Paradise Lost

Exploding brains in placid times

2009-12-18T16:48:00.002+05:30

I am staring at the fact that our lives will be mediocre, dedicated to decades of subservience to soul-stripping outfits with our little pathetic cries of how we're being denied opportunities to write the song of a life on a new note.

I am being painfully made aware of how small and petty we really are. There was a time when I believed in a higher purpose, a different meaning in life that us hungry, thirsty souls were yearning for with the intensity of a leaf caught in a hailstorm. Little did I know that the highest purpose I would serve is to try and appease an insatiable urge in me to peg fellow human beings down and derive a cold satisfaction from it.

They say life revolves round in a circle, what goes around, comes around. Bloody Lies. Most of our lives are line segments. Beginning at point A and ending at point B, the plot area (that is the circumstances in life) are pre defined and there are no surprises on the way or in the end. The lives most of us are going to lead have been led a million times before and all this will still be labeled evolution of mankind.

And yet I haven't ceased to ponder time and again how insignificant and inconsequential our existences are in the fabric of the cosmos. And that maybe the entire universe is built on this flimsy fabric of inconsequential individuals deluding themselves with visions of grandeur, of assuming false importance in our lives.

There is no point to this rant, the reasons in writing this were not to lead to a startling revelation or a resolution to rise above our existing situations. We shall all return to the comfort of our placid lives, panicking at the slightest uncertainty, seeking sympathy for minor miseries and demanding undue attention for petty situations.
How do I chronicle a life like that? And why would I?

Where angels fear to tread

2009-08-03T02:11:00.002+05:30

It's strange, sure it's strange. It cant be but it is. Built on a fabric that is fragile and recent, teeming with souls who can't call it home, Gosofeada is a land that defies history and reason.

What do you do with a land that is literally built out of brick and mortar and nothing else. Nothing that reeks of an imperial conquest, no ruins to suggest a savage natural calamity, no common thread that unites its people to a culture - what do you make of such a land?

It took one enterprising conglomerate amongst others that swooped in later, to create a city, to build it from scratch and then render it barren. Designed to become a suburban mecca it is now a ghoulish nightmare that cannot be stopped. Your eye can scan the area for miles and miles around, the landscape is dotted with concrete structures that only look up to the sky, swarming with corporate machinery that move to and fro like they're supposed to, the roads flooded with vehicles of every description scurrying along on their way to corporate destinations.
I know the rain falls harder on the million glass panes, the earth smells less sweeter on the concrete paths and the wind blows up clouds of cement. I swear I haven't heard a bird chirp here.

There are roads with malls of mammoth proportions clamoring for your attention, all of them equally hideous and built cleverly to foster a society, a human fabric that echoes neither of the city nor of the people.

Scores of societies abound the place, housing the clogs of the corporate wheel whilst trying to recreate an atmosphere of familiarity and of a place its not.

I cannot but recoil with horror at the sight of this piece of land that evokes no memories of yore, that preserves no iota of a past, and has no investment in its own future.
It surely lives, grows even at a pace that is scary but unto what is my question? I can see a million more of those glass walled monstrosities shooting up, I can see a million more slaves come to earn their livelihood, I can see half a million more people drive to their death, I can see ten million hours of power, water and transport failure.

Gosofeada despite a soul less root less existence still survives and will continue to do so. I cannot fathom the basis of the civilization growing here, but my conglomerate friend seems to have found not only a reason to build the civilization but to make it prosper.

This is but an attempt at a construction of a city I'm ill disposed to, not entirely true, but surely more true than false. And obviously, my views are colored to say the least and my story has no beginning, no middle and no end just like the city I live in.

I call them friends.

2009-07-27T19:51:00.005+05:30

I have lost the inclination to construct sentences. Its all in the words. The last time I attempted something like this, one dear friend asked me to leave abstraction to thinkers and restrict myself to writing long involved poetic sentences that never stopped for punctuation. Obvious as it is, good advice from well meaning people is surely not meant to be taken.

Bitter. Bitter. Bitter. The constant bitch. The woman who pmsed forever and never found out.

The 'one' who escapes me. Always has a point noone gets. I don't know if you know the feeling of being supremely excessively overwhelmingly mad at the same person as you are abashedly shamefully funnily fond of. This 'one'.

The fair maidens. One's far away, the other one not too much. One's whimsical, the other's as real as the dirt on your floor. The child-woman. The other you don't dare mess with. One I adore. Other I admire. Love both.

