This side of paradise

The Decision - I am taking my talents to...

2010-08-16T01:43:00.003+05:30

I thought I would never come back here. Sad, but yes.

The decision wasn't easy. Like this slightly more (in)famous decision that got all the hype:

I am not fortunate enough to have Miami as a choice, but nevertheless, I am taking my talents this summer to:

The Big Show & SportsWave

It will combine the two things I love: sports and satire. We at The Big Show decided to flirt with the idea of combining the two.

The first attempt, the pilot episode for the The Big Show podcast can be found here:

The Pilot Episode

I apologize to whatever few regulars occasionally visited the site looking for an update, or response, but I do hope you do join me at my new pursuit.

Not ruling out a return, this blog has been special, and memorable)

Time Out: End of First Quarter

2009-05-14T00:00:00.000+05:30

The last time my age was a perfect square,

I was all of 16, and felt like a star.
It used to feel like 2 has the power of 4;
Trust me, it did seem like that for sure.

Now having finished a quarter of my life,
People ask how it feels to be twenty-five.
Well, it feels like 5 has the power of 2,
Unfortunate, cruel; but so fucking true.

[And no, this in any way does not mean to hint at anything that would suggest that I take those "Power Enhancement" spam messages really seriously henceforth. I wish so till 8 has the power of 2.]

Sex Appeal in Movies, Literally

2009-03-27T00:00:00.005+05:30

Your favourite weekly death-by-analysis column is back! Only this time with a slightly more constructive approach towards analysis and the resulting conclusions.

While browsing through IMDb, I happened to look at the Top 50 ranked movies by gender. This gave me an idea to make a list of the Top 50 overall movies and then compare it against the Top 50 movies for each gender. I compared the list of overall Top 50 ranked movies against the male and female choices respectively and also compared the male and female list with each other. Since the number of male votes hugely outnumber the female votes, the overall list is pretty much in-line with the overall list.

The results are pretty much unsurprising in terms of what guys rate to be a good movie and what girls rate to be a good watch. So here they are:

What women want (and men don't)

44. Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le (2001) [15]

Lead Female character, hardly any one else gets any air time. Unsurprising.

48. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) [16]

Idealistic, classic, moral tale narrated by kids. Any guesses why guys don't rate it that high?

What men want (and women don't)

Quite a few in the Top 50 list actually.

4. Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966) [4]

*No* females. Cowboys, shootouts, wars. No wonder the girls keep away.

5. Pulp Fiction (1994) [5]

Gangsta. Nonsensical (seemingly) storyline. Typical guy stuff.

13. Shichinin no samurai (1954) [11]

Old, black and white Jap movie about some warriors protecting a village. No females again.

15. Goodfellas (1990) [12]

Cool gangsta flick. Again.

17. Cidade de Deus (2002) [15]

Gangsta. Mindless carnage. Carange by kids. Drugs. Well, well, well.

19. C'era una volta il West (1968) [19]

Whatever holds true for the earlier one in the Dollar Trilogy. What's with girls and westerns?

26. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) [27]

Satire. Black humor. Tough to grasp basically. And did I mention no females again?

26. Memento (2000) [27]

Mindless violence. Black and white, colour, forward, backward. Ends in the middle. Did I mention tough to grasp? And no females, again?

29. The Matrix (1999) [24]

Nobody knows what the matrix is. Especially the girls.

30. Citizen Kane (1941) [31]

A balck and white movie about a self obssessed old dude. And before I forget, no females, again.

33. Se7en (1995) [26]

Violence. And we all know the fate of the single female character in the movie. Ouch!

35. Apocalypse Now (1979) [29]

War. The horror, the horror. And no females except the Vietnamese women killed on the boat. Or the one that hands over the file to Harrison Ford in one of the initial scenes (Anyone know here name?)

36. American Beauty (1999) [35]

This one's tough. But probably because a married man finally decides to fight back and enjoy life? Maybe?

37. Taxi Driver (1976) [34]

A psycho taxi driver who takes his girlfriend to a porn movie. And we all know what a .45 magnum does to certain physical parts.

39. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) [40]

A mad guy wandering in the desert for what seems like 10 million years. And no females in sight.

42. Paths of Glory (1957) [47]

War. What is is good for? Guys!

43. M (1931)

A silent German movie about a psycho killer who abducts and kills children. Any guesses why girls stay away?

49. Alien (1979) [45]

Aliens bursting out of human anatomy. Cool stuff. Strictly for guys.

50. A Clockwork Orange [43]

Ha ha ha. I mean like there was any doubt for this one.

What both men and women want (just about)

10. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [m-9, f-30]

And the girls who watch do so because their brothers/fathers/bf's/husbands talk about how cool it would be to own a light saber at least 300 times a day. Lightsabers *are* cool. I like the green one. Whoooosh.

3. The Godfather: Part II (1974) [m-3, f-22]

Curiously the girls nore or less agree with guys on Part I. Because Michael gets too ambitious in the second one?

31. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) [m-33, f-47]

It gets harder and harder to explain.

12. Star Wars (1977) [m-13, f-24]

Lighstsabers.

21. Fight Club (1999) [m-17, f-28]

Pleasant surprise to find this one in the female list.

The ones which girls have ranked higher than guys are mostly cases of skewed sample sets and low votes. Nothing explains LOTR and American History X being ranked higher in the girls list. Except maybe Silence of the Lambs.

Then there the neutral movies, which both seem to like equally: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shawshank Redemption, Psycho, The Dark Knight, Casablanca, North by Northwest, Leon, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Vertigo.

An image of the analysis sheet, just in case you are interested.

Enough. Time to get back to work.

A lament: How over-analysis killed subjectivity and gave way to undesirable objectivity

2009-03-14T23:32:00.002+05:30

Heavy, huh?

Lately, I’ve found that my professional skill set is somehow permeating into the non-professional persona (loosely termed as the personal side) and wreaking havoc. This realization, of course, came through a series of over analytical studies on human behavior (I still qualify as one) and deconstructing thought processes behind every action.

They say you should keep your professional life and personal life at arm’s length. As always, they are right. I’ll explain you why.

Professionally I’m supposed to look for objective justification of everything that is happening or not happening. If I do not, I am taken apart at reviews which take place to do exactly that: take apart subjective reporting.

As an example (highly illustrative in nature), when I say that your cowshed is a bit too lenient on handing out fodder to the cows this month, I have to substantiate, and spice it up it by saying:

Your cows produced more milk last month as compared to current month
Your cows consumed less fodder last month as compared to current month
You did not set a benchmark to optimize production per unit consumption of fodder and did not monitor current month’s consumption/production against benchmark

(And a hell lot of other things. Thank God this one’s not being reviewed)

Then I list out the fallouts of this whole little fodder mix-up. There’s always the value add that says:

You should recover some costs by using the by-product in the process (cow-dung cake from cow dung) at some stage as a substitute to some other material (say for keeping the cows warm at night by burning the cow dung cake)

Then there’ll be always be graphs, pie-charts etc. which are supposed to provide immediate impact to the higher management who cannot sift through all the lowly detail heavy cow dung material. Quite literally.

So it goes. You take a fact, and you justify. You take a plump fact, make it go through a series of high definition sharp toothed crushers (analysis tools/methodology) and extract every single drop of juice. Then you present it to a third person to ensure that he CANNOT have a different point of view. No scope for subjectivity.

Fair enough. This or higher levels of objectivity are good to have at the workplace. As a benefit, they make it that much easier to figure out the possible reason behind the extra fodder:

Some ‘external’ cows (or whoever has a taste for fodder) have been feeding out of the cowshed
Short delivery by the supplier
Fodder scam! (human beings can have a taste for fodder too)
Generally, the cows have been more hungry and lazy

Enough fodder for thought?

Somehow this analysis-till-death approach has been embedded in my sub-consciousness too. This, as you can tell by now, is making my non-professional life very creepy.

This why-why-why-why-why methodology, which forms a basis of these analyses, is taking control of every thing that happens around me. Be it

something that someone says or does to me,
something that is being done by someone in general to anybody else,
something I have said or done (as is apparent)

And a whole lot of other things.

This is wrong, I know. When someone says something, he might not have performed this painful analysis of why he is saying it, or what effect does he want out of what he says. It is just a momentary action, sometimes undeserving of any serious thought. What happens with me these days is that I try and get to the bottom of the thought process that could have generated such a statement and end up psyching myself up with my self-drawn conclusions.

