Fish Bait by "The Smoking Mackerel"®

Click For Me!

2009-11-12T07:16:00.001+05:30

To support me in my madness http://www.inkfruit.com/mysales.php?location=19464

Side Comment:

2009-10-31T17:37:00.000+05:30

PJ Power : So when you're done having an orgasm about finding a free Wi Fi connection you can come over to my place and see the internet as it should be. (PJ Power to someone else, referring to me).

Cheers!

PS - No, this will not turn into a Twitter style update feed.

Coming to terms with Baroda.

2009-10-31T17:30:00.000+05:30

Coming to terms with Baroda.

The first step to doing that was when I realized that all the people in the supposedly “great” Bombay were just loafing around with not much to do. Then I found a free Wi-Fi network and surfed the net and after that I started my professional networking lessons with a member of the Jindal clan.

Pranay Jindal is just the stem of the Y away from Pranav, the only remnant of my halcyon days of college. The former is what I’d like to equate to being the male equivalent of a certain nursery rhyme character that I knew in Bombay, ok I still know the concerned character, but what the heck? I don’t seem to be making much sense these days, not after your mind gets strangled by the endless tangle of wires that constitute the average “electrical scheme drawing”. For the uninitiated, that’s what the “technical” people draw up on paper for the technicians to follow when they wire the components of any electrical panel. Believe me, all of the wires that snake across the places where you live and work started their days as lines on a piece of paper; from the ridiculously simple in your average hut to the insanely complex in a multi megawatt power plant. Technically, I shouldn’t be writing about work and the company I work in, but since I haven’t taken the name anywhere or said anything bad, I should be ok, right?

Yes, back to the male equivalent of the nursery rhyme character, Mr. Jindal. For starts, his appearance reminded me of an alligator, or a sapping turtle or some related creature of the natural world. If you manage to draw a connection of some sort between those two, then you’re bloody brilliant, believe me, even this man has trouble reading my tone of voice and facial expressions, I tend to exaggerate a lot and send out the wrong signals at the wrong times. Finding a rock n roll fan is not easy task, especially in a small city cum industrial town but here you go, I’ve found life where I previously thought there was none. Rock n roll will always find a way to survive in the harshest of conditions! And he makes a lot of noise with external speakers for his lappy! I don’t make sense!

Yes, think of Jindal and you think of Jindal Steel, the company whose shares are likened to the Reliance of yesterday, with four figure valuations and yearly dividend payouts. Our man here seems to have had his intravenous shots of finance at a very young age, believe me, I can tell. Whether or not he’s connected to the illustrious clan of entrepreneurs, I don’t know and don’t want to ask, but I’m sure the act of forwarding this mail to him will elicit some sort of response, it ‘s worked in the past and I bet it will work yet again, words are all I have after all. Oh he'll be stalking the corridors of power very soon indeed.

The male equivalent you ask, and that has not yet been answered, ok I’ll tell you why. I cannot talk for monkeys nuts, I just cannot get my point across and convince people. But this man specializes in that, PR work you can call it. From using a few contacts to build a network that spans generations to leaving his footprints in the sands of Baroda, I think he’ll do it all. When you attend some session of Toastmasters International in Baroda, you know where it all started, in an air conditioned office on the outskirts of the town.

I could wax eloquent about what little I know of this man, but time restricts my rave to this much. There’s only so many times that you can turn your head around to make sure that no one’s watching you as you waste time in office!

Till the next post,

Cheers from Baroda!

Post

2009-10-25T11:27:00.001+05:30

So now i can post via email!

Yaay!
--
Eldrich Rebello
Mob - 9819864911
My blog http://eldrichr.blogspot.com

Think about this -
Ted Turner - "Sports is like a war without the killing."

Fish - Boy out of the City.

2009-10-25T10:53:00.001+05:30

I've never felt so alone before. This morning, while sitting in the bus, i realised something about myself concerning my reluctance to travel. I've been asked by a certain KC to accompany him to Hyderabad and nearby places in the South of the country, on a jolly jaunt, but i declined the invitation. I now know that i did so, not because I was afraid the poor quality of the latrines at the stations and in the trains but because i've become a creature of habit. We all do at one point of time. A rolling stone gathers no moss but if the stone stays stationary for too long, the moss dries up.I didn't go because i was afraid to leave home.

That's exactly what's happened to me here in India, i've lived in Bombay for so long that i've started to take some of the cities conveniences for granted; buses at any time of the day and night, people willing to help you find an unknown locality in a huge city; trains that stop at nothing, not even terrorist attacks and of course, home, family and friends.

I thought i was independent, that i didn't need anyone for support, that my support came from inside. Now i know where i stand. I didn't need to talk to people but i needed their physical nearness, i needed the same bed to sleep in at night, the same smells at home, the same people to call when i wanted something, anything. I once thought that being in a crowded local train could make you feel near so many people yet so far from each one of them. Loneliness has a new meaning now.

The only friend that i had in the city, another person who got transferred from Bombay has left. He's been sent off to some place in Haryana and now i'm fending for myself, which is both good and bad at the same time. Good because i get a chace to face life on my own, to learn a lot; bad because it's hard being away from home for extended periods.

Enough of a rant for now, i'll rant some more when i can!

Cheers!

Baroda 101

2009-10-19T13:33:00.004+05:30

11:30 PM, 18th of October, Borivli station, Bombay.

3 :45 AM, 19th of October, Baroda station, Gujrat.

No, this is not my laptop, this is some random computer at a cyber-cafe in the land of, well never mind that part, i'm not longer in my comfort zone, i'm in a new city, all alone, sharing a flat with strange people and i have only one agenda on my mind.

What that is i can't tell you right now, but for the time being, you must forgive any typos and grammar goof-ups because i can't use the word processor here, i'm limited to my digital dexterity, literally!