The gap-in-the-tooth fairy godmother. The one who has all answers. My weekend getaway. Won't let me closer than that...

Code name !@#$%^. My cow. The one for whom morality sense reality are but a puff of smoke. The one whose conversations I feed on, one whose silence makes laughter.

He wrote my favorite sentence. And now all he does is write short cryptic incomprehensible messages after promising to never call back.

This one's as sane as daylight. And always shoves a wisecrack up your nose.

The Annual Solar Eclipse will only be visible from Bihar this year. And next year. And for centuries after that. The poor folks in Delhi have had their chance, they blew it.

The fat one who calls you chotu and never says I-love-you back. The fat one who's always worried and at whose misery you can laugh at, if not at your own.

The big bong theory has loopholes surely. Can never put a finger on them. Poke Poke.

I never wrote testimonials for the aforementioned. These are not fitting testimonials either. But, these are people who are always swimming around in my warped li'l head, that it feels nice to be able to pin them down on paper with a few words.

Thinking is the best way to travel..

2008-05-26T22:41:00.003+05:30

I desperately seek a pensieve to escape the thoughts that have flooded me. So I take the next best thing there is and make a post out of it.

Crime and Punishment. O Jerusalem. Partition. Britain. For crimes the British committed are we suffering the punishment? Two ghastly mistakes. Once bitten twice not shy?

Gurgaon. The mall capital of India? Definitely no. A popular shithole is what it can lay claims to. Bad roads. Too many malls…all look alike..ugly monsters. Did I mention bad roads? Highly botched up transportation. If the progress of India is to look anything like this then I’d rather keep the third world undeveloped nation tag. Life is beautiful atleast.

What’s wrong with the men of this nation? Staring should be made a heavily punishable offence. Looks can intimidate, threaten and kill.

PPOs. Pre placement offers. MBA jargon. Will I get one? Will I not get one? Does he like me? Does he not? Is it a sign? Is it a warning? Is it a nod? Uh huh whatever.

Latest crushes. Two in three weeks. This is just not going anywhere! And now Defence pipedreams !!

Facebook.Gtalk.Ought to be outlawed. Spend ages on it. Logging in logging out. Where’s the spunk to not exist on those parallel worlds gone?

Birthdays. Announcements in advance to solicit wishes. You call us friends, don’t you?

Weighty issues. Mirror mirror on the wall…have I put on any since I came back at all? Lie not to me for I can clearly see; starvation is not thy key.

Where’s home? No man’s land. Sounds good. Feels good.

Dude, where’s them steaks?? I thought we liked cows as a nation.

Imagine. Friendly witches turning into deadly foes. Fight the evil with evil. Make believe world. Only for kids? I still do it.

Perfect Blue. Perfect. Scared the living daylights out of me.

Pitt-lets. Brilliant name. Zillions better than TomKat!!!! The celeb life I tell you! MSN entertainment is almost a homepage…satire oozing out of every inch of writing in there.

Ahhh, this feels so much better. Penning down a few random thoughts has considerably lightened the burden on the not-used-to-working-at-all mode of the brain. Certainly a thing that’s to be done oftener.

I wrote the post, blogged it in and then went scouring for fellow bloggers' blogs. And since then I've been thinking..had to put down one more thought..at the inevitable risk of sounding barney-ish...I am awesome. ;-)

Scent of the sunflowers

2008-04-17T16:12:00.004+05:30

Unlikely journeys that were not supposed to happen but do so in the least expected ways are always a welcome surprise. The journey that I am about to document is just that and the uncertainty of how and when I come across the next part of the journey is like a mystery unraveling itself with an unhurried pace.

I have never liked Van Gogh. I always thought his paintings far too over-rated. And I still didn’t like him the first time I saw the paintings in flesh and blood (oil on canvas in other words). I thought highly of other impressionists and I wasn’t going to replace my favorites with a painter like Van Gogh who seemed to me to have exaggerated sense of style and color. Well, that was then.

A few months ago, when I was on one of my book exploration sprees, I found a book called ‘Van Gogh’s letters’. All the letters the man had ever written to his brother documenting the discovery of his own work. A priceless book one should own. But that’s not what I thought then. Had it been Courbet’s letters I would have picked it up without the slightest hesitation.

Then I went to Arles. Not very well versed with the fact that Van Gogh lived here for a long time and produced most of his masterpieces here, I discovered bits and pieces of his life here. The town has a van Gogh trail marked to go along and discover the places he painted, where he lived, where he drew his inspirations from. And again it puzzled me. I failed to see what was beautiful and charming about the place. Arles was at best to me a sleepy town whose charms had been disproportionately exalted. And so I wondered why a painter like Van Gogh would choose to stay here, what drove him here and what kept him here. I came back with these questions unanswered.