Things get more complicated when I hear the same event or statement from more than one different person. The situation could be as simple as this:

A: “I talked to that guy today”
B: “That guy talked to me today, he told me about his conversation with A”

Both A and B relate the incident to me, with their first person narrations and of course additional inputs. Normally when you narrate an incident in the first version, there is a bias that comes in the narration. The bias could be:

Glorifying (It was such an absolute revelation talking to him)
Justification (I normally wouldn’t talk to him, but he came in my way, so I said “Hi”. I couldn’t avoid it, you know)
Trivializing (Yeah we met today, so what else were we talking about?)

Since I already have a rough idea of the incident, with my point of view, I really find it hard to associate to and explain any one line of thought. Or the way it is presented to me as if to influence my original line of thought.

(Rashomon, in retrospect, is such a masterpiece of a movie)

I, like anyone else, am guilty of the same. However, admittedly I am not the same in front of different people, just cannot be. I may be talking happily about the latest Bollywood gossip (highly illustrative, again) to someone, while find it stupid in front of another person with whom I could be discussing Bergman’s works. Everyone has different faces in different situations and in front of different people, and none of them is definitive them.

That explains the points of view and narration bias. The bias comes in to maintain a consistency in front of the person who you are narrating the incident to. Say in the earlier example, if person A knows I hate the guy he talked to, he would use ‘justification’. If he knows I really admire that guy, he will resort to ‘glorifying’ and if he knows I don’t care, he’ll just ‘trivialize’. Of course, this wouldn’t happen all the time, but it does happen a lot of times.

I get judged similarly. Sometimes the faces you present in front of different people, situations overlap, and that is another problem. Person A knows me in a different context, person B knows me in an entirely different one. The problem arises when person A judges, from his opinion of me, about what I say or do to person B and person B does the same. This is an apparent inconsistency in behavior, and I fail to explain it somehow. Frame of reference is such a bloody brilliant concept.

There is no absolute me, or you. There are frames of references in which you and I exist as seen by different people and in different situations and they should not be viewed from any other frame of reference to avoid any complications. I am trying my absolute best to do this.

All this may seem nonsensical and stupid to you, but if you were me, you would know exactly what I mean and exactly how I feel. Sometimes you can psychoanalyze people and tell exactly what they think and mean, but there is no purpose in doing that.

Analyzing people is not a fucking game in which you score points whenever you predict something about someone. It does feel good at first, but it ends in fucking you up when you end up knowing things you never wanted to think about. Or what the other person never meant. Because sometimes, you tend to think you’re right about something, and relate everything that happens to your line of thought and build upon your case. Then this whole psycho game takes control of you before you know and you end up screwing yourself and everyone around you in the process.

Stop. There are far better things to do than think on someone else’s part. That’s what I tell myself every time a self-destructing line of thought crosses my mind.

Delusions, false justifications and untrue notions; I’ve seen that fucking up people’s mind bad. So bad to someone so close, that after almost a decade of providing support and re-assurances, I feel helpless and unsure about the future.

I pledge never to play this game anymore. Psychiatrists all over can take a sigh of relief (unless I end up visiting one).

Also now whenever I come across something like the following paragraph:

Hughes has been the standout performer after making twin centuries in Durban but North was also brilliant in compiling a hundred on debut at the Wanderers. Hilfenhaus has bowled superbly and deserved greater rewards, while other men to have joined the squad in the past few months, players like Andrew McDonald and Peter Siddle, have played key roles in the series win.

I'll stop asking questions like:

How do you measure 'stand out' performance of Hughes? Define 'stand out'.
How do you say North was brilliant? Define 'brilliant'.
Why do you say Hilfenhaus bowled brilliantly? Define 'brilliantly'.
What do you mean by 'key roles'? Substantiate 'key roles'.

Yes, I've become that pathetic.

Enough. I was never one to write such incomprehensible gibberish, but this is something I felt I had to do for my own future reference. Serenity now.

The cows are calling me back. Moo.

what is this life if full of care...

2009-03-11T12:49:00.003+05:30

So it takes a lonely day at a far-off guest house room on the festival of colors to gather my thoughts and put it into writing. It has been a busy few days, with its fair share of experiences. Just to give an indication:

3 Sundays ago

A trip to Khan market, savoring Khan Chacha's delicious 'Tikka Rolls' (the plural form is intentional). This was followed by a mandatory visit to The Big Chill for a mesmerizing 'Mud Pie'. Then a visit to the Old Fort in its entire majestic splendor at the break of dusk, to attend the South Asian Music Concert, featuring bands from across SAARC nations. Parikrama was good, except their most famous song, I liked their Maiden cover of 'Trooper' and another original called 'Am I Dreaming'. There was this band called 'Cobweb' from Nepal which had a massive support, something I've never seen, with people waving Nepal flags in the crowd and doing crazy stuff. Rest of it was nothing much to write about. But the setting with all the modern rock music played against the centuries old walls of the Old Fort presented an amazing visual experience. Unforgettable.

2 Sundays ago

I was stationed at Laksar, a place near Haridwar and made it a point to utilize the benefit of this proximity. Rajeev came on a short notice from Delhi, and my colleague at Laksar was equally enthusiastic about rafting in Rishikesh. The three of us took a raft intended for 8 people (with two instructors of course) on a 12 km stretch for a memorable two hours ride. The thrills came intermittently at the rapids, where for a few moments we felt helpless at the hands of a raging river; the boat rocking wildly, the force of the chilled water hitting across the body almost knocking it over. In striking contrast, the rest of journey was a peaceful, slow and serene ride.

Somewhere in between they had this cliff jumping point. As an answer to all complaints I received of never having taken a holy dip in any of my visits, I decided to do it the extreme way. The jump from some 20 meters high into the mighty river is a thrill that just cannot be put into words. A suggestion for anyone planning to take a holy dip in Ganges: This is the way to do it.

1 Sunday ago

No such luck. Back to the cement plant in the middle of nowhere. The only thrill being waking up early morning to see the Indian batting order creating records every day. Living with that.

There was more, but I’m not sure it is such a good idea to whine in public anymore.

Page Refreshed

2009-02-10T19:40:00.006+05:30

It's not that nothing worth writing happened these days. A lot happened, personally or otherwise. Again, it's not that I did not want to write. My dashboard shows more drafts than posted entries right now. The ones that got deleted go unrecorded.

Along went the unrecorded experiences and opinions: from witnessing Kumble's last test match at Kotla to visiting Vaishno Devi twice, with a sneak visit to Dalhousie where I saw snow for the first time in my life. From the seething anger and sheer helplessness that I felt inside after the Mumbai attacks to the overjoy and jubilation of watching Australia lose to us and then to the Proteas. Reviews of the few books that I read and movies that I saw went unwritten. Also went uncaptured the highs and lows and the emotional turmoil that accompanied the last few months (it never ceases does it?). And a lot that I don't even remember at this point of time.

I finally decided to let go of the inertia. To erase the slate, refresh the page and make a beginning. Forget all that could not be written and not let all that I could write suffer on that account.

The time away taught me a lot of lessons. When you have a lot of time alone, you tend to think about things you normally would not have considered worth thinking. Learning to adapt in an alien environment with hardly any like-minded people around (very unlike minded to be precise) compounded by less and less time spent with the like minded ones from outside that environment to keep a sanity check gives enough fodder for such unnecessary thoughts. You're made to realize how somethings you did not think important were the only things you wish for now to be happy and sane. Along with a wish to get back to a time where things were so much simpler. When each day there was something to look forward to, rather than wish to go through a day without any mishappenings.

I contested the idea of including such incoherent thought process in this post, but that was another thing I needed to get over with before pledging a fresh start.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I watched Dev-D the other day. I had high expectations, considering Abhay Deol is someone who has featured in some good and offbeat movies lately, most notably Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye. Then there were some rave reviews with rating stars handed out like pizza fliers.

The movie watching experience was a revelation. You could sense the discomfort in the theater when the utter rawness of the movie hit the audience, and it didn't take long. There are different shades you present in front of different people, and the movie hit the deepest, darkest shade in everyone; a shade that hardly ever comes out in the open. For people like us it hardly made a difference, not that we are experienced with every raw emotion - the desperation for love and lust, alcohol and drug abuse. But yeah, the rawness of the language and the context of conversations was nothing we are not used to. And the discomfort of the people around was quite amusing, we even exploited the discomfort for our further amusement.