I absolutely loved the train ride from Bombay here, in fact i had no idea when it ended and i was forced to haul my luggage up the stairs and out of the station. Cold comfort, multiple people to talk to, actually i must remark here at how the attitude of the average, angst ridden train commuter undergoes a sea chage when he's subjected to glacial temperatures, he becomes calm, willing to interact and willing to divulge more than the choicest abuses that he's learnt over the years.

As a city, Baroda isn't all that bad, my only gripes so far being the huge mosquitoes and the fact that giant, red Vodafone banners are put up where there are tiny dealers selling even tinier packages containing your SIM card.

The roads are similar to Bombay, pot-holed and littered with shi*, cow shi* to be precise and i'll bet that if you blindfolded me in Borivli and took me to Baroda and let me loose there, i'd be hard pressed to find a difference. Same language, same accents, same behaviour in the shops, same dressing sense, same EVERYTHING! Dammit!

For now, i still have to unpack and decide who i'll be sharing my room with. Then i have to get to work tomorrow, my first day as a formal employee of L.

More later, all i have is one hour internet access, which will end soon, and i still have to Tweet!

Cheers!

Kem?

What college was, and still is

2009-10-14T18:11:00.002+05:30

You must read this, you absolutely must, even if your dog is dying and you need to turn off you computer, you must. If you don't i'll make sure you lose a year of your sad life. This is compulsory and if you choose not to read, you'll have to deposit Rs 100/- in my retirement account.

No, it is assumed that if you cannot make it for the scheduled trip, you should be able to make it for one of the trips with the other batches. If you can't even do that much, well, it is assumed that you are sick, implying you are not fit enough to attend college for the minimum duration. Thus, you are told to drop a year, but no, you cannot just sit at home and recuperate. No. Instead, you are supposed to come to college every Sunday (presumably to mark the progress of your health), so that you are in the pink of your health by the time it is time for next year's trek. If not, well, leave college. This is what final year students were told.

Taken from here .

Addendum to last post :

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

I love Bombay,

2009-10-14T17:40:00.000+05:30

I love bombay, and I love quite a few people in Bombay. However, fate decided to move me out of Bombay, yes, L has posted me to the E&C division in Baroda, Gujarat. You can take the person out of Bombay but you cannot take Bombay out of the person. Nor can you separate the many people that go into making the amalgam that a person is.

Six years that I’ve been in Bombay and I’ve had quite a good time; I’ve done my share of crawling around the city, tasted the dirty water, baptised myself with the black salt that the sea produces, stood with my nose in sweaty armpits, tasted someone else’s snot in street food, pushed people in buses, felt rickshaw wheels over my foot, made friends, lost some, travelled by mail trains and done the other innumerable experiences that only Bombay can offer you. I’ve had conversations with total strangers in the trains, dished out advice to students in the tenth standard, waded along flooded railway tracks, gone to college, bunked lectures, ogled at women, hugged a few, and connected with still fewer who I’ll never forget for life.

It’s the people that make a city what it is, the people who give it its identity, them who make it breathe and pulsate, them who make it special to each one of them. I’ve made a few friends in the city, starting from scratch and building a network that includes people in the States, Canada, Madras, New Bombay and a significant number in Greater Bombay. These include chefs, engineers, geologists, people obsessed with chemistry, some with math, and some with pr0n and still others with dance and a still more who cannot live without women. Complete flirts to the recluse, people who can go on and on about absolutely anything to those who know nothing about anything, dancers to cooks, engineers to welders and then there are those you cannot describe with words, they must be seen in action to be believed.

And then you have those few who you never forget, come what may, and those who you know will never forget you. I’ve had some wonderful times in this city with those people. I’ve been to bars, and not been the only person not drinking, been to dance shows, been to opera recitals, been book hunting, gone shopping without knowing what to buy, just going for the joy that like-minded company brings you and done a lot of things that I’d rather not say. Six years have flown by in the proverbial blink of an eye all thanks to these people.

There are endless people I have to thank for helping me find my feet in the city, those who showed me new bus routes, those who helped me cross the roads, those who loaned me books and stationery, those who helped me with whatever I needed, whenever it was, those who gave me company and advice in the most unusual places and most importantly that someone who taught me how to love, how to give, how to share another’s joy and how to live for today, not yesterday or tomorrow. This is someone I’ll leave behind in Bombay as I ride the train to Baroda on Sunday night, I’ll never forget that someone till the day I die because I must admit, no one person, barring my parents of course, has taught me so much in such little time and touched me so deeply without expecting anything in return, not even the monetary part. I’ve gone shopping with that someone, shopping in both the men’s and women’s sections, shopped for gifts, ogled at men and women, rated them on a scale of ten, drawn encouragement and shared some things I’ve never told anyone else.

To that someone, you’ll know who you are, you’ll remember, and you’ll probably cry. I hate to admit it in public but I’ll do it for you, I cried too. When no one was looking, when no one cared, I felt that I didn’t want to leave the city that I found you in. These are but words, coded as ones and zeroes that go up in some obscure corner of cyberspace, but in real life, you must appreciate the emotion that went into writing this. I do not connect with people easily and I’m almost always the first person to bitch about others and pull them down, its how I am, but for once, no, I won’t. There are few people I manage to get along with, and still fewer who manage to get along with me. This goes out to one of the latter.

Life has to go on, I have to make the best of what I’ve been given, I have to move on, but you know what the truth is, even if I’m never able to say any of the words I’ve put down here. What matters is the thought.

Peace.

PS – Next post from Baroda, Gujarat, formally employed by L.