But unlike other questions that tend to eat you away till you find answers, these simply took a backseat to the daily humdrum of life.

Till last week, I hadn’t thought of it again. Then I found the book I had never looked for-‘Van Gogh in Arles’. I bought the book without thinking twice, this time picking it over a brilliant book on Courbet! I read that book that very night. I re-read it the next night and read it once again the third night. Strangely Van Gogh echoed my sentiments on Arles, on its filthiness, on its unattractive women, on its plainness…

The book does answer some of the questions and it made me look at Van Gogh in a different light. Not anymore does my untrained eye fail to see the purposefulness of the exaggeration, not anymore does the mind fail to see the simplicity of Arles and its people, not anymore.

It’s too early a time for sunflowers to bloom but when they do, I know they’ll look the same as Van Gogh painted them, bright yet slowly withering away.

Sunflowers have no scent. And so does this trail. Leading to nowhere and I don’t even have a hint of a scent to go along it. But I shall bide my time, for the trail of Van Gogh’s sunflowers isn’t cold yet.

P.S: Thanks to one maniac for his unlikely help..it seems like the season of unexpected surprises !! :-)

Resurrection..??

2008-01-03T14:27:00.000+05:30

After a considerably long hiatus I've decided to start blogging all over again (tempt me not oh! gods, I 'm sure this fit of madness shall last for a week at best!) and well the lazybones that I am I chose to cut copy paste one of the earliest and probably the last pieces of literary output after setting foot at MICA. Here goes:
Confessions of a DCP Queen
As the second week at MICA breezes past by, I am inclined to sit back and carefully contemplate the journey so far and deliberate on the prerogatives of being a member of the Royal Clan of DCPs.
Before my pen takes to its heels, I had better throw light on the origin of the DCP Royal Lineage. It was another one of the highly enjoyable Business Communication classes when certain potentially deleterious terms made their way into our sleepy lives causing rude shocks. Grading we were told would include class participation and for a particular section of the populace like moi ‘Desperate class participation’ seemed a not-so-distant possibility. The term DCP strongly deteriorated further to ‘Devoid of class participation’ in my hapless case.
A self-proclaimed DCP Queen (both versions), I have had a very interesting two week experience which has left me hopelessly shaken and unimaginably stirred for future educational ‘challenges’.
As the Royal Head of State for this alien form of life, I shall set an example as a beacon of truth and light leading others out of darkness into more darkness by confessing the gloomiest of my secrets.
To begin with, the Business Comm class required us to present a two minute mini-thesis on an activity that we were passionate about. In right earnest I set about scouring for my passions. After a luckless search for an entire evening, I simply waited for inspiration to hit me, which eventually did in the marginal confines of the bathroom. In a eureka-ish moment of truth, I decided to speak on ‘sambar’!!! After a quick search on wikipedia (where there’s a wikipedia, there’s always a way!!) I was ready with a draft on my laptop; I went about informing people of my strange choice. Cut to the next moment in class, the fates decided to play a cruel joke on me and my laptop just went into hibernation leaving me in the lurch trying to desperately recollect the material I had written just a few minutes ago. Day One went kaput and then I made sanguine plans for Day Two. I had another brainwave visit me in the loo….I wrote on mummification as an all consuming passion. Ditching the laptop for a good ol’ notebook, I poured my heart out on mummification and went to the class with my confidence levels significantly up by a centimetre. Ten minutes into the class I realized that I didn’t have that book on me and stranded like a harrowed ship wrecked mariner I contented myself with playing the passive spectator again. For Day Three I had the topics written out both on the laptop and the book as a back up but sadly I never turned up for the class citing ailments like cold and fever. By now quite a few of the populace would harp on my continued absconding of the two-minute Herculean task. Day Four then saw me sitting twiddling my thumbs, hoping for a temporary amnesia attack….needless of me to have worried, I sat as usual…devoid of class participation and desperate to cut the period.
Day Five I decided enough is enough and mustered up a pittance of courage to volunteer for a group task…the desperate class participation syndrome had begun to surface again!!
It’s the dawn of Week Three now, I still haven’t spoken for my share of two minutes of fame, people still ask me why I haven’t done it, participation is still at the lowest ebb and the undisputed champion of the all forms of DCP I still am!!
The noble house of DCP has found in me an ageless peer to carry the tradition forward for the next two glorious years. “Noblesse Oblige”

Back then, I innocently thought myself to be a beacon of the DCP clan (the devoid of class participation variety) and I am happy to say I still belong to the same clan!! :)

To Sheikh Amir Jaan, the Villain, Dolores Umbridge(Part II), Motu Uncle.....