But, the movie itself was not something I would rate very highly. I cannot come up with a set of pre-specified parameters to measure it up but it just did not appeal to me. I never had the courage to go through any of the two earlier Devdases to compare it, but I think the movie must have scored in terms of zero pretence in terms of what to present in front of the audience. Certainly not your time pass weekend movie to go out with family and friends. And to imagine there were kids sitting in front of me, wonder what they would have taken from the movie.

The saving grace for me was the music, which had an obvious rock (grunge rock not pop rock) influence. And Abhay Deol himself didn't put up a bad performance himself.

I also watched 'Slumdog Millionare' the week before. It felt like watching one of those dubbed southie movies, where you could get and appreciate everything that was being shown but somehow everything was way detached and it felt like everyone was putting on a show. Hard to explain, but I get the same feeling when I watch India specific programs, dubbed in Hindi, which would have projected something new, special to someone watching it in English in a far off country but fail to register, fail to somehow appeal to me. The whole purpose of it is to present it to people who have little knowledge of what is being shown and have a perspective of someone who intends to present India within an hour's worth of documentary.

It was entertaining, nonetheless. A great story, and a fast paced narrative for most of the time. The background music was also worth all the praise.

Then I read Slaughterhouse 5 last month. It was unlike anything I've ever read before. The concept of living life in four dimensions, where people do not die in absolute terms but are just dead for a moment in time and alive in all others kept me occupied for a long time after reading the book. Imagine man as a centipede with tender baby legs at one end and old frail legs at the other. The book is also a wonderful take on war, its purpose and perception and most of the message is conveyed without being preachy or rhetoric.

Once again it made me feel how little I know of the treasures that lay undiscovered in front of me. The whole pebbles in sand and the infinite sea analogy all over again. Time to take a dive.

Search for a purpose: The first effort

2008-11-11T21:22:00.003+05:30

One day I decided I could not live on any longer without a purpose. Unlike the ambitious lot, I do not have a long term purpose of making it big. This makes my daily existence solely and totally dependent on self decided short term purposes. Last year it was learning tennis, then making a football team. Lately time and extreme mobility don't offer me the luxury to pursue those dreams. But, I decided, things could not go on like this.

So after a great deal of thought and analysis (not resulting in getting myself psyched up for a change); I figured a way out. Getting back my reading habit and occupy myself with books. Then again, choice of books also presents another dilemma. Recommendations, highly rated, referenced, less famous works by favorite authors, popular, random picks from the bookshop; too much to decide. I decided to give this quest a direction too, inspired from the chase for the IMDb top 250 movies.

I researched for lists of most critically acclaimed novels and zeroed in on 2 of them: the TIME magazine list and the Modern Library list. I know the subjectivity of this method, but I figured out there was hardly any harm in reading a few famous books at the least. Snooty as it may sound.

The reading list was made by extracting the common books out of the two lists, consisting of 100 books each (thank you, my limited excel skills). That left 44 books in the common list. An initial assessment revealed that I had managed just 5 out of the 44, a figure reminiscent of my college maths marks. *Sniff*

You can find the lists in the Excel sheet here.

It was not easy to find those books too, in the priority order that I had made after reading a synopsis of each. However, I just managed to finish the first book in the quest and will put my reading experience and perspective in this space (I hate calling it review, hardly qualified to review such stuff).

The first book in this list was "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh.

It is indeed a strange experience to find an author come just short of trashing his own creation in the prologue and then go ahead and read the book. But, then, it also acts a disclaimer. When the writer himself, in retrospect, brands the language "rhetorical and ornamental" and the content focusing on splendors of the past and infused with gluttonous references to good food and wine, there is little you can add to that. And then there is the deep underlying theme of religion, which I have never come to appreciate much in literature or cinema.

All said and done, it was a wonderful book; probably because I could relate to the predicament (a judgmental word) of Sebastian, a dear friend of the protagonist and first person narrator Captain Charles Ryder. The book itself is written in retrospect, a drift down the memory lane triggered by a chance visit by a now captain in the army to a place he had been associated with all through his past. A place where he did not belong, but was always in awe of. A place where his blue blooded friend Sebastian belonged to, but chose to refer it as "a place where my family stays" rather than his own home. Brideshead.

The entire novel is the story of how Charles, an ordinary college going adolescent, gets acquainted to a prodigal and disillusioned Sebastian which leads to an initial infatuation with the royal life style. As Charles gets to know more of his friends reason for disillusionment, and erratic behavior in the front of the family, he himself finds himself distant from that world and in search of his own.

If the story centered around Sebastian and the reasons for his disengagement and disinterest, I would have liked the novel much more. Instead, in my opinion, it ends up presenting a most dishonest perspective of the narrator, probably intentionally so. The first person tone and assertiveness grew stronger towards the end, so much so that it presented the narrator as an unparalleled apostle of self righteousness and devoid of any human emotions and feeling. If such was the intention, then it was a perfect way to achieve it.

So much for this book. I have moved on to the next one, which I will discuss soon hopefully.

Much has happened in between, in terms of experiences and I must finish those unfinished drafts to have them in print. I'll get back to doing that then.

Plotting Week Points

2008-10-25T12:10:00.002+05:30

Go figure?

A drag of a Friday afternoon at work revealed that graphs do sometimes reflect your mood.

Voices in my head

2008-09-23T00:00:00.006+05:30

I'm no longer a music explorer like I used to be back in college. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the excess leisure time to sample new bands and songs is no longer available. Also lately (and some would say unsurprisingly) I've found myself listening to a select few songs over and over again because the lyrics linger on long after the song's gone. Some others because of the serene and calming effect they have. For me atleast.

For the lack of original things to write upon, and the inspiration to write them, I'll just list them songs down.

1. Blue Sky - Allman Brothers Band

A long time favourite. There's something about the guitar playing in this song that gives me goosebumps. And the lyrics is simple enough.

You're my blue sky, you're my sunny day.
Lord you know it makes me high when you turn your love my way

Not profound, but beautiful. Wonderful imagery.

2. Time - Pink Floyd

Most of the times this song captures my mood. In all probability, yours too.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Memento Mori. A perennial theme you may argue. Beauifully captured nonetheless.

3. Ripple - Grateful Dead

I'm in love with this band all over again. This song a piece of poetry in itself and a subject of essays with attempted explanations. Why even the refrain of this song is a 17 syllable Haiku:

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

But the most wonderful and my personal favourite part comes after that:

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home

You can read an entire discourse on this song here.

4. The song remains the same - Led Zeppelin

Sound familiar doesn't it. My favourite Led Zep song at the moment.

California sunlight, sweet calcutta rain
Honolulu starbright--the song remains the same

Or is it because of the Calcutta reference? I don't know.

5. The world turns all around her - The Byrds

Again my favourite Byrds song at the moment. Nothing in particular about the lyrics (I guess so); just like the tune.

That's about enough for now I guess. I hope I'll do better than making lists henceforth. Then, something has to be better than nothing.

The song remains the same

2008-08-31T11:52:00.004+05:30

No posts, no news. nothing? Well this blog hit an existential bloc lately. A very pretentious justification to hide a lot of things; laziness, lack of interest and that perennial shortage of time. It is not that I did not want to write something. A look at my blogger dashboard would show how the number of drafts in one page outnumber the actual posts. It was almost as if a miniature devil and angel were sitting on my shoulders, one asking 'Why blog?' and the other 'Why not?'. Not sure which was which, but one of them just won.

A scary thing that just happened was that the title I chose for this post was the exact title of one of the previous drafts. Proves that I haven't really progressed with my thinking the past few days (weeks, leading to months perhaps).

Then people all around ask, 'Why don't you blog anymore?'. I know it is just one of the things people say when they don't have too much to talk about beyond five minutes before they go into an endless loop of saying "Aur batao". But, it does make me wonder.

So here I am. My new travel intensive job has me stationed at a cement plant near Rewa, MP. I need not elaborate on the utter sadness of this place, the few and far between readers of this post would have heard enough already. A cement plant has its own virtues. You go in daily a young jet black haired boy, you come back a grey haired old man. The old age vanishes with the shampoo, but sometimes you actually feel you age that much in a day.