Tales from the Orientation

2009-09-24T20:01:00.002+05:30

This evening i saw the ad for a respectable paint company and for the first time, the ad actually got on my nerves. The ad featured a man standing in front of an orange wall that had the misfortune of being stained by something. In his efforts to rid the wall of the stain, the man inadvertently rubbed the colour off the wall and left it a lighter shade of orange. When he first saw the wall, he commented that the colour was “California Orange” and post the vigorous rubbing session, his son said “California Orange bana Nagpur Orange”.

Why must Indian goods be inherently inferior to anything from the States? Ok, manufactured goods and processed items I can understand, they may have technology that we do not, but produce? Come on people, the stuff we get here, home grown stuff is probably better than anything from the states, they are not gods of some sort that we have to revere anything that comes from their hallowed land. If I were not more rational, I’d be glad to join Osama and company, not in attacking America, they have done an excellent job of leading on a people prone to generalisation, but I’d rather point my guns at the people who make such ads.

More interesting stuff now; the subject of my rants will now be the people who constitute the rest of my batch at Lunch & Tea. They’re mostly from the south, and no amount of preparation, endless lectures from well meaning friends or even the holy grail, a visit to South India, can prepare you for the mannerisms of the people who populate that region. You only hear about it in Russell Peters shows but actually seeing men slap other men on their behinds as a form of greeting is very weird the first time you actually see it. But then you resign yourself to thinking that you’re probably the only one who has an issue with it, the rest of the world is cool about it, and then when you actually ask them, it hits you, you’re not alone, son.

Then you have the fascination with pubs, booze and women in dance bars. I have absolutely no idea about the last one, I just know where some “live shows” were held, and that’s it, I have never dared, nor will I ever dare to step inside one of those dens of sin and money-wasting. Again, about the booze joints, I know precious little, go ask someone else. Being one of the few people who have lived for some time in Bombay, you’re naturally the one who’s asked a lot of strange questions ranging from ones posed by the first time suburban commuter to the completely inane. And then they open their mouths to talk and you realise that there’s something wrong with how they talk, the accent is strange, the vocabulary is different, the same words mean different things, and then there’s the issue of abuses.

When you live in Bombay, among the first words that enter your vocabulary in the local language are the abuses, the choicest ones reserved for the bus conductor who won’t give you change or the train traveller who sticks his arm a millimetre too far into your side. These people from the south do not know what it meant to call someone an F. Or a B, or a C, or a MC or a BC or a nut job, or an ass, or an asshole or anything like that. The worst that they say is poda, which literally means “Get lost”. Man, I’m surely condemned to hell if these people are anywhere near me on judgement day.

And then, you have the pseudo-South Indian that I use as a social crutch, trusted confidante, best friend from college and my all access pass to high society called Ms. Muffet. Her and her interactions with these people, now that’s something worth writing a book about! So she asks for gum from the guy next to me, so it has to change numerous hands to get to her and the same ensues on its return journey. During that return journey, this guy, or rather chicken, gets his hands, or rather, wings on the gum pack and decides to get all ballsy with the woman, he refuses to pass it on and takes a gum out of it, eats it and says some shit in Tamil to Ms. Muffet. She comprehends and gets pissed, and then, due to years of interacting with men with mouths of sailors, she calls him an ass-hole.

Oh my Gawd, she called him an ass hole, a woman called a guy an ass hole, the orifice whose existence you praise every morning (or whenever you take your daily dump). Should I tell my mommy? Should I go tell the HR people? No way dude, this is not happening, no cheap South Indian chick calls me, Mr Idli Power, that. I cannot be a bodily orifice, I have never, in my many years heard a woman say that. No sir, she should take that dupatta and wrap it round her head and sit quietly in the corner and take shit from me, I’m there to protect her, not take this from her. Now I should cry. Go women of Bombay, even if you live in a bedroom suburb or even if you live in a shit hole. Eff them, these idli eating morons, give them a slap or two, cheap porn watching losers.

Looks like someone really needs to use the clap, and maybe the slap too, when it’s needed.

Ambition

2009-09-20T20:22:00.000+05:30

Today afternoon, or rather just before noon, someone asked me what my ambition was. Blank. All my thoughts were sucked into the mental equivalent of a black hole, consuming all the information that was in my head and turning it into energy. The only difference was the black hole in my head was consuming energy, not producing it. I scrambled for an answer to save the minute but all that I could come up with was a clichéd “I haven’t thought about that”. I could use the excuse that it’s still early days, I’m young and I’m not really sure about what I want to do and where I want to be but, really, how long can I keep using that as a convenient shield? I don’t know.

To answer that question, I could use the experiences that I’ve been through at a certain organisation, let’s call it company S. It so happened that I was made a job offer from another company, a sworn enemy of company S, that we shall call company L. Company L is the favourite of our college, the preferred employment partner for their students. It also happened that due to the sub prime crisis in the States, company L was affected and had to postpone its employment offers. That did not mean that they cancelled their offers, injecting young blood in small but controlled shots. In the mean time, I was going nuts sitting at home and to break the boredom, I started looking for jobs. I did find employment at several places, three more to be specific. I always doubted that I’d be able to find any employment and the fact that I had that many offers to pick and choose from. At the end of the series, but deserving its position at the top of my preference list came company S. S is a large company, larger and more diversified that L and the fact that I’d managed to score a job in it sent me over the moon. I changed loyalties and to prove my allegiance I proudly flaunted a trio of plastic cards bearing the six other letters that complete the name of S. But woe is me, the reality of the situation slowly hit me as I realised what S had done to me and other people like me, with second or rather first offers that were not yet cancelled. I was placed in what was essentially a grandly named maintenance department. I had no idea was in store for me, and neither did I expect to be doing any of it in a global giant such as S. My responsibilities included managing things as mundane as the canteen hygiene, assuring the management of no offensive odours in the toilets and dealing with all types of service men and technicians from the armada of companies that had some part to play in keeping the place going. The armada included coffee machine dealers, tea bag vendors, lift companies, fire extinguisher dealers, toilet suppliers and many others that I’m too ashamed to mention. What other “activities” happen in this hallowed department I do not know but the little I saw made me squirm at how a bunch of engineers could allow themselves to be made to do such work. There are things that I will and there are things that I will not and sadly, this jobs responsibilities fell into the latter. The HR person who presented the option to me made it all seem very grand and much above what I actually experienced. As far as I know, it takes a little common sense to be able to read the floor layouts of a building, not a degree in civil engineering. Why and how a degree in electrical engineering is needed to interact with AC and lift technicians still cannot fathom. Though other more interesting stuff may have happened in the past, it was the present and future that I was interested in and frankly, it did not look too good. After a month of sitting in an air conditioned office, I had no place to call my own, I was using someone else’s workstation, I had no computer, and I had no training at all. As per the information that I gleaned from my listing on their databases, I was assigned to one department and was doing the work of another. One fine day I was told to go count the number of empty work places on each floor I realised that this was not what I wanted to do at all. The HR fellow that I’d talked to on day one saw what I was doing and said nothing.