2007-04-16T13:38:00.000+05:30

Now that we are done with our Final year project, I feel compelled to humbly thank the aforementioned personalities for their perpetually irritating presence in our lives for four months, something I couldn't do in the official acknowledgement that we submitted to the college!! (The very same acknowledgement is a serious bone of contention between me and my dad...he insists he should have been specially mentioned in it for all his help(?) and I say I've given him a fair deal by mentioning the ever-so lame-parental support line!)

I can vividly recollect the day we three, Amu, Big D and myself had stepped into the hallowed portals of Indian Institute of Chemical Technology to get a project. Big D and me had been here before, having done our summers here(which I now remember we haven't finished yet!!!), so we took turns to explain the terrain to Amu. After having gone over the same territory for the umpteenth time, Amu gently suggested that we should get some help locating the office. We had to give in, our plight looked akin to some of the stray dogs that had wandered into IICT, hanging our tongues out, we swallowed our pride and begged for help!! Some two hours later we managed to find the office, saw the plant and made our way towards it.

The first thing we noticed there was the loathsome presence of a particularly irksome chap, whom we have fondly christened as The Villain, who seemed to just hang around the plant doing nothing. During the summers, I had seen the same guy haunting the library, taking the prime positions, piling up books on his table only to doze the hours away!! Umm, not a very a good omen I thought, but we went inside, smirked at that blighter, asked him if our guide was in. As I had foreseen, the guide was not in but was expected to make an entry sometime soon. We went out and waited for the man, tried guessing who he might be though without much success. At the end of a few more hours, we saw a funny little man come out of a building, he had a really funny walk....something like a cross between a duck and a penguin!!! He ambled over to us, introduced himself and then asked us to come with him. By then Amu and he had started conversing in Marathi, their common language while Big D and me followed them silently with our language handicaps!! Our project he said would be "manufacture of castor-oil"...castor oil.....castor oil, did he say??? I sat there and gaped and gaped at him for the lack of a better thing to do. Well, we hadn't bargained for a tame, inane, futile topic like this, we had instead hoped he would give us a live project or something lets say more gripping!!! We came out looking dazed and numbed imagining all kinds of horrorific faces people would make if they heard we were working on Castor Oil !!!

Days later, after having convinced our guide to give us a more honourable topic, we set out to get our ID cards done. We were already late, the rest of the class had already submitted Abstracts and what nots, so we were in a hurry to get things done as quickly as possible. But we had forgotten to take our luck into account. You see, we three are a superstitious lot. We believe in the fates that be and we also believe that we are blessed with the world's most disastrous fates and three disastrous fates combine to give one Lemony Snicket: A dreadfully long series of Unfortunate Events!!!
It was that very day we met Dolores Umbridge(part II). We had to talk to her about the ID cards and we were licked even before we knew it. She is unarguably the most ill-tempered woman I've ever come across. Step into her room for a harmless enquiry and she will brush you away like the most beleagured caterpillar to be crushed by a human foot!!! She has got a very frosty-nosed way at looking at you and beware if you stay in her room for more than twenty seconds...she will proceed to ring up her secretary and order him to throw you out unceremoniously as if you were a thug plundering her!!! And we meekly endured this, so much for our heroics elsewhere, we know we are a bunch of chicken-hearted-yellow-livered jellies!!

All said and done, we got our ID cards and we finally sank into a routine of sorts. All our project work consisted of was to sit, read and ponder endlessly in the library, have a really filthy and frugal lunch in the canteen, circumnavigate the entire campus, go back to the library to read and ponder some more. Our Villain faithfully shadowed us for the best part of the day, abandoning his researches in the lab and taking breaks only for lunch and siesta. A very diligent worker, that chap. A sad childhood perhaps, we were inclined to think. But a sadder adulthood,we were forced to think!!

Then, we had to contend with the Motu Uncle. A man of ample proportions, he was not easy to miss whenever we went to our guide for a chat. Motu Uncle, we thought was queer. Everytime we approached our guide, he would deviously divert our guide's attention and leave us in the lurch. For a long time, we thought he was being a class-A jerk and we would sneak into the guide's office hoping to corner our guide alone....but we would always end up hole and cornered by Motu Uncle and his cronies. A lot of water has passed under that contentious bridge and we now think of him as a kind, genial uncle who ever tried to sabotage our project. Smiling assassins is the word I believe for them.

