

"Dear Occam,

I came up with a really good one today. It goes- There are two kind of people in the world- one who do this there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in-the-world, and the others. What do you think? Hit me back.

PS: I am so pissed at this new guy Frederick. Did you get his tickling-the-balls razor? I would be drafting a resolution to banish him from the club next Monday. What do you think?

Yours,
Murphy."

*
Does thinking make you walk slow?

*
'Has the bus left?'
'Yeah, two minutes ago.'

Okay Murphy, I can see you laughing at me down there in hell, but I am still not giving in to your stupid law. For one, I didn't slip on the stairs on the way out despite pogo-sticking them absentmindedly, none of the trillion fucking dogs have bitten me yet, and so on.

You know what, you just wait a little more. And then I am gonna come down there myself and dropkick you so hard, and then ask you- 'Well, what were the odds of this? See, you were right all along.' And then dropkick you again and again and again .... till you take your bloody law back.

*
'Sorry.'
'Habitually late?'
'Nah, missed the bus. Had to take auto.'
'Oh ... Murphy.'
'More like last night's Burphy. Where's the toilet?'

Ruskin's Ghost At The Window

2009-10-18T03:45:00.003+05:30

There is a ghost at my window. He has been there for some time now. The overhang is about 3 by 2, which, my guess is, isn't very comfortable for him. But then what do my guesses account to; I never guessed there would be a ghost at my window either.

The first time I saw him was on a dull afternoon two weeks ago. I would have obviously been beyond scared had it been night. Not that my ghost is more frightening, or any different, than yours but that I never expected anything larger than sparrows and the other birds, of whose names I am too in-extraordinary a writer to be aware of, at my window.

To be honest, I almost mistook him for some maintenance worker looking for shade from the unrelenting Sun. But once he hadn't budged when I woke up next morning, I knew I had a guest. And ever since, he has been there.

It took me some time to grow accustomed to his presence which, apart from the fact that he is a ghost, is because he doesn't talk much. The silence was discomforting initially, the kind of silence that begins to pervade families after five years of marriage or so. It was as if he was about say to something almost every other moment, and that kept me guessing what could that something possibly be. And wondering what would I reply back to him. A ghost's sensibilities might be different after all, and they may not be as thick-skinned to our hysterical shrieks as TV portrays them to be.

But as of now, we have got used to our silent ways. Add another five years to the first five years of marriage scenario, and you get the idea.

Anyway, I can't help but consider the idea that it's very likely that he has been at the window ever since the window has been there, and it could be me who is intruding in his space. That is to say, I may not really be doing him a favor by growing accustomed to him.

He never tries to come inside. I don't think he really wants to come inside. The proof of which is -he never came inside, given he is a ghost and must be having powers too awesome for petty iron bars of a government hostel building.

I would love to say that his eyes are pure and blank, or that his eyes are full of all the pain and suffering that he bore in his previous life, or that he simply doesn't have eyes in his sockets, but I won't lie about a dead man. His eyes are very commonplace. He is not the kind of ghost from TV shows, I told you. For example, he is crouching most of the time in the cramped space, so I don't really have an exact idea of how tall he is, but contrary to the TV stereotype of rather tall ghosts with bony and extra long hands and all that, my ghost looks short, wears spectacles, has rich white hair, and must have been quite stocky in his better days.

Why I am telling you all this about him, now after two weeks, is because he made a rather unusual admission today.
'I am the ghost of Ruskin Bond', he said solemnly.
'That is a nice ghost to be', I replied solemnly too.
I felt a little stupid to have never thought of asking this. People keep asking each other about their names and nativities all the time, but don't generally care to inquire ghosts of even their identities; to which the noble ghosts are obviously entitled to take offense.

But that meant Ruskin Bond should have been dead for two weeks now, about which I would have definitely read. Maybe it got lost between the news of Shashi Tharoor's tweets and Rakhi Sawant's latest bravado, I thought and googled a little to make sure Ruskin Bond was alive before breaking the ghost's heart.
'You are not Ruskin Bond's ghost, dude.'
'If I won't be his ghost, I would be the first one to know, right?'
'But it doesn't make sense, he isn't dead yet.'
'It doesn't matter. Just try to write crisp, clean, and concise.'

'Okay', I managed.

Why don't knock knock jokes work in China?

2009-10-14T00:12:00.001+05:30

'Knock Knock.'

'Hu is there?'

'Yeah ... Damn.'

Story of my life, so far

2009-10-03T08:40:00.011+05:30

Age 0: Do I get my cookie?

Age 5: The Sun rises in the East, sets in the West.

Age 10: Actually the Sun is still, it's the Earth that moves.

Age 15: Actually the Sun is moving too, everything is. Galaxies are flying apart in nowhere. So, let's just take the Earth as the inertial frame once again.

Age 20: Do I get my cookie now?

O comeback, please come back

2009-09-30T17:08:00.005+05:30

XX: Grow some hair. I have a thing for long-haired guys ;)
XY: Shave your head. I have a thing for bald girls :D

two minutes later
XY: That was funny. lol

two minutes later
XY: Wasn't that funny? :S

two minutes later
XY: Okay, I am sorry.

Lost In Transliteration

2009-09-20T21:58:00.007+05:30

Until they formally introduce the character 'ā' for the sound 'आ' in keyboards, and elsewhere, there is no way I am naming my daughter Kamini.

They will have their first drinks tonight

2009-09-19T22:45:00.010+05:30

... and this drink is to them.

--------------------------------------

'So, are you looking forward to it?', the tall guy in knee-length kurta asked half-mockingly, shifting the weight of the overloaded backpack from one shoulder to another.
'Not really. But you know, I am open to stuff.'
'Open my ass! You should probably stick to Complan and Horlicks till you decide.'
The other guys took the cue to lampoon the sort-of-open guy and laughed halfheartedly. The quip wasn't funny enough to make them clear their throats, but more than that they were probably too excited about the night of their lives. Already, at 7 pm!
The sort-of-open guy thought for another moment and declared- 'You know what, I would be coming tonight.'

--------------------------------------

There have been moments like this, for a while now, which remind me harshly that I am getting old. By college standards, that is. While I can still not bathe for days, and wear slippers and ridiculous tees to class, and pretend that I am just another happy-go-lucky collegiate, I am often reminded these days that a year later I would be out of this cocoon, thrown into the wide wicked world, which, as somebody once said, might either embrace me for all I can do, or might spit me out for all I can't do.

But this, for your sake, isn't going to be up-close-and-personal-with-Jack sort of memoir. If it was, I would have probably titled it- Down and out in Guwahati, or something, to warn you beforehand. But it isn't. While I can get sad reminiscing about the time that has flown by, I prefer to be just nostalgic. And what better to be nostalgic about than the petty pleasures of life! This is about my nostalgia at seeing the freshies learning to drink. And it's all incoherent.

----------------------------------

Deja vu! Stupid emotional articles like this one appear in the college periodicals everywhere, don't they, which, like caper movies, tend to stick to a basic formula. Starting with 'tryst with JEE' (used to be a wonderful play on words- remember 'tryst with destiny'- but lost its tang after multiple uses), the article moves on to what being a freshman is about- ragging sessions, weird hair cuts, learning the art of bunking classes, long movie sessions with friends, and so on. And then on and on.

The template misses out on two things. One is a rather too deep a topic to be dealt with here, that is- throwing the zeal for Number Theory out of the window and learning to love Metallica. While one can talk, and I shamelessly have written, about this loss of individuality at length, it is nevertheless futile. And more than being futile, it would be a hypocritical pseudo-intellectual memo to no one. For it is bound to overlook what growing up and getting knowledgeable is all about. So more on this, never again.

----------------------------------

The other aspect conspicuous by its absence is- learning to drink, which, for obvious censorship issues, can't be referred to, yet forms a major part of growing up in a college.

For me, it all began when I woke up on probably my second weekends in college at around midnight and went wtf. And while I speculated on what the hubba hubba was all about, Football or ragging sessions, I was too scared to find it out for myself, or even go out to pee-pee for that matter. And as time passed by, and when red-eyed, unshaven, long-haired monsters showed up everywhere I went on Friday evenings, I eventually learnt the cause for all weekend misadventures in the hostel to be alcohol. Alcohol is bad, that I already knew.

But soon, like everything collegial, it began to tease and egg me on subconsciously- 'Alcohol: making complete men out of fucking boys like you, since 1875'. Not that it began to haunt me or made me crave for it during sweaty workshop classes, but it was no more a taboo. Some of my friends joined the wagon, and meanwhile a cost-effectiveness analysis ensued in my brain. While the newly found world of freedom helped, but the thought that at least I am not going to return my room drunken on Friday nights to beat up my bickering wife while my highly-protein-deficient child wails in the corner like in a goddamn 90's Doordarshan movie, was what did it for me. And I think I was ready much before than the I was offered my first chance to drink!

--------------------------------

'White Mischief is okay?'
'Yeah.'
'Why the hell is it so cheap?'
'Umm, I dunno. They have white mischief ads on TV, right?'
'Yeah. Let's start with beer first, vodka can wait. Or it would lose the chill. Read on internet.'
'Do we dilute it?'
'I don't know, I think not.'
'What did the Internet say?'

Three guys, sitting in a circle, looked at the maroon Kingfisher bottle. The floor was covered suspiciously with newspapers as if they were planning a mass jack off. Nervous energy was about to blow up the roof.

'Yuck! Seriously this tastes like phenyle.'
'Yeah. Any idea anyone what beer tastes like? I think we got rigged. Millions of people all around the world can't be unwinding with this piece of shit.'
'My brother said it takes time to get accustomed to.'
'Either way, we have to finish it. 60 bucks.'

And the prasad did more rounds.

-------------------------------------

And today, after two years have passed since that evening, it makes me nostalgic to see the kids walking with the same excited nervousness with overloaded backpacks on the weekends. And it makes me nostalgic to listen to the same shrieks and laughs and loud music, with intermittent sprinkling of o-payn-chod or any other cuss words they began to use freely and in generous amounts recently, late at night. And it makes nostalgic when they ask for over-sized packets of Lays and bottles of Coke innocently (okay, not innocently) at the tuck shop. Not that I see myself in them, or that I want to live it all over again (no way dude), or that I regret anything, but that it just makes me nostalgic for no particular reason. Heart is an unreasonable companion, it just does what it does.

One day they will find out for themselves that this isn't that romantic a thing after all. Or may be they won't. May be they will take the habit to weekdays, may be start smoking too, may be sink to the bottom of the barrel.
Fair enough, either way. Everyone learns for himself. But never will they forget this night. The night of their lives. For they will drink tonight. And this drink is to them.

--------------------------------------

PS: If you are still reading this: This wasn't going to be a painfully boring up-close-and-personal-with-Jack memoir, but what the heck? You survived it, right?

PPS: When I put 60 bucks as the cost of beer, I had to ask one of my friends on gtalk as to how much did a kingfisher cost in 07 (is memory failing me already). And guess what, I ended up typing 'in those days' :(

PPPS: I wanted to do this ridiculous PPPS thing. At least once.

India UnCAT

2009-09-09T21:53:00.018+05:30

The following is a report in The Hindu about Manmohan Singh being on Facebook (with an extra large picture of him, which has not been reproduced here in keeping with the aesthetics of this blog):

The "not so net savvy" Manmohan Singh is on social networking site Facebook, reveals his former media advisor.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on social networking site Facebook but is not net savvy and does not even use a cell phone.

In the course of a discussion on NDTV, Mr. Singh's former media advisor Sanjaya Baru said though the Prime Minister is not net savvy, there is a Facebook site which is regularly updated, so he is on Facebook.But he had no idea as to who was updating the site.

Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, who has been extensively using the site Twitter, said the Prime Minister had once asked him what the site was about and how it worked.

