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

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.
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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.

Degree of Freedom

2007-08-16T09:24:00.000+05:30

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~Frost

Conditioned Life

2007-07-30T09:19:00.000+05:30

Inside, people sip on their coffee and tea
(Which by the way can be got for free)
And gaze through the glass window to see
A world in motion outside, busy as can be
Falling raindrops, wind blowing through the trees
While inside, life is stagnant at 23 degrees.

How Gud is my Gaon

2007-07-27T07:58:00.000+05:30

The few images I have seen over the past 3 weeks that I’ve been here, give me an impression of a city that had no time to cope up with the sudden growth it has witnessed. Like a child in some fantasy movie who takes a magic potion and wakes up the next day to find out that he has outgrown all his clothes. Real estate was the magic potion in this case.

Venture for a 5 minute walk around and you see all the signs.

There are huge, tall buildings, adjacent to each other, jostling for space. Right in front there are vast empty fields, occasionally camped on in by the gypsy types, probably waiting for their turn to be transformed. The roads are busy. High end cars zooming past at speeds only they are capable of, stealthily. But, very often, they have to wait and line up for that noisy rickety tractor probably headed to utilize the fields that remain. And justify the latter part of this place’s name. Cows, bulls and the odd dog posing a threat is a common sight too, but that is common to almost the entire country.

Then there are the malls. Huge ones, and still newer ones coming up. Right in front of them are makeshift shanties, with hay roof covering, the ones that don’t present a pretty sight in rains. Or present no sight at all, come strong winds. Some of them serve alcohol, but not the ones you would generally associate with such places. There are huge billboards with Jack Daniels or Absolut Vodka printed over them, and luxurious cars parked in front.

There are traffic jams of scary proportions, just when the office hours get over. The problem is compounded by the Delhi Metro detours, which promise you a better and faster commute if you suffer till the time they are completed. These are the snapshot images that get published in newspapers and government sponsored advertisements that brag about India’s development. Tall cranes stationed over piles of building materials, engineers in yellow helmets manning over things, long iron rods projecting out of round and stout concrete columns. Look closely and you’ll find a mile long queue of impatient honking cars in the background. Just out of Mumbai which is in the ‘block-roads-and-build-flyovers’ phase, I always seem to be caught at wrong end of development.

How’s job? Well, like most others, only with a much smaller smile on the face the first of every month. It takes some getting used to, one day you’re waking up 5 minutes before the lecture, dragging your dirty, stained jeans and ragged, stinking tee out of a heap and putting them on for class, with a noisy chappal to accompany. The next day you’re required to get up an hour before office time, shave, comb, put on ironed shirt and trousers and a tie along with uncomfortable formal black shoes. Every day when I go through this routine, this ‘The Who’ snippet plays into my mind:

You think we look pretty good together
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah

These days, I’m beginning to find out the importance of weekends.

Postcards from Jamshedpur: The Zoo

2007-06-22T23:05:00.000+05:30

There are only so many things that can be done in my town. We decided (rather I decided and forced others, nothing new) to visit this place which was the object of such fascination only a decade ago. Only the coaxing and cajoling and waiting took long enough so that we neared closing time when we got there. Nevertheless we did manage to get up close with some animals before that and I'll present a brief pictorial proof.

The rabbit showed us the way

The elephant was there to welcome us

The duck posed with the quacks

OMG!! The bear attacked us!

New generation of croc hunters

Eco friendly dino. 100% vegetarian.

Emu. Just in case you doubted if we really visited the zoo. And boy these birds are big!

And you doubted that?

Then they lived happily ever after. I love happy endings.

Immediate Concerns

2007-06-21T00:09:00.000+05:30

This template I have used for too long. Been thinking of changing it. Would have, had the net at home been even a hundredth as fast as in IIT. Here you lose the patience to do things after a while.

In the meanwhile, getting back here has inspired me to raise this near dead blog back into life. Do have a read if you can spare the time.

http://back2jsr.blogspot.com

****

A day or two back I had to get a passport photograph taken. I went in at the wrong time when the shop was about to close and the reel for day had already been sent to develop. I was told to return the next day. The next day I went there and reminded them this. The guy looked at me and said,

"Look at you. Unshaven, not wearing a shirt (tees don't count). Yesterday you were ready, today you are not. Come back tomorrow"

I couldn't help laughing. I could have told him that this photo isn't going to be sent as a marriage portfolio. (Look there's this guy who looks like a bear and even dresses to prove that, how can anyone marry him? ) Even if it is I'm not about to marry his daughter. I could have gone to another studio too to get the job done. But, seeing how sentimental he was about his job, and by extension his subject, I decided to give him a chance.

Next day I walk in all shaved and dressed up (which means wearing a shirt in my world). He leads me to the chamber. He switches on the blinding lights. I get all watery eyed and ask for time to adjust. He waits and takes the picture after a while.I come out and rub my eyes to take away the pain. He looks at me and says, concerned,

"You spend too much time near TV, or computer?"
''Lately, yes'', I respond. Bemused.
"Your eyes get strained too easily. Go check with an optician soon enough", he added.

Now that is all round care. All you want is a photograph and you get advice on grooming and eyesight. Small town thing I guess. Everybody concerned about everyone else. And everything else.

A Drift

2007-06-09T01:04:00.000+05:30

It is never a good idea to talk about people. Praise leads to flattery, truth goes down bitterly. From where I come from, friends don't feel bad if they are not acknowledged, they feel embarrassed if they are. Try sending someone a birthday card, or present a juvenile thing like a friendship band, and wait for the wrath to fall upon you. I love it that way, where you don't really have to say, prove materially what others mean to you, they just know. I know.

Which is why I won't talk about people here. There are many things I've wanted to say to many people. Somethings I have said, some for fear of being misunderstood and being accused of showing a condescending attitude I have held back. Rightly so, for who am I to preach? Preachers I have grown to hate, and I don't want to hate myself. There are things I wish would change. The idol worship, the 'king's clothes syndrome', the desperation for things unnecessary, the perennial wannabe behaviour, the pretense, the fickle ideals, false self consolations ; there are just too many of them. I have wanted to say to many people, what Lester Bangs said to William Miller in 'Almost Famous'.

Lester Bangs: Aw, man. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.
William Miller: Well, it was fun.
Lester Bangs: They make you feel cool. And hey. I met you. You are not cool.
William Miller: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't.

This means much more than you might think it does. Unfortunately there aren't enough William Millers around. 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.

The easiest explanation would be that everyone around is growing up and I'm lagging far behind. Suddenly people are becoming possessive of their 'private life', a phrase to cover up all the cheesy messages and mails and other secret correspondences, and a friendship worth years becomes an instant liability to protect these new acquaintances. Everyone of which is a prospective partner for life. A premature obsession with money is becoming an epidemic. Some yearn for fame to add to that. Reconciling and waiting for the right time are out of fashion. Probably the side effects of ambition; I'll never get to know. I never want to know.

Or, of course, all this could be an immediate effect of listening to The Ramones in loop, with part of lyrics being highlighted and flashing before the eyes.

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up

Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wnna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up

Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street

When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up

Ramones - I Don't Want To Grow Up

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I wish I could quote Shakespeare or someone suitably profound and quotable that people quote to add gravity to their views. But, for now, The Ramones are all I have.

Even with all the vices I might have, I yearn for innocence, ignorance. Even if it is forced. Someday probably they'll yearn for it too. Before it's too late.

It takes all sorts

2007-06-04T18:51:00.001+05:30

Vaibhav's winning performance in college category of Mahaquizzer led to us having 500/- to spend in Landmark. As seniors, the choice of books to take was given to Lath and me. We needed no second invitations to rush to the sports section. Unfortunately 500/- is not a good enough amount if you intend to buy books other than those from Vishwa Bharti or Mir publications. That explains why at least the last 20 books I've read haven't been bought by me.

Given the scarcity of choices, for Steve Waugh and Lance Armstrong do not come that cheap, we decided to buy a book called "It takes all sorts: celebrating cricket's colourful characters" written by Peter Roebuck. Regular Sportstar readers and cricket column followers would be very familiar with the famous journalist's and former player's name. I like his columns and the title of the book, apart from having all c's in the description, did sound very inviting.

In retrospect it was a great buy. The book is all anecdote, a collection of the columns Roebuck has written over the years. And since it is a book, the columns are the better ones he has written. The book though has a theme, to discover the strength of character and the focus in a cricketer at various stages in his career. As the title suggests, all sorts of players are taken. From those who became legends in their lifetime to those who lost focus and gave up their game before they could make it big. From those who played with the greatest pride without once thinking of the rewards, to those who betrayed their country for that extra bit of money. Those who led a private life, away from attention, to those who cashed in on their fame showing great disparity between their exploits on the field and off it.

The best ones though are those that touch emotions that people don't imagine cricketers as having. The one on Hansie Cronje after his death chronicling his rise and ultimate fall and the probable redemption in death and another one on David Gower where he is portrayed as a person knowing his limitations and playing his best within it, knowing he can be no Boycott as far as averages are concerned, yet everyone else wanting him to be, are a great read.

After reading I spent hours wondering what my sporting anecdotes would sound like and what they would reveal about my character. What stands out? The premature end to a cricket career with a bouncer or the winning hat-trick in a footer match with a goal down? The unfinished dream of having a rugby match after having procured the ball from NZ no less or the endless skateboarding lessons to peers and the run down the LT slopes during the treasure hunt? The shunning of swimming pool without properly learning to swim or the overly enthusiastic tennis court trips, sometimes twice a day?

Probably the sum total of all these.

Then and Now

2007-05-29T02:39:00.000+05:30

The look back with a difference. Opinions, and how they change.

Smokers

15 years ago: Evil people.
10 years ago: Grown up people.
5 years ago: Et tu Brutus?
Now: Passive smoking kills too?

Drinkers

15 years ago: What?
10 years ago: Why?
5 years ago: Et tu Brutus?
Now: Can I have the chips, please?

Pr0n

15 years ago: What?
10 years ago: Baywatch. Run Pamela. Run Yasmine. Save some lives.
5 years ago: omg!
Now: Yawn...

Gaali

15 years ago: abe
10 years ago: kutte, kamine et al
5 years ago: c**, a** et al
Now: Ha Ha Ha

Pick up lines

15 years ago: I'll kill you.
10 years ago: Can I borrow your notebook?
5 years ago: Do you eat?
Now: Do you sleep?

Long Hair

15 years ago: Mommy
10 years ago: College does that you?
5 years ago: Dude look like a lady
Now: Wtf, 25 bucks for a haircut?

A Joke

15 years ago:

Teacher- Raju, A for?
Raju: Apple (inaudible)
Teacher: Jor se bolo
Raju: Jai Mata Di

10 years ago:

Q: What is red, round, has seeds in it and looks like one half of a tomato?
A: The other half

5 years ago:

A panda walks into a bar. Orders food and drink. Finishes eating, takes out a pistol and shoots a guy. Bartender objects.
Bartender: What did you do that for?
Panda: Look up 'Panda' in the dictionary. Read out loud.
Bartender: Panda- Eats shoots and leaves

Now:

Teacher- Raju, A for?
Raju: Apple (inaudible)
Teacher: Jor se bolo
Raju: Jai Mata Di

For lack of anything better to do, anything worse to write.

Two Lives

2007-05-22T23:15:00.000+05:30

Behind every door on every ordinary street,in every hut in every ordinary village on this middling planet of a trivial star, such riches are to be found. The strange journeys that we undertake on our earthly pilgrimage, the joy and suffering we taste and confer, the chance events that cleave us together or apart, what a complex trace they leave: so personal as to be almost incommunicable, so fugitive as to be almost irrevocable.

These lines, taken from the last page of Seth's latest novel, are in essence all the novel is about. Had it not been written, and so wonderfully at that, the story of his uncle Shanti and his German born aunt Henny would have remain untold, like the billions of others which meet a similar fate. This book, through the journeys of two separate lives which later became one, affirms that the stories of people are not only glimpses into their private lives, but, on a much larger scale, the story of the times they lived in. It gives an insight into a somewhat strange marriage, of two people in a foreign land brought closer to each other, owing much more to circumstance than anything else. One an Indian studying to be a dentist in Germany and forced to go to England for a job owing to the conditions in pre war Germany. The other, a Jew, having to leave her homeland and relatives and friends behind in such heart rending circumstances. The story of the times they tell happens to be historically the most important time in the previous century, or for that matter any century.

The novel has a narrative tone throughout, something Seth is so good at. The book is divided into 5 very logically created chapters. One detailing the author's initial stay with his uncle and aunt at London as a school boy. Second focusing on Shanti uncle, his leaving India and going to Germany, living in a house owned by Henny's mother, studying to be a dentist in Germany, leaving Germany and going to England to look for a job, joining the Army and getting posted various places as an Army dentist, losing his arm in Italy, coming back to England and starting all over again with an artificial arm and setting up a very successful practice. In between the letters he wrote to Henny to woo her also form a very important of the story.

The third chapter and the best and most emotionally moving part of the book deals with the life of aunt Henny. As she was already dead when Seth had the idea to write the book, he had taken it for granted that the life story that he was going to portray would have to be a second hand description from his uncle and a few friends, thus failing to capture her inner emotional turmoil and feelings. Feelings that she never shared even with her husband Shanti. But a chance discovery of correspondence with her friends in form of letters stacked in a forgotten box ensured that this did not happen. The letters, spanning the course of war, describe in detail the barbaric rule that Hitler had imposed and also expose how erstwhile friends become indifferent and shun the oppressed to save their skins. The research work that accompanies this letter exchange makes the whole experience of Jewish people in pre and post war Germany come to life and is very sentimentally charged. Curiously enough Henny never discusses her great losses with her husband which make the premises of this strange marriage all the more mysterious.

The fourth chapter tracks the lives of Seth's uncle and aunt as a couple and the dynamics of their relations with friends and family. The fifth deals with the life of uncle Shanti alone after losing Henny and is based on the series of interviews that the author had with his uncle to get material to write the book. It also sheds a light on the weaknesses of old age, both physical and mental and incidences which lead to the final ambivalent approach of the author towards the very subject of his book.

In my personal opinion, though it is unfair to compare a biography with fiction, A Suitable Boy has been the best Seth creation. I have already discussed my disappointment with An Equal Music and Golden Gate though brilliant in its composition and concept is not something you would read again and again for pleasure. I still read parts of A Suitable Boy and laugh, smile, get angry or shrug in disbelief; whatever the situation demands.

Judging by the volume of books he writes, it will be a long time since another Seth novel will be available, but I'll be waiting eagerly for the moment. And, for a change, will buy the book to read it :)

Main Madhuri Dixit banna chahta hoon

2007-05-20T15:25:00.000+05:30

A carry over post from May 15

Yet another birthday post right? About how I am a year older, and the thing about standing at the crossroads and putting life into perspective. Pondering about the things that have been and the could have beens. No way! If I intended you to sleep I would have sent a sleeping pill, would have been much easier (for once I thank God that some 100 people aren’t reading this). As I already mentioned last year, superheroes and cartoon characters don’t grow old (what category I fall into is open for interpretation). They are created and after a while the creator dies. Or just gets bored.

This concerns a fortunate co-incidence by which my birth day exactly matches that of a certain Madhuri Dixit and that I happened to spend all these in years in Jamshedpur to cash in on this fact. Any place else and this fact would just have remained on “You share your birthday with” columns and in all probability I wouldn’t have given a damn. A sardar who runs an average chat stall is what makes all the difference.

This sardar mentioned is Pappu sardar.
Not happy with the usual chat shop routine of having to make a spicy mish mash to please the palates of customers, he decided to do something different. In a modern case of idol worship, he transformed his shop, Manohar Chat, to a temple of worship, dedicated whole heartedly to his obsession or more appropriately his devotion: Madhuri Dixit.

Even on a normal day if you happen to walk into the shop, you’ll notice the degree of devotion. Every imaginable corner of the rather modest, even by small town standards, shop you’ll find posters of Madhuri staring at you in all poses, from movies spanning her career. If that’s not enough, the usual chatter of any eatery is subdued by speakers playing songs of movies she was part of, those which she ‘sings’ on screen.

On 15^th May, things are taken a few notches higher. The road in front of shop is decorated lavishly, like in marriage ceremonies.
A huge banner is put up, saying “Happy Birthday Madhuri”. An image attached, taken with my hugely inadequate ‘camera’ would present some hint.

Ads are put up in local papers wishing her on the day, and inviting people to come over and celebrate and eat for free. This is where things get easy for me. I make it a permanent venue for my treats.

Lately, Pappu sardar has decided to achieve something good and productive out of this celebration. For the last few years he has been spending most of the money to buy gifts and support the Cheshire Home, more can be read here. Also he has been made a somewhat national figure, owing to the plethora of news channels, some of which cover his festivities live. Needless to say, it helps bring on the customers, who want to be a part of a live news happening.

But these things hardly matter for Pappu sardar. He is just over the moon, even now, over the fact that he got a letter acknowledging his devotion from Madhuri herself. If he carries on, probably a meeting won’t be to far off.

All said and done, I spared my friends a trip to this place for my treat. Also I feel better to say that I share my birthday with Andy Murray, the next British hope or Ted Dexter, the former English captain. But, these people are unlikely to make the “You share your birthday with” column in local papers sometime soon. Or more importantly guarantee me and a few friends free food on my birthday.