Another prominent personality I would like to thank is Sheikh Amir Jaan. The fearless warrior who keeps a watch at the IICT gates, is a likeable, humorous fellow to most but an absolute terror to us!! There is something I wager in our faces that excites gruesome emotions in others for us. This gargoyle would always insist on checking our ID cards alone while allowing other highly suspicious characters to pass off without so much as a murmur. One particular day, Amu and me had had an unpleasant discussion with our guide and the last thing on our minds was extracting the ID card from the recesses of the bag. So to avoid an ugly confrontation with the gargoyle, whom we cleverly spied to be manning the Main Gate, we cut our way through the campus to the other lesser known gates where we were smugly confident he would never dream of coming. Laughing at our own ingenuity and resourcefulness we made our way to the gate to find the gargoyle lurking, smiling complacently, holding his hand out to check the IDs. We were stumped. We stared at him in dis-belief. Did he have a twin, who was a part of the gargoyle's machiavelliean intentions?? And thats not all, the man has an uncanny sense of timing, recently when I was happily observing to Amu that our lives were so much more sunnier because the gargoyle seemed to have gone on an extended vacation leaving us scot-free, he walked out of the building with a superior smile and said..."No, I'm still here!!!"

And after aimlessly rambling on for so long, I have realised that the only thing I want to say to these pieces of excrescence is "Thank you", for making our lives so much more miserable and giving us countless, priceless occasions to laugh at your and our expense!! Cheerio!!

A tryst with destiny

2007-01-16T00:05:00.000+05:30

The man sat at the table, his steady gaze never leaving the door. He had been sitting motionless in the same state for a long time now. Just then, the door opened and his orderly announced-"It is time, Sir". With great reluctance, the man got up and proceeded towards the door, steeling himself to an ordeal beyond all his wildest imaginations.
The sound of his footsteps was reverberating in every nook and corner of the corridor and he felt the walls closing in on him. He couldn't shake off his vague sense of fear and apprehension, yet he pushed on relentlessly towards what seemed to him an unseeming oblivion.
The years were fading away quickly and the ghost of the past was vividly emerging in his memory. It seemed like yesterday that he had embarked upon a journey to India, leaving his beloved England to pursue 'the great imperial dream' bursting in his heart and shining in his eyes. As an officer in Her Majesty's Sixth Regiment, he had found India to be every bit as charming and exotic as he heard back in England. At twenty-two, life had seemed like a pretty picture to Charles Martin. He had gradually learnt to love India as the British did, learn to cope with the stifling heat and the bitter colds, learnt to be a 'pukka sahib', learnt to respect the multitudinous cultures and the myriad races of people that constituted India. How jolly it had all seemed then.
1930. The Civil Disobedience Movement had flagged off under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi and it seemed like the entire nation had woken up to a new life and a new conscience. Swaraj had taken a new meaning altogether and people were taking to the streets like never before. Tens of thousands of people descended onto the streets marching to the tune of Freedom and boycotting all things British. Young men, old men, children and women joined together to fight against 'the great imperial dream' led single-handedly by Mahatma and his weapons of Ahimsa. Amongst these young men was Gurcharan Singh, a revolutionary who had decried the Mahatma's philosophy as being insufficient to deal with the British. A firm believer in the policy of 'an eye for an eye', he took upon himself the task of galvanising the vast sections of Indian youth to protest against the British using their own weapons against them.
Thousands were arrested, many hundreds were killed and many others wounded. Yet, the revolt did not cease to march ahead. Recognising defeat Lord Irwin invited the very man whom he had chosen to ignore for more than a year. Together Gandhi and Lord Irwin inked the agreement that was to become the Gandhi-Irwin pact on March 5,1931. And there would be no more an immediate beneficiary of the pact than the young Sikh student- Gurcharan Singh.
The Lahore Prison had always been infamous for its overtly brutal treatment of political prisoners. Being its Jailer was by all means not an easy task and certainly not an enviable one. And Jailer Martin too had not found it easy.
Finding himself sympathetic to the Indian cause had made matters worse for him. And then there were the executions. Week after week, freedom fighters had given up their lives with smiles on their faces and he had been simply standing behind ordering their executions. He had seen fear, hope, hatred and forgiveness in their eyes for him, yet he had to fold his hands and bow his head and let it all happen. Bitterly cursing his fates, he had passed every single day writhing in remorse and guilt for having hanged people who did no wrong. And today, he was to carry out the execution of Gurcharan Singh, the young man who had impressed one and all with his dedication and love for his motherland. He did not have the heart to see so young a boy die. It was with great anguish that he proceeded to the unseeming oblivion of the courtyard where Gurcharan Singh was to hang today for loving his country and nothing more.
Gurcharan Singh was pacing up and down his cell waiting for the first rays of the sun, waiting for the first rustle of the leaves knowing fully well that today was going to be his last day of freedom. Not even remotely frightened of death, he was cheerfully looking forward to laying down his life for his country. The only regret he harbored was that he wouldn't be alive to see his motherland attain Purna Swaraj. As the gongs sounded, he was slowly marched to the beat of his own funeral. Arms bound behind his back, he walked towards the courtyard where death awaited him.
Suddenly he heard a commotion and saw the Jailer Martin runnig towards him waving a blue piece of paper. "Congratulations!" Martin shouted. Gurcharan Singh then drily observed-"you British are impossible! You are hanging me and you want to congratulate me on it!"
"No" Martin happily shouted "All executions had been suspended because of the pact signed in Delhi between Gandhi and Irwin!"
Note: Needless to add that the first thing Gurcharan Singh did was to make a pilgrimage to Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram where he asked for his forgiveness and spent the rest of his life serving the Mahatma and the nation. Ironically it would be in his arms that Gandhi would breathe his last.