I have to talk with people who are on an average 15 years my senior. My job comprises listening to them patiently for 2-3 hours and then find mistakes in things they have been doing for the past 10 years. Tough job. Tougher when you have to suggest them how they can make things better, a suggestion that always does not go down very well. Then, you have the comfort that you're never going to meet these people again. I hope.

One very curious phenomenon that we have established during the course of these numerous meetings though is the 6-degree separation-IIT-association game that begins once we give our introductions. Everyone seems to have some remote acquaintance of theirs in one of the IIT's in one of the batches. And we are somehow supposed to know all of them.

Picture this. One interviewee asks me about my background.

'IIT Bombay, 2007 batch'
"Oh, you're from IIT Bombay?" (well..here we go)
'Yes I suppose'
"I know a guy in IIT B"
'Yeah?'
"He was in Mech. Dept."
'Yeah?'
"He graduated in 200x'
'Well'
"He works in Yahoo now"
'Wow'
"Do you know him?"
'I mean a name would have helped.'

Sequence of questions with varying degrees of obscurity followed with other people.

The good things about my stay here is that they do cook Maggi, that too at demand, in the guest house. Places change, the diet remains the same. The other good thing is that the only place where I had to spend any money was when I decided to buy a football, to keep me busy throughout. And also to remind me of the way more fun times.

Coming back to the existential bloc, I probably have been thinking to much lately. It scares me, but I think I'm beginning to sift out the tragedy in my day to day life, highlight it and become one of those sympathy seeking sissies who think they are tragic heroes of the league of Hamlet. After all, the choices that I have made are all mine. More often people tend to highlight the negatives more than the positives, coming to point where they fail seeing positives at all.

You are what you project after all. Which is one the many problems this blog faced, reading back I would have despised false projections, whatever the intentions. Even in real life.

"Why not" is sometimes more powerful a question that "why"; introspection wise.

The Transition

2008-07-20T23:45:00.002+05:30

I can tell you right now that I'm really concerned about how the colour of my keyboard has changed from white to hideous brown, the kind that really looks unpleasant to the eye. I can also tell you right now that just having watched 'The Dark Knight' I really don't see what the fuss is all about, I mean 'Batman Begins' was way better; and it being IMDb number 1 isn't even being mentioned here.

I can also tell you that I wish that these were just about the only concerns I had. Wishes.

You must have heard this one: Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Transition kills. Literally.

Is running away from what you dislike a way to find out what you really like? Especially when you had just about started finding things that you really liked at a place you still disliked as a whole. Cynically, if you don't run away, you never find out.

I cannot justify my skepticism. It comes with the transition probably. The desire to hold on to things.

Then, acceptance and reconciliation happen to be the two greatest virtues I tell people I possess. Time that gets tested.

On the cards

2008-05-27T01:33:00.002+05:30

I got a shiny new bank debit card a few days back, yet again. Considering the alarming frequency with which I tread the thin line between carefree and careless, the 3 times (twice irreplaceably) I lost my salary bank ATM card do deserve a look back. The college ATM card that I lost once in the meanwhile can wait.

Before I begin, the four years in college that I had an ATM card passed on peacefully. And it is not that I did not use it that often to be lost. I mean every time we went to the main gate I had to rush to the ATM to get whatever little cash I had in my account to pay for the vada pav and cutting chai we had. Nothing ever happened.

After coming into this job thing, the little money in the account part didn't change. The frequent use didn't change. Curiously the mishandling part did. I mean the SBI ATM had this swipe and remove thing, where you had to be an absolute moron to lose a card. This ATM that I have now eats up the card, dispenses the cash and you have to wait for eternity after pressing a button to wait for the card. A lesser degree of morons find this change slightly unnerving.

So the inevitable happened the first time around November. It had been just 2 months since I had gotten this card, before that I had no identity proof to even open a salary account. I had to depend on my SBI card, which I managed to lose right about then! Talk about poor timing. Anyway, just to substantiate Murphy's law, I lost my salary account card right on the day I got my salary. As I described, I must have forgotten it in some bloody ATM which gladly would have eaten it up. The conjectures because I wasn't even sure until about a day later.

The realization part was comical, it had to be. As usual we had no food at home. We were hosting a friend and I volunteered to go to the market and get some food. Again adding to the situation all the ATM's in the market were non-functional, sparing one. This meant that there was this half a kilometer long queue outside that solitary functioning one. I waited in the line patiently. The guy behind me asked if we could use an ABN card at an SBI ATM. I consoled him telling that is exactly what I was going to do before him.

My chance came in about five hundred hours, compounded by the fact that I was very hungry by then. I entered the room with the machine and took out my wallet. Hard luck, there was no card. I searched frantically, and realized there were people behind who were getting irritated. I came out making a stupid face. Trying to figure out what happened all the while.

It was around 9 in the night. It was cold. It started raining. Cold November rain. I phoned back home, they sympathized. My friend volunteered to accompany me to the far off market we had visited in the morning to trace the missing card. We were the only ones in the bus. It was playing cheesy Bappi Da numbers which somehow irritated me to the point of laughter. It was all so surrealistically comical. Not the end mind you.

We reached the market in about 40 minutes. We knocked on the ATM doors and asked the guards. They were clueless. What were we thinking? The best part was that it was an AXIS bank ATM and I had a had time explaining both the customer care people. I gave up. We had to get back, and the place was deserted. Windy, chilly, raining, freezing cold. We saw a bus going to our place. The conductor said it would go if it starts. We pushed it, ran in the rains pushing that damn bus. It started and we ran to hop in before it gathered speed. I took and seat and laughed. Unstoppable laughter. It was all so surrealistically improbably insane. And yet it was happening.

The blocking and re-issue of course went like clockwork. I decided to be ultra careful from now on.

Ultra careful, right. Once again, about 2 months later, I forgot it while taking cash from downstairs my company. I went up, got a call from an office number, which as always I almost didn't pick up:

"Hi, is this Nikhil?'"
'Yes'
"I think you left your card in the ATM downstairs"
'You think, you're not sure?' (what a real smart thing to say, isn't it?)
"No, no I mean you did leave it. I left it with the guard."
'Well. Thanks a lot. Thank you.'

Quite obviously that guy thought right. I rushed down and embarrassingly but fortunately reclaimed my card.

This third time, again the day I got my salary this month, I don't even remember. It's almost as if the card underwent spontaneous combustion. I pick up my wallet that morning, all happy to finally able to fill it with some cash and presto... my card's gone. I tried using my SBI card, but it was so long that I had forgotten the pin. Every day I went to the SBI ATM, tried a random (absolutely sure at that point of time) combination of four numerals but the machine refused to dispense me any money. All this at a time when I was supposed to treat people on my birthday. Talk about timing!

Honestly, this time I'm taking serious care :)

Serenity Now

2008-05-17T00:18:00.002+05:30

He had to take therapy. I mean you just can’t sit down on the middle of the road, shouting you are God, blabbering incomprehensible stuff and not take therapy. I can’t even make a straight face and say I did not see that coming. We used to sit for extended periods of time at places; parks, stairways, roadsides and talk about stuff, logical stuff from his perspective, my perspective does not even matter. He did the talking, I did the listening.

I used to come back and wonder, what triggered all this. Why someone so obviously creative and talented (I hate that word, but that’s why I use it) could end up this way. He told me something that his therapist told him. Creativity need not always be a positive thing. Probably it is like tripping, trip bad and you end up being scarred for life. Trip good and you end up being Pink Floyd or Aldous Huxley.

I did my own amateur therapy part. You know it is not always talent or creativity that decides things; it is how you decide to use them. The part about talent being nothing but a genetic gift from your parents, works well till 18. You top schools, ace competitive exams, get praises and accolades. That’s about it. After 18 it is all about hard work. I bet he knew all this. I mean who doesn’t.

He used to tell me that he doesn’t see things the way I do. He described what an approaching car with the light cone made by the headlights meant to him. I ended up telling him something way weirder; just to prove that others may think on the same lines too, just that it is not worth the imagination. I mean why on earth would you unleash your creative line of thought on something so insignificant. I was a being a victim of my own explanation.

What triggered this bad tripping is a totally different matter. I thought it was the pride, the huge ego, the putting up to great expectations compounded by a slightly enhanced imaginative mind. A mild setback (again a debatable word), and a whole world would come crashing down. Part truth.