I had reached breaking point, I had a few friends but they were busy most of the time, I was the only one who seemed to have nothing to do but seemingly stupid tasks assigned to me my by a gentleman who was not my boss. I didn’t like the work and the only saving grace was the clock striking leaving time. I spent most of my time sitting by the coffee machines, the same ones whose liquid output that I’d measured days ago. Then, as if in response to my prayers, company L decided that they needed my services after all. It was time to broach the subject of a department change one last time, and it didn’t work. The last, vain attempt at keeping me there was a claim from the HR person that what I was doing was not my work. If it wasn’t, then go get someone else to do it. I’m better off now and I have no intention of doing such work ever again. So much to S, you can keep your name and reputation ready to bait some other desperate, naïve, young engineer.

That’s it, that’s how much narrower the choices of my “ambition” have become; One possibility less but a million more to eliminate. How and when I will finally get down to doing that I don’t know, but after a few months of “real” work I hope to be in a better position to decide.

Cheers!

To choose or to accept.

2009-09-04T13:57:00.000+05:30

Are you fascinated by the occult and supernatural? Seeking an explanation for something that happened in your life? Want to know what tomorrow holds in store for you? What would explain our desire to know the unknown? Is it the same aspect of humanity that has led to the finding of black holes and the big bang theory (not the TV show)?

Maybe it is the desire to know the unknown, the proverbial curiosity of the cat that drives us. Coming back to the supernatural, have you ever wanted to know what lies after death and in that pursuit turned to religion and then to science because the former is based on belief and the latter on fact? TV shows add some questionable amount of credibility to the theory of “my soul will go on”. How else can you explain the success of shows like Supernatural and Ghost Hunters? Ghost Hunters in particular, makes you wonder how an amalgam of low-res, shaky footage shot with hand held cameras in IR mode and other recording methods like DVR’s (digital voice recorders) and thermal imagers, can turn into such a hugely successful TV show when faced with competition from other shows that feature a solid plot line and slick editing.

What gives? Why do we want to know what lies beyond, what is after, what would happen if? Astrology provides some answers, supposedly on the presumption that everyone born at a particular time of the year has the same traits. Some are led to believe, but what are the chances of that actually happening, everyone born in a given month acting in a similar fashion? What happened to the theory of each of us being unique? The astrology believer would counter that by saying that the art only gives you a rough idea of what each person may turn out to be like, not a hard and fast rule about what each person should be like. But I ask, how do you arrive at those traits? Aren’t the star signs supposed to be named by the ancients based on the patterns formed by stars which are supposedly light years apart? Who’s to say that the Arian ram is really a ram after all, s/he could jolly well be an earth worm. And why do all the signs have to be one of earth, fire or water? Why can’t some of them be extraterrestrial, Martian for instance, the stars aren’t exactly earth bound. There are also other means of knowing the answers, the Ouija board for instance, the planchette where, a pointer is moved by the hands of participants sitting around a board with letters and a YES and NO for the monosyllabic answers. Some, specially the church, claim that such practices summon not the spirits of the deceased but rather the fallen angels, disguised as loved ones. What proof is there of the counter argument? Faith, the church will claim but how credible is either side of the story? There are countless instances, well documented, but alas each unverified, to support both sides. In one experiment, the participants at a séance were blindfolded and the board was flipped 180 without their knowledge. Their hands moved the pointer to the place where they thought the YES and NO markers were. Need I say more?

Then you have tarot cards, completely random, with a different possible outcome after a simple shuffle of the deck. Isn’t that exactly what our lives are?

Just an hour ago, I saw an ad on Zee Studio for the movie White Noise, where disembodied voices are captured on digital recorders, the idea of the DVR. Huge amounts of amplification add to the audible noise and the human brain, with its tendency to pick out patterns from randomness, is just the right tool with which to analyse these recordings.

From the Christian camp, you have the issue of demonic possession and exorcisms where numerous cases have been documented in painstaking detail. Victims have been known to speak in languages that they could have never learnt, develop superhuman strength and point out intimate details in the lives of those present. Demons, the church tells us, were angels and still possess their powers, which would explain how, if demonic possession were real, the possessed person attains all those abilities at such short notice. If you’ve seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, you’ll know exactly what the counter arguments of the rational, science believer are. But at the end of those, there is still the lingering question of faith, to believe or not to believe. Coming back to the question of the future, these “beings from the beyond” have been known to make accurate predictions about future events but that again leaves us wondering, how do they know? If they were created by God himself, that could be the source of their knowledge. But that would make us mere puppets playing out the moves dictated by some supreme being. But we have an intellect, as BR man says, we choose, we decide, we regret some choices and bask in the glory of others. That means that we are the rulers, or controllers of our own destiny. If all of us were to go to heaven, we’d have no good in this world, all we’d do was break the commandments. If all of us were to go south, we’d have an ideal world, or rather not, depending on how all of us take the fact that our lives are just tales being lived out in the flesh.