Good Times, Bad Times

2007-05-06T00:33:00.000+05:30

So Led Zep beats Charles Dickens for the that-usual-looking-back-cliched title for this post. For a guy who thinks he's both into Rock 'n Roll and literature, that was a tough choice. Anyway, I'm no longer a student of IIT officially, and that does deserve a look back.

The cliches end with the title. I wish I had added thankfully to that, but I can't. Time did not fly, four years did not roll over just like that and I do not feel that everything happened in a blur. Sure there were short moments that did feel like zipping by, but then there were those long, uncertain, lonely moments which made me hate what I had turned into. Not that I was a masterpiece to begin with.

Like most bad things, it all begun badly. The whole concept of relative grading made me think I just had to keep my head above water level, and I never was under the illusion that I could be a trailblazer. Never meant to be. Mediocre targets often lead to disastrous goals. Second sem hit me hard. Third wasn't better, but the fourth was the knockout punch. Two years down, I wished I could go back all over again. I was indifferent to begin with, not even doing things that I loved. Quizzing, football, cricket: everything was lost when I could have done so much more. In my entire second year I hardly played football a single time. You'll have to lock me up all tied up in a chamber to have that happen now.

There is no tale of magic transformation after the interval, but at least I decided not to let the good things suffer because of the unfortunately bad ones. That did not save me from having another torrid year. But at least I had the satisfaction of doing things I wanted to. Fourth year is too recent to revisit, the pre-placement mood is all over the blog some 10 posts back.

I wished it would all end relatively happily. But then I am not the one who gets to write the script. Like an actor written out of a play, they had to figuratively kill me off just when I wanted to leave the stage with a smile on my face. Incredible and sad.

For consolation, which I get in excess these days, my future isn't getting affected much. At least not the immediate one. Just 2 days of headache, marathon sessions of M*A*S*H seasons and having Tottenham Hotspur powered by Berbatov/Keane goals beat the hell out of every other club on my computer screen are what it took to soak it all in.

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen. Or Abyssinia, Henry. Whatever you prefer (non M*A*S*H watchers may forget this one.)

And to think of all those beautiful things I would have written had the mood been otherwise.

Dear friends, thanks for the memories. I hope I be a part of the happier ones of yours.

May the future be slightly brighter, I'm not asking for much. Amen.

Greatest entertainer of our generation

2007-04-23T09:30:00.000+05:30

Bless BBC and their old world cricket commentary team back in 1994, and their hourly commentary updates with Jonathan Agnew. At a time when watching anything but an India match was a rarity, we were kept updated and had extended commentary sessions of test matches and county championships from far away. I recall that late April night when they excitedly switched back to Antigua to report about a certain Brian Lara batting on 365, just about to break the single most important batting record. A pull shot, that went for four, later he had done exactly that, in what was just his third century. Considering that his first two were that famous 277 against Australia and 167 against England, this was not very surprising. He had arrived a long time ago, this was just stamping his authority.

Lara was one of the reasons why I became a compulsive test match cricket watcher. Mark Waugh's finesse, Warne's magic, wrists of Azhar and Laxman, patience of Atherton, fire of Donald, concentration of Dravid, swing and reverse of Waqar and Wasim also rank high up. But Lara and his single handed genius, focus and resolve has to take the cake. You just have to recall the series in which West Indies were all out for 51 in the first innings of the series against Australia and were ridiculed throughout. Lara took over after that, and two unforgettable test matches later had the much less talented West Indies side win the series 2-1.

Sure there were disappointments. His 5-0 test series loss in South Africa, frequent disciplinary actions, fickle ODI form, the never ending cycle of sacking and re-appointing as captain and the but natural loss of form. There always are. But, if ever the form-is-temporary-class-is-permanent cliche was personified, it was through Brian Charles Lara. What else could explain a horrid run of form going into Murali's territory and coming out with 650+ runs in a 3 match series. Widely regarded as the best single handed batting performance in a series.

Then he has to get all those records to statistically prove that he is a cut above the rest. England come to Antigua again and he gets 400. Scores 501 for Warwickshire. Destroys Peterson to get the maximum in an over. The maximum centuries. The maximum runs. Every record that's worth anything is against his name. Even for someone who doesn't watch cricket and looks at figures that define the game, choosing the best would be but a formality.

A year which sees first Warne and then Lara retire. What would happen to test cricket now?

BTP

2007-04-13T21:52:00.000+05:30

B Tech Project: what we stand for, what separates us from them, what is the showcase of all that we possess and can deliver and a lot more. At least that was the idea. For me, and a whole lot of other people, it has been the hugest obstacle to the oh-so-near degree that we spent our 4 years here for. As always it all boils down to the very last moment where things have to be done. Only this time there are no tutorials to cog, no photocopied notes to cram and no guarantee of the time spent being in direct proportion to the result achieved. Unpredictability makes it so different.

Nevertheless the last few days have been a great experience, working like we have never ever worked before. Amidst all this gloom and apprehension small joys like speaker in a lab or the company of friends with similar fate at 4 am in the lab come as divine blessings.

Lab floor for bed, Giddu for pillow

I would be lying if I said that the joy of doing something new and not done before, at least in our department hasn't spurred me on. But enthusiasm doesn't always count for everything. Deva, my BTP soul mate, and I am finding that out the hard way right now. In fact both of us decided to stay back in the summers for one month and complete the project properly. We approached our guide, who happened to be the JEE chairman by the way, and told him so.

"Sir, we would like to stay back in the summers and do this properly", said I.
"Stay back? I think that is a ridiculous idea. Don't you think that is a ridiculous idea?", said he.

The only option that was left with me was to brand my own idea ridiculous. For others, like Rajeev, things are just the opposite. His guide asks him for his summer plans and joining date and casually says that he has enough time to complete it in May. We realise that we are not the worst affected. Giddu has to wait for 3 hours everyday to get an error message in his simulation, and then start all over again. At such inhumane hours like 3 in the morning. Giving up is not an option. Joshi broke the only sample he had prepared all this while and has had to prepare three more in the space of one week with the promise of 2 more in the recent future. The only thing that guide, or for that matter anyone says, is that we should have started early. Easy thing to say.

I fell into a burning ring of fire

Nevertheless we continue to play with fire. Literally.

I don't know what memories I'll take with me from here. But things like staying till dawn in a lab with a couple of friends for company, talking about everything from the futility of such existence to out of place feeling that grips us daily and the uneasy apprehension of the life ahead, chatting (the real life kind), singing, sometimes dancing to keep us awake, singing the sickest of Hindi songs in chorus, shouting at every passerby from our safe positions on the bike while going back at 5 am and singing at the top of our voices simultaneously will surely stand out for long. Taking pictures to remember these moments by too :)

For now the report is submitted. The work and fight for survival continues.

110 meter hurdles

2007-04-06T10:50:00.000+05:30

Until late, poems meant but rhyming words;
Without the rhyme they seemed utter nonsense.
I would read through Birches or Mending Wall,
And wonder how they were poems at all?
The worst part of this all being that in
School this apparent anomaly was
Not even discussed. Infuriates me.
My sincere thanks- that wretched lit course,
For teaching me at least this much in time
That it always is not about the rhyme.
I wish now to be a Birch swinger too.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

2007-03-31T14:17:00.000+05:30

Recently while idling and looking for a movie to download (Aside: I know this will cause panic if any of the IITB wise men read this. Someone who downloads movies AND blogs about it. Sacrilege. Read this, if you haven't read enough already; especially the 4th paragraph.) I came across this piece of information:

In the television series The X-Files, Fox Mulder watches Plan 9 whenever he needs to focus on a difficult problem, claiming that the film is so incredibly bad that it shuts down the logic centers of his brain, allowing him to make intuitive leaps of logic.

Having Mulder as one of my childhood idols, I decided I needed intuitive leaps of logic too. If this wasn't enough, I recalled this conversation from a Seinfeld episode:

"This isn't plans 1 through 8 from outer space, this is plan 9, this is the one that worked! The worst movie ever made!"

Now I have watched "My Cousin Vinny" beacuse of George's obsession with Marisa Tomei, and decided not to watch "The English Patient" because Elaine hates it so much. I have also searched for "Sack Lunch" and "Rochelle, Rochelle: A young girl's strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk" only to learn that they were fictious movies. So given the X-Files and Seinfeld connection and the obvious attraction of watching the worst movie ever made made my choice very easy. I decided to get Plan 9 and watch it.

I do not belong to the majority of people of my age who are prejudiced against black and white movies and hence term each and every one of them equally bad. Infact I might have watched more B&W movies than colour ones. I'm saying this beacuse Plan 9 happens to have no colour too, but that doesn't affect my judgement in any way. I found the movie fitting to all the praise it has gathered nevertheless.

To be honest there are far, far worse movies that have been made and that is reflected by the fact that this does not make to the IMDb bottom 100. But most of them lack things of such fantastic proportions like aliens digging graves to raise the living dead in order to convince their existence. Which is why this movie has stood the test of time. If we forget the story for a while, Plan 9 is guilty on every other count you care to charge it on. There are whole pages of details you will get, so I won't bother to cite my amateurish observations.

You get the flavour right from the first lines that are spoken:

Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.

Those living in the past may take note. And learn.

The UFO's they show in this movie are a site to watch. Small, shiny, wobbly looking like cheap plastic plates. The magnum opus is the ending scene, a burning UFO over the LA skyline and the final explosion. Sight of a century. Why were these aliens concerned about us anyway? To prove supremacy and rule us? No, the answer is simple:

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots.
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.

I'll come to the fantastic concept of Solaranite later. First what would they do if stopped from their mission? You guessed it right, invoke Plan 9. The emperor, very feminine for some reason, rolls it out nonchalantly, like it was some item in the shopping list his wife gave and he forgot at the shopkeeper's. Umissable dialogue delivery:

The Ruler: Plan 9? Ah, yes. Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead.

Effortless. Now coming back to their concern about Solaranite, here's what it is. Be prepared for a sense numbing explanation:

Colonel Tom Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.

Wow! Just wow! What imagination. Unprecedented. These are things that make this movie immemorable.

I found the scene with an old man stepping outside his house, mourning his wife's death and in a confused state of mind, very corny. Turned out it was the footage of Bela Lugosi, the famed Dracula star, which the director Ed Wood had shot for some other purpose. He decided to incorporate it anyway as a homage to Lugosi and had to complete the rest of the scenes by Tom Mason, the chiropractor of Wood's wife at the time, who played his scenes holding the character's cape in front of his face. Wood was apparently undeterred by the numerous physical differences such as height and build that distinguished Mason from Lugosi; i.e., that Mason was nearly bald while Lugosi retained a full head of hair until his death. (Years later, one video distributor made light of this, adding the blurb "Almost Starring Bela Lugosi" on the tape box.)

After watching the movie I began the post movie research, which almost takes the same time as the movie itself. There I realised that a movie had been made on Ed Wood, the director of such consistently bad movies with such fantastic scripts. The movie, released in 1994 was titled Ed Wood and starred Johnny Depp in the lead role. I realised I might be one the few people of my generation to have watched Plan 9 first and then Ed Wood.

It was a very enjoyable experience watching Ed Wood after Plan 9. For those willing, I would make it compulsory viewing in that order. The movie depicts the life of the cross dressing director, with a love for Angorra sweaters, and his strange ensemble as crew. Orson Welles and Bela Lugosi are his idols and he decides to revive the career and provide employment to an ailing Lugosi in his movies. That part is very touching and Martin Landau even got a supporting actor Oscar for portrayal of Lugosi.

The movie references many of the movies Ed Wood had done, including one "Glen or Glenda" where he portrays his own life and plays Glen/Glenda in the movie. He compares this performance with his idol Welles and his acting and direction in Citizen Kane. Welles would have been so proud. Also Wood showed the movie to his girlfriend and she found out about his dual life after watching the movie and promptly broke up. This whole setting reminded me of 8 1/2. No offences to Fellini but we might just have him too as long as Welles is getting referenced.

Ed Wood climaxes and ends with Eddie directing his greatest creation: Plan 9 From Outer Space which he convinced the the Baptist Church of Beverly Hills to fund, no less. As a homage to his idol and friend Lugosi, he included that footage I mentioned earlier. The same sequence I found corny after watching Plan 9 suddenly seemed to be so touching after watching Ed Wood.

So go watch both of them if you can. Those here may get Ed Wood easily. If you want Plan 9, you know who to buzz :)

In many ways we'll miss the good old days. Someday.

2007-03-28T21:24:00.000+05:30

With just one month left in college, nostalgia is in the air these days. I'll spill some overe here, with one my favourite bands presenting one of my favourite videos.

No, these were not the 'best days of my life'. Being an optimist, I hope there will be better days. Nor will I 'cherish the memories' and change my Orkut name to reiterate that. It would be strange to be nostalgic for something that never happened to me. Things like heart pouring sessions over booze, chasing girls, intellectual smoke sessions, parties and a group of people sitting on couches in coffee shops. It's the last day of school all over again. The only thing I miss is playing cricket and football with friends. One more thing that gets added here is creating nuisance in classes and labs with friends having similar intentions. The intention of not studying and not learning.

Nostalgia requires involvement. I am too indifferent to experience it probably. Someday.

On the contrary I am nostalgic about 2003. The goosebumps when Sachin pulled Caddick for six or blasted Shoaib away. The punched fist when Yuvraj hit the winning runs against Pakistan. The gloated sense of achievement when I cleared JEE and entered IIT.

Those days are a distant memory now.

I'm working so I wont have to try so hard
Tables they turn sometimes, oh someday
I ain't wasting no more time

Wonderful song.

The ultimate question, and search for answers

2007-02-21T11:58:00.001+05:30

The answer to Life, Universe and beating Australia?

Last year, in the same Chappell Hadlee series, NZ had won almost both matches that involved chasing in excess of 300. They fell short by a heart rending 2 runs while chasing 322 in Wellington in the 2nd ODI. They made amends in the 3rd chasing a then record of 331 in Christchurch with an over to spare. I remember watching those chases and then excitedly explaining the details to everyone who asked. Or didn't. I thought I saw something special in those 2 back to back matches.

I was wrong. This time they went a notch higher. Higher targets, achieved with few balls to spare. In the first one you almost felt pity for Australia not to get the wicket of Ross Taylor early on, the way alsmot every run until his fifty came from the edge of his bat. He played very well after that and supported by McMillan, Fulton and McCullum NZ won with over an a half to spare. The six off McGrath that McCullum hit will remain in memory for a long time. Coming up to a bouncer and pulling with all his might, ball hittting the middle and disappearing way beyond.

The last ODI was even better. For the last few overs while Australia were batting, fours were a rarity. The way Hayden was nonchalantly hitting sixes, with a fractured toe, was unbelievable. Especially the one with one hand that went miles high in the stands. Putting the exams I had the next day on lower priority, I knew I just had to watch the NZ response. And you all know what happened. McMillan's innings and again the last part of McCullum's knock again with a winning six, though under much more pressure this time, was a joy to watch.

Which brings me to McCullum. Here are his contributions in the four matches I mentioned:

2006, ODI 2 : 48 of 33 balls, run out.
2006, ODI 3: 50 of 25 balls, not out.
2007, ODI 2: 22 of 15 balls, not out.
2007, ODI 3: 86 of 91 balls, not out.

Had he not been run out, and that was pretty unnecessary, NZ would have won that match too. Amazing consistency under pressure. No wonder he wears the jersey number 42.

Also these four matches point out to the size of grounds in NZ. It was certainly a huge factor in these amazing run chases.

The last time Australia lost 3-0 in the erstwhile Texaco trophy in '97, I remember what the mood was. Mark Taylor, the captain for the tour and the first two ODI'd had to drop himself in the third, something unprecedented. Steve Waugh captained in that match, Australia lost (by 6 wickets in all 3 matches!). But that phased Taylor out of the team and put Waugh in charge. We all know what happened then.

So are Australia on a shaky ground before the world cup? Results certainly point that way, although I think this well help off shake whatever complacency there would have been. They might just emerge a better outfit in the WC. Can't wait for that.

I watched the match and then slept to wake up in time for the Bayern vs. Real Champions league match. Real won 3-2 and it was 3.15 am by the time they did that. I had an exam at 9.30 am and hence this was another record for the least time spent on preparation of an exam. I slept in an hour, thank God it was only a humanities course.

As an afterthought, they have art appreciation, movie appreciation etc. courses as electives. Time to have a sport appreciation probably?

The one minute movie review post

2007-02-15T13:34:00.000+05:30

Like the previous time, the idea is to list all the movies I've seen lately so that at a later time I won't have to go halfway through a movie to realise that I've already watched it.

This time most of the movies I saw had some themes. Have them categorised accordingly.

Star Wars

It was rather shameful that I hadn't seen the 'real' Star Wars movies yet. Decided to rectify that. Though after such a long time all three parts have blended into one another and it is difficult to remember what was when.

A New Hope: Honestly for me the better parts were the conversation between C-3PO and R2-D2. Visual effects are way beyond their age. Wait, you don't need me telling that.

The Empire Strikes Back: Forget everything, I discovered Chewbacca's blog! hrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnhhhh!! Coming back, people say this is the best Star Wars movie. Would have loved to agree had I been able to recall.

Return of the Jedi: Seriously what was with the teddy bears for half the movie? Imagine those fuzzy little primitive bears beating laser gun armed empirical guards. What about evolution baby? The dark side dialogues were impressive nonetheless.