I wouldn’t complete the rest of the story. Partly because it is not complete. Let it be.

But sometimes, when things get blue, I ponder about what the therapist said about creativity and imagination always not being a good thing.

There is thing that troubles me often. How long do you stay what people think is you? What if I’m tired of joking, making fun, trying to be witty and sarcastic and want to stay silent? A wrong time to think all this but just about half the friends who called me up ended up asking if everything is okay. Everything is okay.

I am just getting tired of being what people think I am. And playing along is getting difficult all the time.

And so I get older. Happy birthday.

Pink City Blues

2008-05-07T02:18:00.003+05:30

Amazing view from atop the chair

I feel so bad that I cribbed about Kotla in my previous post. I feel horrible. Because, putting things in perspective after Sawai Man Singh Stadium, Jaipur, every expletive in the fattest dictionary of slang ever printed would fall short. Honest to God.

Firstly let me put the disappointment of a complete mismatch aside. Chennai got annihilated, Dhoni sucked. But that's cricket. I take it in my stride. Traveling 220 kms up and down to watch this match in the best possible seat on offer would have been tragic. Understandable nonetheless.

But boy oh boy do I rue that screwed up moment when I chose the 400 instead of 500 buck ticket, thinking what the frigging difference will it make as to what stand I chose. That choice ruined up the experience of not only a stadium, not only a city, but the entire state as a whole. Elaborate I must. Elaborate I will.

So these guys have this Hitchcock inspired stand names, we chose the west south one. Seemingly a harmless choice, but even Hitchcock wouldn't have anticipated such a cruel twist of fate. The signs on the ticket were ominous enough. Pink color coded stand in Pink city, what was I thinking? It would all have been nice in a tweens Barbie world simulation match. Real life is tough.

The screwing dumb wits had the stand designed like a damned roadside maidan. The essential element of a stadium i.e. the constant increase in elevation of stands as rows went back was not figured out I guess. They had put all chairs, all at almost the same level, which meant that people even 3-4 rows behind could have an iota of a chance of catching a glimpse of any action. Barring the soda pop guy selling his stuff.

As it is people tend to get excited in cricket matches. They shout at players like they are next door acquaintances almost sure of getting a response. The presence of cheerleaders aggravates and compounds the situation. All this meant that everyone in the entire stand was not only standing, but standing on the chairs. To add to the agony, instead of standing still, most were jumping and dancing and waving which does not do good to your anger when you are already irritated.

We tried our best to restore sanity. We begged, we pleaded, we implored people to sit down. But the moment a ball was about to be bowled everyone stood up again. We resorted to slandering, abusing people and got full sport from fellow back rowers. Again, the effect was short lived.

Irritated beyond words, and disappointed, we had to do what the other were doing. Stand on our chairs to watch the action. We could only convince ourselves to do it once in a while, letting out our frustration at the people in front in the meanwhile. The match on ground didn't help the mood.

This watching experience matches the one in Keenan, Jamshedpur that I had quoted in my previous post.

Mohali better be good :)

A night at Kotla

2008-05-03T23:19:00.005+05:30

Kotla by Night. From up above.

I have this dream of watching a cricket match in every stadium possible. I took one step forward this week towards the completion of this quest.

We went to witness an IPL T20 match between Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore. I had booked a dozen tickets, half a dozen by mistake, so it was just a matter of choosing the company. That wasn't the tough part, of course. The tough part was getting to Kotla on a sweltering summer day to collect the tickets and do a full circumference of the stadium before getting to the right counter. This seriously made me wonder if all this was worth the effort. But then I am a veteran of standing in 4 km lines to get into a cricket stadium, only to kneel down on concrete and watch the match for 25 overs. Getting old brings that element of skepticism with it I guess.

Anyway, expect for the heavy traffic congestion everything else was smooth sailing. The stands were full but not over packed. The view was good from the north-west stand we were in, right next to the sight screen. But, having watched a match each in Wankhedede and Brabourne, I was left wanting for much more. The scoreboard was pathetic, they could do with an electronic scoreboard. The so called 'big' screen wasn't big enough, and the little they managed to show of the action on the field was of quality comparable to grainy low quality porn videos (so I'm told :D ).

The 'glam' element was equally obscene. I mean I'm not there to watch 'Akki' waving hands at a place he doesn't belong to. And a sad Kailash Kher singing songs I have and would never hear. Cheerleaders bring little cheer, when they are Indianised. The purpose gets lost. But then about 99.99% of the people were happy, ecstatic in fact. I guess we won't we getting a live rock show at a stadium soon enough then.

All said and done, the view from the top tier, right next to the floodlights up above, was surreal. The ground looked like an exotic green carpet, with toy like players sliding and running about. That's the view I've tried to capture with the slightly less than adequate phone camera.

Continuing this quest, we head to Jaipur tomorrow. It is not the first time I have seen the great Shane Warne and the local Dhoni in action on a cricket field. Then, you can never have enough.

I am divided though. Warney or Dhoni? Sentimental!

The long and winding post

2008-03-19T19:08:00.003+05:30

Sometimes the lights all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip its been.
~Truckin' (Grateful Dead)

Lethargy kept me from chronicling what has been the busiest phase of my life; places I have managed to visit, people I have met, things I have done. A new notebook (Acer 4720Z for the record) gives me the opportunity to pause and recollect.

First things first. Heartiest congratulations and a great married life ahead to my cousin-in-arms and dear bhabhi - latest addition to the family.

It was great fun having everyone around for those 2 days. I also indulged in probably the most uncomplicated dance form known to human kind, and the only one I know, with much glee that night - the baraati dance. Heck we even danced to "Ye Desh hai Veer jawano ka", why it was there in the band playlist in the first place we had no clue. Trivialities.

A part of the fun was the shifting of the 50 odd bags and baggages, all of them obscenely stuffed, from one impossible place to another. At points of time there were more coolies handling the luggage than people following behind to whom they belonged to.

Chandigarh reminded me of Jamshedpur, the grid structure, no high rises, small town feel and all that jazz. The level of organisation though was slightly unnerving. Thank God for all the chaos I've seen in Mumbai. At least every place in the damn city doesn't look the same. Eerie.

Going back, we had this sick-of-the-city-let's-get-out trip to Rishikesh, Haridwar and Devprayag. The trip coincided with my work group's trip to Murud (a random beach near Mumbai, some 20 hrs travel from Delhi). The fact that a friend and I envisioned, planned, pitched and convinced colleagues of the worth of that place, only to back out and plan a parallel trip did raise a few eyebrows and resulted in a few conspiracy theories, but everyone came back happy (we took the credit by the way) made everyone forget everything. Win, win anyone?

Coming back to our trip, we had a hang of the laid back lifestyle that these places offer. We were on a spiritual-but-not-religious tour which meant that none of the temples got the honour of being graced by our presence. No ones loss. No rafting too, we decided to save our adrenaline for better days. For hours we just sat by Lakshman Jhula, the Ganges riverside, whatever it might be, and soaked in the spirituality oozing out of the pretty, pretty surroundings.

The "Har-ki-Pauri aarti at Haridwar" deserves a special mention. There is something about the earthen lamps and their reflection in the river that touches the deepest chord of spirituality, and the sight there is sure to give you a spiritual high. The flickering cotton lamps disappear in the troubled waters, most put out by the forceful waters, the ones that remain glittering like far away stars in the galaxy. Spiritual trance.

Then there was this really express visit home for Holi. Nothing eventful except that I traveled 24 hrs to get home, reached and got sick in my 24 hr stay home, traveled back 24 hrs and rejoined office.

It had been a long time and I could feel Mumbai calling. The valfi of my juniors provided the perfect reason to answer that call. Batch mates from here and there dropping in at the same time made it a memorable re-union of sorts. It was another packed trip, try living your 4 years in college in 3 days and you'll know. I did manage a respectable lot; the night out, Maddu Mess, Pop Tates, trips to HN, Colaba Causeway, a million faces to meet and greet. The Hard Rock Cafe visit was a special one, a much needed respite from the usual gayish music at the usual joints. They played Led Zep, The Who and the likes at full blast. No one talked. Everyone listened.

I'll be back Mumbai.

Right now it is back to the grind.