"I told him at that point - look which politician is going to resist an audience, in those days 24,000 or something," he said.

"He (Prime Minister) laughed and said of course you should not and today I have an audience of 84,000 and tomorrow it might be more....no politician would wisely turn down an audience of so many that he could reach," Mr. Tharoor said.

The minister said his remarks on the site are a combination of personal and official comments. "But in none of my 1000 tweets have I said anything which I could not have said publicly or that in anyway embarrasses or compromises the government".

-------------------

If this article appears in the RC section of CAT-09, which is quite probable given it is by The Hindu, the possible questions can be:

1. So, is Manmohan Singh on Facebook?

a> Yes.

b> No.

c> Shashi Tharoor is on Twitter, that I know.

d> Data insufficient

2. Who had no idea as to who was updating the site?

a> Former Media Advisor of the PM

b> Manmohan Singh

c> Shashi Tharoor is on Twitter

d> The reporter Me, to be honest.

3. Did Shashi Tharoor satisfactorily answer PM's how-stuff-works query?

a> He gave lots of data. And, he happens to be an ex-diplomat. So, yes.

b> It made no fricking sense. No.

c> Shashi Tharoor is on Twitter.

d> Satisfaction insufficient.

4. Who had an audience of 84,000?

a> PM laughed and said that. So, PM.

b> NDTV discussion.

c> Shashi Tharoor is on Twitter.

d> Use of quotes insufficient.

5. 'No politician can turn down an audience.'

What does that statement tell you about the psyche of Shashi Tharoor?

a> If given a choice, he would carry a purse instead of a wallet, and wear fur coats.

b> He would make an excellent blogger.

c> His homepage is perezhilton.com

d> He used politician and wisely in the same sentence, so he has selective ..... whatever.

---------

And as for logical reasoning, read the following statements:

i> the Prime Minister is not net savvy,

ii> there is a Facebook site which is regularly updated,

iii> so he is on Facebook.

What kind of argument is that?

a> Existentialist argument

b> The Chewbacca argument

c> Retard argument

d> I-am-the-fucking-Hindu-who-the-fuck-are-you argument

A Rainy Day in the Heart-land

2009-09-08T01:04:00.000+05:30

Beautiful to be soaked to skin,
The aftermath is just sad.
That way,
Rain is like Love.

The patent (gone horribly wrong)

2009-09-02T22:15:00.009+05:30

'Did I tell you about my latest idea? About my cellphone anti-theft device?'

'No.'

'So, there will be two electronic button kind of things, one of which you put in the cellphone, and the other button in your other pocket. Now the idea is, as soon as the distance between the two buttons is more than, say, six meters, your cellphone goes Ping. This way you won't have to tie your cellphone to your trousers, and still almost never lose it. You could always customize your pings, or get your cellphone to ring to keep track in crowded public places. What do you think?'

'What if one loses his pants in public?'

'Hmm.'

What brought you here this August

2009-08-30T01:15:00.012+05:30

Taking a cue from Rohini's 'Seek and you shall find', here are six select google searches, ranging from intriguing to priety-fucked-up, that misled some users to Summer Diary over the past month.

'Fucking a drunk priety zinta'
And the optimist said- the glass is half ...

'himesh reshammiya PJs'
I can't really tell which part of this search disturbed me more.

'bhabhi stories'
So when Mastram had writer's block, you now know where did he go to.

'chat sex wrong?'
Nah, just stupid.

'oral summer diaries'
Ummm, I don't get it. You want podcast? Really?

'how to kill dog'
*High five*

Moral: I should write better, and about better things. Goddammit.

Untitled (a.k.a. I am the Walrus)

2009-08-15T22:30:00.010+05:30

'What did you see?'
'As I said earlier, as I turned around the corner I saw him hitting his wife.'
'How did you know she was his wife?'
'She had a baby in her arms.'
'Paraphrasing my question, how did you know he was her husband, and not her landlord?'
'He was hitting her and she wasn't really protesting. And she had a baby in her arm. Actually yes, you are right. I don't really know the nature of their relationship. They might be just live-in partners. But as you know sir, calling it live-in might ruin the whole point of the arrangement in question. Marriage is an institution, and that is what they are running from, and we decide to call it by another name, as another institution. Ironic. Actually sir, since I am before law and my word would be on record, I must tell you that this idea is taken from a book, I don't remember the name now, that pointed out the pointlessness of the terms hippie and beatnik. Actually pointing out the pointlessness is itself ...'
'In which arm did she have the baby?'
'Left. The digits were in the usual 3-2 combination, if you are into sarcasm and all.'
'Okay, so what did you do next?'
'I called you guys, law I mean.'
'No. That you did, but about ten minutes later. What did you do right after you saw him hitting her?'
'I smelled my arm.'
'Why?'
'Right before I was turning the corner, a crow had defecated on me.'
'Are you sure it was a crow?'
'No sir, that's my best guess, but still just a guess. It could have been a flying cow having loose motions. You see, I had this meeting with this really important guy and I was really dressed to the d, the second d I mean, and the next thing I know, a bird, allegedly a crow, defecates on me. Now, I cleaned it thoroughly with my kerchief, but the stench was obviously still there. Right after I turned the corner, and after I saw him hitting her, I grew curious as to whether the stench was still there or not. I mean the meeting was really important.'
'So, was the smell still there?'
'A little.'
'Any other major detail that you missed?'
'I don't know. Tell me.'
'Were you smoking then?'
'Actually I am trying to quit. Two of my friends are quitting already. The first one to smoke again has to pay the other guy five hundred. And what makes one actually pay five hundred, I asked, to which they said- one's honor being at stake. I asked if I could join in too, but added that my honor would like to represent itself and not be represented by cash. Actually that's just a joke. The other version is where I ask if I could chip in just fifty as my honor is ...'
'My point is if you were already smoking, how could you possibly tell the stench of the defecation?'
'Do swines catch swine flu?'
'I guess yes. Umm, how does that answer my question?'
'Exactly.'
'Okay, so what did you do next?'
'I went to the meeting but found the office closed. So I thought I should report the case of domestic violence.'
'We still aren't sure about the nature of the relationship, I must remind you again.'
'I know. I meant the intensity of violence by that.'
'Hehe, never heard that one before. By the way, where is that kerchief?'
'I threw it.'
'Before smelling your arm? Or before the hit? Or between the smelling and the hit?'
'Right after cleaning my arm. Before the hit, that is.'
'Oh, it didn't count as evidence in that case. Anyway, so what did you see on your way back? Were they still fighting? Had the law arrived?'
'Well, you know, this has to end somewhere. I really don't have any ideas any more. Sorry you 44 guys.'
'What? Who?'

The Sex Chat (gone horribly wrong)

2009-07-24T01:27:00.011+05:30

........

XY: Wow, that was dirty. I am getting horny now.
XX: haahaahaahaahaahaahaahaahaahaah
XY: What the fuck!!!
XX: What?
XY: Why are you laughing?
XX: What? Oh sorry, that was a typo. Make that aahaahaahaahaahaahaah.

[long pause]

XX: I guess that turned you off. Am really sorry for the extra H.
XY: You know what, this is stupid and tough to manage anyway. Gimme your number.

The Idea (gone horribly wrong)

2009-07-23T00:19:00.011+05:30

A: lol@sts
S: :D
A: So, the freshers have arrived?
S: Yeah, there is one in the room beside yours.
A: Shit man. God save us from reverse-ragging.
S: lol. May be we can form something like an anti-reverse ragging squad.
A: Hmm. Anti-reverse ragging squad. Hmm. Won't the 'anti' and 'reverse' cancel each other and make it sound more like The ragging squad?
S: Damn.

Pusher in the rye

2009-07-19T08:06:00.004+05:30

....

On our way back I discover she doesn’t like Kitkat, calls me a phoney when I tell her it’s my favorite. She has her reservations about the need of packing the goddamn chocolate thrice. This pretty much sums her up- very un-superficial. Not necessarily a good thing, I must add, especially if one makes a conscious effort to always be so. I ask her what if that's the only reason I love Kitkat. She squints, smiles and adjusts her hair in quick succession.

....

Let Out, Let Go

2009-07-10T02:09:00.009+05:30

Back from the hospital after an hour of small talk, M tries to find a parking space near the canteen while I stand around making more of small talk. A long gone friend once told me that it was not my burden to keep everyone around me from getting bored. May be I would accept it someday and learn to keep mum, but, for now, I talk some.

I notice Smokey Eyes' (SE) tee through the window pane. She is inside. The red tee looks good, looks good on her. And then I see Fluorescent Adolescent (FA) sitting opposite to her, and then the two guys sitting by them. No, M hasn't yet seen what I see, but I feel the making of a disaster in the air.

I look around and make small talk about the menu items, comment on how they have only Pepsi every day, and more of this and that. M isn't listening to me now, that means he too has probably seen FA having lunch with another guy. As far as I could recall, it was only yesterday when FA was too busy to spend some time with M. I feel sorry for him. M is wearing a blank expression, I am a little angry at him and his persistence with FA too but I realize I am supposed to be just sorry right now. I act accordingly.

A minute later FA leaves hastily, as if been caught stealing, trying to call someone frantically, but clearly not calling anyone. The rest of the group follows her out. 'Terrible day', M manages to say something finally, J at hospital clearly playing on his mind too. Nice of him.

I realize I am a little sorry to see SE with another guy, but what soothes me is the fact that she doesn't know about my little crush on her. She isn't running me over or anything. Also I realize it is more about seeing her with another guy than her not being with me. Kind of jealousy, more of narcissism. May be it's M, not me, who needs someone to talk to right now, or at least my selfishly generous small-talk-side thinks so.

Over lunch we talk about the usual stuff- dope, masturbation techniques, merits and demerits of circumcision, pronunciation jokes, how firemen are overrated and nurses are totally not, South Park and Seinfeld, Shining and Jack Nicholson, a little bitching too; the regular boys' stuff in short.

The fullness of stomach and nothingness of mind lead us to the cigarette shop eventually. Not sure about the brand suiting the mood, we settle on the new king size Navy Cut, the duotec filter clearly dominating the thoughts of the the red and fluorescent tees by now. Soon we settle in the bright hot sun looking at the sparse traffic, watching people getting to somewhere, some of them making frantic calls.

I let out a puff and watch it go nowhere; I don't feel like talking now.

Karee-na galat baat

2009-07-08T20:00:00.007+05:30

How often does Kareena K write to you? She wrote to me today trying to sell me a ticket of her latest flick.

I wonder if someone I happen to know who happens to know her happened to talked about me and then about me not having watched any Hindi movie for last six months. You know, as they say in the film industry, word-of-mouth publicity of my sort-of-vow. And she, like an Apsara, decided to break my vow and lure me to the nearest cinema hall. And after the three hour ordeal, I wonder, it would all come back to me, a la a thriller, and I would go- Ms. Kareena K, you are trying to seduce me, aren't you?

Too flimsy, eh? Exactly.

I mean what the fuck is wrong with this new generation of spammers? Where the fuck are they studying Online Advertising? What the fuck are they thinking? It would have taken me much more time to realize it was a spam, had the sender's name been Reena R or Sheena S or Heena H. But Kareena K, I don't know what to say, I mean what the fuck!

Also, trying to sell a movie ticket? For the sake of god, at least ask me to provide you my credit card details for you want to transfer a million dollars to my account because the black government of your Zimbabwe is taking over your million dollars, for you are white, and you want it to be safe with another sort-of-black guy in a third world country. That makes much more fucking sense than trying to sell me a movie ticket as Kareena K.

Or may be even try to sell me some ten dollar medicine that would ensure me performing as a tiger in my bed, though I am not sure what exactly does that mean as I have never seen two tigers having sex, just because once I entered my email id on your lovely website trying to download the latest nude celebrity pic or some mms, and you decided to put my id in the list of sexual deviants of India. Even that makes much more fucking sense than trying to sell me a movie ticket as Kareena K.