Bergman

Persona: Completely blown away by this. Cinematography is such that it feels like watching high resolution award winning photographs one frame after another. Script is riveting, dealing with human pysche, dark sides of it. Cast is perfect and minimal with just two very beautiful actresses, Ullman and Andersson playing the intentionally mute actress and the nurse. I realised how little I understood of this movie when I went through the multitude of essays about it. These are the movies they study in movie making PhD courses I guess, so I won't even pretend beginning to describe exactly what everything meant. Unforgettable experience.

Wild Strawberries: Had very, very high hopes after watching Persona. A totally different movie, chronicling the life of an aging man who goes on a journey, both literally and figuratively, figuring out all the mistakes he has done through his lifetime. Again thought provoking.

Seventh Seal: Most famous of Bergman's works. Very symbolic. Kind of reminded me of a poem we had done back in school, 'Journey of the Magi'.

Hitchcock

The Lady Vanishes: I could watch this over and over again just for the two cricket obsessed characters whose only motive is to get to England and watch the Ashes test match. At one point of time they refuse seeing the 'vanished' lady just because they do not want any trouble that would stop the train to England! Wonderful.

Shadow of a Doubt: Easily one of the best Hitchcock movies. Set in a suburban home where a girl discovers that her uncle might be a serial killer. Given the constraints of the home and the realtions they have to keep, no one can make a decisive move, but someone has to. Classic.

Strangers on a Train: Back to the murder mystery type, but with a special twist. The Hitchcock twist. A stranger convinces a tennis star switch murders. Enjoyable.

Westerns

Shane: This movie leaves quite a few things open to interpretation. None more than the almost mysterious and superhuman character of Shane, the good cowboy who moves from town to town to make them a better place, risking his life in the process. Why, no one knows. Best remembered for the last lines, "Shane, Shane come back Shane." He must have been used to hearing that by then.

Rio Grande: A western with a family touch, a 'family western'. John Wayne and his son do a good job of driving away the Indians though.

Unforgiven: I'm used to seeing the Clint Eastwood of early years, the nonchalant sharpshooter with his trademark poncho. Was shocking to see an old guy struggling to ride a horse to go on one last mission. And the fact that after showing him struggling for about 80% of the movie, he does what is suited for a Hindi film hero. Inexplicable.

AFI's 100 Years 100 laughs

I had the urge to complete all the top movies in this list. Sadly had to do the job of the bringing the movies myself. It was a great thing that I managed that though.

The Producers: Two producers trying to produce the biggest flop play and hiring pathetic actors, directors to implement an insanely numb script called 'Springtime for Hitler'. Even thinking of such a thing makes me laugh. 'Springtime for Hitler' was genius, would love to watch a real life rendition :)

One Night at the Opera: Marx Brothers, enough said. Liked Duck Soup better though.

Young Frankenstein: Another Mel Brooks movie. Hilarious script, funny for most part.

Blazing Saddles: Mel Brooks again. The ultimate western spoof. Imagine a black guy as the sheriff of a town. And that is just the beginning. A satire I gather, and a good one.

Recent Releases

Apocalypto: I did not find it gross as people warned me it would be. A great tale of survival instincts and evolution. Loved the ending. Now everytime someone stands next to us waiting for us to get off a table after we've finished eating, I can't help but recall the ending. (Nothing to do with restaurants, don't worry!)

The Prestige: Great storytelling. I wondered if would ever like Bale after having watched American Pyscho. But Batman Begins and now this movie have changed my opinion.

Blood Diamond: Saw this in Regal as a part of the job treat. The fact that Di Caprio got nominated for this movie and not The Departed does speak volumes about his acting. A few scenes with the mindless killings and the children reminded me of City of God. And the exclamatory sighs when India's name was mentioned as a part of the whole diamond nexus, though not in a derogatory manner, was unmissable.

The Good Shepherd: I thought a movie based on CIA, Cuba, Cold war and having Matt Damon and De Niro (director) could not be boring. I was proved terribly wrong.

Generally..

The Thing: The fan base this movie has generated is huge and remains Kurt Russell's probably only megahit movie. The underlying theme of mistrust is very well executed and the isolated setting of a research station in Siberia add to the chill. The ending is quite good too, kind of reminds me of Orr in Catch-22. The graphic details of the slimy 'Thing' are supposed to be highly repulsive, but I'm way past that stage I guess.

Gosford Park: Only the second Altman movie I have seen after MASH and I don't need to reiterate how big a MASH fan I am. Loved this movie form start to end, a murder mystery in a British country house. Brings out the 'upstair' and 'downstair' relationships pretty well too. Wonder why it isn't that widely acclaimed.

Raging Bull: I'm sceptical of watching boxing movies, but this one is an exception. My favourite De Niro movie now. The 'I coulda had class' lines from On the Waterfront came back to haunt me again at the end of this one and also inspired two lines of the poem, if I have the liberty to call that so, I had written a while back.

It Happened One Night: It is tough to watch a movie when you know everything that is going to happen beacuse you happen to have seen the Hindi remake about 3-4 times already. Once you get rid of that scepticism, this is one wonderful movie. Worth watching only for the dialogue exchanges if you still need a reason.

Big Fish: Strange movie. How facts get exaggerated and change into unbelievable fiction which sound like fables when passed on from one generation to another. I didn't think the ending was sad in any way though, discussed in a lot of places. Nice movie.

Glory: Watched this movie after I found out that Blood Diamond was by the same director. Based on the true story of the general who led the first black battalion. Inspiring in parts.

The Night of the Hunter: I've never seen a movie with such great visual symbolisms used to such haunting effects. One of the chilliest villians in movie history, posing as a priest and having the words 'LOVE' and 'HATE' tattooed on his knuckles, chasing two little innocent kids who know the secret to a fortune. The underlying religious themes are quite intense too.

American Graffiti: Felt like watching 'Happy Days' all over again. Underrated Lucas movie.

Not only this, compulsivley got all seasons of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and gobbled them up. Larry David provided the long needed respite from the popular, unfunny, drab sitcoms I see floating around these days. Hadn't had the Larry David dose since Seinfeld. Feels much better now.

Meanwhile life goes on. Exams are due in 2 days time. The last midsems ever.

In Da land

2007-02-09T03:21:00.000+05:30

Q. Who painted Monalisa?
A. You and Me: Da Vinci
Them: Vinci, Da!

(Akhil on our way back from IITM)

It is almost fascinating how the IITM junta manage to insert that ubiquitious filler word in almost every sentence they use. They don't say a plain yes or no, they make it special: No da, yes da. I'm not saying it in a derogatory sense or anything, but it is as I said; fascinating. Not 'astonishing' as you might expect me to write these days, I'm discussing entire theories on the possible use of that word in place of 'surprising' (as in it's 'astonishing' to hear from you, rather than 'surprising' to hear from you) with a lot of people. Almost everyone agrees that astonishing gives a "I thought you were dead or something before I saw your message. It was a pleasant thought you know.." sort of feeling. Without getting too far, for people who would be astonished on this digression, the word is fascinating. Plain fascinating.

Not surprisingly then, it got itself a paragraph in the most famous research paper to ever come out of IIT. Also the most read thesis paper among all IITians. Ironically it has got nothing to do with science or technology. Quite understandably it would have no readers then. I'll quote just a part:

The word da means friend or buddy in IITM slang and is usually used at the end of the sentence, for instance in the sentences, I have to go now da, Come here, da or Can you do me a favour da. In Tamil da seems to be a lexical, bound morpheme which is used as a suffix at the end of the verb. This suffix, for instance in the request Vaada! (in English Come here!), is a highly informal form of address towards a male person and shows a lack of respect for the addressee. Although the use in the sentence Come here, da. suggests that this lack of respect is also prevalent in the IITM slang, examples like How are you da? and What are you doing da? show that it may still be a very informal form of address, but not necessarily disrespectful because these questions imply a certain care or interest in the addressee. The sentence final position in the slang may be taken from Tamil syntax in which the verb is put at the end of the sentence.

By the way, do try searching 'IITM lingo' on Google. See what almighty Google has to say :)

This probably is the only paper that has the phrase KLPD in it, in an attempt to explain it. But, I'm sorry 'mam' there are so many contexts and connotations that you are not aware of, but you cannot be blamed for that. I don't know why but this paper gives a feeling of what our profs think while we give our presentations and reports. They know the topic inside out, they see all that could be, all that it means and all that we are doing wrong. We on the other hand, with our meagre knowledge of these issues, just try and come out unharmed. Going through this thesis always gives me that feeling, albeit with roles reversed. It's not a good feeling though. Makes me feel vulnerable.

Anyway, beyond all this pointless drivelling about lingo of all things, we had a fun trip to IITM. Saarang itself wasn't very exciting or involving, but the four of us: Audi, Akhil, Maddy and I did manage to keep ourselves busy for the duration of our stay. I don't have too many ideas of what kept my dear friends busy; I for myself had an excellent host in my schoolmate Tushar whose high level student body post helped us in getting a fair amount of free food through coupons every evening. That too without moving a muscle, except those to procure the grub coupons. We talked about good old times and ate free junk food. Sheer joy.

There were a few other reasons except visiting my friend that had brought me to IITM though. The most important one being the famed all night main quiz which starts from midnight and lasts till the break of dawn. It's like the timeless test match of quizzing. Pure unadulterated quizzing. Of course I was a part of the audience; for I am not qualified enough to qualify for the finals, but every bit was worth it. I loved the way things are so informal, nothing is predecided. There are 3-4 quizmasters, they roam around, mingle with the small but dedicated crowd in which somehow everyone happens to know everyone else. Suddenly one of them decides to grab the mic, open his folder, click on any of the multitude of text files in notepad, format if necessary and then just let the participants soak in the question. I slipped in a nap or two in between a question and answer. Infact the thing is so informal and laid back that at around 3.15 when the participants were given a break, the sound guy promptly packed up his system and shut off the power supply without anyone noticing. They only did notice when it was time to get back to asking questions!

The one thing you can be sure about is the quality of questions. Sometimes there were 30-40 slide long visual connects, 18 clips long video connect each of which was played long enough to last an entire quiz in lesser places. Some questions looked like a collection of short stories from our ICSE books. Some had so many X, Y, Z variables that you could have been in a linear algebra class. But when the answer was given, everything started to make sense, every bracket closed itself perfectly and the program got executed beautifully. Perfection.

The other beautiful thing about this trip was that I got to see the IITM Chemplast cricket ground. I know for most of you that means nothing. For me, when as a schoolboy I found out that an IIT had a cricket ground where the Indian Cricket practised occasionally, it thrilled me beyond words. Probably provided an extra incentive to try hard and get in too, only later did I learn that it is not used on a daily basis. Anyway, the ground is amazing. It provides a perfect backdrop for an ideal Sunday afternoon. Laze around in a smallish, green ground with friends and watch good cricket. The South African way of watching cricket.

The rest, well, if you take out the lit events, Saarang isn't that absorbing. Maybe having watched three Mood I's biases my judgement, but I see no comparison if you take out the lit part. I won't even try comparing.

The freely roaming deers and blackbucks also deserve a mention, they look exceedingly charming until you get bored of them. Contrast this with what we get in our campus: stray leopards and crocs. Wow!

We had a great trip back there. Sure we burnt a few things and didn't own up to them. I don't think burning yourself is a solution to get rid of mosquitoes. But that is very nearly what we achieved courtesy of a Mortein coil. Considering everything that could have been, everything else is collateral damage :)

Time to pack up da. Macha. (I don't know what the hell that means)

Horse powered weekend

2007-02-05T22:48:00.000+05:30

Eventful weekend it was. The list of to-do things I've had since long has two tick marks now; bold satisfactory ones.

Saturday

Friday night I logged into YM to message Krishna make plans to watch the Ranji finals at Wankhede. Call it telepathy, I found offlines from him that asked me about the same. I took it upon myself to increase the number from the dismal two of us. When Rai, Rajeev and Ansul agreed and Sujay coaxed another 4-5 of his batchmates to join in, I knew we were in for a fun outing, good cricket or not. Mumbai had lost Sachin overnight and then Bengal ran through the tail, and lost two early wickets by the time we left our rooms. Everyone had the same thought in mind: to watch Ganguly play. We made it just after lunch time, and found that entry everywhere was free except the pavilion stands where they charged a nominal 50 bucks. Watching so many test players and a few upcoming talents like Rohit Sharma or Manoj Tiwary from just about the best seats available at this cost was a bargain. Everyone chose the stands.

It was a pleasant suprise to see that a considerable number of people had made the same choice. Then the shocking news came. Bengal were 50/5 and Ganguly was out bowled first ball, yet again by Zaheer. The good thing is that we got to see Zaheer's lethal spell of accurate bowling, a rarity in ODI's, especially if Ponting is around. Twice he was on a hat-trick and looked like taking wicket with most of his deliveries. So much so that we figured that considering Bengal's plight we might get to see Sachin bat by the end of the day. Meanwhile watching a burly, fat Romesh Powar with a funny fatman's walk near the boundary was entertainment enough and the crowd made sure the message got across to him too. Spotting sporting celebrities like Vengsarkar, Patil and of course Dravid who took the focus away from the match in the middle for a while was another timepass we stadiumgoers got to indulge in.

As expected Bengal folded out for 143 just around tea and our expectations ran high to watch Sachin bat. An early Mumbai wicket raised the expectations to a higher level. Rohit Sharma and Wasim Jaffer had other ideas though. They made us wait and wait and wait even more, until it was almost time for end of day's play. Just as we were about to leave, Sharma got out and the entire ground rose and chanted in anticipation of the man himself walking in. But he saved himself from another day, making sure people with enough free time would turn in on Sunday too. Hope they did because I had other plans.

As an afterthought, today would have been the best day to watch with Ganguly playing well and Zaheer again picking up 5 in a Mumbai victory, the 37th time they have done this. The fact that we couldn't does leave room for another visit to the stadium with similar high hopes.

Sunday

I've always wanted to witness a horse race, a big one, ever since we had this story in our ICSE short stroy book.

Sunday was the big derby day, The Mcdowell's India Derby, and I wasn't missing it for anything. Fortunatley Ansul was just as excited to accompany me to the Mahalakshmi race course. I had done enough research to convince him that we didn't need immaculate formal clothing and uptown manners or a lot of money to watch the race. Well that was there, but there was a provision for the common man too. All it took was 25 bucks for the entry and 10 bucks to place the minimum bet. He called two of his other interested friends and we joined in the carnival atmosphere of the biggest horse racing event in India. Samba dancers, stilt walkers, bollywood personalities; it was an another world altogether.

It's intimidating from the moment you walk in. People of all ages bent over their little racing books, analysing and figuring out the horse that could earn them a fortune. I've never seen so many people standing patiently in a line ready to lose their money. We knew nothing about the race, not even the horse names or the odds or the favourite. We chose 4 random names, 2 of them being the favourite (by a long margin at that, Southern Empire) and the second favourite and put 50 bucks on them. Rest two were long shots and we put 20 bucks on them.

All bets done, I looked around to the members area to get a feel of the glamour quotient talked about in the pre race articles. Honestly I've never seen a greater, more conspicuous class divide than the white wooden fences of the normal and the members area. One look at them and you know how and why they are where they are. I could have spent the evening meticulously noting all the difference but I'll save that for another race. We had a race to focus on.

The jockeys paraded the horses near the stands for public appreciation. The horses I'm used to seeing are ragged, old beasts carrying tourists on the beach or pulling tongas on the road. These beasts were different, like the members area people. Shining, beautiful, powerful, beastly and presented a picture of elegance. Soon the horses lined up and with the sound of a shot the 2400 m race began.

Most of the race had to be followed on the giant screen. Amazingly 3 of the horses we had bet on numbers 1, 5 (favourite) and 7 were in the top 4 for three fourth of the race. In the last quarter, 5 overtook 6 and then both 1 and 4 overtook 6 and near the finish 1 was pulling away for an upset victory. The horses crossed right in front of us and 1 had won by a long margin from 5. We were overjoyed. I know the probability of getting a winner right when you bet on four of them is very high, but when a long shot wins; it means a lot of money.

People all round were booing Southern Empire blaming it for stealing their money. Diabolical on the other hand won 1 crore for its owner and jockey, and a 'lot of money' as the ticket counter lady told for us. Sadly we had put only 20 bucks on this winner at 1:9.2 odds. But that 20 converted into 184 and finally put us in profit of 50 bucks. Beginner's luck maybe, but sure to get us drawn into this horse racing business. Wherever I am the next year, I'll try and make it to the Derby to experience all this again, probably with a little more cash to spend, or waste whatever way you see it.

ischool ke tem pe

2007-02-03T00:34:00.000+05:30

News from back home had been consistenly good lately. Tata took over Corus and gave everyone from Jamshedpur (forget Jharkhand or India for a while) something to brag about. Dhoni was back in blazing form, sending balls into orbit with amazing regularity. On a personal level there was this peach of a song we had unearthed recently, wildly popular in Jharkhand, and unleashed it here in IIT to a diverse audience who liked it immensely. Or at least they pretended to, it sometimes is very hard to tell. Anyway this song is catching on as a sort of Jharkhandi anthem here and you deserve a look at it too.

ischool ke tem pe

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There is a sort of undeniable catchiness to this tune. Something like an ad jingle. You try to ignore it first, then it grows upon you. Before you know it's all that's playing into your head. Over and over and over again. Something like what George Costanza had to say about his name

George: I'm going out with her tomorrow, she said she had some errands to run.

Jerry: That's a date?

George: What's the difference? You know they way I work, I'm like a commercial jingle. First it's a little irritating, then you hear it a few times, you hum it in the shower, by the third date it's "Costanza! Costanza! Costanza!"