The chaiwallah of Faluknama

2007-01-15T00:01:00.000+05:30

The man sat at the table, his steady gaze never leaving the door. The boy was late. He sat drumming his fingers on the table waiting impatiently for the boy. It had been quite an eventful morning for the stationmaster of Faluknama. It had not even struck eight and he already had his hands full with ill-tempered commuters complaining about the trains being late again, stray dogs littering the platforms, some lads having a brawl...and now this boy, he too was late.
"Chai chai...chai chai"- a nasal voice floated into the stationmaster's room and he looked up from the South-Central Railway time-table he had been studying. "Kaiko late hua?"(Why are you late?) The boy gave an impish grin showing his irregular yellowing teeth and said "bahut sardi hori na!"(Its very cold). He set a cup of piping hot elaichi tea on the table and waited. The stationmaster threw a two-rupee coin at him and got back to work sipping his tea slowly.
The boy ran out onto the platform with his flask. It was a chilly morning and heavy curtains of fog still hung about the station. The boy walked jauntily, humming the latest Bollywood song and shouting "chai chai" occasionally. Everyday would be the same, a cup of tea for the stationmaster first, then the sweepers, then the people waiting for the local trains to arrive. Not much business, but then as he always told himself, even great men had humble starts like his. As he walked up the platform, most of the sweepers were leaving except for the old hag who always insisted on getting her chai free. He came upto her and poured her a cup and squatted down beside her. He liked talking to her though she was nearly seventy and almost deaf. Everyone in the station was accustomed to see this odd pair sitting and gossiping about everything and everybody under the sun. "suna hai" she would begin, "ki arshad miyan ki kaamwali bhaag gayi!".And the boy would roll his eyes in pretended horror and exclaim "chori bhi ki kehte!"
The 8:31 local was running late as usual. The boy quickly made his way to the other platform hoping to profit from this delay. The platform was unusually crowded and he had to weave his way through a maze of people, shouting "chai chai" all the time. "Ek chai dena"- a voice called out to him. Glad to rest his flask for a moment, he poured out his third cup of tea that morning. Business had been particularly bad so far. The gentlemen who had ordered the chai was one of his regular customers, a strange man clad in a shirt and lungi, he would come to the station only to walk and not to travel. The boy had often seen him pace up and down the platforms stopping only to order a cup of tea, sometimes even two. A nagging wife and troublesome children, the boy had always thought of the gentleman.
The gentleman unaware of the ideas running in the boy's head made an attempt to converse with him. Finding however that his observations had yielded no comment from the boy, the gentleman started sipping his tea. As the boy walked away with his flask the gentleman continued to observe him. Each day, as he had taken his customary twenty rounds around the station, he had seen the boy go about his job and a curiosity had risen in him to know more about the boy. He did not look more than eighteen, but already bore the unmistakable signs of having lived a hard life. His hair cut in the latest mushroom fashion was brown and dust laden, his eyes though mischievous had a weary look in them, his clothes were bright and gaudy and he wore a cheap metal chain that was made popular by Shahrukh Khan in his movie a couple of years ago. Yet he was always cheerful, always smiling and it had made quite an impression on the gentleman.
"Saale, ek flask chai bhi nai becha!"(Rascal,you haven't even sold one flask if tea!)
The boy grinned and said "bahut sardi hori na,chai bhi thandi hori to koi lera nai". (The chilly weather has made the tea cold, so no one is buying it.) Cursing him loudly the shop-owner gave him a new flask and asked him not to come back till he had sold the entire flask. Smiling impudently the boy walked back to the station. It was almost deserted. With all the major trains having gone by, there was hardly anybody on the platform except for the security guard, the stationmaster who was wolfing down samosas now, a few stray dogs and the gentleman who was still walking. The boy walked upto the gentleman and asked him if he wanted another cup of tea. The old man took a long look at the flask,smiled and asked the boy to sit down. He then asked him how many rupees worth of chai he had in his flask.
"bees-pachees rupayon ka hoyenga saab"(twenty-twenty five rupees worth chai sir)
The gentleman brought out his wallet and took out a hundred rupee note and gave it to the boy. The boy was taken aback for a moment and didn't know what to say. "Rakhlo"(keep it) the gentleman smiled and walked away. The boy looked at the note fluttering in his hand and then smiled happily.
Walking slowly back to the shop where he got his flask from, the boy was singing the latest Shahrukh Khan hit "Main hoon Don..." Looking the shop-owner in the eye, he set the flask on the table and displayed the hundred rupee note in his face. Laughing at the look of incredulity spreading on the man's face the boy said- "Ek special chai hojaye!!" (Bring me some tea!)