By the way, Ms. Kareena K, if you really happen to know someone I happen to know and have happened to learn about my sort-of-vow, and if you really are trying to seduce me into buying a ticket to your movie, I must tell you why I haven't watched a movie for six months-
I really don't have that kind of money.

The Twittey

2009-06-19T19:11:00.013+05:30

In The News today, a 21-year-old guy said to Mr. Tharoor, the Indian minister of state for external affairs-
"You know what, you are a Twittey."
The guy was later arrested under the NSA, the National Security Act, which is what Indian police nowadays does when Not Sure of Action.

The Oxford dictionary of slang defines the word 'Twittey' as 'an online Phoney'. It further explains that in this cyber age it is fairly common for the inflated egos of the otherwise mostly humble people to show up in form of status messages at social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook etc., and hence the terminology. The earlier term for an online Phoney, the dictionary says, was Bloggey, but the use is mostly archaic now.

Mr. Tharoor, it is to be noted here, had been very active on Twitter lately, updating people about every other 'good' thing he had been doing. From the usual rants about elections, to cribbing about the need for reforms and punctuality in India, to his generosity, he has been even reported in an unconfirmed report to have once woken up in the middle of the night and tweeted-'the headless alien' to the horror and surprise of his eight thousand followers. The rest six hundred-odd followers had lives and were sleeping.

Mohan Pundit, the famous cyber-psychologist explained-"In today's India, where almost half the population is young, it's important for an aspiring politician to be techno-savvy and hip. And of course, he doesn't want to end up being Number Two. Again, I mean. [here he fell off chair laughing only to get up, regain his composure and continue] However, after a point, Twittermania- a compulsive desire to tweet- begins to arise and one loses sight of the initial goals, if any."
He further elaborated Twittermania and his famous five phases of it, with the following example:

Phase 1: Before going to dinner, one updates his status as- 'Going for dinner'.
Phase 2: Retarded spelling creeps in - 'Goin' 2 dinna', and goes off for dinner.
Phase 3: The ego quotient of status shoots up- 'Plannin' 2 go 2 dinna, wat shd I hv?', and then insteading of leaving for dinner, waits for comments.
Phase 4: The needless details creep in- 'No dinner 2day, hvn' loose motions. Yellow mostly.'
Phase 5: Tricky phase, the likely result- 'It's better to burn out than to fade away', while some prefer to delete their accounts rather than themselves.

Mr. Tharoor wasn't available for comments to the SD In The News correspondent, but we managed to catch up with some of his followers online which mostly asked why his display picture bore an uncanny resemblance to that famous picture of Rajiv Gandhi, except the famous wrist-watch obviously.
Penguin India publishers have meanwhile decided to publish his tweets in the form of a book- "The Great Indian Updates" amid great rampage by VHP who were twenty years late in protesting against Mr. Tharoor mocking at the Mahabharata.

Twenty Eighty Four

2009-06-08T19:09:00.017+05:30

This just might be the biggest piece of news of your life. In a tragic set of events the Union of India has been dissolved by the World Bank group, sometimes also called as the USA, claiming it has failed state of affairs.

As the news spread, there were surprisingly mixed reactions from the different parts of the erstwhile union, and an even more mixed reactions from the eminent personalities of the former country. We, here at SD, bring you the choicest of the lot.

His Highness Lalit Modi, the erstwhile king: "I assure you this would make no difference to the IPL, we were anyway moving the event to England. Also, I hope the term 'India' is open for copyright now. Apart from retaining the name IPL, we can charge institutions, newspapers, websites using the term. A shirt-cuff calculation tells me that would garner a profit of two billion dollars. At least."

The erstwhile president, ~~Sheila Dixit~~ Pratibha Patil: "My signature on the bill is due. No, that doesn't mean anything. I would be signing it on Friday. You are invited."

The erstwhile PM, ~~Simpu~~ Manmohan Singh: "Ask the ~~Pankazzz~~ Madam."

Meanwhile, the royal Gandhi family wasn't available for comment as the speechwriters were on casual leave after the hectic General Elections.

Raj Thackeray, human rights activist: "Why do these people from Pune always come here in Mumbai and take errrr jobs? And these people from Nagpur and Aurangabad too. One has to get his hands dirty and put an end to it once and for all. Jai Mumbai."

Mayawati, the CM of the synecdoche state Uttar Pradesh: "As the first PM of UP, I think I deserve a golden statue of mine in every district, err state. I think this would go a long way in the upliftment of the Dalits. I am .... I think..... I would.... By the way, the courts are dissolved until further notice."

Lalu Yadav, the eminent social scientist: "I think MuYa (Muslim-Yadav) combination doesn't work anymore. Aye kaun halla kar raha wahan pichhe, hatt, hurrr. How about COnDom(Chamar-Onir-Dom)? Or BraPanTi(Brahmin-Pandey-Tiwari)?"

Brinda Karat, the communist: "Hail Castro. Nandigram, we are coming."

APJ Abdul Kalam, the rocketeer: "Penguin has already got me writing 'Tamil Nadu 2020'. I hope this one makes a lot of dough too."

Sheila Dikshit, the CM of Delhi: "Personally, I think this is the best thing that could have happened for Commonwealth Games right now."

Narendra Modi, the CM of Gujarat: "We, the people of Gujarat, declare war against Pakistan. Sieg Heil."

A random Bengali: "We were anyway more intelligent and cultured than them. Honestly, we should have been called ISI- Intelligent State of India. "

Aamir Khan, the rainmaker: "I have a lot of views on this topic. But since no movie of mine is lined up for release right now, I don't give a muck."

LK Advani, the celebrity blogger: "What would RSS do? What would Jinnah do? What would Vajpayee do? What would Brian Boitano do?"

Prakash Singh Badal, the CM of Punjab: "In ~~heaven~~ Canada everything is fine."

M S Dhoni, the leading model of the country: "That's fine with me. We played with sincerity, that's victory for me. (on question being repeated again, in Hindi this time) What do you think, should I grow a beard?"

Varun, the real, Gandhi: "Hey Ram."

Stop the press. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, has just issued a press release saying- "With reference to the document F/K/U, the phrase 'Union of India' is hereby corrected as 'Union Bank of India'. Any inconvenience caused is entirely your fault."

The Best of Graham Lope

2009-06-02T00:10:00.010+05:30

----------------------------------------------------

The next time you type 'jokes apart' in your blog, follow these steps:
#1 Look up,
#2 Read,
#3 Analyze,
#4 Make sure there is a joke up there or delete the 'jokes apart'.

If you don't, I swear in god's name, I will kill you.

Jokes apart, I won't kill you.

-----------------------------------------------------

Here is a sincere biological advice for the chance sculptors visiting this page. Next time you get an order for a Maharana Pratap or a Shivaji statue for town halls, crossings, school buildings et cetera, kindly do NOT carve out the horse's balls.

I am perfectly sure that balls are god's gifts intended solely for the 'mankind'. Unless the use is metaphorical as in- Mary's got some balls.

Also, I am pretty sure that horses, however agile, historical or brave, never got erections in the battlefield. Unless, of course, the use is, again, metaphorical as in- Come on boys, let's fuck them.

Or is it some kind of sick professional in-joke?

---------------------------------------------------

Even if you don't like to brag about your beauty, just write eyes, lips, hair, or whatever fricking part of your body that comes to your mind in the Orkut best body feature column. But please don't choose the option 'not on the list'.

Everybody knows that, choose the next best.

--------------------------------------------------

Graffiti of the Year:

Mandir ke ANDAR gaanja peena mana hai.
[Smoking pot is prohibited INSIDE the temple premises.]

--------------------------------------------------

Overheard some bored parents talking outside an entrance exam center:

Technically speaking, people who fall asleep in examination hall should receive the harshest punishment, at least harsher than those who cheat. Both didn't care for their studies, okay, but the cheaters at least care for their results.

---------------------------------------------------

Fake IPL Fan

2009-05-02T16:38:00.003+05:30

"Man, he looks high."
"What??? Who?"
"Rohit Sharma. He looks high."
"He is not running well, alright, but definitely not high."
"Looks high to me. Anyways what do you think they do in strategic break?"
"I don't know. Eat?"
"Definitely not 'eat'. I thought you, being a KKRetards fan, would at least say they plan. "
"What do you think, eh, RCBooze fan?"
"They get high."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, what else does one do in 450 seconds! And haven't you observed there is always a batting collapse right after these mini-breaks. Can't you see, his eyes look so hazy and dazed after the strategic break. Not a surprise to me, Warne and Smith used to do that before toss last year."
"Really? I thought they had had just cigarettes. How do you know?"
"Talk to the man."
"Who else looks high to the man? Yusuf Pathan?"
"No, he eats red meat, red bull or soemthing in breaks, be it 450 seconds or 30 minutes. Preity Zinta looks pretty high."
"Ganguly?"
"Bong on bong. Hahaha."
"Sachin?"
"Fuck you dude. You don't fucking talk about fucking Sachin like that. Nobody fucking talks fucking shit about fucking Him. You get fucking that?"
"I am sorry. Umm, Pietersen?"
"Nah, he is just stupid, high on testosterone."
"You mean Adrenaline?"
"Nah, testosterone."

"Did you notice that Cross painted on Robin Uthappa's back?"
"Yeah, he must be Christian."
"Duh. So is half the IPL, nobody does that. I think he should change from RCB to KKR."
"What???Why?"
"KKR is the closest it gets to KKK in IPL."
"That's not funny, seriously."

The Shoe Incident

2009-04-08T13:42:00.005+05:30

I am calm now.

But when in morning the humanities lecturer was trying to propagate her feminist views in class, I couldn't resist throwing my shoe at her.
"Get out of the class." She said calmly.
"You hurt my dude feelings, mam."
"Get out of the class. RIGHT NOW."
"Mam, I am really sorry for that. Please forgive the chauvinist act of mine."
"I forgive you. Now get out."

Another moment of insanity prevailed as I threw the other shoe at her.

"What now?"
"What what? Do you want me to go back to hostel in one shoe?"

I want to be, oh, so many things

2009-03-20T18:11:00.006+05:30

In a reversal of their true roles, Arvind as the commentator and critic, and yours truly as the sketcher-boy.

The Dream House

2009-03-15T11:33:00.001+05:30

This story dates back to the days when I was young at heart, and had moved into a ten by ten room, with no attached bathroom that is, in the semi-urban part of the town. And that reflected, apart from my wallet, my mindset- caught up between extremes, confused about my longings, and all. I hadn't run away, I wasn't thrown out, it was more of a mutual mute consent that a boy who has missed all the express ways, must learn to hitchhike his way. And I agreed as I was bored. On my first morning, as the sky began to redden, and the streets began to hustle with no particular rhythm or energy, there was a humble knock on my door.

I was at the window, looking out at the sky, avoiding the burnt shaken-up buildings which surprised me, and perhaps themselves too, every time. I hadn't not met anyone in the building yet, and as far as I could guess, there must have been a hundred heads in that small building. People everywhere are exactly the same, anyway. The humble knocks continued as I fumbled my way to the door, fumbling more out of listlessness than sleeplessness. Before me, on the other side of door, stood an upright stocky man whose age I couldn't guess. And he walked in, without any salutations or anything close to it, though still humble.

He maintained the records of every inmate, he told me briefly, records of their employment, their whereabouts, their trysts, and their dreams. I wanted to be a writer, honestly, but what use would it be to a stocky man of no particular age, I wondered. I filled the columns nevertheless, while he looked around with no particular curiosity. And in the dreams column, I stated that I wanted to be a good human being of use to the society and so on, which I guessed should be what they are looking for. He looked at my details, again without much interest, and said-
"Tell me when you decide to paint your dreams honestly."
'Now, where have I heard that before', I said to myself, and laughed silently.