Jerry: How do you make sure your gonna get to the third date?

George: If there's any doubt, I do a leave-behind keys, glove, scarf, I go back to her place to pick it up...date number three.

Jerry: That's so old. Why don't you show up at her door in a wood horse?

Eveidently Seinfeld has covered even this little thing that is happening to me. Yet again. Some show it was.

Anyway getting back to the point, everything was all fine and pleasant and happy; until...until I came across this piece of very disturbing news.

Two years after Pyaar Ka Hawa, a Nagpuri audio cassette containing eight love songs sung by Bokaro-based Manoj “Dehati”, was released and the producer having sold over 100,000 cassettes — HRD and culture minister Bandhu Tirkey is determined to clamp down on the “undesirable” songs.
His wrath is specially directed at the hit that calls upon a schoolgirl to bunk classes and meet her boyfriend at a dam. The song, the minister feels, does not send out the right message.

Now I have never bothered much about censorship, it doesn't effect me or people like me in any way whatsoever. But this I think is too much. An innocent girl going to the dam or 'dem' as they put it not sending out the right message? Come on!

Freakish coincidence though. Just when I was on an aggresive popularity drive for this song, this news had to come through. I need some support to protest but I think bloggers have much more pressing issues to work on. Iraq, US elections and whatnot. If you love this song and can't imagine young people of Jharkhand being deprived of this gem, come join forces with me. We'll think of something.

Until then singing this song and popularising it would be support enough. And by the way, the 'dem' in question is the Chandil dam. I vow to make it a point to visit this place once I get back home. This song should add on to the tourist value, but the short sighted government fails to see beyond their manufactured shortcomings. Nuts.

Times like these

2007-01-22T18:50:00.000+05:30

First of all, for those who got all those depressing vibes lately from this blog, I managed a job about 10 days ago. It is nothing much to write about, so I didn't and won't. But, it does afford the time to be carefree; enjoy the last few days stay in IIT and start gearing up mentally for a new life without too many expectations.

The last month has been a whirlwind. It started on Christmas eve when I got an unexpected interview call and I went there with borrowed shirt, trousers, tie, oversize shoes; looking like a chic scarecrow. It continued with Mood I the next four days which were probably the busiest four days of my life in terms of physical effort put in. To give you an idea, we took part in an IMS general quiz and reached the finals. The finals were till 1.30 PM and I had to complete round of questions for a sports quiz slated to be at 1. I had been awake till 6 AM to do that. When the IMS quiz got over, I got calls form the sports quiz venue to report immediately. I went there to find out that a CD with questions hadn't arrived there yet. I ran back to the hostel, ditched the incompleted round, gathered the questions and ran back to the venue. Then I was told that I was supposed to conduct it too. The expression on my face should have been framed and kept somehwere. I did manage to breeze through the slightly inadeqaute questions in an hour, the consolation prize being that I was not beaten up by the contestants who had to wait an hour for the poorly prepared quiz. But then it was doomed form the beginning when the original quizmaster could not make it to Bombay.

Then for 2 days we took part in the treasure hunt, elims and finals. Elims didn't require too much physical effort but the finals were understandably a bit strenous. The tasks comprised playing football, rock climbing, 120 pushups, skateboarding, kite flying in addition to solving clues and running around generally. Not being too good at solving clues and cryptic crosswords I had to do 50 pushups, rock climbing, put up a skateboarding exhibition travelling about 5 times the required limit, fly kite in addition to the general running around which amounts to a lot in a huge campus like ours. We did manage the second prize although the prize itself proved to be a huge letdown. Then I had to deal with a sore shoulder and aching arms for a few days to come, but I must admit that doing all that was a lot fo fun.

The next few days were really sad and disturbing with us losing a batchmate of ours and the false picture that media presented, for the second time in less than a year. Whatever I write won't do justice to the cause so I'll refrain from doing that. But how useful the knee jerk reaction from the institute to enforce a 13 hour LAN/Internet ban in hostels would prove to be, remains to be seen.

New year set in amidst this gloom and and I got another oppurtunity to get employed, rather handsomely, which I wasted. A few days later another chance showed up. I waited for my turn to be interviewed at 6 AM in the morning and then come back at 10.30 to face the second one. Short on sleep and rather apprehensive, I was grilled for about 40 minutes; 25 minutes more than a close friend who also made it through. I was made to draw line graphs of my CPI distribution and explain its shape and justify my position and then strangely asked to write an essay on some topic. In the end they asked me if I had any regrets. I paused for a while and said emphatically, "No regrets." I think I meant it too.

Esctatic? euphoric? jubiliant? happy? No.
Relieved? Yes.

Then my mom and dad showed up on a pre decided marriage ceremony visit of a relative. Thankfully I was placed by then and the daily shuttling between the institute and south bombay didn't hurt much. Although carrying luggage to and fro from S-1 to S-9 where my grandparents where, brought back some old memories from Mood I. The sore shoulder and aching arms too.

Somewhere in between we had a La Liga (our intra 6 a side football tournament) match, which has assumed legendary status now. Our best player and Inter IIT defender was unavailable due to a sprained foot. The responsibility shifted to me. We were up against a good team and it was difficult playing against them. We got a penalty early on. I took it and missed, hit it straight to the goalkeeper. Then we conceded a goal and were down 0-1 at half time. Billed as the best team, it was a devastating situation for us. Then came the second half. I got a free kick at about centre of the small field in the leftmost corner. I took it. The ball curled, hit the intersection of the crossbar and post and went in. 1-1. About 2 minutes later I got a pass in a similar position. I turned and shot. The ball curled, hit the intersection of the crossbar and post and went in. Deja vu. 2-1. A few minutes later I got a direct pass from the goalie and somehow poked in a goal. 3-1. Result beyond doubt. You dream about such personal performances, however insignificant they might seem. Needless to say, it will be tough living upto this now, and I hope nobody will expect me to either. It's good to be the talk of a good part of the hostel for a day or two though :D

The 1 day pause in between presented this oppurtunity to look back. I leave for IIT Madras tomorrow. Sorry Techfest and Chaos, Saarang it shall be.

Great Expectations

2007-01-07T02:18:00.000+05:30

Curiously I was listening to this song that says,
"Just the way that her hair fell around her face
And I recall my fall from grace"
I wondered, could...could this be MY case?

Friends and all, they say I am meant to reach the sky;
To make you happy, don't they always lie?
Been punching shadows on the wall, throat gone dry,
From shouting why, why, why, why?

'Talented Underperformer?' Ha! The most common breed,
Where did things go wrong? oft we plead;
Was it Something I said? Something I did?
Don't YOU worry! am just another fucked up college kid :)

[Ever wondered what goes on in a constantly rejected, dejected brain? This is it. This IS it.]

Shallow consolations, false hopes.

2007-01-03T00:41:00.000+05:30

"I'm cold," Snowden whimpered. "I'm cold."

"There, there," Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. "There, there."

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

I'm cold," Snowden said. "I'm cold."

"There, there," said Yossarian. "There, there." He pulled the rip cord of Snowden's parachute and covered his body with the white nylon sheets.

"I'm cold."

"There, there."

Movie log of the eternally jobless

2006-12-12T01:44:00.000+05:30

There are two kinds of people in the campus right now. Those who have got a job and those who are nervously wondering if ever they will get a job. Combination of a not so favoured department and a lethal CGPA make sure that I will remain nervous for a while to come. I'm following a proven antidote to these testing times by indulging in movie watching binges.

As a result I decided to keep a log of movies I watched recently, lest somehwere down the years I rent a DVD and realising halfway that I have already seen the movie, have to rush to the store to get another one. Future planning, you see. You might argue if I had been such a visionary as far as my grades a concerned then this post would not have been there. But then, there is only so much a man can learn.

Anyway here is a list, and brief experiences (I prefer not to call them reviews.)

The Philadelphia Story: Sarcasm, smart ass comments, in your face psychoanalyses. Funny throughout. Why don't they make such movies anymore?

Casino Royale: This was the end-of-end-sems-wtf-let's-go-to-theater movie this time. I am not a Bond fan, hardly watched one or two of the older ones. None of us who went knew anything about poker, so we sat poker faced for about one-third of the movie. After that Bond fell in love, which is never good. Why am I even trying to review this one. Forget it.

Lawrence of Arabia: It's a great movie. Honestly, I couldn't watch it in its entirety. Blame it on my mood. Someday I will though.

American Beauty: I saw Kevin Spacey's acceptance speech when I was a schoolkid, always wanting to see the movie but not being able to for some reason. Finally the time came. It does ask you to 'look deeper' and you actually do for 2-3 hours after the movie. It becomes your favourite movie too, until you watch another one.

Vertigo: I saw it again. Pretty intense, but why does have to end that way? I think I'm another one of those kids who like happy endings. Specially in these times :)

Leon: Natalie Portman is 12 in this movie, wow! Pretty weird though, a pre teen girl learning the trade from a hitman, not to mention fall in love with him.

M: This might be the oldest movie I've seen yet, but if you have the patience it's worth it. I don't know about the underlying theme related to Hitler and Nazism but considering the fact that it was made in 1931, it is great stuff. The last scene does get you thinking.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: "I know what gold does to men's souls". Well now I do too. Bogart in one of his rare non-positive (negative would be a wrong word I guess) roles, and good at it.

On the Waterfront: My GTalk friends would have been bored of reading the message "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am". Masterpiece of a propaganda movie by Elia Kazan, Brando being his allusion in the movie.

Blade Runner: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." I realised I might be a replicant after watching the movie. I can never be sure until I run into Harrison Ford (was he, or was he not a replicant) and he performs the Voight-Kampff test on me. We'll never get to know some things.

Rebecca: It's been a long time since I read the book, more than 12 years. This movie was a nice refresher course. Sadly I knew the twists in the plot which made it that much less exciting. Nothing to take away from the movie though.

Some Like it Hot: One of my favourite comedies now I guess. And I think this is the prototype of guys-dressed-as-girls comedy situations in many movies to come.

Cool Hand Luke: Again a sad ending, but a nice movie overall. And the lines, 'What we got here is a failure to communicate.' Lesson: don't act cool just to impress your peers. It's much more serious than that though. And boy, the car wash scene! Gave enough material to Playboy and the likes to build on for years to come.

Annie Hall: Anyone who even remotely considers himself a snob or an intellectual or is blamed to be so by his friends should be able to see himself in Woody Allen's character. Unbeatable sarcasm again, great movie.

The Graduate: Funny in parts, otherwise there are many questions about the characters and the way they behave that I would like to know. Maybe will watch the movie again sometime.

Toy Story I and Toy Story II: There was a time when I used to run home to watch 'Home Improvement' and Tim Allen was an idol. Just about the intermediate time between these two movies. And about then Tom Hanks was the only superstar who I knew could actually act (sorry Arnie, Sly, Bruce.) I was desperate to watch these two movies, needless to say I enjoyed them fully. Second one has the touche element though, alongwith better graphics and all.

Charade: This began the Audrey triple bill one fine day. The twists and turns in this one would surely beat any hindi flick in which the heroes and villians change hands on the trigger during a typical save-kidnapped-mother-tied-in-a-godown final showdown. Seriously what was with the godowns? Audrey looks pretty, and that is more than enough to make it worth watching.

Sabrina: Again Audrey looks pretty, no other explanation needed. Bogart looks a bit old to be romancing her though.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Audrey looks very pretty. Also if you watch her sing 'Moon River' on the window sill and then ask "Hi, Watcha Doin'?" and don't miss a heartbeat or two, then well, get that piece of rock replaced by a real heart. I downloaded about 10 different versions of Moon River after watching this one, apart from cutting the part where she sings it. I sang it too, until people refused to talk to me unless I stopped.

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

Listen to the one by Sinatra and of course Audrey herself. I'm in a trance again.

A Good Year: Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe, I expected something much better. But if a friend is paying for you and you get to sit in an empty spacious PVR, there is little else to complain.

Babel: You shouldn't be watching supposedly profound movies with a headache, empty stomach and under the after effects of watching a movie like A Good Year.

Magnolia: 'You might be through with the past, but the past is not through with you.' So true. But waiting for three hours and then watch toads fall from the sky is one thing you hardly wish to bear with. Again, I lack profoundness.

Borat: I don't know, I am not a fan of the kind of humour shown in most part of the movie. I did manage to laugh in a few parts though. Or maybe I saw the movie with a lot of prejudice, doesn't matter.

The Deer Hunter: If you watch the entire movie, without fast forwarding the seemingly boring parts early on and let the characters build in and then not feel like crying at the end when the remaining cast sings 'God Bless America' then I must say you are most likely to be a replicant and not a human being. This movie inspired a string of Russian Roulette suicides around the time it was released. Why, you'll know if you watch the movie. One the most 'real' flicks ever made probably; none of the fancy cast with picture perfect manufatured surroundings, cliched co-incidences and the likes. One of the better ones I've ever seen.

Kiss me Deadly: The drive to watch all film noirs led me to this one. The amoral hero and his quest to know something that wouldn't matter to him anyway make this a bit off mainstream. Then there's that famous glowing suitcase everyone's after (inspiration for Pulp Fiction I gather.) Watch to find out why :)

The Departed: People went for Matt Damon and Di Caprio. I was more eager about Sheen and Nicholson. Di Caprio surprised me though, and I happen to have seen everything from Basketball Diaries, Romeo+Juliet, The Beach to The Aviator. Maybe I just can't get over my eternal prejudice against people involved with Titanic. Rest everyone knows.

For a Few Dollars More: I don't know how many times I've watched it before. But still, a masterpiece.

There's so much more to watch still, and probably so much time to do it :)

Re-cycling Transport

2006-11-24T21:45:00.000+05:30

[Probably the most 'impactful' of all pieces I've ever done. The DoSA (Dean of Student Affairs for the uninitiated) immediately granted provisional funds to get something done after reading this in the current issue of InsIghT. Getting things done; now that's the tougher part.]

About two years ago, a friend from IIT Delhi had come to visit me. I welcomed him with the customary stroll around the campus, to let him admire the famous lakes and the picturesque scenery. But, unlike any other person I have taken around campus, his reaction was most animated when he saw the multitude of unused cycles lying in a heap near the Main Gate. His reason-these cycles would have been ideal for the ‘alternative campus transport system using community bicycles’ project he was working on. That was when I first heard of this idea and given the similar situations of the no-bike policy in both institutes, it made a lot of sense to me. Somehow I chose to ignore it back then.

Now, feeling the pinch of the no-bike policy coupled with the sudden vanishing act of the tum-tums and further compounded by the fact that I live in Hostel 13, the time was just right for me to ponder over feasible alternatives. The community bicycle program that I shall describe perfectly fit the bill.

A community bicycle program is not an entirely new concept. It has been successfully implemented in several countries and university campuses. In all these places, the basic idea is the same. Old and unused cycles are collected and painted for recognition. These are then placed at various hubs inside the operation area. Users can issue cycles from these hubs, via a manual or electronic interface, against their names for free or a nominal fee required for maintenance. The cycles can then be deposited at any hub inside the area, which makes it very helpful for short-term users.

Given the pathetic state of internal transport in the institute, this program could be adapted to work as an excellent environment friendly alternative transport system. Here’s what could be
done:

1. The old and unused cycles , so many of them,at the Main Gate , hostel basements and other areas could be collected and repaired. In addition, a pool of people willing to donate their cycles when they leave the campus could be made to refresh the cycle bank every year. The good thing with cycles is that the cost of repair would be minimal.

The endless cycle: Heap of unused cycles lying near main gate

2. These cycles should be painted with a uniform colour to facilitate recognition. As a result, even if one is stolen, it will have little or no resale value and it will become easier to track lost or stolen cycles.

3. Hubs would be chalked out at major activity points and a fixed number of cycles kept at each hub for issue.

4. The cycles would be issued against ID cards, in a similar manner as library books are. Card readers, if possible, could be used at the hubs by security guards who could double up as hub caretakers. This will also ensure round-the-clock operation.

5. The issuing process could also be automated, as the IIT Delhi students have mentioned in their proposal. The cycles would be locked by magnetic locks which would open once
the ID card validation takes place. Thevalidation process would involve magnetic strips, like ATM cards. This automated process, although better, could take time and much more investment.

6. The cycles would be issued for use only within the campus for a fixed amount of time, failing which a suitable fine would be imposed on the offenders. This fine could be used for their maintenance.

7. A separate hub for cycle maintenance could also be made for users to deposit defective bikes.

Small repairs like punctures etc. should be the user’s responsibility while bigger damages with justifiable causes could be looked into at the maintenance hub. Some might argue that once in operation, certain issues are bound to crop up with this system.

1. The peak hour traffic, when all students will move between the hostel and academic areas, could create an imbalance in the hub pools.

2. Estimating the extent of damage to a bike and subsequently holding a person responsible for it could prove to be a roadblock.

3. Even though ID card validation and uniform paints of the cycles would deter theft, it is difficult to eliminate it altogether.

However, solutions to these are by no means impossible. Putting everything in perspective, it would be a nice initiative if this alternative transport arrangement could be started on a trial basis. All issues regarding operation could then be identified and possibly rectified. Who knows,
we could have a long-term solution to all our commuting woes in the future.
To read more about the proposal and feasibility reports of the IIT Delhi students,
please visit this link.

Credits: Kaushal for giving me this idea. Audi and Krishna for co-writing and editing respectively. Abir for taking the wonderful picture which in itself speaks more words than I could ever write.