So long Dear Diary, until we meet again then.

Wishful Thinking

2008-02-08T03:15:00.000+05:30

If I was where I want to be
(Speaking Geographically)
I would probably sit by the sea
And seek tranquility

Miles away from this cold place.

And as I would sit on the beach
Way beyond the reach
Of authority; the rules 'they' preach
I'd think of consequences if I breach

And break away from this rat-race.

200 posts. Still alive. Yay!

And the sand-castle virtues are all swept away in the tidal destruction, the moral melee

2008-01-27T00:23:00.000+05:30

[Warning to me reading this somewhere in the future: Remember the 'company' you were in when you wrote this? ]

Sometimes you want to write but you're not sure what to write about. Or you're not sure what you want to write is even worth writing. I don't know why this 'worthiness' angle comes into picture after 3 years of writing about almost everything that could be written about. Surprisingly it does.

It is scary how words come back to haunt. That too something I had written not too long ago, just before I left the campus one final time. Since I have no one else to quote, I'll have to quote myself again.

Probably all the pretenders get around and make a world that seems real to all of them. Probably I'm a part of of that world. I'm fighting with all I've got to get out. Only that I really can't get the people around me to come with me. The worst it leads to is frustration, something I have learnt to get over soon enough. I'm glad I didn't end up disliking many people, I wish the many would have been any. I wish the same with me, although I know that hate is often reciprocated.

Now this... this is proving to be an epidemic as far as I'm concerned. The part in bold is the major problem. As I say often to people who try and troubleshoot my problems, I know all my troubles, limitations and their solutions in graphic detail. It is just that I fall short on the implementation part. Once the optimism dies, all I'm left with is cold indifference. I see that stage coming again.

I'm scaring myself as much as I'm scaring you with all this shadowy talk. But I guess this is what happens when your interests, your friends, your carefree life are taken away from you and you're dumped in a lonely, friendless, boring place. The problems are compounded when the only option is to choose the other life. I choose not to choose that life.

The other day I was telling a friend about this quote which goes something like , "When you keep hitting a rock repeatedly and it breaks on the 100th blow, it is not the last blow that broke the rock. The 99 others contributed equally, just that the end result wasn't visible." I know I messed up this quote proper, but that's not my concern right now. I see that 100th blow coming too.

Enough. In other news, I have started taking tennis lessons. They told me I'm a quick learner, and it felt nice to be doing at least something well. I also have made plans to skateboard (one of the things my brother got me on his trip back home) my way down my apartment stairs pretty soon. My room mate though has refused to take me to the hospital just in case, which is one reason I'm putting this off until later.

Some very funny things have happened since the ones I've posted on this blog. I'll update as soon as I get into that mood. I see that coming too :)

a small step

2008-01-06T23:28:00.001+05:30

I decided to check for myself this whole mobile blogging business. A
really lame way to end a two month hibernation, that too a
philosophical and tumultous two months. Nevertheless this promises to
be an exciting new avenue.
Hopefully productive too.

Double Bill

2007-11-06T09:04:00.000+05:30

Money is trouble. Two back to back incidents just re-affirmed my faith in this age old saying.

Money for Nothing

I might be working now, and reached an age where the kids in the neighbourhood have started calling me 'uncle', but yesterday I found myself in a situation best suited for pre-teen sitcoms.

We were having our daily afternoon post lunch walk downstairs, laughing our way along as we always do. A pretty female came next to me, pausing to say something. In my universe this is an event with probability almost zero, whatever be the circumstance. So it did surprise me more than it should have. I literally froze.

"Excuse me", she politely said.

I looked around, she might very well have had the wrong person. I felt like enacting the "You talking to me?" routine in front of her. Words failed me, as they often do in such situations (they do, don't they?). The least I could manage was a surprised smile.

"Yes", still smiling. Plastic smile.

"I think you have dropped some money back there", she said.

There. She put a full stop on the purpose. I looked back and saw a 10 rupee note lying there. It wasn't mine, but the expression I made was like I'm not the kind of person who drops 10 rupee notes. On the contrary, maybe the expression went something like I'm the kind of person who drops 500 rupee notes and doesn't care to look back. It failed me that there were other people with me and they could be the concerned people. First words failed me, now my mind.

"ME ????" , I asked with all the surprise I could garner.

It came out sounding like I was excited that she had selected me, out of the 5 people, to give that information. Something of the "swayamwar" type thingie of the ancient ages. Or the ancient ages as depicted by Ramanand Sagar and co.

It was her turn to be surprised. Very surprised.

She said, "No, any one of you?". The tone of that sentence was much like Priyanka Chopra's iconic "Your silly village girl" in the Scooty ad. In fact the sentence came back to haunt me, much long after the incident, with emphasis on a different word each time.

No, any one of you?
No, any one of you?
No, any one of you?
No, any one of you?

Those weren't pleasing thoughts I tell you. I just tried to figure out which one of the versions would have been the mildest. I gave up.

My friend, I don't care much which one, saved the situation by claiming the money to be his. But somehow, the habit of getting the last word did not fail me here too.

As she walked away trying to figure out what creeps they have in office these days, I had to shout out "Thank you", like she had just saved a million lives.

She turned back, smiled and went away nodding. The kind of smile and nod that says "You'll never, ever improve, will you?"

I try madame. I try.

My unforgiving friends did not spare me after this.

"What did you think? This was some new generation improvisation of 'Excuse me, kya ye aapka rumaal hai?' type of pickup line?".

You got me :)

Meet the Fakers

If the previous incident was fit for pre-teen sitcoms, this one would have been suitable for a crime thriller. A seemingly harmless trip to the neighbourhood bank took a chilling turn when I got a phone call just after I thought I had wrapped up the whole rent paying business this month for good.

"Is this Mr. XYZ?" XYZ being my landlord.
"Wrong number." I said without even thinking twice.
Then it struck me. I had written his name on the money deposit envelope and my number, so this was no coincidence.

The phone rang again and I explained the scenario. The voice on the other side had a tone that couldn't care less. That is partially because of the bomb that was dropped after that.

"One 500 rupee note that you have deposited just now is fake. Either come to replace it or get 500 less deposited."

My world came crashing down. 500 Note? Fake? I had just take the damn money out of the adjacent ATM and shoved it in the bloody envelope without even looking. This is what you get for trust? They slip one of them phoneys in between? And why is she all cool about the fake note? Aren't they going to like arrest me for this fake racket? Take me to the prison and torture out the name of my imaginary accomplices and the make of the fake printing machine?

"I'll be there in 15 minutes." I told her in a voice just short of breakdown.

On the way, I was telling my roomie of the fate that awaited us. Snipers would waiting on the gates. They already had our images on the CCTV, where we were so cutely trying to figure out just how the heck does the coupon dispensing system work. They would shoot us on sight and get accolades for encountering masterminds of the fake currency racket. Then find our IIT ID-Cards in the wallet and media would be full of 'The Departed-esque' type conspiracy 'rat' theories. Rats planted young. He patiently pointed out that a fake 500 did not deserve this much drama.

After reaching there, I had to tell a billion people embarrassingly about my story, so that they would guide me to the place to get it resolved. The weekend crowd was overflowing in the bank and everyone seemed to look at me penetratingly as if to say "These be the rotten phoneys, what did they think?". Finally one person guided us to the basement.

In such circumstances, the basement is not an ideal place to settle issues. I mean if you visualise bank basements as made immortal by so many movies, the ultra modern security measures and unforgiving treatment they promise to goons, a very reassuring picture does not emerge out. Nevertheless it had to be done.

We were greeted by two very sceptical ladies, who shooed us out of the room. On narrating my problem, again, it did register something in one of their minds and out came a very shiny looking 500 rupee bill from an envelope. It looked perfectly normal otherwise, but maybe too much makeup is out of fashion these days. Sure the note was shiny and the Gandhi insignia had bit too much ink, but fake? Unfortunately I wasn't the one who works in banks.

I did try the melodrama bit here too, which famously had taken me out of a soup at a Mumbai local station. Didn't work out. This time though, I was happy just to come out alive. And kick the bloody ATM on the way back.

Alive and kicking. Ha.

She Don't Lie

2007-11-02T21:12:00.000+05:30

Martina Hingis has said she is horrified by her positive cocaine test and that she is "absolutely, one hundred per cent innocent".