Small Talk

2009-02-20T06:09:00.008+05:30

High Talk:

You got to think what exactly do the Eskimos think of life. Why are they still going around, killing seals, living in a freaking cold damp, well, nowhere? Are they nihilists? Did all the nihilists, hundreds of years ago, pack their bags for the North Pole one day?

And why not the South Pole?

Small Talk:

"What did your grandpa do?"

"He was a grammarian."

"What grammarian?"

"A guy who studies and writes about grammar."

"Dude, I know what grammarian means. I mean what grammar?"

"The set of rules that govern the usage of a language."

"Jesus dude. I mean what language?"

"Language is the tool to communicate ..."

"I mean which language, Mr. eats-shoots-and-leaves?"

"English."

Shallow Talk :

"Seems some bug or something has got inside my shirt."

"Uh...uh. Let me have a look. Uh...uh. Bare it."

"What? What if someone finds us like this?"

"So .... switch off the lights."

"But how will you look for the bug then?"

"Hmm. Good question."

Long notes on Irony

2009-02-07T03:10:00.004+05:30

For some time now, I have been thinking of getting back to rambling. So, here it is.

1.
Why are smart phones called smart phones? Strictly speaking, a phone can be expensive, it can be high-end, it can be ultra super-duper-bumper phone loaded with ultra truper-cruper-gruper features, but it can't be smart.

May be one day there will come a phone that would know exactly when to switch itself in silent mode. That would be smart, for a phone that is. But sadly, right now, it's the smart phone that rings the loudest in the most uncomfortable of the circumstances, in the classrooms, meetings, toilets, funerals and so on. And when that happens, it looks 'phoney', not smart.

2.
"Look buddy, you don't have to fear. Dinosaurs don't exist."
"Yeah I know."
"No no, don't take my words so lightly. I am convinced that Dinosaurs don't exist, so you don't have to fear them."
"Yeah I know."
"May be hundreds of thousands years ago, they did, and that still is debatable. But I am pretty damn sure that they don't exist now."
"Turn around Darwin, look there."

I don't get it. Why are atheists so interested in God's non-existence? I mean if they are so convinced about Her non-existence, why are they still talking about it. Ironically enough, the ones who talk about God in public places are invariably the Atheists or the Ram Sena guys. [And shit man, you won't even get to say things like- thank god, goddamn you, holy shit, for god's sake, by god, Zesus Khrist et cetera, if you happen to be an atheist. See, believing in God makes our lives so easy.]

Ditto for non-smokers [Reader discretion advised henceforth]. The ones who start Facebook communities like "Smoking is not cool", "I thought you were cool until you lit a cigarette" are never smokers, obviously, probably not quitters, they know how lovely those times were, and so always the ones who have never had a single puff in all their lives.

And the funny side is they always attack the coolness quotient of smoking. I mean I have never thought of starting communities like 'Red undies are not cool' because I know they aren't. And so, who cares.

So, the point is- believe in God, start smoking, or just get a life.

And red undies are not cool.

3.
If you have read the book 'Fight Club', you would have probably noted that it can't be adapted into a movie, heavy interior monologue being one of the prime reasons. But it was, and how.

If I ever become a filmmaker, I will adapt 'The Fountainhead', and will cast Salman Khan as Howard Roark. And the rest of the cast will be brilliant.
That way, I will save a lot of people who would someday read that damn book and hail that phoney Roark guy. For, I think, it's impossible to adore Salman Khan.

More seriously, I will adapt Kafka's novella 'Metamorphosis' and credit John Abraham as Gregor Samsa. As the opening credits would end, he will wake up as Abhishek Bachchan and say- 'Oh God, I have just woken up from troubled dreams, and look, I have transformed into a horrible vermin.'

I think it's a neat idea. And cheap too, no need to pay for special effects, and I won't have to pay John Abraham either.

4.
If I don't get a job, I will become a masculinist. [Mind you, that doesn't mean I will turn gay, unless feminist means lesbian to you] I mean if you get paid for shouting 'Dude Power' all day, it's probably the next best thing to get paid for being Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Coming to the point, I have been wondering lately what if Kaufman had written 'Being Navjot Singh Sidhu' instead of 'Being John Malkovich'. How would the world look like from Sidhu's brain?
I, for one, don't want a portal into his brain, for I would be very disappointed if I get to know he was just high. All these years.

5. Why do all aliens look like this in every damn movie, soap or any artwork for that matter? I mean the word is 'Alien', why the fuck are they always so familiar!

6.
I have always wondered whether the rappers ring up their native places after winning a Grammy and say-
"Look Granny
I won a Grammy
Yo right Granny
I won a Grammy"

What do you think?

7.
Irony of the decade finals: [Satyam Shivam Su(n)daram plays in background]
'The cheating company's name being Satyam'

versus

'Sudar, suffering from dysentery, as I write this, mistaking Pepsi for Pepsin'

Okay, the latter one was not ironic, but you get the idea how stupid Sudar is.

8.
If Dev Das was from the state Bengal, where does Dev D. hail from?
Think think.

Slam-Bitch Billionaire versus the curious case of the Narrator

2009-01-25T16:56:00.004+05:30

It's about Slam-Bitch Billionaire (henceforth called SBB. Ok forget SBB, that bears too close a resemblance to our beloved, but banned, Savita Bhabhi). No, when we say slam-bitch, we are not talking about Sania Mirza or her two days and three nights Australian Open holiday package. Today we have gathered here for your dear narrator, as in Jack from Summer Diary and not Amitabh Bachchan, has a confession to make. Don't expect anything candid, it's about his survival in this 'filmy' world. But stay with him because he needs someone to listen to him, this time at least, direly.

The thing is, he hasn't seen Slam-Bitch Billionaire. That's right, you read it right, no need to call the optician. Among all this gung-ho and hooley, you dear narrator has managed to keep his head on his shoulders. It was a tough ask, both keeping his head on his scrawny shoulders and also to look naive and ignorant everywhere. At coffee shops, class rooms, mess tables, bathrooms, everywhere. When everyone, well almost everyone, around him was going gaga over the Slam-Bitch, he had to lie, lie, lie every time to conceal his cinematic illiteracy. He had to go to toilet every two minutes when the discussion got into the deeper shit (or was it peanut butter) and bunk classes all day, just to avoid the bitch, the Slam-Bitch.

He failed, of course, in his strange endeavor. And without any grace too. 'Nice porno that', he echoed his instinctive guess at the sound of 'Slam-Bitch'. As it was, the Slam-Bitch is far from being a porno. What kind of bitch is 'she' anyways, he wondered, what has the world come to.

He had never felt this way before. He had skipped Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Wall-E and all that, and still he was upbeat about it in a sick phony and pretentious way. Battling with the 75% attendance rule, boredom, life and sleep, he marched his way through the Westerns, the noirs, the cult ones, the Italians, the Russians. When everyone wanted him to shut up, he kept quoting A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club, he kept humming 'In Heaven Everything is Fine', and he walked clicking his shoes against each other, 8 1/2 style. He had learnt to respect Casablanca, Citizen Kane and The Bicycle Thieves. He went through IMDB top 250 list every night before sleeping, smiling smugly at himself.

And then everything changed that night. The Slam-bitch fucked his happiness, putting it plainly, that fateful night. Ten Oscar nominations, Four Golden Globes, an IMDB rank two notches above Apocalypse Now. You shitting me, he asked his browser.

'The feel good movie of the decade', he was told, and he countered- why not watch 'Singh is Kinng' then, probably the feel good movie of the millennium.
"Celebration of life", eh! Hello world, he wanted to shout aloud, I grew up watching SRK, for god's sake. But he mellowed down. The brutal reality of India, superb soundtrack and after all she's a Danny Boyle. I ought to download her at least, he conceded.

True Indian that he is, not ready to laugh at himself yet, he disliked her instantly. He convinced himself that she had sloppy editing, the screenplay was pathetic, the characters unreal and the plot no better than that of some desi flick. And she was gone (deleted) duly. But he was never the same again. As I write this, he has already started Facebook communities like 'Taj Mahal is over-rated', 'Congress took ourrr jobs' to name a few. Those five minutes still haunt his dreams. Is she really that good or is it just me, he often thinks, but one thing for sure he is done with bitches.

Help him.

Introducing Kafka's Death

2009-01-15T05:09:00.006+05:30

K woke up for the second time in the day, only this time he was more awake than he was ever in his life. He sank in the chair further. He felt no fear even though he could see his fingers quivering all over the newspaper. Could be a printing mistake, he thought, and rushed to the Mehtas.
'Can I borrow your newspaper for a minute?'
'Sure.' Mr. Mehta looked up from the newspaper. 'You okay K?'
'Yeah .... yeah. Why?'
'You look jittery.'
'It's just the heat...' K dug in the newspaper, trying to hide his face, his eyes.
Page 2, sun sign Aquarius- "Time to expand you business. You will meet someone new today....", and so on. Strange, he said to himself.
'You sure you are okay K?' Mr. Mehta inquired nervously. 'Bad news?'
'Nah, it's perfectly okay. Thanks.'
K turned to look back only once, Mr. Mehta was reading the newspaper anxiously.

Back home he read his newspaper once again. Page 2, sun sign Aquarius- "You will die today."
What could it mean and more importantly what could he do about it, he wondered. 'Could this be a prank? But who would do this to me? I haven't picked a fight in last ten years. My job has been smooth for as long as I can remember, can't be any colleague', K reasoned. 'It's not the first of April, alright.' K dialed up the newspaper office and then put the receiver back. 'How would I explain my problem, and first of all- is there really a problem', he thought.

K realized the coffee was getting cold. No office today, he decided, and rang up his boss asking for a casual leave, who agreed readily as K had never applied for one in all the years he had worked for his firm, the only one he had worked for. I can ask that newspaper vendor, he thought. If it's a prank, he will be the only guy in the world who can confirm that. But at first, I have to cut the electricity supply, he decided. He was standing on a stool trying to figure out how he could do that, when he realized Mr. Mehta was standing on the veranda, almost trembling with fear and disbelief, looking at him.
'What are you doing .... Get down. Please Mr. K. I beg you to get down.'
'It's okay, Mr. Mehta. I was ... I was just trying to fix the lines.'
'You don't know how to ... Okay okay I understand, you get down from there first.'
K got down eventually, trying to think hard for some plausible reason. To K's relief, Mr. Mehta didn't seem to know what to say next.
'It's not what you think. The fridge was making some kind of vague sounds so I decided to cut the lines.'
'Will you please call someone you know, or may be you can just come to my house?'
'Any idea where does that newspaper vendor ... what's his name ... where does he live?'

K never talked with the Mehtas much, but considering he never talked with anyone, Mehtas were as close to the glass wall, he had built around himself, as one could get. 'You look like an Italian hero', Mr. Mehta had joked when K had moved in the neighborhood ten years ago. K did look Italian, hair slightly on the longer side pulled back a la James Stewart, clean-shaven, draped in black suit as if ready for a heist, or for a funeral, day after day for ten years.

He picked up the newspaper. 'It's the newspaper. My horoscope. Aquarius.' 'Horoscope. What about it? Well, I thought you were a sensible and educated man, Mr. K. Can't get more ridiculous.'
Mr. Mehta was surprised and even hurt for some reason, K could see.
'Wait a minute. Your name is K, no? How come Aquarius?'
'No no, you don't understand. It says I'm gonna die today.'