Chhat Puja at Juhu Beach

2006-10-29T20:54:00.000+05:30

[For the uninformed or the non-biharis, do go through this if you want to know what Chhat is and what it means to us.]

For 3 years in a row, I've had to read how lakhs of people turn up at Juhu beach for Chhat puja delebrations and curse myself for not being a witness. Afterall Chhat was a fest I looked forward to when I was back home, as you might have judged by the link I gave. Anyway this time I along with Rajeev and Abir gathered enough courage to see what it's like. Priyanka Chopra's expected presence made the choice that much easier.

Everybody seemed to be going to Juhu. We were stuck in traffic for a very long time. Long enough to witness sugarcane sticks tied together kept on top of taxis, women with sindoor upto their noses sitting in luggage autorickshaws and open trucks, sounds of typical Chhat songs floating around. Quintessential Chhat atmosphere. We might as well have been in Jamshedpur, or Patna for that matter, if the Best buses and the big black Merc parked alongside were to be neglected.

We finally reached Juhu beach. This was the my first visit to this oh-so-famous tourist spot; as you might guess I'm not too keen on symbols. Tourist symbols at those. The sun had set and hence the puja was over, which was a huge letdown. Nevertheless the gathering was unprecedented. Here's a pic to give an idea:

One sea meets the other

And this was just the sparse side. On the other side two huge stages had been put up. One by the Bihari Front, organised by Sanjay Niruapm, and the other by Uttar Bharat something something. The Uttar Bharat one had some freaky show where 2 singers singing bhojpuri songs were hung up in the air in a box by a huge crane which moved them around in the air while a spotlight miserably tried to follow them. Scary stuff, quite obviously the kind the crowds liked. The Sanajy Nirupam one was slightly more sober and politicsed. He greeted the crowd in Bhojpuri and Maithili (that's my mother tongue if you're wondering) and then continued in heavily Bihari accented hindi. He mentioned how he fought with the BMC and moved the SC to allow celebrations of Chhat at Juhu, with loudspeakers and firecrackers and all. He then welcomed Maragret Alva, some top post holder in Congress (yeah I can't recall what) who he stressed multiple times had flown from Delhi for specifically this purpose. The crowd believed him and cheered wildly. Alva came on to speak. The firecrackers that were bursting in the background one after another maintained a better speed than the words in her Hindi speech. I don't think that shook the belief of the crowd.

We came, we saw, we came back

We got bored by now. Announcements were made that Nagma (bhojpuri film actress) and Manoj Tiwari and some other household names of Bhojpuri entertainment would continue with the show. Later Priyanka Chopra would grace the stage with her presence. She has a pretty face allright, but risking your life (we were intimidated by the potentially stampedisih crowd, yes) for a pretty face who won't even get to know that you did, didn't seem to be great idea. Plus we felt terribly out of place, and prasad would not be handed until morning session of Puja. We decided to give it a pass.

But not before Abir tried his hands at his new found hobby: abstract photography.

10 more days and I shall be a werewolf again

Gathering experiences, not of the terribly wild kind, is a quest; probably even a purpose. Here goes another one.

एक अर्से बाद

2006-10-27T05:44:00.000+05:30

(re-discovered this brilliant site, where you type in hindi using english alphabets and the software does the conversion to hindi bit. there might be font issues, but couldn't restrain myslef from doing a hindi post :) )

मुझे याद भी नही पिछली बार मैने कब अपने मन से हिंदी मे कुछ लिखा था. अब तो कभी कभी ऐसा लगता है की मैं हिंदी लिखना भूल ही गया. ये अजीब सी बात है की दसवीं कक्षा मे मैने अपनी हिंदी शिक्षिका से हिंदी पदहने की औचित्य पर एक लंबी सी बेहेस की थी और आज मैं एक महीने पुरानी अख़बार की ढेर मे आधे घंटे तक उस ख़बर को खोजता रहा जिसमे इस site का ज़िक्र था. ख़ैर वो विषय से ज़्यादा विषय को पढ़ाने वाले के लिए मेरी चिढ़ का नतीजा थी.

अभी मैं ज़्यादा कुछ लिख नही सकता क्योकि करने को बहुत कुछ बचा हुआ है . हमेशा की तरह अंतिम दिन ही सब कुछ करना है . लेकिन अब जब हिंदी मे लिखने का इतना आसान सा तरीक़ा मुझे पता चल चुका है , तो उम्मीद है आगे बहुत कुछ लिखता रहूँगा .

( इस उर्दू-हिंदी के मिश्रण के लिए क्षमा चाहूँगा, आजकल बहुत सोचने पर भी हिंदी के शब्द याद नही आते . और school मे कहाँ हम जयशंकर प्रसाद और महादेवी वर्मा के कठिन अलंकार पढ़ा करते थे..)

The gathering storm

2006-10-24T00:12:00.000+05:30

[This post is what happens when you become a dormant blogger]

These days, these times I constantly feel like a grain of sand trapped in an hour glass. The tiny grain that has rested for a while, then accelerated and caught speed, finally to fall through the interconnecting passage and then rest again. Rest and watch layers of sand stack upon it. Right now I'm free falling; through the passage separating the dependent life and the independent life. Things are happening in a blur. Only this idyllic Diwali vacation gives me some time to chronicle what has been going on. After all as W. H Davies has aptly put, "A poor life this if, full of care/We have no time to stand and stare."

Viva La Liga!

Intra football couldn't have been more fun. This time we decided to experiment, albeit on a format that had already been in place in H-4, and it's been a huge success. All the players who registered for the La Liga as we call it were rated on a scale of 10. People who wanted to be managers had a total of 45 points to choose 8 rated players, pretty much how fantasy football works. Currently there are 10 registered teams, which amounts to 80 willing players. Unprecedented in a hostel sporting event. The matches are pretty charged up affairs, with the overall league winners taking the jersey of the team name they play with. It is unbelievable fun playing under lights for 45 minutes, with hostelmates lining up on the sides cheering (actually there is much more of jeering) for you. Our team Liverpool, managed by Giddu (Abrahamovic minus the money and the babe, lucky with star players), is on top right now after 2 rounds, beating Mohun Bagan 7-0 (the team names suggest the disparity) and Barcelona 1-0. The 2nd match being a bitter, bitter encounter where I was virtually mauled and manhandled before managing to score the winning goal. And I am in contention for the golden boot, leading the scroing chart with 3 goals, but that depends on who scores how many goals against Bagan :)

Trivial Matters and the Unibrows

It was very, very satisfying to complete all the 30 levels of Trivius, a highly addictive cryptic trivia game hosted as a part of SJMSOM's fest. Vaibhav and I wasted just about 5 days, discounting another 5 where we gave up on level 21, brainstorming and scavenging the internet. Of course we were helped on some levels, most thankfully on 21 by Vaibhav's cousin, and on one by Surdy. There, you had the acknowledgements, we'll take the prizes ( Honestly we owe you a treat, just keep reminding us.)

The Rock Trivia was kept as a part of the Music GC. The first time I saw the posters, I knew this was the only time I could be a part of a position winning team in a music event. After being psyched by KP for showing up late for the elims, where I was conveniently substituted (temporarily much to my relief), we made it through to the finals with relative ease. The finals weren't easy. Rock trivia can be as obscure as you choose to make it, as teams except H8 an H13 found out. We were trailing by over 25 points coming into the final round, but an amazing display of quizzing reflex action by Vaibhav and a few chip ins by KP and yours truly won us the quiz by 10 points to spare. So I, of all people, have now a music GC first place to my name.

Potpourri, which includes dumb charades, tinto, manhunt etc. is always fun to practice and take part in. Ever since our mesmerising performance in my 2nd year, it has been a thing I look forward to every year. Last year was a disaster, Mood I was a heartbreak (waiting lists always are), so we decided to step up on practice. Sujay took charge of acting since Kela passed out and Krishna came into the team. He coined the name Unibrows for our team, a name reflecting the fact that all three of us coincidentally share the freaky attribute of having joint eyebrows. It is always great fun practising for events like dumb c, specially when you have slightly slow guessers like me and slightly impatient actors like Krishna (the pogo stick jump to represent a horse was a classic.) The main event would have been a cakewalk for us, had we not got Mattle Toys as a brand name. It took an eternity to be guessed by us, not helped by the fact that I hadn't heard of this company and that Krishna, who acted, is an amateur scrabble champion (which made it a frustratingly obvious guess for him.) Nevertheless we managed a respectable 3rd, within 10 seconds of the eventual winners. Mood I will be the swan song for me and Sujay, hopefully the song will earn us some money too.

What else?

Another Diwali minus the firecrackers, but thankfully had a taste of long forgotten home food at LG's place. And also the remembrance of old days and the friendly banter once I got together with cousin sisters, almost a decade since that happened last and god knows how much more since that happens again.

I did not go home citing academic commitments. Thankfully no one asks for a proof. The results, well, they cannot get worse from what they have been past 4 years. Even if they improve, it's way too late already.

I could stretch the grain sand analogy here, but it would hurt more than I can handle once I read this blog a few months, or even a few weeks from now. Already it has become difficult for me to sit on the chair and type, thinking about the content of this post. I'm not changing it anyway :)

Oh and do read my arti on blogging (for InsIghT) if you can spare the time (2nd last page, We-blog.)

Muddied Oafs

2006-09-26T01:03:00.000+05:30

Except that there was no mud out there that day. Only concrete. Concrete and those mosaic pieces to cover it, so that it would grate your skin if you tried to slide. Slide we did, nevermind the consequences. Reminded me of those rugby union ads that came on TV, 'Sometimes without pain, there is no gain'. An option between spending your evening singing 'Who'll stop the rain' and getting out and having fun doing something new. So the terrace of B4 witnessed the first ever game of mini rugby played on concrete, putting the NZ imported rugby ball I so insisted on having brought finally into use. Here is a pic to give an idea of the setting. Four floors above, wet concrete, a few willing boys; willing both to play and listen to my rendition of whatever makeshift rules I knew of rugby, chairs for goal, big rain drops and the great lake beyond.

The last time we had tried this, a year back in the football field with a football, most of ended up taking a booster dose of ATS injection. I must thank that day for sparing me another visit to the hospital. A few others were less lucky, bruises, battered bones, sprains...best part was those very people coming and telling me that it was a good idea and we could have a game sometime soon.

Even better, a few foreign exchange students who have actually played this game, agreed to hold a session and maybe continue it further. The ball has been set rolling, let us see how far it can roll.

Maybe it's time to dust off that skateboard and bring it out in the open. Any takers (that's an anagram for skater :P) ?

the blog post about a blog post

2006-09-14T21:39:00.000+05:30

And you never thought this was possible? Anyway let us make this an anniversary post that never was.

A year ago I had written this post about sleep patterns in a classroom. Had made me a minor celebrity that time. Mess, canteen, class; sometimes I was approached by people I hardly knew and told that I had done a good job. Publicity helped, people had it as their status messages, forwaded in IM's mails and someone suggested me to send it to Desipundit. It got linked and that put me thick into all this blogging business. Reading, hopping madly, writing, linking, commenting, fighting, bitching, sulking.

A year old, a year wiser. Thankfully all that is passe. I would like things the way they are right now. Few people that I read now, few people who read me now.

Blogging is one place I learnt to despise collective whining and groaning. People talking about 'issues', holding a view that is no different from a multitude of others and yet thinking it's important to put down, being the yes men...oh now I'm whining. I am but one of them.

Not that I'll stop doing that :)

Lincoln's letter to his son's teacher

2006-09-05T07:45:00.000+05:30


He will have to learn, I know,
that all men are not just,
all men are not true.
But teach him also that
for every scoundrel there is a hero;
that for every selfish Politician,
there is a dedicated leader...
Teach him for every enemy there is a friend,

Steer him away from envy,
if you can,
teach him the secret of
quiet laughter.

Let him learn early that
the bullies are the easiest to lick...
Teach him, if you can,
the wonder of books...
But also give him quiet time
to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky,
bees in the sun,
and the flowers on a green hillside.

In the school teach him
it is far honourable to fail
than to cheat...
Teach him to have faith
in his own ideas,
even if everyone tells him
they are wrong...
Teach him to be gentle
with gentle people,
and tough with the tough.

Try to give my son
the strength not to follow the crowd
when everyone is getting on the band wagon...
Teach him to listen to all men...
but teach him also to filter
all he hears on a screen of truth,
and take only the good
that comes through.

Teach him if you can,
how to laugh when he is sad...
Teach him there is no shame in tears,
Teach him to scoff at cynics
and to beware of too much sweetness...
Teach him to sell his brawn
and brain to the highest bidders
but never to put a price-tag
on his heart and soul.

Teach him to close his ears
to a howling mob
and to stand and fight
if he thinks he's right.
Treat him gently,
but do not cuddle him,
because only the test
of fire makes fine steel.

Let him have the courage
to be impatient...
let him have the patience to be brave.
Teach him always
to have sublime faith in himself,
because then he will have
sublime faith in mankind.

This is a big order,
but see what you can do...
He is such a fine fellow,
my son!

IITB Litclub Open Quiz-9 (answers)

2006-09-02T20:21:00.000+05:30

1. X was a 16th century French reformation theologian and the originator of a system of Christian theology named after him. Y was a famous 17th century philosopher whose most famous work influenced western political philosophy. However their last names find a very important place in popular culture. Funda.

A: John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. Hence Calvin and Hobbes.

2. Connect these two pictures. Name of the shop has been blanked out intentionally.

A: U2. Bonavox hearing aids from which Bono got his name and the U2 fighter plane.

3. What's common to the Norse god of thunder, a Greek titan honored for stealing fire from Gods, a mortal woman from Greek mythology who was the daughter of Tantalus and wife of amphion and the Norse Goddess for fertility?

A: Thor, Prometheus, Niobe and Freya ( Vanadis) --all have elements named after them.

4. This picture represents the first ever instance of what?

A: Computer bug and hence debugging.

5. While at college, this company's founder was given the Cornell Lacrosse team cap by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems and he was referred to as that guy in the ___ ___. He lost the cap, later the manual of the company's product had an appeal to readers (anyone finding it) to return his ___ ___. Easy enough, name the product.

A: Red Hat

6. T.S Eliot said that "The Waste Land" was inspired by the books "From Ritual to Romance" by Jessie L. Weston and "The Golden Bough" by James Frazer. These books are shown as a part of collection of a very famous movie character who quotes from "The Waste Land" in the movie. The character and the quote?

A: Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now (I mistook the quote as being 'this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but with a whimper' but Kurtz although he reads from 'The Hollow Men' doesn't get to this part, it is uttered by the photographer. All apologies.)

7. The protagonist of this very popular show of 70's-80's was written out of the show in the 6th season, leaving to join the US Army because the actor wanted to pursue his desired and later highly successful career in direction. Who?

A: Ron Howard from 'Happy Days'.

8. Famous picture. Identify both.

A: JFK and Bill clinton

9. This place had maximum requests for songs on Vividh Bharti radio programs during its heydays (as in people from this place had the maximum number of requests for songs to be played). Most people thought it to be a fictitious town because of its rather uncommon sounding name, much like Timbuktu. Identify.

Jhumri Tilaiya (I planned to give the Google Earth image too. Tragedy being I couldn't find this place.)

10.

___________________ I stand
___________________ I stand
A sprig of wattle in my hand
A native of my native land
Australia you little beauty.

Fill in the blanks, with the same phrase, and connect to David Boon.

A: Under the Southern Cross. Autobiography of Boon (singing tradition in the Aussie dressing room might be a vague connection).

Same old noon

2006-08-28T08:47:00.000+05:30

I had this diary when I was somewhere around 10th std. A bit like this blog in the sense that I hardly wrote regularly or about topics that would interest anyone who derives thrill from peeping into a stray personal diary. It had scores and reports from friendly cricket matches I played in, for there was no one else who would keep that record. More importantly it had all the details of the animated football matches we played during recess and hence the only existing record of the fact that A section beat B section by a huge margin in the overall record. But then these things stop mattering, infact become a trifle childish, when you graduate from school.

Anyway what I was coming onto was that I was the lyricist of this imaginary band called 'Alter Ego' (later changed to 'Status Quo') and wrote pathetic song lyrics for them. Not intentionally pathetic but something that couldn't be helped. Probably one the reasons why you haven't heard of any such band as yet. This summer as I was browsing through that diary, counting the goals I had scored, runs I had made, wickets I had taken and taking an imaginary bow, I came across this amusing bit of 'song' lyrics which wasn't titled as yet:

Don't wanna be just another proper noun
Wanna get famous
They have a statue of me in every town

Don't know how, don't know when
Will figure it out very soon
Until then it's the same old day, same old noon.

The signs are pretty bad when you have your own 'song' stuck in your head.

August beginning (and July ending)

2006-08-01T00:59:00.000+05:30

It's not like I didn't try to write. A new semester, an escapade to Goa before it began, the world cup and the jersey store I've got myself after that. And yeah thanks to all those precious friends who wasted their hard earned money to bring back something for me. I'm richer by a Yankee cap, official World Cup merchandise and of course the rugby ball- the dream lives on. What was funny though was the look on my dear friend's face when he gifted me that ball, bringing it all the way from kiwi land-- I took roughly 30 seconds to point out three words in fine print " Made in India". I don't know if that's supposed to make us proud or anything. Thanks for the chocolates too, most of them tasted like wax, but you eat wax if it's from Germany or Australia or Hungary. I did.