No, we decide, a hardened criminal could ask for forgiveness minutes before being given the prick of death, a chaste man could do the one thing that he’s always wanted and then go to hell for it. It is you that matters, you choose, you live. While it may be true that our lives are all connected and how we live depends on the lives and choices of a thousand others, we still choose for ourselves. Sadaam Hussein killed the Kurds with gas, they didn’t know what he was going to do. Had some supernatural force told them of their impending doom, they would have fled. Passengers on the Titanic would have gladly taken a delay in exchange for a chance to see another sunrise. The space shuttle Challenger technicians would have loved another chance to fix their errors and save the lives of the astronauts on board.

It’s a open debate, and on that has no conclusion or a definite answer. What side you take would depend on what you believe in. has your side already been picked for you, or is it open?

My days, or evenings

2009-08-23T21:42:00.000+05:30

Just to keep the blog fresh

2009-08-23T20:46:00.000+05:30

So I finally read The Godfather and I loved it. Now I’m reading my first Jeffery Archer novel, Honour Among Thieves. Seems good up till the point I’ve reached.

It’s been three weeks that I’ve been working at Sheewomans and man, am I bored or what? I got a cute little diary to write stuff in. and I keep writing in it all the time, I’m that jobless. I’ve never looked forward to the weekends this much. It’s so bad that every morning I keep track of the number of hours and days left to the weekend and the time that I can spend at home and sleep. Aside from that, I’ve been doing some interesting stuff at work, like figuring out how to use MS Access, I have to use that, they don’t really dig OpenSource software.

Another person has been bitten by the blogging bug, see here.

I don’t know what to blog about anymore, this post is just a log of the stuff that I’ve been doing the past three weeks, not really something with a point. I now have an AmEx card and a HDFC debit card and I now have the thing that chicks dig. If you want a free meal from me and you’re a woman, you know what to do.

What struck me one day at work is how the same paan-spitting and public-space-defiling people turn into voracious guardians of spaces when they enter some place that’s been keep spotlessly clean. This made me think, if the roads were kept clean and maintained well, would be still act the way we do?

I also have a corporate email id. I’ll mail it out to people soon enough, wait!

Ah, I don’t know what to say anymore, so typical.

Peace.

2009-08-06T21:40:00.002+05:30

This i had to put up, it's some of the best George Bush quotes that i found on uncyclopedia:

"You should be afraid for reasons even I pretend to understand."
"We Prayed to The Wrong Dairy Product"
Scrunch-up face, look like yer thinkin'
"God Bless America and no one else"
"Free people vote me for president because they support the freedom of our free nation."
"It was China"
"It was Al-Qaeda"
"It was Bin Laden"
"It was the devil"
"It was my daddy"
"Terrorists!"
"It was God!"
"It was Al Gore"
"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?"

Passing out

2009-08-01T15:27:00.001+05:30

It’s rumoured that most of my class will be passing out on the 13^th of August, but I’ll tell you something better, I passed out much before that, on the 27^th of July in Bandra east.

If I add that the location was a hospital and that I was at the medical test of a reputed organisation, would that make things a little less vague? No, then I’ll tell you: in short, I fainted, for the first time in my life.

I was at Guru Nanak Hospital, Bandra East, all set to undergo the whole gamut of medical tests that most organisation demand that you undergo before joining, probably just to make sure that they don’t recruit a sick duck. The battery of tests include a urine test, a stool test, a height test, a cardiovascular test, sometimes an ECG, the eye tests and my favourite, the blood test.

In all of my past years, I’ve never harboured any fear of needles, they prick, but that’s about it, what goes in or comes out is really not my concern. I’ve had my vaccines, taken shots standing up and never once flinched at the thought or the sight of a pointed syringe. It’s just something that you put up with. However, the mandatory blood test requires that you fast the entire night, meaning that no breakfast is allowed. Breakfast is my saving grace, the one meal that I cannot go without. Lose the chance to eat and my whole day just goes wrong. It is, perhaps the consequence of years of downing the average mans equivalent of lunch, during the wee hours of the morning. Multiple cups of chai, milk and copious amounts of cheese, cold cuts or eggs form my daily breakfast. The demands of the blood test send this for a toss and I’m forced to get up, finish my daily ablutions and move myself out of the house and onto the streets. That’s exactly what I did that fateful morning. I decided to take a bus to Bandra west and see how to go from there. I just had to get onto a bus that was on the verge of dying, one of those TATA Skybuses, painted a very appealing red and blue with the BEST logo emblazoned on the side, in a colour that’s different from the usual bland off white and red. Nice low floor, comfortable ride and spacious, but there was the devil in the details, the bus inched along slower that a cycle, as a fellow passenger remarked. Even on empty stretches of the road, we were ambling along at about 20 kmph. To add to my misery, I happened to move to a seat that I shared with a pretty PYT, but she got off much earlier than I’d expected. So much for that. Making matters worse was the fact that I carried along with me a book, that Mr. G. Rebello had mentioned to be one of the worst that he’d ever read. He did not lie, it was a nightmare, not something that you’d enjoy reading on an empty stomach seated in what was quite literally, a slow coach.

At the end of two gruelling hours, the bus finally reached Bandra and I crossed over to the east. What do I see? Some random slum kid peeing on the divider, another emptying her bowels on the pavement and the line for the only bus to take me there being formed on a footpath next to a drain that consisted of nothing but wet mud. So much for “ India Shining”, the only things that glisten here are dog and human faeces and the roads, only when covered in freshly liquefied mud.