What if I die today, K wondered. Will it be a fair conclusion to the unambitious life that I have led. I could have been places, I could have married, I could have fathered two kids, I could have quit smoking. But that's so cliched, he reasoned. He never felt an impulse for anything cliched- for traveling, for an emotional attachment, for eating good, for reading good, for doing anything worldly, no no for doing anything cliched. Is that wrong, and who decides what's worldly. Okay, I'm not happy, but who is, he thought to himself. At least I had found solace in my cold solitary life. Until I found I was going to die, he appended.

He sat down to write his diary, his first in ten years, after Mr. Mehta had left. Unsurprisingly Mr. Mehta couldn't see anything wrong with the horoscope. "Time to expand you business. You will meet someone new today....", and so on.
I should have guessed that, K thought.
'Is there something I really want to do?' He scribbled. He got up and ambled across the room, paused in front of the mirror to admire at his lanky frame. There isn't, he said to himself, and wondered if life without any purpose qualified to be called as life. But then that would be a contradiction because you still have to call it 'life' without purpose, he reasoned. He realized he had never really stopped to think so philosophically and thanked himself for that. He got back to his diary.
'Like a dog, like a lion, like a fly, I have lived. And today I am destined to die like one. It's better this way. I am dressed for a funeral anyways.' He put his pen down smiling. For the first time in ten years.

His boss came soon, apparently Mr. Mehta had called him.
'What the hell are you doing K? I always thought you were a sensible and educated man, the best employee we have ever had. And today you intend to malign your image by committing suicide. What's wrong?'
He paused for a moment as if trying to think fast, and then asked- 'Is it love?' Love ha, K thought.
'No Sir, I will be back to work tomorrow. I am just feeling a little sick today.' 'Sick? Sick of work?' The boss scowled.
'I mean ... Can I come to office with you right now? I didn't want to drive today, that's all.'

K waited in the car, for a wasted driver, for a kid crossing the road abruptly to get a ball or something, for lightening, for death. He, like Kafka, thought of a million ways he could die in the car as if trying to outwit destiny, God, death, the newspaper vendor ... what's his name anyways. He waited for the sound of screeching tires or shattering windows or his boss crying. He bit the inside of his cheeks preparing himself for the taste of his blood. I don't want to die surprised, he wished and laughed shrilly. For the first time in ten years.

Winter Diaries: Patna ke Presleys

2009-01-03T13:51:00.004+05:30

"I love the smell of Napalm in the morning."
It was different this time. Walking out of Patna junction, inhaling the Patna air at four in the morning (don't the romantics say that every place has a distinct air, a scent that encapsulates the spirit of the place. I try this at college after every vacation and I feel the smell telling me- you are going to be fucked for the next four months. The romantics must be right), I couldn't help but notice Abhishek Bachchan, donning a metal hairband and an overgrown stubble, palms folded in a Pranaam, saying 'Idea welcomes you to Patna'. Few months back it was Preity Zinta, wearing two exaggerated dimples, saying 'BSNL best hai mere liye (No BSNL doesn't sell dildos, yeah and by the way) Welcome to Patna'.
Are people accepting that it's okay to be gay? Hail Karan Johar for making Dostana.
I have never traveled by air yet. I want to do it before they replace the classic 'Bhartiya nari' Air hostesses wrapped up in Lycra with Air hosts wearing make-up and false accents, dressed in tight pants, picking their crotches, asking people- 'You feeling okay, Sir?'

There were Hindu gods and goddesses, in marble, on the bricked walls all around the station. 'BJP in government', I thought but the autowallah told me it was to prevent people from peeing on the walls. I marveled at the brilliance and simplicity of the idea. Even the most blasphemous or pervert Hindu wouldn't like the idea of wagging his dick in front of the Gods, let alone pee, unless it's a bet or a dare, I could see the brain behind the idea explaining the move to his boss.
Two days later I saw the RPF guys beating an urchin after he was finished. Definitely the planner didn't consider this- RPF guys might take their job too religiously then, never minding the size of the dick... err piddler.

Spending a little time, however little it may be, On The Road, clears the perspectives on a lot of things and the mind, in general.
For one, it assures me there is a world apart from Obama, recession, South Park, Facebook and all that, and which has been moving and transforming itself while I was looking away. The other thing it does is to quash the belief that my universe revolves around me. Day after day looking at the same faces and meeting the same people, saying and listening to expected things gives me that feeling, and, needless to say, it is extremely boring too.

There was this guy I met on a train who said the most original and wackiest thing I had heard in a long long time.
'Indians love to glorify India. We fabricate history and idols to make up for our fucked up present. Ricky Ponting is the best batsman in the world. He wins back to back World cups, conquers all world ruthlessly and we still say Sachin is God just because he debuted at 16, seven years before Dravid did, and amassed thousands of runs on flat pitches. Abhinav Bindra wins one gold medal ...'
He saw me yawning probably and abruptly said- 'Do you know what were Gandhi's dying words ?'
'Gandhi? Indira Gandhi ?' I tried to buy some time for thinking, surprised by the change of topic.
'Na na. Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhiji.'
'Hey Ram ?'
"See, that's what I have been saying. Who would say that when he is about to die. He probably said- 'Haraami' to that Godse, but that old man must have lost his breath and the 'H...a....r....aaaaa....m....' was glorified as 'Hey Ram'."

And then I realized I was laughing my lungs out with a guy I would probably never meet again. I loved the thought of it.

And then once there was this 13-14 year old guy who was nuts and was going to a mental hospital with his uncle. Literally.
'Was genius. Topper all along. God's own ways. Studied rather too hard and lost it', his uncle told us solemnly so that we won't mind his ward. I was both relieved (studying hard makes you go mental, hence proved) and suspicious. Could be an ISI agent, I thought.
His uncle had a strange trick to calm him. Whenever the nut got too restless, he started testing his general awareness, which surprisingly sobered him up every time.

'Keep silent, keep silent, keep silent. Arey chutiya keep silent ....' The nut was talking to no one.
'Hey hey ... Who is the chief secretary of Bihar ?'
'Afzal Amanullah.'
'See I told you he was a genius, and the governor of Bihar?'
' R S Gawai.' (which was a wrong answer, but no one seemed to care. He was nuts anyways.)
'Which Indian boxer won a medal in the Olympics this time?'
'Vijender.'
'What is the height of the Everest?'
'8848 metres.'
'Who is the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh?'
And then the nut suddenly realized that it had been a trap all along. Nonchalantly he said 'Taimur Lung'. Everyone started laughing.
'Who is the president of France?'
'Taimur Lung, the Langda Tyagi.'
'What is the currency of USA?'
'Taimur Lung.' It was a dirty local train with pan spits and all, or else every one would be ROFL by then.
His uncle gave up and thankfully so, for I was hurting my stomach by then. 'Every child is special', I thought later and laughed a little more.

That's all for this time.

By the way, Upamanyu Chatterjee was honored by The French government with Officier Des Arts Et Des Lettres, probably first English writer from India to get this award. Perplexed? Clue: His wife is French (a wink at the male readers). The better news is his next book will be coming by the end of this year. Yippppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

In The Zone

2008-11-12T21:41:00.005+05:30

The bastards at howstuffworks are ruthless. Today I came across an article titled- 'How does Bankruptcy work?'
Don't they know that bankruptcy, like love, just happens.

Now that I have posted over 50 posts on blogger, written some 1000+ scraps and wall-posts on the social networking sites, (mis)edited a few Wikipedia articles, I wonder if I can include the following in my CV- 'I was adjudged as the Times Person of The Year 2006'.

Woody Allen quote of the day-
"My life was an open book. Well, before somebody misplaced it in the library."

Writers are bad at Mathematics. I mean, why else will you frame a phrase such as- 'an iota of change ...'
Iota, as most of us know, is an imaginary number.

Sometimes I wonder if I have arrived a little too late on this planet to make a significant contribution. The Newtons, Einsteins and Watsons have left nothing major to discover [citation needed]. While hundred years ago you could win a Nobel prize for a broad field as radioactivity, these days one is more likely to win for something vague like- the neurological effects of radioactivity coupled with nano-level action of bla-bla-bla in the the bla-bla-bla kidney cells of a European transgenic rat.
However it's not really about the Nobel Prize.

The problem is that as soon as I come up with an idea I (am made to) discover that, sane or insane, the idea nonetheless has been covered by the WGA (commonly known as Simpsons-already-did-it phenomenon).
One storyline I thought of was very similar to that of the movie Mist (or so I was told). Still worse, the movie was no good either (and this I know). I once googled 'A letter to No one' and was surprised to find the ludicrous amount of letters to no one that have been penned already. And the latest one in the series is- well check out the comments section of the last post for yourself. Coincidence[citation needed] doesn't get better than this; for me, it can't get worse.

So, finally I am dropping the idea of developing an mp3 parsing software that uses neural networks and backpropagation learning to discover a pattern in the songs a person likes (this is not same as comparing one's list with that of the other guys who liked the same songs) and then providing a personalized service of suggesting songs periodically that the user is likely to like, for I am sure that some wretched loner, somewhere, has typed the code for the above idea many moons/suns ago.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Going Deep down the Rabbit Hole

2008-11-08T17:34:00.004+05:30

I had this strikingly freaky dream some time back. Not this afternoon, not the day before, some time back.
While I was writing one of my fingers fell off. I picked it up, casually looked at it, and resumed writing. It was just a little finger.
I got worried only when I was supposed to meet some girl, woman, or something. At the table she didn't seem to notice my ultra-bandaged finger until it fell off again, this time in her butter-chicken as the bandage had got all wet in the food and slipped off. So she looked at it and me, and then said something like- 'Why can't you be yourself?'

That was it. No prologue, no epilogue. Devoid of all the components of a classic dream- Vertigo, Sex, Ghosts, Fantasy stuff, Dogs, and all that. And perhaps that's why I am still interested in its meaning, unable to shrug it off as a upset-stomach-dream or something.

I have somehow this gut feeling that it has probably to do with the hair loss which has picked up some pace for some time now. But I can't be sure about it for there are still some loose ends:
1. How stupid was I to bandage it?
2. Who was she?
3. Why wasn't I using a spoon?
4. Did she think I was trying to be a chicken?
5. Why that Rbk ad in the end?

As I woke up from troubled/anxious dreams, I was relieved to find my little finger intact. Almost did a little jig in bed.

KJ- a short essay

2008-10-22T17:51:00.004+05:30

What did the cloud say to the Polish monkey ?
Man, I am so high.

Yes me brothers, 'this' is very real and very dangerous. It's a disease, no less. There is no escaping from this. It's an addiction like smoking. No, may be even more- it's like masturbation, or may be like the Internet. It's like the stickiest spider web you can get caught in all the world. There is no light at the end of that metaphoric tunnel even, you can't crawl away. In short, it's the worst thing you can ever get into, no matter what end are you caught at- the speaker or the listener. Of course, O me brothers, I am talking about Killer Jokes (KJs).

What did the Polish monkey reply to the cloud ?
Gibber ... yeah mostly gibber.

No me brothers, I am not talking about Poor Jokes(PJs). They are just poor. What can a poor joke do to you? Ask for some change, at best. Remember 'Shining India', we don't care about the poor. Why despise PJs, they may rather do good to you, say, give you a chance to beat that guy up who stole your pencil the previous day and today told you a PJ under the pretext of telling you that awesome joke he had once come across. And may be recycle the same PJ later, pass on that PJ to turn off a gay stalker.
PJ is like a sneeze, a necessary evil, and here, O me brothers, we are talking about the bird flu, the influenza, the asthma- the KJ. You can't even compare a PJ and a KJ threat wise. PJ is Anu Malik while KJ is Himesh Reshammiya. PJ is a tiny pimple on your balls while KJ is castration. PJ is ... okay, you get the idea.

What did Carlos say to P G Wodehouse?
Make love to me, make love to my dog. Come on gangsta!