What pushed me to write was the fact that I recently saw Easy Rider. Putting that and the Goa journey in perspective, it gave me a lot to think about. Roaming around the rustic landscape on rented bikes for three days, with just a tourist map in hand and no fixed destination with just the right kind of people isn't something you would forget in a lifetime. All that minus the girls, marijuana and LSD, money and of course the looks of Peter Fonda, but we did learn a lot. Without getting into too much trouble at that. What's getting hassled by the odd police checkpost when you put that movie ending in perspective?

Anyway Jack nicholson lived in those brief moments he had in the movie. And here's something I might quote the rest of my life:

George Hanson: They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.
Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.
George Hanson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about.
George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

I'm not a hippie, this is not the 60's and my life is not a movie. But I would like think I'm free. Whatever that means. Then Nicholson says this:

George Hanson: I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.

Very true Jack. Very true.

Anyway what's a blog post about Goa without one of those photographs. This one is special though. Photoshopgiri at it's best. Best as we know it atleast.

Ah! To be free..

Nothing but the tooth

2006-07-07T19:08:00.000+05:30

Dear 3rd molar on the left jaw,

Losing you has been painful. Very painful. I couldn't eat or sleep properly when the realisation set in that I would be losing you soon (which is why I had to let go of you actually) and it will be a while before I can do that. You have left behind a huge gap in my life (and the left jaw) . More sadly it can't be filled as of now.

I can't thank you enough for having kept my company for these 20 odd years. I can half imagine the euphoric scenes when you raised your little head and everybody cried out 'Look the baby's got a tooth'. Tears came to my eyes when I saw you lying today coated with blood, wrapped in cotton, the black shadow of bacterial decay eclipsing your beautiful white built. Maybe the grind (and chew) of day to day life got to you. Or maybe it was just the evil mess food.

So long 3rd molar. Your other molar (and incisor) friends will have a tough time without you, so will I. Hope you reach your ivory white heaven for the service you provided during your lifetime.

Tearfully yours,
Nikhil.

PS: Agent Mulder, The tooth is out there. (I have vowed not to improve.)

Very soon I will have FAQ's on everything you wanted to know about tooth pulling but were afraid to ask.Wait.

Bring on the drumrolls

2006-07-01T19:30:00.000+05:30

This blog turned a year yesterday. Hopes, fears, laughs, tears (no tears actually but what the heck, it rhymes) . A proper anniversary post shall be put up when I get back to Bombay. That's another 15 day respite for you.

I'll get back to the world cup now. So long.

Tee time

2006-05-29T14:29:00.000+05:30

My tees/jerseys are getting some attention in the boring blue uniformed company I'm doing my internship in. The other day one of my guides said, "Abe tu Cadbury Gems waale colour ke tees pehen ke kyun aata hai?" .The other guide said, " What is this colour? Lilac, Purple?". I promptly replied, "When I had bought it, it was violet. Then I was on mission rainbow." Understandably so, as my football jerseys that I wear to work don't come in intricate patterns or sober colours that might be acceptable to them.

The best part was when the Divisional Manager came on a visit to the lab, looked at me and asked,

"Hmm so what are you upto today?"
'Sir, MS testing and all..'
"Hmm why are you wearing clothes like you are roaming in college?"
'Sir, I don't have a prescribed uniform."

Apparently they expect me to turn up in a formal/semi-formal shirt. Sadly with the World Cup just round the corner the exact opposite is going to happen. Just pray the shining bright orange of Holland goes well with them.

The sun is same in a relative way but I'm older

2006-05-16T18:51:00.000+05:30

I turned 22 yesterday. It was scary for a while. 22 is not the age immortalised in songs; limited to 'solah-satrah' or even a 40 year singer singing about being 18. Only thing there is, is Catch 22, and that's not good.

Then I turned to the newspaperss. Dennis hasn't grown old, neither has Calvin. Then Spiderman and Superman are also the same, albeit a bit older. That made me happy.

Cartoon characters and/or superheroes don't grow old. They remain the same.
Amen.

Boring discourse on boredom

2006-05-08T16:41:00.000+05:30

You can't imagine the kind of resolve and patience it takes to blog from an umcomfortably small cyber cafe cubicle with a stubborn ball mouse and a cranky faded keyboard. Sit down, don't clap. One hour is a hell lot of time to spend online specially if you are supposed to pay the same amount for an hour or less. So here I am.

This summer I'm supposed to do my training, or internship if you like to use a more refined word. Thanks to the TATA's, there is no dearth of companies at home that can bear with a bored 'metallurgist' with nothing else to do for one summer. After weighing my options I chose this company to torture, and as of now they are ready to let me do it. It's been tough convincing them though. Very tough infact.

Now, the office is located within walking distance of my home, walking distance being anything around 2kms. It's a difficult job walking that far in 42 degree heat, but thanks to the glorious past of playing cricket in midsummer, I can happily bear with that. The thing that hurts though is having to wait in the AC waiting room for an hour or more at a stretch, with virtually nothing to do.Which brings to me to the most important point -- what do people do/think while waiting?

I took a look around at the magazine/newspaper rack. Same newspaper as the one I comprehensively read in the morning. The rest were business mags, on which I'm not very keen though it's scary how my peers lap them up with glee. I decided to revise the paper. Then I decided to count the number of alphabets in a line, a paragraph, the article. I stopped there and made a rough estimate of the total characters in the page and chuckled at my super intelligence. Then I got bored again.

I've had a heavy dose of Sherlock Holmes since my childhood. Right form the abridged stories to the complete works; it's all been covered. I decide to do a Holmes and try and make decisive observations about the people that come around. The closest I get to is guessing a guy who came in to be the postal guy, and he was carrying a Blue Dart bag. That wasn't pretty smart.

The clock moved like a sloth, even slower. Finally I got a phone call from the HR lady.
"Sorry Nikhil I can't find the guy incharge. Please come again tomorrow."

Damn!

PS: In hindsight this was better than the ordeal I have to go through now : 9 to 5. Later maybe.

Nostalgia-Life at IITB : a short video

2006-05-01T03:00:00.000+05:30

This video was edited by Ankur along with Ankur Shah (both passing out batch 2006) and Krishna as the man on the bike. Some of you, those who haven't been to IITB anyway, won't have any idea of what's going on so I'll take it upon me to explain. It's basically the footage of a bike journey from the main gate to Hostel-13 (yes that infamously famous multicrore hostel) via all that's in between. Simple as that. In between you'll see classroom shots, profs, OAT before PAF etc. etc.

Firstly the extremely poor quality of the video, entirely my fault, would seriously hamper your opinion about it. So I plead you not to do that and if possible get to watch the original video to get a grip of the idea and the execution. Only then you'll be able to get to see the synchro of the audio and video, something that took quite a while to do. Things like the first bump co-inciding with the first bumper on bike, marching sounds when the students go past running and few other minor details would go unnoticed. But the upload limit that youtube gave prevented me from uploading the original decent quality video. So I had to encode the video, crawling through manual pages of mencoder, linux groups and what nots to finally reduce the size to less than a third of the original.

But then it was never meant to win the short movie award at Cannes Film Festival, so I guess putting up something was better than putting nothing. I've done my bit of explaining because apparently it's been linked on some site (thankyou to the site people by the way for doing that) and the poor quality is affecting the opinions of people. Now it never claims to be the flame bearer of what IITB means to the world so I don't see what's putting off people as such. Still if you'll strain your eyes to watch a youtube video in which Aishwarya Rai drapes Oprah Winfrey in sari and feel all proud about that, then I guess I can't say anything more.

And you wonder what people do after exams get over?

I feel summer creeping in and I'm tired of this town again

2006-04-27T16:15:00.000+05:30

Homeward bound

Too many songs as post titles? Latest muse it is. Appropriate though. Exams are over and in about 5 hours from now I'll be on my way on a jam packed train for a 34 hour journey back home. That too on unconfirmed tickets as of now. This when most of my illustrious friends would be booking flights to different parts of the globe for summer internships. Me? I never bothered to even make my resume. Home it shall be, although it's not what it used to be earlier. Remember this exchange from Garden State?

Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

I had mentioned this earlier on my blog too, and this feeling grows stronger.

This and that

There are a million things to write now, but I don't think I can fit them all in one monster of a post. I'll have to do with the highlights

* The insane amount of time I spent on youtube during my endsems greedily moving one form one music video to another, one Monty Python sketch to the next one and the heady nostalgic stuff I managed to uncover. The opening track of Silver Spoons and other forgotten sitcoms, videos of Ring of Fire, No Rain, Gloria and a list of other favourite videos, favourite movies scenes like the ones from Cinema Paradiso, The Good The Bad and The Ugly and so on. Priceless I'd say.

* The end sems themselves. But Giddu has done an amazingly honest review here. So I don't need to do that.

* The epic football matches. Spurs almost beating Arsenal but for the phenomenal Henry goal. Villareal doing everything but score a goal against Arsenal. Liverpool beating Chelsea with a superb Garcia goal. AC Milan losing out to Barcelona with some Ronaldnho magic, but only just.

* My own footballing adventures and the matches we play until 9pm with the super arrangement with the lights and an inviting footer field. And the minor recognition that comes with playing decent football. Nicer feeling than anything else. Of course I still have to do justice to that on the bigger occasions and I'm trying.

* The summer ration of books I'm taking to pass time back home. Finally got hold of The Golden Gate. Will try my first Joyce with Potrait of an Artist as a Young Man and a random Greene novel. Then there's Calcutta Chromosome and of course a mandatory re-reading of Catch22 I do every 2-3 months. Hope that'll be enough.

* My arrangement with friends going all over the world to bring back sports memorabilia. If things go according to plan I would have Australian Rugby Union tee, a rugby ball and also an All Back tee or a Shane Bond jersey, Swiss national football tee, Korean 2002 world cup jersey, Spurs jersey with Keane on the back, German national jersey with Schweinsteiger on the back and few more arrangements. Friends, what are they for afterall.

* The sem round up, proudest moment being part of the Bronze winning footabll team. Second proudest winning the Main GC trivia quiz. And then being given a cult colour along with my quizing mate Audi and also a sports special mention for football. Though honestly I didn't do justice to my place in the team. Hopefully there will be a next time.

* Movies I loved lately and am taking back home. The Manchurian Candidate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf being two of the better ones.

* The back to back trips to Maddu Mess at 5am in the morning. Watching the sunrise on Sameer hilltop on one of those days with the two lakes and an ocean as the backdrop. The utter disappointment on the new face of the Sammer hills which look more like a high security fortifies area than a favourite getaway spot. They are ruining everything.

The Sleep Dilemma

Joshi had this problem last night when we were coming back to hostel after watching the football match. There is this fish tank place in the MB and as we were passing by, he wondered if the fishes ever slept.

Joshi: How do these fish sleep, or do they ever sleep?
Me: They have to move continuosly as they exhale Carbon di-oxide and that place becomes insufficient in dissolved Oxygen. Wonder how they manage to move while sleeping.
Someone else: Like we breathe during our sleep?
Joshi:But we have a bed underneath, we don't stay afloat in air. Fishes have to stay afloat in water. ..(then he gives this arbit funda)..maybe they go to a place where the density of water equals that of fish bdy and hence stay afloat.
Kareena: Maybe there is some air filling mechanism that keeps them afloat while sleeping.
Joshi: Seriously how do they sleep, without support like we have beds?
Me: Ever wondered why 'ocean beds' and and 'river beds' are called so?

Nobody argues after that killer logic of course. Seriously how the heck do fishes sleep?

I have time enough to watch Discovery and Animal Planet to find out the answers. Hopefully I will and let you know. Till then Sayonara!

Let the summers begin.

I wanna be sedated

2006-04-25T00:30:00.000+05:30

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated
Nothing to do nowhere to go I wanna be sedated

Just get me to the ~~airport~~ station and put me in a ~~plane~~ train
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane I can’t control my fingers
I can’t control my brain oh no oh ho

~The Ramones (with suitable edits)

Just one more exam to go. Then I'll sing this other song.

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher's dirty looks

School's out for summer
School's out forever

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all

~Alice Cooper

A nothing post really. But it's one of the things I do before my last exam.

You know it ain't easy
How hard it can be
The way things are going
They gonna crucify me

~4 blokes famous than Jesus (or so they claimed, but Jesus never came around to clarify. So..)

Enough already. I wanna be sedated.

Speling misstakes

2006-04-14T23:01:00.000+05:30

Q. requiem or requeim? receive or recieve?
A. i before e excpet after c'
-- the best thing we learnt in our Chemistry-101 course

Point out a few spelling mistakes and you're considered snooty. Laugh and make fun and you run the risk of being ostracized and then guillitoned perhaps. I'm no trail blazer when it comes to spelling; heck I never even made the team for the inter class spelling contests which asked you to spell 'psychology' or 'xenophobia' at best.

I've seen people pointing out mistakes in notices and banners outside shops, placards and what nots. Just the other day I saw someone sniggering at our laundry room notice which said 'loundry'. Immediately I thought that it's not right to expect some washer dude to be a lexicographer. Then I recalled that it was me who had burst out laughing at a Durga Puja mela merry-go-round banner which said 'Ticket Kawnter'. Dammit, I'm still sniggering -- bloody hypocrite that I am. One thing I wondered is that if they can come up with such innovative alternative for 'Counter' then why not get it right. Well.

A month back it was me who pointed out that the Techfest-06 table calendars had 'Calender' written on the first page. It's a word, but I'm not sure that's what they meant. That's unforgivable though. Just 3 days ago on our work visit to Ispat steel plant someone pointed out that the huge hoarding in fornt of their main gate spelt 'Mision' or some other blunder like that. Again that's a sin. But a semi town curio shop 'wellcoming' you or the overcrowded bus labelling seats as 'ledies' or 'ladise' is forgivable and ignorable I guess. Smile and forget.

I like my mistakes being pointed out, that's how I've learnt half of my spellings and going by history that's how I'll learn many more. I spelt my department name as 'Metallurgicall' in some certificate and that was embarrassing (not 'embarassing' as I've seen many, many good people spell it!) I termed my performances as 'absymal' which was rather abysmal and the best one was my spelling of pilgrimage which went something like 'piligrimmage'. Unholy.

All this takes me back to my 4th std. where the English teacher asked us to spell career and everybody was raising their hands and saying things like 'carrier', 'carier' and stuff. I wondered why the teacher hadn't noticed my vigourously waving hand. Finally she looked at me and said, 'I know you know the right answer Nikhil, I'll just write it down for everybody now'. Boy, such confidence! Of course I was going to spell it incorrectly. Which shows another fact that I'm not even half as good as people think I am, but things like this stop that from coming out.

So, I don't laugh when people 'loose' their things or think they are 'privilaged' to be here as they are 'geniouses'. No. I just politely point out and take two steps back. Then probably walk away.

But, if they say 'Thatz ma style.....Gotta liv wid it dood......Dat's me frndz bcos I luv 2b kewl!!' Well then I don't walk away, I run. All the while wishing I had wings.

Added later: This just gets better. I just recalled that we had lost some city school quiz final to then reigning BQC champs Sacred Heart Convent because I spelt assassination as 'assasination' ; a huge upset win it would have been. Now what kind of quiz asks spellings, well I did mention BQC in the same line didn't I?

Where were you when the sun went down?

2006-04-11T00:50:00.000+05:30

If pro is the opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?

There is this huge hysteria everywhere I go. Dinner tables, breakfast tables, lunch tables, blogs and of course those million TV channels who have stationed themselves outside these hallowed gates to get a perspective from us the ill fated bunch of people. A very noble cause, I agree. But why now, why not earlier I ask from so many people.

Why not when this thing was passed in the parliament some months ago, which left only a formal announcement to have it enforced? What about the reservations in excess of 50% that are already in place in most states (Jharkhand and Rajasthan I know for sure)? What about UPSC? What happened to 'meritocracy' then? Double standards or dig-a-well-when-ass-is-on-fire I'm not so sure.

The optimists say it's never too late to try. Go ahead, try. Got some message which said 'Hasn't RDB taught us anything? Let's all bunk 17th April, even though we have end sems.' Dude!

Once again I am listening to The Who and once again am quoting them-

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow at the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and I pray
Won't get fooled again!

Ah, the recurring joys of being born a Brahmin. We only have the scriptures to let us know how glorious that is. Praying, that's our hereditary job, and that's what I'll get back to doing now.

Cleaning out my closet

2006-03-31T22:03:00.000+05:30

Sometimes you just have to thank those retrospective, soul searching moments; those times when you're alone in the room thinking about the things that matter to you most whatever they might be. Some ponder about the intricacies of life and love, some think of world peace, some just resolve for the billionth time to do better in studies and some give it all up and sing 'the game of life is hard to play, gonna lose it anyway..suicide is painless' and think of ways to put that in practice.

One such moment, I was lying on my bed, my eyes set upon the ceiling where I saw the complex weavings of a huge spider web supporting a reasonably large spider family. I'm not arachnophobic but I know too well the story of Spiderman and his coming into being. For lack of desire to serve humanity or even a Mary Jane I decided that I could not take chances with freakish radioactive accident and that was when I decided that time had come to finally clean my room. For anyone living alone in a hostel that's a monumental decision, like pressing the red button or popping up the question with consequences as dire. But determination to do worthless things is one quality I have abundant supplies of which when fuelled by the unbeatable enthusiasm to pull off the strangest of acts becomes an unstoppable force. Meaning to say, I motivated myself to do it.