Roonil Wazlib.

Love,Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing

2006-12-02T10:05:00.000+05:30

No its not a review of Keith Urban's new album( in case you didn't know).Actually I didn't know Keith Urban existed till he got married to a fascinating woman, Nicole Kidman.I never heard his music and I still haven't. But I'm conveniently using his title as it is tailor-made for my purpose. For five days now I've logged on to Blogspot everyday, begun writing a new post, left it halfway and moved on to greener pastures where I don't have to rack my brains and produce something that's remotely readable.

I'm a disgruntled person these days. Its time for me to come out with the sob-story. The saga of never ending pain, tears and anger. I am even finding it hard to indulge in my favorite activities (Ekta Kapoor bashing and Bush whacking), so you can understand the intensity of the turmoil I'm going through. Ok, let me get to the facts before I weave interminably long, incredibly dumb and thoroughly vainglorious stories about my trials and tribulations which never have a happy ending.

November 19th: The D-Day finally arrives, its time for the so-called mother of all exams 'CAT'. I couldn't have been better prepared. I was writing my University exams the same week and had achieved valuable experience in how to pass,kill and mutilate time for 3 hours in an exam hall. Two and a half would be a cakewalk. Funnily enough, I seemed pretty confident....well optimism is a happy feeling. Two and half hours later I emerged from the hall feeling distinctly happy and I even allowed myself to think that a call or two from the IIMS seemed within an arm's reach. Twenty four hours later I was sobbing and generally crying my heart out coz I realized that I had bungled it up. It still brings a tear to my eye whenever I recall those painful moments when I saw my dreams go up in smoke (oh,clean smoke,completely burnt hydrocarbons in it, no pollution causing muck for me,no, not even in my dreams)........ughhh I don't think I can even work up a decent emotion without a sense of frivolity creeping in.

November 26th: A new week brought with it renewed hopes and after the CAT setback I was ready to prove my mettle in the next exam to come, IIFT. That fateful sunday saw me giving sanguine messages to my friend saying that nothing can stop us now, we're going to make it and that sort of crappy shit. Barely into the exam hall, I realised with horror that I had forgotten to bring pencils,pen,eraser and sharpener; its like walking into a battlefield without your weapons!! I borrowed two pencils and half a rubber from my friend(which I am yet to return), a pen from the invigilator and a sharpener from the boy sitting in front of me. I shouldn't have. I needn't have actually. The paper was a disaster from the word go. Ten minutes into the exam I was wondering why management....and most importantly why this God forsaken Institute. I came out two hours later with a comforting thought that it lasted only for two hours and not more!! This time too I was cying my heart out, the only difference being-these were tears of laughter. The paper setters must have been mental, absolutely mental to have thought of this new form of torture. I'm sure people at Guantanamo Bay would pity us if they could see it.
My neighbor had taken two attempts to clear this entrance(he got through the last year, lucky bugger) and when my mom told me that, I had laughed my guts out. "Gosh" said I " the guy must've been real dumb to take two attempts to clear this stupid exam". I eat my words now. I might take more than five to clear it.