While you, O me brother, may be having sleepless nights in your room about global warming, cyber crime and all that, KJ may be the next big thing since AIDS. It may be transmitted to you by the think-themselves-funny guys you are otherwise good friends with, may be that book you are reading now, may be the movie that is next in line, may be even sex (especially if you are talking without protection during sex).
It, like AIDS, doesn't kill you. It makes you rot, makes you socially despised, and the ironically funny and final phase is when you begin to like KJ eventually.
It's worse than AIDS that way.

What did Jay say ?
My favorite band is - 'Rage Of the Hypocrites'.

Finally, how to avoid contracting KJ?
Turn sober, start drinking. Read the quotes or speeches of Vivekananda and Churchill. Hang a poster of Rahul Dravid or Roger Federer in your room. And if possible, O me brother, stop reading my blog.

What did Jay say ?
My whole life is dedicated to promote the cause of Nihilism.

Love Story

2008-10-14T03:10:00.005+05:30

What can you say about a twenty-one-year-old girl who hasn't yet died?
That she is beautiful. And brilliant. And she loves Euler and Fermat. And Ramanujam. And me.
Once, when she specifically lumped me with those mathematical types, I asked her what the order was, and she replied, smiling, 'Impact Factor wise.'

Hostel Alone

2008-10-10T01:20:00.005+05:30

Jay jumped across the bed, a full length dive, and landed on a pair of old socks and an empty packet of biscuits that had been lying there for eternity perhaps. That was that. What followed was pretty normal by Jay's standards- three stitches in the face, a dislocated shoulder and a crumbled biscuit, that had been lying there in the packet neglected, all over the ground.

'You didn't wash your socks.' Jay managed when he woke up in the hospital.

The game, by the way, was postponed ad infinitum. Jay used to write long letters to me from the hospital. Perhaps there were a lot of mosquitoes in the toilet over there, his letters were always full of grump and contempt. The letters went on and on about how the people are dying in the world and all that, but never really about his stay there or the syringe holes he had developed in his bum. Sometimes he used to write about the Kanchenjunga, the golden thighs. He had never been to the mountains before and the nurses there were all in their forties, so I passed it as the side-effect of some high-duty sedatives. However, all the letters had the common postscript- 'My batting next'.

Meanwhile his girlfriend Mary got into some really good friendship with the Russian guy Yuan. A well-wisher of him, that I have always been, told him about it. He let out a mysterious smile dipped in an even more mysterious satisfaction and just said- 'Made for each other', looking at the 'No Smoking' placard in the hallway. One day he showed me his shoulder all wrapped in plaster of Paris. It's second-rate, I told him. May be just out of jealousy if not of the yellowish layer the wrap had developed. Why do they call it plaster of Paris, I asked him to change the topic. It was discovered by a guy named Mr. John Paris, grand dad of some Hilton Paris, in 1767, he told me. I was pretty much unsatisfied and even a little amused with his answer but he went on about how that guy got the Nobel prize in Medicine in 1768 for the same. At least his history is pretty good, no fooling around about that.

Finally after two long weeks, Jay was allowed to come back. I had brought him chocolates that day, boy he loved those chocolates. Mary and Yuan came together. How dare you, I shouted at Yuan at the top of my voice but Jay just smiled. Two other friends of Jay had come too. They didn't bring anything, some hospital manners they had. Besides nobody except me really liked Jay. We got Jay out of bed and he smelled funny, like medicines.

Jay batted like old times again. I just sat there and watched him go at it. God, how I had missed him for those two weeks. I wondered if Jay and me were made for each other too. Finally when he couldn't take it any more, he asked- 'You people didn't eat that biscuit, right?'

My reaction to his reaction to their reactions (AArGh)

2008-09-19T21:33:00.003+05:30

This day will be remembered as a golden day in the brief history of this blog. Our guest writer of the day, RGV, needs no introduction. He will be posting his favorite- 'My reaction to their reactions'- part 14. Hold your breaths.

A : I didn't like Phoonk.
RGV: I don't give a damn.

B : I quite liked Phoonk.
RGV: I don't give a damn.

C : I hate Ayn Rand, and Howard Roark doesn't even qualify as human.
RGV: I don't give a damn.

D : I like Ayn Rand, and I have wet dreams about Howard Roark (and his orange hair).
RGV: I don't give a damn.

E : How did you shoot that sequence in Shiva where Nisha Kothari's butt looks 3-D or something and almost jumps out of her shorts (and my 2-D TV screen) ?
RGV: I don't give a damn.

F : Godfather is my favorite movie too.
RGV: I don't give a damn.

G : I could see the influence of Nietzsche in RGV ki Aag.
RGV : I don't give a damn.

F : If you are an asshole, say- I don't give a damn.
RGV : I don't give a .... wait, what was your comment again ?

Last night

2008-09-14T01:00:00.003+05:30

"Rule 8 : If it's your first night, you Have to perform. New guys raise your hands."
I looked around- I am marooned, I am screwed. I collected my notes.

'There couldn't have been a more apt name for their profession- Watchman. They just watch.'
I looked up for the first time, my hands all trembling and greasy on the white sheet. People noticed the joke was over. A few claps, a few yawns, a few disgruntled grunts.
"Next time your joke is over, say Period."
'Okay.'

'I bathed last evening after a week because I was planning a surprise date with my girlfriend. I rang her up but she said no. I guessed it was probably her period so I asked how long ...'
People had already started clapping.
'You chauvinistic bastard.' Some lady yelled from the back row.
'Hey the punch is yet ...'
"Say Peace Out instead of Period next time."

'If I were you and you were me, I would have hated you too. Peace Out.'
'That goddamn bastard stole my line.' Someone yelled.
'You suck too then.' Another yell.
'Fuck you, it's esoteric you fool.' Someone yelled back.
"No personal remarks, and please no plagiarism."

'One of my friends is little too mannered and says Excuse me every time he sneezes or coughs. He has a perennial cold so I informed him that I had excused him permanently except if he sneezes right on my face. But he persisted. So one day when we were in an elevator, I farted and said- Gone with the wind. Peace out.'
'I like that movie. It's not even funny.'
'Of course. It's not even supposed to be funny, I am an engineer.'
"Are you sure you came to Light club meeting ?"
'Hell no. I came for engineers' guild meet. Is it not 209 ?'
"Throw him out. Peace Out."

A letter to No one

2008-08-22T11:00:00.006+05:30

I did this yesterday, bought an inland letter, addressed it to No one, and sat down to jot down some of my thoughts. That's right, addressed it to No one- No one, India. Why India, it's an inland letter you dumb ass.
Anyways so I started writing it, quite fluently in fact, because No one would read it. No one didn't care, nor did I. So this is what I wrote-

Hi No one,
I hope this letter finds you in best of your spirits, of course if it finds you at all. I am fine, as fine as last time I wrote to you in standard ninth though I have changed a lot since then, I laugh rarely, I have become a lot less sarcastic, somewhat less witty. The worst part is my dreams have died down, I am living as a rolling stone.

You never replied, I wasn't expecting either. But it must have reached you, the Dead Letter Office is pretty efficient in India, at least more efficient than the regular post department.
It's really been a long time. I am not a teen any more, and contrary to the normal rule, have grown far less intelligible with time (that is why I am writing to you, to No one). I have started believing in god and lost faith in love, by destiny's turn I have ended up studying biology. It's hard to refute god or believe in love if you are studying biology, you know.

How is you daughter by the way? She must be in bad shape I guess, become the top whore of the town or something by now. She is no one's daughter after all. Sorry for being rude but I have grown a little chauvinistic too, boys' school did that to me. You heard this one- chauvinists are from boys' school, men are from mars, women are from venus ? Yes, I have changed, I told you.

Do you follow politics, news and that kind of stuff ? Of course you do, No one follows that stuff. It's in bad shape, isn't it? All because of you, No one gives a shit. I do care though, to be honest. College did that to me, I don't have much to do. There were bomb blasts last month, and the authorities assured that No one got killed. I cried all night really, I care for you. Next day they corrected and said two died, and only then did I take food.

Oh I forgot to tell you, I have started blogging. It's a place on internet where loners from all around the globe read each other's equally boring lives and rants. I have grown up to be a loser, I have grown up to be a blogger. May be I will publish this letter on my blog. I know you will read it there, No one reads my blog.

It's pretty late. I have got to catch some sleep, I have to attend three-fourth of the classes. I hope at least you did learn something in the classes. No one does.

Hit me back.
Sincerely yours,
(You must have seen this one coming, I am sincere to No one)
Some one.

From point A to point B

2008-08-04T14:18:00.003+05:30

I just visited a female blog and right there on the right side it said- view my stats HERE.
I happily clicked, and it said 0073.
What the fuck !

Yesterday, after getting bored no ends by two black and white classics, I was watching a latest Hindi movie 'Money Hai Toh Honey Hai' for some change. It was pretty good, pretty good to laugh at I mean. I like such movies.

Once one of the few intelligent people I know, my school geography teacher, told us that movies like this, you know Jai Santoshi Ma, Pyaasi Naagin and all are made to convert black money into white money. They arrange outdoor shootings and all, show an average budget on paper, the movie bombs, and the returns, little what so ever, become white, as white as the holy dhoti.
To be truthful, I was not disappointed with that explanation, for I hoped that there must be another explanation except - Indian film makers are dumb, which I hear often in college.

Here at college most of us follow at least half a dozen American soaps. Most of them are crap, I have been told (and learnt), but after all we have to do something. Once one of my friend was watching 'Byomkesh Bakshi', and he was laughed at.
Disgusting, I was a fan of that one when I was a kid. He was laughed at because Indians think that Indians are dumb, we can't make good movies and soaps. Granted that there are not many intelligent movies and soaps around but then there are reasons for that.
For one, every one in India with an IQ above 50 or so is forced to go for engineering, medical, management or you know something 'respectable'. That's the way India works. After all, it took an architect to write 'The god of small things'.

Talking of Byomkesh Bakshi, I am reminded of Bengalis (It would be Vyomkesh in Hindi and Bakhshi in Urdu). Bengalis are the only people in India who can recite the names of ten great Bengalis of all times in one breath, I mean they have portraits of Vivekananda or Tagore on their study desks here in college. I don't even have my dad's! And five of the ten great people will be abstract painters, musicians, film makers. They will probably miss Subhash Chandra Bose. Bengalis are soft people, you see after twelve years in international arena Ganguly can't still play a short ball !

That brings me to another movie I recently watched - 'Via Darjeeling'. Even if I was stoned as hell, I would have guessed that a Bengali directed it. There were like tens of tributes and references to Bengali movies, music, and everything Bengali except Bipasha Basu may be. Taking nothing away from them, Bengalis are cultured and honest people, the movie was a copy(/spoof(?)) of the classic Rashomon, and at one point of time one of the characters had the latter's DVD in his hand. Honest indeed !

Why So Serious

2008-07-24T12:08:00.005+05:30

I have been nocturnal for some time now. Waking up after the sun has set, people amused at the toothbrush in my hand. They think I am mistaking dusk for dawn, I smirk at their smirks. And when I am bored of the smirks, I don't brush my teeth that day.

Sometimes I don't speak to a human being for 18 hours or so, and when I do, it's only on matters of life and death - bhaiya, ek omelette. bhaiya, ek butter scotch. bhaiya, ek coffee. Sometimes I have nothing to do at 4 a.m. in the morning, I can't go around jogging in dark, I am not into computer games, I don't watch soaps, I just sit and wonder -what do I do now. And I mistake that feeling for loneliness. I am stupid- I am just alone, not lonely.

I was sitting in library listening to Romila Thapar's rants about prejudice of European historians about India, all alone in the huge cold space. And then two ill-mannered guys walk by, talking loudly, at least loud enough for a temple or a library. Romila can no longer speak to me, and I am naturally pissed. One of them is probably staff of the college while the other is a fresher and the former's relative. They keep talking loudly on mundane matters like what's the appropriate time and place to take a leak in the college, what color should you wear for classes. Okay, I am exaggerating, they were talking about more important things, but is library the appropriate place!
And then suddenly I realize I have got intolerant to people. All those hours spent alone, a parallel under-cover life, have done this to me. I have built a personal space I don't like people to step in.