The first and foremost problem was I had no broom. The bigger problem was asking around for a broom from my wingmates. Soon amused cries like 'NCJ (that's the name I go by) is cleaning his room!' and 'See pick(underscore)nik (normally it's your name that go into your yahoo ID, for me it is the other way round-drawbacks of being too innovative) has a broom in his hand!' could be heard across the hall. I tried explaining in vain that it was not a Gudi Padwa ritual and my decision and the auspiciousness of the day was a mere coincidence. At this point of time I must add that our hostel has provided us with the facility of housekeepers who clean up the rooms every week, and do a good job I must say. But I have been ignoring their services, at first with the thought that my room didn't look that untidy and later thinking that those people would curse me if I let them enter my room. Just a few weeks back one of the housekeepers had asked me to get my fan cleaned regularly to avoid trouble; I had aksed him to clean it as I noticed a considerable loss in speed due to the added weight. I wasn't taking any chances after that.

So I took out everything form the comfortable dumping sites I had tucked things into. Right from the huge monitor carton stacked on the top of the cupboard, the unused travel bag with all my old clothes, the huge pile of newspapers and magazines and old notebooks stashed beneath my bed and the numerous paper bags and plastic bags stuffed with stuff form the neanderthal age. Had I not changed my room two years ago, I would have found out some dinosaur eggs too but I left that age in my earlier room. For about two hours, I took out everything and expressed amazement at each of my finds. Snippets--

A dinner coupon dating back two years.
A single shoe one of which was stolen in train by I presume a one legged beggar.
Some 3-4 nailclippers, 25-30 pens none of which worked of course.
2 walkmans of no use sadly in this iPod age.
A huge stack of my freshie time audio cassettes with Blur, INXS, Oasis, Coldplay, Pearl Jam, Deep Purple etc. adorning the covers which reminded me of the days gone by and simpler choices.
My skateboard covered by newspapers and notebooks.
2 tennis balls, 1 TT ball, a leather ball, 2 pairs of football socks, 2 shin guards.
A miniature bicylce pump, of all things in the world.
My original certificates which I feared lost.
A keyboard, an 80 GB HDD, 2 power cords (how the heck did these things come in?)
Receipts form probably all the monetary transactions I have ever undertaken, including ATM slips indicating all the highs and lows of my bank account.
Adaptor for a car stereo system, something I wanted to chuck into the Powai lake.

Apart from these there were used tubes of probably all toothpastes I have ever used, cover packings of all the soap that I ever came across and whole lot of cobweb and dirt. I was feeling sick towards the end, being allergic to dirt. But then I am still to come across a perosn who isn't, someone who smears dirt all over his face and says out loud 'I'm loving it'. The dustbin, which is a reasonably large one was overflowing courtesy my hard work.

Not satisfied by all this, I decided to go one notch higher. I took out an old brush and decided to clean my sneakers -- a pair of shoes Reebok would disown if it chanced to see it prior to the wash. Not only that, I took all my football jerseys, fresh from the humbling defeat in the finals, for an elaborate wash. All this at about 10pm in the night. The bathroom that had the misfortune of being witness to this frantic action turned brown from a clear white shade. I myself was amazed to find the amount of dirt a pair of football socks can absorb or the colour change that even a simple water wash can effect on a jersey. It was a great learning experience albeit a very demanding one.

After all this hard work I finally came out clean. And I hope the room cleaners won't have any snide remarks to pass once I open my doors to their service this Sunday. Now, I am eagerly looking for a new mission to undertake.

Strangers in a strange land

2006-03-25T04:20:00.000+05:30

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Opening lines of 'The Thought Fox'. Replace blank page by keyboard and you're in my position. I have this habit of waking up at weird hours. Too early for a movie, too unsettling for a book, too strange to go watch the NZ-Windies test match alone in the lounge. So I try and keep my eyes closed, hoping that somehow I might fall asleep. Until then, there is a chain reaction of thoughts that casacades into the mind, joined together by the slightest of links. But, I guess, that's how the thought fox moves. So I put down a few links of the chain, hoping that it would speed up my journey to the dreamworld. It could make anyone reading drowsy too, but that's a risk I'm prepared to take.

I wake and see the time--4.15 AM. Why do I always have to wake up at such weird hours? What do I do now? Weird, wait that rings a bell. Today in the tumtum (for the uninitiated, it's an internal minibus type transport service) there was this foreign exchange student taking photographs. That is the busiest time and the tumtum is jampacked by students with some hanging on the doors just to get to lectures on time. I guess he found this image really amusing, like all foreigners do when they see the local train or the BEST bus for the first time. I couldn't restrain myself from starting a conversation

'Photographic evidence, eh?'
'Yeah, this is my last month here, so I'm trying to take back all the weird things I see.' (Weird yeah. For you.)
'You know I just caught somehow publicly picking his nose, that's a gold shot'

I couldn't stop laughing. I would have told him that nose picking is a national pastime here, but then so is hanging on the edge of buses a national necessity. The tumtum stopped to pick up some more, until 4-5 people had adjusted themselves by the door and no more could be taken. I made an observation--

'Just gets better'
'Yeah, you took words out of my mouth'

And then he took 2-3 more snaps. That was the end of conversation as it was the end of journey. It got me thinking about the things these foreigners find weird.

Just yesterday during the halftime of our main GC football match, a similar incident had occured. Naturally tired of running around for 25 minutes and having more than my fair share of being pushed around, I reached for the Glucon-D pack for the 'instant energy' it promises. It was with one of the two Frenchmen in our team. He was pouring out the powder rather conservatively, taking great care not spill out anything or take more than what's warranted. I, with my increased energy requirements, took the pack and poured a heap of powder in my hand. He looked and me, dropped his jaw, like I had deprived half the Indian population of the staple diet they should get. I couldn't help laughing, and laugh is one thing you should not do when you have any powder close to your mouth. I ended up blowing half thing away, on my face and jersey. I wanted to quip, 'Hey look I'm a white man too', but my better senses prevailed.

Somehow I can't get past nose picking though. What's with it that makes it so repulsive. Even that episode in Seinfeld, which has covered every such thing in the world, Jerry loses his girl when she catches him picking his nose at a traffic light. He tries to convince that it's not a crime with a typical Seinfeld quote like--

"I guarantee you that Moses was a picker. You wander through the desert for forty years with that dry air. You telling me you're not going to have occasion to clean house a little bit." After all his attempts fail, he ends with a speech near an elevator for all to hear--

An' what if I did do it? Even though I admit to nothing, and never will. What does that make me? And I'm not here just defending myself but all those pickers out there who've been caught. (Elevator doors open) Each an' every one of them, who has to suffer the shame and humiliation because of people like you..(Everyone but Jerry is now in the elevator. Jerry's still addressing them) Are we not human?! If we pick, do we not bleed?! (Elevator doors shut. A few people in the hallway are looking at him, he turns and addresses them) I am not an animal!

I wonder if the person photographed would defend himslef so convincingly. Moses was a picker..how do these people come up with logic like this. There are so many times such convincing random logic is used. Like this one when Susan is about to break up with George and a conversation takes place (amazingly in the same episode as The pick)--

GEORGE: It'll be different this time.
SUSAN: I need someone a little more stable.
GEORGE: I'm not stable? I'm like a rock. I take these glasses off, you can't tell the difference between me and a rock. I put these glasses on a rock. You know what jumps into most people's minds? Costanza!

SUSAN: People don't change.
GEORGE: I change I change. Two weeks ago I tried a soft boiled egg. Never liked it before. Now I'm dunkin a piece of toast in there and I'm loving it.
SUSAN: I'm not a soft boiled egg.
GEORGE: And I am not a piece of toast.

SUSAN: I just don't think we have anything in common.
GEORGE: That's okay. That's good. You think Louie Pasteur and his wife had anything in common? He was in the fields all day with the cows, you know with the milk, examining the milk, delving into milk, consummed with milk. Pasteurization, Homogenization, She was in the kitchen killing cockroaches with a boot on each hand.

SUSAN: Why were there so many cockroaches?
GEORGE: Because. There was a lot of cake lying around the house. Just sitting there going with all the excess milk from all the experiments [grins]
SUSAN: And they got along?
GEORGE: Yes! Yes. You know. She didn't know about Pasteurization. He didn't know anout Fumigation. But they made it work!

Now who would have thought of that! This works, I'm feeling sleepy again.

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

A very filmy story

2006-03-23T20:53:00.000+05:30

Today the millionth person asked me if I had seen RDB. My answer in the negative drew a gasp and was followed by the rather pertinent question 'WHY?' So I decided to let it all out now, can't tell this every single time I'm asked such questions. It's gonna be a long and sentimental one.

My conscious memory takes me back to 1990, when I was 6 years old. Our holidays used to be spent at Nanaji's place in Darbhanga, a sleepy small village town in North Bihar. Infact the holidays were so long that staying at home seemed like a holiday. We had a VCR back there and it used to be pretty busy, and I along with my cousins and brother were the ones responsible for keeping it busy. I think we averaged some 3 movies a day and the periods were well distributed. Nanaji and Nani chose Shammi Kapoor, Devanand, Meena Kumari Madhubala films (I distinctly remember Main Chup Rahoongi, for the rather strange name.) Mamaji, Mom and Mausi chose Big B, Vinod Khanna,Firoze Khan (for some strange reason this guy was my mom's favourite I'm told) and Jaya Bhaduri et al movies. We were left with the intriguing choice of choosing new movies. Anyone who has been through the late 80's early 90's can vividly recall the types of movies that used to come those days, a time when Govinda, Chunky Pandey, Neelam, Kimi Katkar etc. reigned supreme. So we made them watch Street Dancer, Love '86, Zahreelay, Nakabandi and what not. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy them-- what else can a brainless 6 year old enjoy? Dishum-Dishum, Naach-gaana and all that crap.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that I was addicted. Nothing else can explain watching Ajooba, Toofan (because it had Big B) and then following it with a movie in which Neelam sings 'Patjhar Sawan Basant Bahar' (boy that was some addictive song!) Or thinking that Kishen-Kanhiayya was a masterpiece and shouting when Aamir Khan hit the winning six in Awwal Number, a feat I could not watch him perform in Lagaan--my loss totally. I admired Sanjay Dutt in and as Thaanedar and still remember the great contraption beginning in Appu Raja where Kamal Hasan made me laugh. This phase continued till 1994 where I think we had exhausted the VHS shop's stock. We were recommened movies based on the number of good songs, murder scenes etc. I distinctly remember a movie called Aa Gale Lag Jaa, which was hyped as the return of Urmila-Jugal duo after playing kids in Masoom and had 11 murders which were committed by a ice-knife. Sorry no spoilers.

I saw the entry of Shahrukh Khan, after watching him in Circus. I saw Juhi Chawla enter cinema as the ex-miss India. I remember the exchange between the two in Darr when Juhi says to Sunny about SRK 'Ye to college me bhi jhempu tha'. The use of the word 'jhempu' still makes me laugh everytime. I remember Shilpa 'long legs' Shetty dancing with SRK in Baazigar with a hip-zip on her shorts in the song 'Kitaabe bahut si padhi hongi tumne'-- felt rather strange at that time. I remember too many things to be listed here.

But before I go on to tell how it all snapped, I must thank that period for introducing me to the world of good Hindi cinema. Ardh Satya I remember vividly and the scene where Om Puri switches the table light on and off and pours out his inner conflict is one of the best ones I have ever seen. Infact I quote this movie when someone tells me about RDB and the dialogues where Om Puri says 'Mujhe chunna tha napunsakta aur porush me' and next scene he goes to the police station and says, 'Maine usko maar diya' portray this same sentiment in such an effective way. Then there were Lekin and Albert Pinto ko gussa kyun aata hai which grew on me as I began to understand, and Jaane bhi do Yaroon which of course is my favourite. I loved Ek ruka hua Faisla until I saw 12 Angry Men and was infact rather disappointed that some the good movies I had seen were rip offs from Hollywood. I liked them nonetheless. Almost all Amol Palekar and Sanjeev Kumar movies too, especially Angoor. I still do.

Then came 1994, the year Hum Aapke Hain Kaun was released. There was mass hysteria everywhere. All families began making plans to watch this family movie. We were unaffected by all this and infact the only movie we had seen in movie hall together was Jurassic Park and I loved it. Never needed to watch anything else. But I presume there were social responsibilities to keep. Mom, Dad me Bro and me tagged along with some 3-4 other acquaintances and their families and together we all went to this great show. Somehow I couldn't handle it-- the overly acted melodrama, the girly-girly song and dance sequences, dog as umpire with family playing cricket, the mass crying when Renuka Sahane fell off the stairs, the happy sobs when Salman and Madhuri got back together and above all the dog emerging as the hero of the movie. Something snapped. I am reminded of that scene in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf where Liz Taylor goes snap, snap, snap, snap-- it drove me insane. To add to that, the discussions almost killed me and girls in class singing 'Munder pe bole kaga' and trying to copy the dance steps in class and picnics almost had me puke. I vowed never to watch such mass hysterical movie again.

From then on, every year a movie with a chic shortform came up and drew large crowds-- DDLJ, DTPH, KKHH, KNPH and God knows what else. I wasn't to be a part of the crowd. Circumstances forced me to watch Akele Hum Akele Tum in a hall against my wishes and that strengthened my resolve to shun movie theaters. Since then I have only watched Spiderman2; so I guess it's been pretty successful. I still have nightmares though, of girls in my class dancing the steps of 'Mera Piya ghar ayaa O ramji' at a class picnic. I wake up and thank my fortune that those days are behind me.

As an extension I almost never watched movies on television unless they were extra special like the Hitchcock week or maybe a Terminator, not to bother about the Hindi ones. I deepened my interests in sport and watched everything from NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL before classes to tennis and golf and football and rugby union in evenings and late nights. For this I must thank my parents who never came in the way of these interests I had, even when it meant staying awake to watch Sampras vs. Safin at 2.00 AM and then wake up at 7 to watch MLB. Doing well in school didn't hurt much either. The bottomline was that I was happy.

I agree it's totally my loss. I try and compensate that from time to time by going on a movie spree, which means watching 3-4 in a week, some very good ones I must say, and then go a fortnight without watching one. But then somehow I can't motivate myself to watch a 3/1.5 hr movie but can happily sit through a 5 day Test match. I think 200 bucks on a movie is not worth it but then I spend some 500 on a cricket match. Just the way my mind works.

End of a long and rather abrupt story. Mental scars do take a long time to heal. Overdose kills; it killed my interest.

The jinx continues..

2006-03-22T14:15:00.000+05:30

So India have lost another match in which I was present at the stadium. I am yet to see India win a match in my presence. The one ODI that Indian team did manage to win at Jamshedpur against SA in March 2000 coincided with my ICSE Physics exam and I couldn't be there. Rest 2 I saw and 2 others I almost (don't ask me to explain 'almost', it's a painful story) saw, they lost. I thought things would be better once I change the venue, didn't work out :(

Speaking of which one of my friends Krishna, who is as enthusiastic if not more to watch India play, has a similar sort of record. The 5 matches he has watched at Bangalore, India have lost 4 and 1 has been rained out (correct ain't I?). He has one win under his belt though--the India SA ODI at Wankhede last November.

We had this discussion on our newsgroups about a year back, and here's is what one of the profs had to say--

One of the most interesting discussions in a while. One thing seems to be clear. Keep jha_nikhil and krishnar away from stadiums, perhaps even away from the TV during matches. I read about Infosys Narayanamurthy or some such biggie also suffers from the same syndrome or impact or something on India's fortunes, and this was just from watching the matches on TV. I say we take no chances in the coming 1 dayers. Keep any suspect guys out.

A year on, and things don't seem to have changed much. I thought we would cancel each other's misfortune out if we went to the match together. Needless to say, it has backfired. And how!

What do I have to do to watch India win?

Wankhe-Day

2006-03-21T22:53:00.000+05:30

I had watched everything live cricket had to offer. The ODI's, the practice matches, India 'A' vs. Australia match, a few Ranji matches --all at Keenan stadium. I even watched inter school matches at various venues mostly as 16th man cum scorer of the school team, watched tennis ball tournaments and flood light plastic ball tournaments; managing to play in some too. Today, I finally completed the journey. I saw the fourth day's play at Wankhede today.

If things had gone my way, I should have been there at the weekends too. Instead Saturday was taken up by a stupid guest lecture which I almost bunked to watch the match but realised that I had Sunday to bank upon. Then Saturday night I got the news that our hostel football match, which I thought started from 5.30 actually was scheduled to be at 3.30. Since it's not often that I get the chance to play in the first team, I had to choose playing football in the mid afternoon heat. I didn't exactly set the ground alight, far from it, playing left mid, but for the record we came from a goal down to win 5-1 ( a very nice record too, that's why it deserved a mention.)

Today finally I decided it was enough. I somehow copy pasted and 'compiled' my seminar report, and presented it to my guide early morning itself and was prepared to bunk all lectures to go watch the match. Fortunately the afternoon lecture was cancelled and I thought I would just stick around for an hour or two. Unfortunately a lab was announced in the meanwhile. I was too determined to leave the match by then. So I decided to use the super-sub rule (no it's not allowed in real life) and my good friend Annie agreed to do a lab he had already done a week before for me. Words cannot express my gratitude, but thank you mate.

So we (Rajeev and me) finally got to the North Stand just in time for the post lunch session. There is no need to state it but the experience was so much better than the overpriced cement stands of Keenan. After watching Dhoni in a Ranji match back home, this was the first time I was seeing him in India cap. almost as an anticlimax, he missed chances and a few college students, who are quoted as 'North Stand' in the news, started booing him. Speaking of which I have a few clarifications to make.