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues.
Cocaine.

When your day is done and you wanna run.
Cocaine.

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie;
Cocaine.

~ JJ Cale (Well, Clapton too)

I trust you Martina.

Nothing But the Tooth Redux : Root of all evil

2007-11-01T01:01:00.000+05:30

Some of you might be familiar with my last rendezvous with a dentist, which culminated in an extracted tooth. Those who aren't, better 'brush up'.

The last time I fell in trouble, I decided that I won't let it happen again. Like every time else. I did try, mind you. I brushed at nights for 2 nights straight before I realised that brushing before bedtime at 4 AM and then again at 8.25 AM before turning up for lectures doesn't make a hell lot of difference. I used a funny tasting, funnier looking medical toothpaste to kill those goddamn germs. I gave up because it produced no foam and did not leave that cool, tangy, minty aftertaste. I am a man with clear cut priorities after all.

More importantly I had vowed not be my own doctor again. The last time around, I had mistaken my toothache for the onset of wisdom tooth; a concept based on the one paragraph I got to read in some school biology course. Some argued that wisdom tooth doesn't take 4 months to grow, which was the duration of my ache with increasing magnitude of pain. It is proportional to the amount of person's wisdom, I argued back. To no logical response of course.

After the extraction last year, I thought I had seen the last of the intimidating sight of a dentist's chair. Unfortunately, going by the turn of events, that was just a beginning. The pain returned after exactly one year, like a much awaited annual event. It returned with an entirely different dogma though, last time it was left, this time it was right. I just have too quote 'The Who' here.

And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
- Won't Get Fooled Again

When the pain started, I assured myself that it had to be the wisdom tooth this time. No chance of anything else. Even by my standards, it was high time that wisdom dawned upon me. Like last time, and most other times as well, I couldn't be more wrong. Last time it was a fallen tooth fragment while eating a dosa and the instantaneous chilling pain that followed which jolted me to reality. This time it was a toothpick half covered in blood, taken over by searing pain that was the revelation. Each time is a new learning experience you see.

After 15 days of doing extensive study on dentists in the area and listening to a million harrowing tales, I decided to go with the closest Hospital in my area. Proximity beats expertise anytime. The hospital was new, evident by the still freshly painted advertisement boards hanging over neighbourhood trees. Being the gentleman that I am, I decided to give it some serious business.

I took an appointment and waited patiently outside the dentist's cabin. Accompanied by pesky toothless kids about 20 years younger or serene toothless elders about 50 years older, I did feel slightly out of place. I was greeted by an affable doctor who took stock of the situation and laughed occasionally when I narrated most of what I have narrated here. Apparently patients with a sense of humour are appreciated, and it is not hard to see why.

Things took an interesting turn when she learnt that I was from Jamshedpur. She was from Jamshedpur too, and excitedly narrated about her school, Sacred Heart Convent, a name which meant so much back in schooldays for reasons not tough to fathom. Half of the appointed time was spent sharing memories of our hometown, the end of which put me in social situation I am ill accustomed to handle. Delighted to meet someone from the same place, she invited me over to meet her husband and 2 year old kid. I could only smile in return, this time and every other time.

The treatment itself started the second day. It gave me an indication that things were going to be very tough. For about an hour I had to keep my mouth open, to its maximum stretchable limit, while instruments emitting suspicious lights and emanating funny noises were inserted one after another into my mouth. Injections in the palate and obnoxious tasting medicines, which I was warned not to swallow, made the going even tougher. But this was just an inkling compared to what was coming up. I was told that the only way out was the Root Canal Treatment (RCT) which would begin the next time. I was explained about how infection reaches the nerve ending, how the canals are found out and cleared and filled and how the crown is fitted with an excellent illustrated diagram of the tooth. I probably looked like someone who would take an active interest.

The next day's session would rank close to the longest one hour of my life. The ones on the third, fourth and fifth day would give it a tough competition. The premise on which entire RCT is based is where do you experience the pain. And how much. This takes out the option of using a local anesthesia. So first the cavity was cleared and a hideous water nozzle inserted in my mouth. The water jet was directed into the cavity, with increasing force, and I was asked to tell if I experienced any pain. I told I did. I was instructed to hold on till it became unbearable. I would have liked to point out that I could be dead by then. Nevertheless it was managed, and it was established that as suspected, I did, indeed, need to undergo RCT. Bah!

The process of locating the canal comes close to the most sadistic thing that could be done to you (assuming....ahem! forget it..). Needles of various lengths, but invariably pointed and sharp and sometimes with those tiny screws near the end are inserted into the cavity at different angles. As the needle is poked into the cavity, you are supposed to convulse, you can't shout, when the pain takes your breath away. Makes it easy for the doctor to define unbearable. It is like Clockwork Orange with the eye replaced by the tooth. Sometimes two needles are inserted making intersecting angles and x-rays taken in all cases. With the needles and the small cardboard piece inserted for the x-ray and the looming radiation gun pointed at the cheek, it does get a bit intimidating. And more than a mouthful. On the brighter side the x-rays do look kind of cool with needles criss-crossing the tooth, reminds you of the pirate sign.

Locating the canal does take some time. Till then the entire sadistic process is repeated. Poke a needle. Push it inside. Bear it. Bear it. Bear it. Shriek. Wipe the tears. I went home looking like an exhausted warrior after every session. At times I begged to just extract the tooth and let go. To no avail.

Once the canal was found, thankfully, it was duly filled. The process though did not end here. I was told that since the tooth has no source of nutrition would become brittle. I was more alarmed when pointed out that this means that one day while biting an apple, the tooth may remain embedded in the apple itself. Which further meant that I had to get a crown on top. This required a process in which the guilty tooth had to be sized down. Which meant another painful session in which some kind of drill, with an irritating high frequency noise was inserted into my mouth. Tired of keeping it open for so long, I twitched a bit. That was enough for a gush of blood form the cheek to fill my mouth. And it hurt.

Finally after all these gory procedures, my dental imprint was taken and a crown ordered. I was advised to go with a ceramic crown which resembles the tooth, instead of the much cooler (and less expensive) gold one.

The overall bill was handed out to me, and my situation best summed up by the dentist's comment "I guess you guys are reimbursed by your company, right?".

No we aren't. I didn't opt for that plan, thank you. But I do have the satisfaction of telling people that I gifted myself a crown with my first salary. An exquisitely crafted ceramic crown.

I'm still waiting for the wisdom tooth.

Sreesanth: The Modern Black Knight?

2007-10-16T21:02:00.000+05:30

Sreesanth is being a prick. I have reservations about show of too much enthusiasm, let alone over the top enthusiasm, and Sreesanth is taking things way beyond the limit. Probably you are a part of the group of people whose blood would have boiled reading Symond's article and hence support everything Sreesanth does, but I detested what he was doing in the T20 WC even when he was doing well.

In this series, especially after what Symonds has done to him, his plight reminds of the Black Knight from Monty Python. A refresher course just in case:

Monty Python's Black Knight - Click here for another funny movie.

Imagine Symonds as King Arthur and Sreesanth as the Black Knight, and the legendary dialogues take a new meaning.

ARTHUR: Look, you stupid bastard. You've got no arms left.
BLACK KNIGHT: Yes, I have.
ARTHUR: Look!
BLACK KNIGHT: Just a flesh wound.
BLACK KNIGHT: Right. I'll do you for that!
ARTHUR: You'll what?
BLACK KNIGHT: Come here!
ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!
ARTHUR: You're a looney.

I'm no Symonds fan or a fan of Aussie brand of mental disintegration. But I think there are better things in the world than to irk someone of his nature. Sportsmen, the best kind, have a tendency to perform when they are irked thus. Just ask Flintoff and Yuvraj.

However I have serious issues with the 'monkey chant' racist claims that Symonds has made. The last time I heard a thing like this was the infamous Eto'o incident, and I doubt whether word came to the Indian spectators that such a thing can be construed as a racist remark. After all who are we to pass racist comments? Also, I have been to international matches to stadiums across the country (not too many mind you) , and trust me, there are far far worse abuses that are hurled across, it just depends if you want to make it an issue or not.

All this does make it real interesting for India's tour to Australia. One thing we can be sure of is that there would be no incident like the one in which Srinath apologised to Ponting for a bouncer who then rudely pointed his bat and asked him to f-off and get back to the bowling crease. How times change!