Wow, I silently ponder over the consequences. I put Romila on table and go back to my room, away from the world.

Counselling Times

2008-07-20T07:30:00.005+05:30

Recently one of my friends got a mail with a lot of queries about the Maths and Computing department of IIT Guwahati. Even though I am not from his department, for some reason, he thought I would be a better choice to answer the nonsense mail (I still can't infer whether it was an honor or a disgrace).
Anyways, without much ado, here is the mail and my reply to it.

Now, some people (with sand in their vagina and little sense of humor) may feel a little enraged, and to take care of that I have put a disclaimer note and after all, it's my take on it, you are free to agree or disagree. You can still nail me in comment section, but you already know what my reply will be- freedom of speech and blah blah blah.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Good morning,
My younger brother got admission into Math & Computing B.Tech (4 year program) . He appeared for AIEEE & BITS. and with his ranks; he'd get into C.S.(B.E.) at NIT & BITS.
He has future plans to appear for CAT and get into MBA for Masters. He likes IIT more than BITS & NIT.
We know that first batch will be graduating in 2010 & it is too early to ask these questions but just wanted to check with you.

Questions:

- Is Math & Computing(B.Tech) at IIT Gowhati geared towards MBA/CAT?

- We looked at IIT Math dept. faculty & wondering who'll be teaching
Finance courses in 3rd & Final year.

- Who are the hiring companies after graduation?

- Is B.Tech at Math & Computing good a branch to give a shot at CAT?(i.e. this course has right blend of Math & Computers & Finance)

- as an alternative, are there any chances to get into MIT or Stanford for higher studies in Math or Computer programming? or are there chances to get into Wharton or Kellogg or Univ. Chicago for MBA?

We're favoring Math & Computing(B.Tech 4 year course) to BITS & NIT (i.e. It is IIT and Course work is a very rear blend of courses in India. We are very much impressed with curriculum.)

Any of your feedback is very valuable to us. We're in a limbo and thought of the current students for suggestion.

FYI: We got email address from IIT Guwahati website. This is not a SPAM.
Sorry! for the trouble & Your help is highly appreciated.

Good luck & Best Regards,
Ravi

------------------------Reply-------------------------------------------

Hi Ravi,
First of all, thanks for selecting IIT Guwahati. We are honored.
Coming to your questions, I will take them one by one.

- Is Math & Computing(B.Tech) at IIT Gowhati geared towards MBA/CAT?
-Yeah sure. From 6th semester onwards professors stop the regular classes and teach us verbal, quantitative analysis etc. Mock tests are conducted every week, and the winner gets to learn how not to sound dyslexic and spell it Guwahati and not Gowhati.

- We looked at IIT Math dept. faculty & wondering who'll be teaching Finance courses in 3rd & Final year.
-Since the dept is geared towards MBA, nobody gives a heck about the finance courses, and we get to pass the courses without even learning a WORD. Cool na!

- Who are the hiring companies after graduation?
-Very reputed e.g. Bansal Coaching, Packers and Movers, Levis to name a few.

-Is B.Tech at Math & Computing good a branch to give a shot at CAT?(i.e.this course has right blend of Math & Computers & Finance)
-It's not good, it's the best. You can never get into IIM after a B.Tech. in cs, ec, mech, chem etc, forget the science and humanities degrees in other universities.

- as an alternative, are there any chances to get into MIT or Stanford for higher studies in Math or Computer programming? or are there chances to get into Wharton or Kellogg or Univ. Chicago for MBA?
-MIT, Stanford are duly impressed by our CAT preparation scheme, and have told us in writing - 'Our gates are always open for you.' So, don't you worry. Same for Chicago and other universities with strange names.

-We're favoring Math & Computing(B.Tech 4 year course) to BITS & NIT (i.e.It is IIT and Course work is a very rear blend of courses in India. We are very much impressed with curriculum.)
-Thank you thank you. We are overwhelmed with joy and thankfulness, wait did you mean rare by rear. Actually I don't exactly know what a rear blend is, supposing you are not talking about the ass of the courses (as they don't have any). I hope you are not helping your brother with his CAT preparation. Okay a typo, you meant rare blend by rear blend, well thank you.
Though personally I think NIT is better than this place. Remember how India Today trashed us aur saala, bathroom me paani bhi nahin aa raha hai.

I hope my suggestions have been valuable to you, even in the least possible way.

With love,
A.K.

Disclaimer : These are solely my views and have nothing to do with MnC department of IITG.

On a serious(II) note : How can you even think, IIT is a launch pad for IIM ! Should I mail you J.L.Nehru's speech at the inception of IIT Kharagpur?

Chapter 14

2008-07-15T20:13:00.007+05:30

'And when I speak of human frailties and you giggle like a virgin, I know you have other ideas in your mind, but I have no problems with that, given you live in 21st century and so you are understandably an idiot.'
'No Sir, this is not what you think. Please go on with your lovely story. It was not you, it was your beard. It's funny.'
'You are even more stupid than I supposed initially. But son, I won't abandon my story. My patience has been tested so long and in a rather impossible way, a thousand splendid years naked in the sun, the rain, the snow, the sand, with girls and homos all around, that you stupid folks just can't fuck, uh sorry, mess with my patience. Anyways, speaking of stupidity, you will be pleased to know chapter 14 of my story deals with the same.'
'Pleased, ha! I am overjoyed sir, I can die happy now. Can I go now ?'
'It smells like sarcasm in here, but let's leave that for chapter 30, shall we! Back to chapter 14, you may ask why chapter 14 for stupidity? You needn't ask. In our times, nothing happened just for the sake of it, an innocent fart, picking of nose, a giggle, nothing was without a reason. So when I say chapter 14 for stupidity, there is a reason behind it.'
'What reason, sir?'
'I don't know, nobody told me. But take my word, 14 for stupidity. So when the king marched in the woods, there was little doubt in his mind. He was not sure, he was just stupid.'
'Sorry to interrupt you, but sir if I am not mistaken, in chapter 1 you said he was intelligent.'
'That's because 1 stands for brilliance. So as the story goes on, different colors of the character will show up, that's life. Some times you ask intelligent questions, and then you giggle at my beard. So when I contradict next time, don't interrupt me.'
'Incredible story sir, who wrote it?'
'Me, who else do you think? It was a bestseller of my times. But then the world was not so crowded those days, and 100 copies sold was what it took a book to be a bestseller. I was happy, I won some awards, some magazines criticized me just to sound different, I was a happy man till a sage told me that my story, like me, will be gone and forgotten one day. And I was happy no more.'
'So what did you do, commit suicide ?'
'No, the sage had a better idea. He asked me to beat the heaven out of him and he cursed me to wander on earth eternally. He asked me to ask him for forgiveness. That was the catch, he told me. He proclaimed that a time will come, a really bad time, when books like 'Three Mistakes of My Life' will sell half a million copies in the first month, and that will be time when I would re-tell my story to the world, and be the bestselling author of all times.'
'And what makes you think, this book will beat Harry Potter or the Bible ?'
'What potter? I know Bible, it's Quran in English, Quran is Gita in Arabic, Gita is common sense in Sanskrit, some do's and dont's, and a superhero. My story is much better, and moreover, the sage said so.'
'No, the sage didn't say that. He just said you would re-tell the story in 2008, the rest depends on how bollywoodesque your story is.'
'How do you know?'
'What do you think, will I say I am the sage you hit, no way, it would be a premature ending. Anyways, tell me what happened next?'
'Uh! Oh, okay. The king marched on and on ,and the readers kept reading chapter 14.'

The king was incredibly stupid and so are you.

I am polite (or I would have kicked you)

2008-07-13T01:06:00.007+05:30

'Hello, I'm back. This is RJ Mandy on Red FM. Let's see who the next caller is.' (My name may be a sweet Mandira or Mandakini or Mandodari, but I think Mandy is cool. I know Mandy sounds as if I was born in an asylum, but then I am an RJ, I am paid for being a retard.)

'Hiiieee (the show producer asked me to have an orgasm every time I hi a caller) , who is this (get a life you moron) ?'
'I am Megha (And don't ask me what that means, my Hindi sucks) .'
'And Megha is calling us from.... (The place you moron, don't say phone, it's not even funny) ?'
'Phone. Haha. (Got you) !'
'Hayn! Oh, okay (seriously underestimated you). So, tell our audience a little about yourself, Megha (in not more than 200 words) .'
'Hmmm .... I am a normal girl (whatever that means). I am in college (I am killing some time before I get married). Hmmm what else... I like my dad (He hates me, but whatever). Hmmm what else.... I have a boyfriend (yeah, actually someone on earth fell for me)... heeehee. He looks like Shahrukh Khan (if you are on drugs), heee heee , may be a little (finally some sense).'
'Okay, which song will you like us to play (don't you have an mp3 player you cheapo) ?'
'Pehli Nazar Mein ( I don't give a damn, just mention my name before the song, my friends will be so jealous) .'
'And Megha, you would like to dedicate this to .... (be extra nice, and say my name) ?'
'My family (mentions every member individually), friends (mentions all her dumbass friends from the colony and college), and haan haan, my boyfriend (forgets to thank the academy). We had a little fight yesterday (In case it was not already cliched enough) and ...'

----
'Don't you have some another station?' My patience finally gives up.
The shopkeeper gives me a quizzing look, as if he was the boyfriend of that Megha girl. The next station plays an Assamese song, less irritating at least than a retard sharing her life with another one (who is luckily paid to be one) , I thought. Ignorance is bliss.

16th June - All that happens to me - II

2008-06-16T22:34:00.002+05:30

Gossip of the season : Who's that gal?

A: Here she comes.
B: After a week. I thought she had died or got gonorrhea or something.
A: In a black dress. She looks awesome today.
B: I think, it's the same dress as last time.
A: Don't you know the second law of physics, girls never repeat their dresses in the same month.
B: Oh.
[5 minutes gap. B checks her out, A jerks off mentally]

B: You know, she knows I am at looking at her. Should I go talk to her or something?
A: Sure dude.
B: Ok, let me first see if she is on orkut.
A: You know her name? (Sounding as if B told him that he knows her figure)
B: Of course, I don't. There must be a community for summer interns at iitg '08, may be.
A: Nerd!
B: Fuck you.
[They get back to work. Black dress leaves. 10 minutes later]

A: Dude, you remember that 'smokey eyes' at the canteen?
B: Yeah, as much as our father of the nation. Must be in chemistry dept.
A: I saw her yesterday at the badminton court.
B: Really?
A lets out a winner smile.
B: She must be a regular. Screw squash then, we can start badminton from today itself.
[B imagines fucking 'smokey eyes' on the soft badminton court surface. 10 minutes later]

B: Why is the 'white suit' not coming this week?
A: You mean the spectacled one?
B: No, that's the 'yellow T-shirt'.
......
And, so on and so forth, the gossips galore.

Question of the season : 'How is your project going?'

Case I : A and B are both biotechies.
[A pings B on Gtalk.]
A: How is ****(your guide)?
B: In the best of his health, bathes daily even though it rains here 8 hours a day, doesn't shave that often though. His kids go to school daily, and no, I am not dropping them to school.
A: lol
After a brief silence(what do you call a long pause in chat anyways), A comes to the point.

A: How is you project going?
B: You know ****, and you know me. And think of us together, now how do you think it must be going?
A: lolz. Chalo bye, gtg. See ya after lunch. (A had his lunch of sarcasm though)

Case II: A is B' friend from some other department.
A: How is the project going?
B: It's going fine, not going great but it's going nice. Hopefully would be completed. Yours?
A: ...[same answer in Hindi]...