***

Boo hu hu?

All this booing talk is a bit unnerving. The stand was more or less packed except the portions directly in the sun and the only people who were shouting were not more than 30-40. By the look of things they were pre-acquainted and their idea of a fun day out at a cricket match seemed like hurling abuses at everyone and anyone. So people who say North Stand was chanting 'Flintoff is a bastard' and 'Hoggy is a doggy', please to be letting go of that idea. A bunch of revelrous college kids does not constitute a stand. They were also shouting things like 'Dhoni ch****', 'Yuvi ch****' when these two dropped catches or stumpings and then got back to praising them when they did something worthwhile.

It was method to counter boredom by them I guess. Once they got bored abusing each other, they took to heckling three English ladies who had wrapped themselves in saris and then moved onto the players. In utter disregard of the slightest of manners, they were also chanting abuses that involve mother and father in front of so many concerned parents and kids. One 8 year old kid sitting beside me even nudged me to ask what that meant. Shameful really. It's not that we don't use abusive language, but we know the difference between an inter hostel cricket match in front of college crowd and an international match in a stadium.

This lends this Saching booing incident very little credibility. I can now imagine what kind of people did that and I don't think booing from a bunch of rowdy college kids means that a player of such standards should start having sleepless nights. Overblown I must say.

***

Coming back I learnt that super-sub thing had run into trouble. Someone had identified my friend as having done the lab earlier. But like a true fighter he took care of the situation and this meant officialy I completed my lab. And Annie won the man of the match as a super-sub.

All's well that ends well. Just hope that India win the watch today so that I have something more to talk about.

The greatest day for a sport lover

2006-03-13T00:13:00.000+05:30

How could I not write about this day! I did not eat properly, until a few moments ago, did not sleep my weekend quota of 14 or more hours, did not even play football. Just sat and gazed at the TV screen, for some 12 hours running. And now had to write about this. Full report follows:

One-Day Mataram

All the superlatives must have been exhausted by now. The single greatest match in ODI history, if you are not a bowler type that is, and it's yet to sink in. I've pinched myself blue, cried myself hoarse, tired of typing and chatting about it with friends, been on a mental high for so long now. They said ODI's made the test matches faster: this ODI must be the first one to be affected by the 20-20 version then. Losing a WC semifinal under such tragic circumstances can never be compensated, but for SA this could be next best option to take revenge. Down 2-2, conceding record total of 434 with a mauling by the unstoppable Ponting and the 'choker' tag looked all for the taking once again. But, Gibbs had other ideas and it was rather fitting that Gibbs came to the fore. The dropped catch of Steve Waugh must have hurt him every day since, but today when Bracken dropped him it was his turn to say ,'You've just dropped the Standard Bank trophy son' (good one Deva) . And I would quote this innings from the reformed Gibbs as the symbolic answer to all those who have the common rhetoric for not watching cricket 'I lost faith after the match fixing scandal' . Well too bad, 'cause we're not missing you.

The lounge was a place to witness. People had already started pouring in once they heard of Ponting going berserk. Dejavu it was, for the WC final memories are too recent to be forgotten. I missed the major part as I was watching England play and sleeping, switching effortlessly between the two. Then F1, which will be discussed later, was also preferred and a late surge by Kumble also widely appreciated. But, once Gibbs and Smith got into the act, and how, priorities were decided. It was amazing to watch such a lage number of people cheer SA and jeer Australia and do that for the entire match. Everyone wished Gibbs get a double but I guess enough records had fallen already. Once he got out the infamous choke loomed large. Van der Wath calmed some nerves along with Boucher (and also inspired a song from me- 'Maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me, 'cause afterall, you're my Van der Wath' :D ) but like SA always do, they left us guessing till the last over. Hall got out unecessarily on the 2nd ball and we were in familiar territories, 1 wicket remaining, 3 balls to go 2 to win. Thank God, Ntini was much smarter than Donald and when Boucher scored that boundary there was chaos. On the pitch, in the stadium, in the lounge, in my mind. I believe we lost a sofa in the post match celebrations.

The greatest ODI ever. Ever.

EDIT: Just an afterthought after writing the F1 part. Before the new qualifying rules came up, there used to be an hour of qualifying time where all cars would try and get in their fastest laps in 3 tries. There was this technique, if you can call it, of sending a car right behind that of a team mate's to make use of the vaccum that's created to sort of 'suck' the car that's behind and get faster times.Putting that analogy into cricket SA would have never dreamt of getting 400 against Aus but once OZ did that, SA were sort of 'sucked' into to do that, amazing. And by the way, Mick Lewis had a reputation of being the best bowler at death in the academy as the commentators pointed out. Ha!

Formula Won!

I'm more of an anti-Schumi (Hill was my favourite and I will never forgive him for that shameless trick, also for trying it again against Jacques: am an old time F1 fan) than pro Kimi supporter. So quite naturally I wasn't happy with the way things were at the start of the race, Schumi at pole and Kimi at the back. But the one stop formula worked liked a charm and not for the first time Kimi got a podium place from the back. The race itself was awesome. Loved the moment when Alonso came out of the pits, inline with Schumi and both went wheel to wheel and Alonso pulled away. That was the end of the race for me. Rosberg is the man for the future though. After spinning off at turn one it really took an amazing performance to take on one car after another and then beat them with scorching slingshots. Would have done his father Keke, past championship winner, very proud. The final result with Kimi on podium, Alonso holding Schumi and Juan Pablo and Button in the points was the best I could hope for in the circumstances.

Can only hope for better things to follow.

Henry, Rooney:Premier League

I even managed to watch some good football on this action packed day. ManU began their match against Newcastle with 2 great goals within 20 minutes. Rooney got both of them and looked good for more. Already I was telling stories of the 6-2 battering they had given the Magpies some 4 years ago. But that was not to be. The final score reamined 2-0 and the 20 minutes that I watched, mattered. Had to choose cricket of course, was spoilt for choice.

No such problems with Arsenal vs. Liverpool though. Henry started off with an exquisite finish to start off things but the match really got exciting in the last 20 minutes. Gerrard had a long, swerving shot spilled by the goalkeeper only for Luis Garcia to put in the header. At that point Liverpool looked good enough to split points or even win. But 2 minutes starting form the 82nd changed it all. Xabi Alonso was rather unluckily sent off for a 2nd bookable offence and then there was this childish mistake by Gerrard, still not sure what was he thinking. Near the Liverpool goal he got past 2 Arsenal players and then backpassed the ball for the goalkeeper only for it to go straight to Henry standing all alone and finish it effortlessly with glee, like a child unwrapping his Christmas gift. Pires came close to making it 3 with another Henry special, but 2 was enough for the night.

Testing Spells

I could not follow much of the 2 ongoing tests thanks to all the things I already mentioned. But that doesn't mean they were devoid of great action.

First Bond took out Sarwan and bowled Lara first ball, taking 4 wickets in his fiery spell. That made Windies cruble form 118-0 chasing 290 to a situation where they need 45 with 2 wickets in hand. My plan is to stay awake till 3am to watch Bond finish it, and to put an exclamation mark on this wonderful day.

Kumble, on a high after his 500 wickets the previous day, first batted sensibly to give India the lead and then took 3 crucial wickets to put India in with a chance. Dravid was unlucky to miss out on a century after a typical gutsy knock and Irfan showed the world's greatest allrounder that he too is getting up there with yet another rear guard action. So many reasons to bunk class tomorrow.

What else could you want in a day?

The feet of God

2006-03-09T06:02:00.000+05:30

[I couldn't sleep until I wrote this one.]

I've always wondered why movies are such popular 'hang-out' joints. Why they are considered the perfect places to have a 'nice time', regardless of the movie that's being shown? More than that I've wondered why can't anything else take their place. The answer lay in front of me. Our Lecture Theatre [LT] screened the UEFA champion's league quarter final matches on the big screen, from 1 AM in the morning and it was jam packed. People had to sit on the floor and no one complained. A huge success.

I see no reason why this can't be as successful a venture outside, with or without entry fees. Agreed watching cricket at a pub or someplace else could drag on for non-purists, but football doesn't pose any such problems. People go to the movies to get thrills, be entertained, 'awakened' and come out and discuss the goosebump moments. They don't realise that it takes months, sometimes years to prepare those moments. Perfectly enough so that they can be engarved in the memories. Takes, retakes, editing- it's a long list. Live sport is spontaneous. The brilliance, the skill, the drama, the tension , the agony, the ecstacy is all real time. Ronaldinho doesn't take a billion retakes to come up with sublime moments in a crunch match in front of fifty thousand people, Henry does not take months to come up with the perfect script to come up with a winner. It just happens instantaneously. Don't even get me started on the unpredicatability element. If you wish to get inspired, get inspired by real people in real situations.

Which is why I think it would be a good idea right now to come up with a sport multiplex or even theme pubs like in the west. The ones already there are too elitist, in the lobbies of dark 5 star hotels. Enough digression already.

Needless to say I watched both these matches. To say anything about Ronaldinho and his heavenly skills and control with the ball and his amazing big match game would be like dropping just another tiny, microscopic drop in the ocean of praise he already is floating in, deservedly so. Anyone who doesn't watch football won't need a minute to judge who's playing the most different,exciting game in match he plays in. Those who do just sit back and soak it in. Those who play a bit try and absorb, learn, get inspired but come out and realise that even conceiving doing that would be going into the realms of the impossible. How he got past those four defenders with his unearthly dribbling and then chose the near post with the far wide open, getting the goalie to misjudge his jump is plain unbelievable. I play left wing whenever I get the chance and at this highly amateur level I can assure you that it's the last idea you could fathom in your mind. Yet he had the confidence to execute it, and execute perfectly is truly mesmerising.

Messi shone the little while he played, but it was all about Ronaldinho in that match. The scoreline read 1-1 at the end, with Barca going through on aggregate, thanks to a late contentious penalty. Those who saw the match don't need a scoreline to know of the story.

Henry on the other hand has very simple technique in comparison. Simple yet highly efficient. It all came down to that goal he scored last leg at Madrid, that sublime solo effort to put Arsenal through. He came pretty close doing the same in this game too, but he had already done enough. Scorching pace, simple dummies, a slow run;fiercely accelerated suddenly and a clinical finish. Just plain brilliant, signature Henry. Hleb gave him great support and should have got a goal, but then so should have Raul from the other side. In the end the better team went through.

On a personal note I tried some minor tricks today and failed miserably. My back heel was intercepted by the opponent, I almost pulled off the play-to-win Nike advert trick, only to have the ball bounce and hit my hand for hand ball and my swerving shots went way above the cross bars. But a man is allowed to dream, ain't he?

It's hard out here for a pimp !?!

2006-03-07T22:10:00.000+05:30

People who know me wonder why I haven't mentioned Jon Stewart and his Oscar show as yet, being the huge fan that I am. I do all the hard work of downloading Daily Show clips, reading the transcripts in case I missed any and then suggesting and insisting that people watch that show. Most of them like it and I'm glad that there are still people in this 'f.r.i.e.n.d.s' obsessed microcosm who can laugh when somebody else tells a joke.

So yeah, I watched the show. I haven't seen any of the movies nominated yet but I bunked a class and saw the ceremony for Jon. He was far less ruthless than on his show. The point being that he wasn't on his show, though still he managed to sneak in a few jabs. Overall though I was uncomfortable seeing him in this role, I rather like the no holes barred Jon tearing apart everyone in his Daily Show.

One of the few times he looked in prime form was when Ludacris came to present the best song in a movie oscar. 'He is very famous, you don't know him. Go upstairs where you children are downloading illegal music form the internet, they'll know him very well.' After that there was this rap song, never a fan of that genre, 'It's hard out here for a pimp' performed by 36 Mafia which finally won the award. Jon sneered and said, ' For those of you keeping scores at home, it's Martin Scorsese nil and 36 mafia 1.' That was more like it. There were some signature Daily Show spoof reports and I thought I heard Colbert in one of them though but then I recalled that he now has his own show.

The go-back-to-the-theater theme dragged on a bit. Montages after montages, a tired Jon rightly pointed out that maybe it was time for the Best Montage Oscar. One amusing thing was that when they were showing the film-noir montages I kept on shouting Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, The Manchurian Candidate, Sunset Boulevard etc. when the clips came up and people around were rather perplexed by the amount of black and white movies I have managed to see. What they don't know is that it's the only thing I watch these days.

Rest I was happy that one of my favourite directors, Altman got the lifetime achievement award. I celebrated that by watching M*A*S*H once more.

Take your pic!

2006-03-01T02:38:00.000+05:30

Forget about NGC's best snapshots of the year. Take a look here:

Poor old son of a bitch

Photo courtesy A-7. A stray pup finds it's way into our hostel, somehow manages to creep into the lift and is transported to the 7th floor. Seventh heaven for him. Dogs can't fly, but they do get high. And a very appropriate description by Giddu here.

Hail all!

Photo courtesy B-2. Andy is Hitler's reincarnation. Not for long, look closely at the open door. Dressed to kill.

Dalai Lama vs. Hitler

B-2 again. This one one had me in splits. Das as Lama and Andy as Hitler. Lama vs. Hitler...just how did you think of this? :))

Waah, dost ho to aise. Us kutte ko chor kar.

UPDATE: The last 2 pics were taken a day before mid-sems. See what midsems can do to us :)

the change it had to come,i knew it all along

2006-02-25T20:21:00.000+05:30

It had to happen. It waiting to happen. I got so deathly bored with the normal blogger template that I just gave around three hours to ensure that I am not bored anymore. Just another link in the blogosphere evolution if you wish. Exams are over, it's showing already.

So what's new?
What? Are you insane? Everything's new. Except me, except you. Pinched a Wordpress template form somewhere and tweaked it away to glory. The banner image by the way is 'Expulsion from Paradise'. For now that this; I have plans. And an image of mine, chosen specifically so that it gives the feeling of me looking down at my posts. I do that. With a smirk of course. Had to remove the tagbox as it looked hopelessly out of place.

What to expect?
A lot more surely. First of all a changing image header. In vogue these days. Will do it some other time.

What goes wrong?
The comments won't have your name,apparently. Once you wish to post one, voila! It's there again. I have to correct that of course. Later.

If you think anything other than 'Yeah, whatever', I'll like to know.

the end has no end the end has no end

2006-02-24T21:28:00.000+05:30

I was waiting for this day to post. Everyone's exams are over. Ours aren't. We've got 2 tomorrow. It all ends tomorrow, then starts again.

This week I've been busy. Very. The NBA all star weekend, the 2 UEFA champions league matches. Bad timing for exams. Exams do tend to bring out the best in people though. I got this as an IM forward:

Q. What is the vector inverse of Sridevi? (hint: if a is a vector then a-bar is the inverse)
A. Tabu. Sridevi was Chandani, Tabu was in Chandani Bar.

This led to some more innovations. I got this soon after:

Q. If Imran Hashmi is a serial kisser then who is a parallel kisser?
A. Ravana.

Then I bumped across this IITB indigenous Orkut group, which has this legendary senior as an active member. Legendary because I was on the recieving end of his gyaan a long time ago:

Q. What is the answer for Life,Universe and Everything?
Me and everyone else (read freshies) : 42
RT: 69.

So that group obviously had some more major gyaans. Highlights follow:

Einstien theory of relativity disco maarta hai and apna motorcycle lekar time machine banata hai and goes for a ride at the speed of light. Wahin, doosri lane mein usee Gulshan Grover milta hai. Einstinen poochta hai:

E: What is your name?
D: Gulshan Grocer..

Why?

kyun ki at that speed, v=c!

Another one. Specially if you dig KBC jokes and are sick of the give-options-for-baap-ka-naam waala joke. Follows:

Amitabh: Welcome to Kaun Banega Crorepati Dritiya!
Atal: Ji Shukriya... kya mein pooch sakta hoon ki is program ki agli nasal ka kya naam hoga?
Amitabh: Of course.. Kaun Banega Crorepati Tritiya...
Atal: Ok! Aur uske baad.. Kaun Banega Crorepati Ch.... ?
Amitabh: Computerji, inhe lock kar diya jaaye!

Some classic Non-sequiturism is can be found there. By the way I learnt that phrase today. Here:

Professor: 'A' for?
Little Boka: Apple !!!
Teacher: Jor se bolo
Little Boka: JAI MATA DI

Anti-humor is addictive. I got into the act too.

Q. What is the favourite energy drink of hookers?
A. Whore-Licks.

Q. What do call the fuel refill of a coal powered racing car?
A. A peat stop.

Puns are pretty addictive. Bird Flu gave the passport to millions of people to come up with bad or worse puns. Stupid TOI journalists tell us 'Not to flirt with chicks' and HT says 'Fowl Play'.
No wonder he had this status message- 'Bird flu puns...sigh :(' . I messaged him and asked 'How about One Flu east, One Flu west, One flu over the Cuckoo's nest? ' He took a bow.

Status messages are the best place to place your puns or jokes. See? My potpourri partners, him and Kela usually have the best ones. Two that I still remember:

Sujay: I am very poor. I can't even pay attention.
Kela: Why is Santa always happy? Because he knows where all the bad girls are.

I got inspired, had this thermodynamic pun:

If I got any cooler, I would be absolute zero.

Maybe already am. Exams remind of the setting of M*A*S*H and the way they deal with the gloom. Hawkeye Pierce I so want to be you.