So I hail a rick and get to the hospital. The rest of the story is pretty mundane, with me handing over the cash for the tests, getting my forms filled and collecting vouchers for the blood and X-rays. Forms and file in hand, I descended the flight of steps to the Pathology lab and find, to my horror, that the woman doing the blood collection is a PYT, all of twenty, younger than even me. Still, I don’t panic, even as a three year old girl who entered before me, wet her pants at the sight of the long haired, young Medusa.

In I went, as I did, I tried to allay the fears of the senior woman there that placing your cellphone near a MCB doesn’t pose any risks. That done, I sat on the “hot/wet seat” and raised my sleeve to show off my drooping biceps. Unfortunately, our young woman was more interested in the thin skin above my elbow and smeared the entire area with spirit, or some disinfectant. Then she remarks that all her patients that day had been ones with “difficult veins”, something that scared me a little. Anyway, I looked away and felt the needle go in, then out, then in, then out and then alarm bells started ringing and I had to look at what was going on there. After a total of three pricks on my right hand, I saw 5 ml of my own blood enter the syringe, then 10, then 15 , then 20 and then stars, blue stars, red stars and then everything went black.

I had fainted at the sight of my own blood, just as someone had predicted. I was in dream world, where the tests were done and I was on my way home, in a bus for some reason and it was empty, save for the conductor and driver. The bus turned a corner and the next thing I see is a tubelight and some leather faced man dressed in white staring down at me. Confused and irritated at having left the bus , I said nothing but just stared up groggily. Then he said “ aur ek ko gira diya”. Then it came out, F’s B’s BC’s, MC’s every conceivable abuse that I knew in English, Hindi and Marathi split forth from my mouth, just like the blood that was sucked steadily into that syringe. Then it hit me, I was back in the hospital, though how and why I was on a bed, I couldn’t understand. Slowly it came back, I had fainted and the “hot seat” was actually a wheelchair that had been used to wheel me into the ward, where there was only one other patient, a rickety old man, complaining about something in Gujarati.

A quick blood pressure check later, I was good to go but taking the medical advice given to me, I stayed put and continued lying down, only getting up on my elbows a good ten minutes later. Back on my feet, I resumed the tests, with no memories of the entire incident except the needle, the abuses and a very bad head ache.

PS – What happened after that will not be described adequately by words. I’m too ashamed to admit that I had truly lost my mind for about half an hour there!

VT, Very Old

2009-08-01T12:09:00.001+05:30

All questions, no answers

2009-07-27T12:25:00.002+05:30

A recent, poorly worded outburst from one of my former classmates, aimed at the fact that I poked a little fun at him in one of the emails that I spam people with, got me thinking about certain aspects of my otherwise idyllic life.

One

Am I really comfortable with who I am, as a person and at a social level?

Sometimes there are situations where I don’t have the faintest clue about what’s to be done. I don’t enjoy being the butt of jokes but I laugh at myself ever so often. People point out the simplest things in life that make them laugh and lighten their days and I fake laughter. Why am I not happy? Is it that I don’t see things as a normal person would? Or am I a stereotypical hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another? Why do I play along with the crowd for years together? I say that I don’t allow the world to influence my thinking and that I maintain a strictly neutral standpoint on most matters but how much of it is merely hot air? Knowledge is not something that you read in a book, you go out and see for yourself. Accepting yourself the way you are is the biggest challenge with many, case in point – MJ’s nose, and likewise with me. I claim a lot of things, do very little. I tell myself everyday that one day I’ll be able to do the guitar solo on at least one Iron Maiden song, and yet day after day, I make the same mistakes with the six string keeping me at the level that I reached earlier. I tell myself to read to books I’ve bought with four years worth of savings yet I’m content to let them sit on a shelf and let their knowledge remain stagnant, all because they look good on that shelf. I’m willing to admit to my mistakes, to others and myself but I’m unwilling to change. Or do I really admit to myself in the first place? Even though there’s nothing going through my mind, there’s a sub conscious decision made that I’m right, no matter what anyone else says. Right and wrong are relative, BR man says, but Abdel Kadher Khan in Shantaram dares you to pose this question – If you think that something is right, for justification consider what would happen if everyone in the world did that. Would the result take our part of the universe to a greater lever complexity, towards a God? in my case, most certainly not.

Two

Am I uncertain about my own future and do I use that insecurity to direct my hate at those whom I perceive as having bright prospects?

What if he makes it somewhere in life? What if she opens a restaurant? What if he’s better at expressing himself than me? There have been numerous times when I’ve found myself green with jealousy, though my dark skin hides that from the outside world. Then I ask myself why I feel threatened by other people. Maybe it’s the recent turn of events on the job scene, where the man who took illegitimate pride in having scored with the first company to visit college is now sitting unemployed at home, while those he rated at not being worthy of a job are atop mountains of soon to be liquid cash. Who am I really to judge the competence of others? There’s more than meets the eye in most cases and if people have been able to do that with me, then I should also do the same to others. It’s what Christianity preaches but what wilfully choose not to follow. I cannot explain why I always harbour feelings of mistrust and worse, hate towards most people, even those whom I call friends. It stops me from being part of their joys and sorrows, from paying mere lip service to their thoughts and feelings; exactly what I do in church. The walls and boundaries of my personal space, both mental and physical have kept me blissfully detached from most people and though a few have managed to forge a bond with me, it works only one way, as I see it. I’m mostly unwilling to let go of my inhibitions and connect with someone, maybe because I’m afraid of losing what I have, friendship. But as is said, you’ll never know if you never try.