Case III: A is perfect stranger to B, they meet by chance on the lunch table, A gets bored soon and then
A: How is the project going?
B: Nice, can you pass the rice?

Nice is such a nice word. It can mean from 'good' to 'mind your own business'. Nothing beats nice!
Not agreed, take this:
A: Children, how is the project going?
B: Bad.
A: Why bad?
B : blah blah blah.
A: See, but you can always blah blah blah (solutions that will solve 95.4% of the world's problems, a project is too easy a thing)

But you can't really say 'Why nice?' to 'Nice'.

Imagine

2008-06-09T20:25:00.004+05:30

I hail from Bihar/Jharkhand.

If I would have been the national squash champion, I would have told the media that I am very proud of my roots. But right now, I am not. That does not mean I am ashamed of it or indifferent to it (which would have been another way of saying I am ashamed of it), it's just that it never occurs to me.

But trust me, it matters ; for it decides people's perception about you. When I tell someone from some other state that I am from Bihar, he is most likely to visualize me in one of the following conditions :

1. chewing pan(or selling pan), spitting aimlessly on the road and discussing politics.
2.delivering milk at his house on an antique Royal Enfield or Rajdoot.
3. carrying bricks at some place hundreds of miles away from Bihar.
4. looting a train or at least looting your seat or comfort in a train.
5.contesting a university election, no matter where the university is located in India.
6.whistling in the front row in a Bhojpuri theater.

I am not denying them, and that doesn't mean I am supporting them. I mean there are places I have never been to, and I have my own prejudices towards the land and its people.

For example, Brazil to me
1. The major occupation of the country is logging on to orkut.com
2. In their spare time, they prepare for next soccer world cup. (play it if they are players, rest of them tailor special inner wares with the national flag printed on them.)

Or say, US
1. The major occupation of the country is making porn movies.
2. Those who don't really like sex go to MIT and later on work at Microsoft or NASA.

Or may be, Pakistan
1. They make bombs, rock songs and modified bikes and cars.
2. In their spare time they upload Indian movies and songs on the internet.
[In fact, I quite like Pakis. They are really cool people if you have ever read their language on the internet and all. Mah, moi and you know all that portugese/spanish stuff.]

Or may be China
1. They make watches, calculators and noodles in day time.
2. They ask for Sikkim at night.

Or may be Poland
1.Who cares!

Or may be Bangladesh
1. They keep mourning all year long as their cricket team keeps playing with another countries around the calendar.
2. Those who can't take more of the mourning migrate to India.
[No offense towards Taslima Nasrin]

Or may be I should go to sleep now.

P.S.
If you are from any of the above mentioned countries, I know what you must be thinking about me:
1. He is a C programmer or works at a BPO.
2. He is a snake charmer.
3. He is high on drugs of the exotic land.
4. He is a practitioner of Yoga or Kamasutra.

And you are all wrong. I am just nobody.

In case you are Sudar: Well dude I am sparing Sri Lanka just because you are my friend.

6th June- The Three Mistakes Of My Life

2008-06-07T03:48:00.003+05:30

The 3 mistakes of my life are:

1. I bought ' the 3 mistakes of my life ', sigh.

2. I read it, sigh.

3. I am publicly making a fool of myself by telling you this, sigh.

Orkut and the blonde

2008-06-05T07:02:00.002+05:30

An american blonde in Orkut Büyükkökten.'s scrapbook :

"Were your parents so blown over by orkut.com that they named you after it ?

By the way nice pictures :) "

'All apologies' to 'The Bet'

2008-04-16T22:11:00.006+05:30

"It's time." The banker thought. The party fifteen years ago was still so vivid in his mind as if it all happened yesterday. He couldn't believe his stupid and pampered ego fifteen years back.

"Capital punishment or life imprisonment?"
"Well, depends."
"On what?"
"Mode of capital punishment, of course. I won't mind a cyanide injection but I would definitely like to live in a prison forever rather than getting whipped to death."
"Haven't you seen any prison movie ? There are only faggots in a prison. I mean you won't like your ass getting whipped for a lifetime either."
Everybody smiled. Nobody had a clue.
"No matter what, life imprisonment is better than capital punishment." The young engineer interrupted. The confidence in his still voice brought along dead silence.
"Don't just argue for the sake of it. I bet two million you won't stay in solitude for even five years." The banker shouted angrily.
"Five, eh, I say fifteen."
While others thought it was just a stupid brawl , they pushed it too far.
"Let's lay down the conditions."
"Don't worry. I have read the story 'The Bet'. Just replace food, piano,books, wine, tobacco by computer, free net and a regular supply of food, vodka, game and music CDs and cigarettes. It's 2008, you know."
"Okay done."

The banker looked at his watch. It was exactly twelve. He went to the basement and opened the door. In the smoke-filled room, the engineer was sleeping in his chair. As he moved towards the ghostly figure, he tried to find any letter in the room.
"There it is." His eyes twinkled as he thought of the two million bucks, he had saved over these fifteen years.

"Dear Mr. Banker,
I love you man. These fifteen years have been pure delight.
I have crossed the highest score of every game in the world. I have like hundreds of online girlfriends. I have completed listening to every single rock song composed ever and I know I am wiser than you all.
And you know what, I am loving it. I despise your world and your money.
Please give me a fifteen year extension. I need to reach level 15 in the game 'Lost earth' and I think I am in love with Neisha and I am about to propose her. I just need time and I know you need your money.
I hope you will make a right choice this time.
Once again, I love you man. See you then fifteen years later.
Peace. Respect. \_/
Rehan.
P.S. : Wake me up if Neisha is online."

"Geek." The banker laughed and left. This time he didn't lock the room.

Clueless!

2008-01-18T00:47:00.005+05:30

Winter in IITs is the season of applying for summer projects and internships. People ,based on their interests, apply for summers in companies and universities both in India and abroad.

Now, that's the ideal case. What happens mostly is people follow seniors' advice and go to some university without having a damn idea about their so-called field of interest.

"Should I go for computational biology ?" I caught up with a senior at the lunch-table.
"Ya, great."
"But what do we do in that ?"
"Aaaah....Look....." The senior was completely mesmerised with my cluelessness and was at complete loss of words. "Well it's basically solving biological problems using coding." He summed it up for me.
"Fish, I hate coding. You know I managed a mere pass in both the computer courses. What are the other fields I can go for?"
The senior just kept gaping at me.

Sometimes people are wise enough to approach a local professor to get some paper presentation or project during the semester to get a feel of the field and then decide accordingly whether to go for summers in that field or not. I have been through that too.

"May I come in Sir?" Already half in, I was mentally revising all the lines I had thought of.
"Yes?"
The room was almost a Nazi gas chamber filled with cigarette smoke. Introducing myself , I asked for a project under his guidance.
"Hmmm...How many courses do you have this semester?"
"Sir.... 6 or 7 .... or may be 8. I don't exactly remember." Great start, I thought.
"Don't you feel burdened?"
I almost laughed at that wisecrack. Was that supposed to be some joke? Burdened with what ? For the record, I study for a maximum of 1 hour per week. I mean, you don't need to study here unless you want to top.
"No sir." I managed.
"Hmmm...What's your CPI?" They call it CPI at some IIT's and GPA at others. If you haven't read the legendary 'Five point someone', it's basically the worth of an IITian on a 10 point scale!

Now, what has CPI got to do with a project? If you ask me, it can be termed as discrimination on the basis of CPI and should be punishable under law like discrimination on sex, colour, religion, caste etc.
"7.87" I said meekly.
"And what's the highest CPI of the batch?"
"9.94" Later I learnt it was 9.8 ,but who cares.
"You just said you don't feel burdened. Why don't you have a 9.94 then ?"
I thought he could have asked me my age and then that of Sania Mirza and said -'She is of your age, right? Why don't you play tennis at the Wimbledon ?'

I had nothing to say. I just wanted to leave. But he followed it with some moral lecture on importance of CPI and the right time to ask for a project. I simply kept nodding.

"What happened ?" A friend asked me as I came out of the gas chamber.
I was very busy analysing what had gone wrong. He sensed it.
"Let's go for tennis." He proposed.
"Tennis?" I looked at him and just asked - "What's your CPI ?"

Dentally Retarded

2008-01-07T21:54:00.008+05:30

--------------------------------------------------------

"Don't sleep." Preeti came back to check me.
Is she fucking crazy? A human being has just been informed that 1/6th of his mouth is infected, he is in total dental and mental pain ,and to top it all he has just been injected. How the hell can he fall asleep!
"Do you feel heaviness in your mouth?" She inquired.
I nodded affirmatively. She went to call the doctor. Surprisingly, he was back this time without anything to eat. He got the drill-thing in my mouth again. As soon as he switched it on, I shivered with pain.
"You still feel it. Surprising. LA again, Preeti." He announced and went away.
I smiled in disdain. She noticed it.
"You won't feel the injection this time, the spot is numb you know."
So what, I wanted to say, but I couldn't.

"You fine?" I looked up to find another doctor this time. 'Dr. Ravi', his nameplate read.
"No." I managed somehow.
"Okay. Tell this to me after 20 minutes. Here we go."
No pain. The drill moved around in my mouth quite smoothly. I knew the previous doctor was more focused on eating than anything else.
"Why are you so nervous? Does it pain?" Dr. Ravi suddenly put the drill aside.
"No."
"Why the hell are you sweating and stiffening then? You know you are making me nervous now." He complained. "Okay, let's just talk for a while."
I was in no mood to talk. Not because my mouth was numb, just that I wanted to get away from the place as soon as possible.
"What do you do?"
I wanted to give the trademark 'Chemistry Bachelors' answer. But something told me not to lie this time.
"Studying engineering."
"Where?"
"IIT Guwahati."
"Oh. How many girlfriends do you have?"
I looked in his eyes for the first time. I was not ready for that.
"No." I said as Preeti was near by, studying me ,as a case obviously, very closely.
"Okay forget the previous question. Tell me her name."
I didn't know if he was serious or just killing time. If he was trying to make me feel at home, he was wrong. I wasn't feeling at home.
"There are no girls at IIT." I lied.
"Don't lie now. My brother had a love marriage with his IIT classmate." He said this more to himself than to me.
"Okay. Tell me who is the most beautiful girl in the clinic?" He changed gears.
"What?" I looked at Preeti in shock. She was still fine, perhaps she was too familiar with his ways.
"You know their names, right ?"
"No."
"This is Preeti. And the other one is Gunjan."
"And the receptionist?" It just came out.
"Ahhhhhhaa !" He let a got-ya grunt. "Her name is Nidhi."
I looked at Preeti. Her eyes were blank. Not that she liked me or anything, she just couldn't believe a moron found the receptionist better than a house intern. Ravi thankfully realized the graveness of the situation too.
"Okay, back to work." I had lost count of his okays long ago.

"No. 23. My report please." I couldn't believe I had survived those 20 minutes and was alive and looking at Nidhi again.
"One second, sir. Your report is still with the doctor." Her smile was gone.
I wondered why she was sir-ing me. Had Preeti told her about my revelation?
I looked at the plasma for a change. Rakhi Sawant was still crying.
"Nidhi." Someone called her from inside. May be Ravi for my report.
She was back with my report after a minute. And, oh my god, she was smiling this time.
"No. 23" She asked me, still smiling. It wasn't a receptionist's smile, of that I was sure.
"Yes."
"You will have to be back the day after tomorrow.......... "
She followed it with a lot of instructions, but I didn't care.
I wanted to jump around, punch the air and tell everyone I was in love. At first sight. In a dental clinic. With the receptionist.
May be it was high time I stopped watching Hindi movies or may be I had gone Dentally Retarded.