UPDATE: It was a pleasant surprise to look at the morning papers and find that my favourite batsman, someone whose Slazenger bat still is in my wishlist, has views not very different from mine on the 'racist chants' issue. Even Border agrees on the whole taunting thing. Makes my morning :)

Two good books, the odd bad movie, and the amazing eat out place

2007-10-08T21:03:00.000+05:30

The lack of things to write about alarms me. It is though an indication of the kind of unwritable daily routine that the work life imposes. The little time that is left to pursue an interest is made little use of owing to the even littler enthusiasm left. No time to read books, save the odd cab/bus/rail journey or the wait outside a dentist. No time, drive to watch movies, except those imposed by the odd social gathering. A far, far cry from the excitedly hatched grand plans of reading and watching movies and doing little else just a few months back.

All things taken into consideration, I did manage to finish two books in the interim. That these were the first books in much of recent past that I had bought with my own money, (CBT and NBT publications don't count for much do they?) fill me with all the more joy that I had my money worth.

One of those was the delightful Bill Bryson's "Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". If you have read Bryson, there is no point reviewing it. If you haven't, it is time you should. This particular book is an account of Bryson's growing up years in his hometown Des Moines, which co-incided with the growing up years of US as an economy and superpower. Needless to say it is funny as ever, still managing to be thought provoking at times.

The second book was a part of "I'll-read-the-book-and-watch-the-movie" series that I plan to follow in the near future. The book of choice this time was Capote's masterpiece "In Cold Blood". You would think that a real life crime, where you know the killers right from the start, would present a very shaky premise for a crime thriller. This is where Capote takes it one notch higher, with his literary journalism, building the story, the characters, the suspense, the setting and make it a better read that most of the crime fiction you would ever come across. The psyche of the killers, and the background behind such homicidal behaviour is brought out in a way that it generates empathy for two people who slaughtered four innocents in cold blood. Towards the end you have to remind of the grotesque nature of the killings to not feel bad of the final fate of the killers. Can't wait to watch the movie now.

The third book in line happens to be Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", and given the sheer incomprehensibility it presents, it might be some time before it can find a mention here. The struggle took me back to my efforts at reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", which by the way, I have bought and reserved for reading at a later date. Finishing the current one just might help.

One of the two movies I saw was 'Chak De India', what else. Given my stance towards popular movies, I would have avoided it, but the other option was to wander alone aimlessly in a shopping mall. The sport and true incident angles played a part in softening my stand too. The time spent there was slightly better than the other option, that I must admit. And it also gave me a whole lot of corny dialogues to pester my friends with, so no complaints.

The other movie is something I won't talk about. Not even name it. Just one of those collective mistakes that people make when they have nothing else to pass time with in a shopping mall. What makes matter worse is that this movie has been released in only two cities, to gauge the public reaction before deciding on the next step. I feel so used. So probably would the 7 other people who happened to be trapped in the same hall as us. If you are not in those two cities, you will surely be exempted from the sin of seeing of poster of this movie. Let alone the unabsolvable damnation of having watched it. It is not even a mainstream movie, with at least some people you know who you can curse till your money's worth when you come out. Which leaves the only other option of cursing yourself and your equally stupid friends, of which I do a good job.

Treated a friend, who had made his journey from IIM-L for a seemingly stupid purpose, at a nice place last weekend. Quite famous in circles these things get famous, "The Big Chill" was where we ended up searching for place to eat. Not having any prior information about this place, I was pleasantly surprised by the entire noir theme when we went upstairs to have a table booked. Original (I presume), hand painted posters of classic movies hung like ornaments on the wall. The 'Big' in "The Big Chill" started making sense then. I half expected Sam Spade waiting round the corner, ready for a fist fight with some shadowy, hatted stranger.

While we waited downstairs, we treated ourselves to Kababs, apparently popular themselves too. The smoke from these shops seemed to concentrate near the neon sign of "The Big Chill". Only silhouettes were visible in the dark, lonesome alley with the odd spiral iron staircase. I was already having visions of the numerous Noirs I have enjoyed not so long ago, and a chill went down my spine in anticipation. The Big Chill?

We got a table after a moderate wait, and I was pleasantly surprised by the movie poster collection on display. As a retro movie buff, I spent more time looking around, trying to remember now that scene, now that line from the multitude of movies, while my friend had to do the task of wading through the fairytale of a menu to have something to eat. The front page of the menu had Audrey Hepburn staring at me, which meant that I hardly opened to look beyond the cover once I did manage to divert my attention. My trance was broken by the noise of a ring tone that went "Aaj ki Raat, hota hai jo.." which gave me a stern reminder of the place we were at, on a macro level. The music in the restaurant itself was a big, big letdown. Anything but pop would have done.

I'm not a foodie, quite the opposite, to let you know about the food, or the famous desserts. Then, who goes there for food anyway?

I don't want to end up writing about N-Deals, imminent elections, sport happenings or my deepest, darkest feelings, fears. Then it might get to that stage, the way things are going.

What the Chak?

2007-09-26T08:57:00.000+05:30

The final was at 5.30 PM, the exact time my office hours end. I am not one to take chances though. Certainly not in cases like these. I took the entire day off, on account of 'mild fever'. The next day people laughed at me, more so at my made up 'fever'. Then they touched my hand, then my head and agreed in unison that in fact I was serious. The discovery startled me much more than it did them, but I learnt to keep a straight, sober and slightly pale face, almost as an acknowledgement of what I had told them, all along. The doubters were the ones feeding me Crocins then. I must have developed some superpower to fall sick at will, being transformed into your normal looking next door, unenviable 'Sick Man'. And no, he can't fly. But yes he can wear the Blue tee with the S written in Red on the front.

Anyway I hadn't taken a day off to see India lose. They didn't. But there were things that made me wish otherwise. The pop-patriots whose definition of courage rarely exceeds waving flags at stadia and shouting hoarse in India colours would be charging me with treason already. Then who is afraid of them anyway.

I haven't written a reader friendly point wise post for ages now. Rather I haven't written anything for ages now. So here is a list of reasons that gave me, and probably you too, serious second thoughts about the outcome of the match.

1. The 'Chak De' song being played till you eardrums hurt, your heart churned over, your mind became numb. Add the entire Shahrukh 'Kabir' Khan fellow being present there, and noticed and plastered all over the channels....you begin to wish that poor Misbah should have lofted Joginder Sharma out of the park. For good.

(Aside: By the way, they should have a movie with an infidel hero who speaks english with a call centrish accent, has the occasional 'high' time, zooms around in a phoren dhoom type bike and has visions of him being Zidane. The hero of course would have to be Shoaib Akhtar and the movie? 'Chuck De Pakistan'. Darrel Hair would love be a guest act, with his muse Murali. )

2. Joginder Sharma. If you have seen a more useless bowler since Subroto Banerjee (anyone remember our legendary team from WC '92. This guy was from Jamshedpur btw) then please update me. He is so pathetic that a lame, limping Sehwag had to bowl an over against the mighty Oz and ended up matching him in runs conceded. The runs were 20, and it was a tough task to match. Credits to Sehwag, and Dhoni too. Don't tell me that you ever believed that someone like Misbah wouldn't take his skin out in the final over. And don't tell me you did not lose any remaining hope after watching that wobbly, wayward, shaky wide delivery and then that whack for six. Poor Misbah..

3. The sight of TV channel crew members invading every possible abode of a cricketer, interviewing their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, kids, friends, girl friends, neighbours, shopkeepers, bystanders......Tell me have you ever seen Ponting's mom and dad with a confused yet beaming look on their faces telling that they always trusted their kid would do well with his uncle nodding fervently in the background. Then why torture us. And them?

4. Them new made fans. They who go 'Oh I knew India would win, they had such a great team.' They who can't name about half the team. They who declared after the WC that Cricket is a game for the retarded. They who came back to liking cricket because T20 is such a time saver, and entertainer. They who think T20 is the best form of cricket. They who think T20 is a form of cricket. Get back to the phony twisted talks of F1 and made up gibberish of EPL, punks. When you love sports, you love sports. You never love something because you hate something else. And you never love something because it makes you look cooler and contemporary.

Oh Misbah...

Yes I got internet at home. Finally. It pinches having to pay for it now. Anyhow, I'll back. More often.