I attribute this to my not knowing what to do with my life. When I see people telling me that they’ll be doing this and that after a certain number of years, I mentally kick myself in the behind and the seed of envy is sown. When the person does well after all his or her effort, I can’t take it, even though I have nothing to gain or lose. I know what I need to do, but I’d rather take the easy way out and live in denial that come clean about it.

For some strange reason, I find myself unable to cry at someone’s funeral yet I’ll be sobbing after watching something in reel life, which I know is nothing but a recreation at best. I have this secret elation when something bad happens to one of my competitors, it’s what most of us do and it’s not healthy, but the key word there is “most”.

Three

Am I really the person I make myself out to be or worst of all, am I lying to myself? Am I really as intelligent as people think that I am? What do I have to back that up? A list of numbers on red paper that may proclaim my worth as a number between one and a hundred? Is that what it boils down to, marks? I have poor self worth but good self confidence, I can lead you to believe a whole bunch of things that are untrue about me, not want to do it, still continue and then pee in my pants when the truth seeps through the cloak. Intelligence can be misleading; when confronted with a life and death situation, true heroes emerge. Do I use intelligence as a gag to avoid telling people what’s really on my mind, yes I do, most of the time.

(Read this if you’re bored with the rest)

I’m something else, something different, chemically identical to most humans out there but emotionally different. Accepting yourself as you are is easier said than done. The obese have issues with their physical selves and I think I’m like them in a way. I’m mentally obese from years of neglect and an unwillingness to change. I know what I need to do but I won’t do it, I’d let the problem be and dismiss any solutions. I cloak my thoughts, when there are any, with layers of artificial intelligence (sad comparison) to hide away the bulging layers of ignorance and disgust at my own sheer lack of knowledge.

Maybe it’s time I started being more critical of myself and not of others.

PS – made no sense? Bored after the incoherent ranting of a confused mind? Fret not, I’ll be back to more light hearted stuff soon, I just had to get this done with first, and BTW, today’s the first day that I read the papers, read a book, studied, thought about things, went to see the shrink, went to seek divine help , met a man and blogged. All because I got up early!

Posterior Interrupted

2009-07-27T00:55:00.001+05:30

This evening, I completed what may be my final extended interaction with someone whose words have managed to say in my head for an extended period. I won’t say that he’s had a life changing impact on me but he has had some effect. It’s not everyday that you meet someone with the determination to see anything that he cares to undertake, right through the end. Most people are unwilling to admit to their shortcomings and don’t take kindly to others pointing them out. Fewer still will accept that they have problems and try to devise a solution, that’s why you have AA. Still fewer will admit to you, to themselves and seek help. I don’t have to point out the category here.

From poking fun at the female anatomy (which I never took kindly too) to putting all his faith in a light bulb, this man has done what few would have dared to do in such a short span of time. Granted that the innovation may run like an IV through his blood but it’s the effects that matter, after all an IV is no good unless someone benefits. It’s hard to limit someone just by your vocabulary and your ability to string words together. If you were to use the mathematical tool of probability, then this man would have the highest chance of becoming something in life. The highest by far, I may take the liberty of stating.

Saying that you’re positive and actually keeping your hope afloat in the sea of doubt that is the average human mind, are two different things, the latter executed to perfection. Mouth muscles always contorting that hole into shapes and a tongue and throat pumping and modulating air are the first things that you’ll notice about him, not to mention the constant gesticulations and the desire to “be”. Knowing the intricacies of the human psyche and using that knowledge in a real situation are difficult for even a trained psychiatrist, but ask this man and you’ll be staring at an answer that you know is right but never knew existed. It’s the saying out loud of the simple, understated facts that you know are true but never bothered to notice, that amazes most people. You know that if two and two make four, two less that four would leave two. Simple fact, twisted statement. And did I forget to mention that there’s always an analogy to almost everything that you don’t understand? It’s called tuning into a different frequency, when there’s a frequency mismatch.

Dreaming of being the first member of his family to grace the hallowed soil of the United States to actually doing that takes a trip along a boulder strewn path before you get to the smooth ride along the bridge, here’s living proof of how a dream and an idea coupled with the willingness and desire to achieve the unthinkable can take you farther than you ever though possible.

I salute this man, no matter what the earth comes to, the leaden bottom will be remembered.

PS – of late, I’ve been sucked up by the tidal forces of finding multiple jobs and having to pick one AND getting up very late in the mornings. That explains why I haven’t posted in such a long time. I’ll get back to using the laptop for what I indented to and not for playing games, both offline and online!

HDR Attempt - 2

2009-07-26T14:59:00.002+05:30

Designs on You.

2009-07-26T14:54:00.003+05:30

These bookmarks have been made by a certain person who has taken great pains to get them from a mere mortals ideas to the reality that they are.

If you want some, or know a bookworm who'd like some, or better still, you can give the book worm some yourself, then get in touch with me.

Leave a comment and i'll tell you how you can get them.

A little less about God

2009-07-13T14:55:00.001+05:30

Think that God doesn't answer your prayers?
Wonder whether or not God exists?

Well a certain tour bus operator who regularly parks his buses in Borivli may have the answer for you.

The fronts of all his buses are emblazoned with this " Prise God".

Indeed, prise him open and you'll get what you want!

One Line Funnies

2009-07-11T01:50:00.000+05:30

OMG, seriously, you have to read this, i laughed, and i don't laugh at too many things ok

Here

http://chroniclesofdementia.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-kickass-status-messages.html

Villages, Trains, Accents, and Me!

2009-07-09T23:07:00.001+05:30

Of late I’ve been exposed to a lot of different types of people ranging from the village simpleton to the razor sharp minds from the big cities. Some of them are completely unable to communicate in English, and when faced with anything that seems to test your comprehension in “English” they are bought to their knees even though they may have understood or rather, comprehended the meaning of something better that supposed “native” English speakers such as me. The same lot are geniuses at math, leaving tortoises like me far behind. There are those who know absolutely everything that’s relevant to any given subject there are those who are disinterested and even those who are uninterested. And then there are those who do not know that Nike is a brand. God, I know that coming from a village of people who work the soil and tend animals you may have never seen high end fashion label stores like Gucci and Versace, but can you not know that Nike is a shoe brand or that TOI is India’s leading English language daily? Ok, I may be a little presumptuous with those two but how in the name of God most high, can you not have heard of at least one English language daily, the Mid Day, the Hindu, the Statesman, one of those? India Today, Outlook, something? Oh please, do you actually live under a rock in that village of yours?

I’m taking the example of one dude here and trying to generalise but when I found out that more that a few were from the villages, it really struck me how bad we really are and how fortunate I am to have lived in a city all my life, being exposed to a more modern lifestyle compared to this lot. I’m not belittling them here, they come from a completely different background with a different set of sensibilities and mannerisms, they have grown up seeing the earth and respecting it for what it’s worth, a completely different experience to my own. For someone like me, the earth is simply a giver of food in one form or another, a repository of material for buildings and furniture and a place to accept all that we’re done with and want to rid ourselves of. As for the village folk, they’d probably be better at reading the signs of decay in a tree, know how to start a fire in the wilderness, know how to use the earth for what it’s worth and they’d think twice before mistreating her.

After a civil exchange of words with a certain KC, I was reminded of what India truly is, a collection of villages, that’s where the real India is, and that India is connected to ours by the largest transporter of men and goods in the world, the behemoth called the Indian Railways. I’ve always looked at those long blue serpents billowing smoke from their fronts, as the means that connected us to “them”, the filthy, uncouth residents of some obscure village with a name that’s too difficult to pronounce. My, how I was wrong! The village folk are not dumb, without them, there’d be no rice in those ceramic jars that I have at home, and there’d be no meat on the table, no fish for the crow to steal.

I’ve lost track of what I was saying and where this post was supposed to go, so I’ll give it a rest now.

Till next time, adios!

PS – There was a debate (Face The Nation) airing live on CNN-IBN about the issue of homosexuality in religion (remember that Jobin and me can come clean now, it’s finally legal!), but alas, I moved to writing this. I tried this channel because of the obvious American connection but sadly, I was let down yet again. There’s none of the refinement that you expect from an international news channel, all you get is the typical Indian attitude of screaming to be heard and discussions with fragments of sense in each sentence but none on the whole.

HDR Attempt - 1

2009-07-07T13:51:00.001+05:30

Agreed, it's not that great, not aligned and stuff, but i'm trying!

Simba Made it to my Dream.

2009-07-03T12:17:00.001+05:30

It’s been a rather tumultuous period of late with having to pick one of either the GRE or the CAT, a masters in a technical discipline or a post graduation in an altogether different stream, and I picked one, which one you’ll find out soon enough but if you know me better, you may already know the answer to that one.

This post is not going to be about that decision, this is about one of the weirdest dreams that I’ve had since college ended. This involved of all people, Simranjit, yes, Simba and that black and gold highlighted motorcycle of his. The sequence of events that led to this strange situation that I’m going to describe seem rather hazy, lost in the fog that mires most of our dreams, but this part, I do remember clearly simply because of it’s sheer shock value. I was riding the man’s bike down the stretch of the Sion-Panvel highway outside the Tata Power station at Mankhurd, which is strange in itself, because I have never been in the front seat of a bike before. Then I reached what looked like the eastern end of a flyover at Belapur but was actually in Vashi, some shortcut to college it would seem. After getting off the curve leading out of the highway, I was confronted by what looked like the end of some dirty hutments, where the toilet blocks normally are. The blocks themselves were painted in that sad cream-beige colour with the cement grilles serving as the only ventilation and source of light for the occupants inside. The stench that emanated from there was needless to say, worthy of covering your nose. So there I was, with the man’s bike and there was no way forward, the road was a dead end. There was a little nullah, a trench dug into the ground to carry liquid to the nearest holding pond or some other means to get it there, that ran on the outside of the toilet block, towards the centre of the huts and in the general direction of college, I presumed. For some reason, I decided to scale the outside of the block to get to college.

Not wanting to leave Simba’s bike there, I had no option but to carry it with me. I know that sounds outrageous and even impossible, a figure like me, carrying a bike with one hand and using the other and two pairs of toes to hold on to a little ledge in the outside wall of a toilet block, all to avoid getting drenched in biological effluents (Slumdog) and to get to college in time. Well this is my dream and I can do what I want to, so I did carry the bike in one hand and it was surprisingly light, the body even gently swaying back and forth from the handlebar as I held it tight. Three steps into the escapade, I got cold feel and had to go back. There, of all the people I could meet, it had to be a man who I took to be Simba’s father as he asked me what I was doing with that bike. On telling him my plight, he offered to help me get across the toilet block and past the slums. We shared the almost non existent weight of the bike and tip toed across the toilets before we came to a clothes line that someone had strung from their hut to one of the windows on the toilets.

That literally became the end of the line for the old man as he moved the full weight of the bike to me and with both hands holding the clothes line, he disappeared into oblivion, into the black interiors of the hut that was the source of the line, leaving me with a bike in one hand, the other holding on to the flaking paint on the outside of a toilet block, perched precariously over a stream of human effluent.

What that means, I cannot fathom as I’m no good at interpreting dreams, I’ve dreamt stranger stuff but just in case you want to know, before dreaming this, I was reading Shantaram and had reached the part where he’s in Afghanistan, crossing some mountain range in pitch darkness on a narrow path on the outside of the mountain, just as I was.

Make what you may of it!

Peace, adios!