December 2nd: This sunday, thankfully I only take a mock test, the real test is next week and I'm sure I'm going to live upto my billing, I'm sure the test will be dreadful and yet I will have lived to tell the tale.

As one Captain Edward A.Murphy Jr said " If anything can go wrong it will". Wish I had known that sooner!!!

P.S: In the meantime when not wallowing in fits of depression I have certainly taken time out to watch the world's best movie "The adventures of Shark Boy and Lava girl" -being aired on HBO in regular intervals of time.(This definitely explains my violent and saturnine behavior for the past one week.)

Sleepless in Hyderabad

2006-10-20T20:03:00.002+05:30

As one cyber stalker rightly pointed out, its been quite some time since I wrote a blog. I've been lying low for a while now, you know shunning the arc-lights, keeping a low profile kind of thing. And as the title suggests, I am going through sleepless nights and days( that's quite an achievement for me!) and the whole thing is taking a toll on my creative output, however miniscule that may be. Talking of the title, I know it reeks of the 'Sleepless in Seattle' kind of thing but believe me its nothing even remotely close to the fun or the romance in that! Perhaps, I should re-christen the post as 'Sleepy Hollow', that would atleast be more closer to the truth.

I don't know how many of the teeming millions read the daily horoscope predictions in the papers, but I do count myself among those chicken-hearted, lily-livered multitudes with an I.Q lower than that of the dumbest jellyfish(yes, they do have an I.Q and an E.Q;courtesy: P.G. Wodehouse) who read those uncanny predictions assiduously every single day. Funnily enough, they have an accuracy rate that is almost as good as the Weather forecasts by the Met Dept.
These johnies haven't got the prophecies right even for one single day; not even by a misprint or something!! Everyday they predict that I'm going to get lucky; its just so happens that the day they're talking of is not on the normal schedule of the seven days I know of. Like today, it was supposed to be a happy and a positive day for me, I gave in a blank paper in my test today (the second in as many weeks), got snubbed by a lec in the wee hours of the morning, had a roller coaster bus ride ( not very exciting if you consider my age and my jittery mental make up) and I am writing blogs now when I should be using all the time I have for fruitful purposes!! I admit it wasn't a seriously bad day when compared to yesterday and not half as bad as my Sundays and not even one eighth as bad as my Wednesdays; me thinks that lucky enough.

Phew! that's one issue off my chest now. From a Freudian point of view, I consider myself a pretty interesting study. I have all the ingredients a potentially homicidal, unbalanced, schizophrenic person should have. I get dreams, mostly nightmares and I am specially adept at screwing up relatively simple things with an unbounded ease.
A few months ago, my dad got interested in something that goes like- 'Past Life regression therapy'. Since then, he's delved into his past and future selves and a whole gamut of spiritual ergonomics that's tougher to comprehend than even thermodynamics. He's made a reluctant confidante of me and I have been subjected to hours and hours of expounding on a subject I would rather avoid. I got myself regressed too in a quest to find whether I had any past life so to speak of and what good does the whole thing do. And now, instead of making things simpler, this has just added to my confusion and the general incomprehensibility I chronically suffer from.

Apart from all these aforementioned maladies I also suffer from valid medical diseases like sinusitis, osteoporosis, low and high blood pressures, seizures, fatigue, elastic limits, break points, yield points, stress and strain(both shear and tangential), fouling, scale formations, lower mass-transfer co-efficients because of inadequate time of contact, lower conversions because of eddy formations......" some tortures are physical and some are mental; one that is both is chemical, meta-physical and dental"....!!!!!! ( from the redoubtable Ogden Nash's " This is going to hurt just a little bit")

Art for Art's sake

2006-09-06T11:00:00.000+05:30

By jove!! I've hit the doldrums quite early on! Mulling over what to write and more importantly what not to write about I seem to have hit the much-dreaded writer's block. For a few weeks I had been blogging with alarming fecundity, but now it has all come to a stand-still. For a few days now,I have been going through some of the 'Blogs of note' on Blogspot and found quite a few of them quite interesting. At first, I was peeved. Why was my blog not on that list?? Then I was outraged. How did one get on that list anyway??
With a maximum viewership of probably five sane people, I can hardly wonder why I'm not on that list. Ok, I'm no Ekta Kapoor. I can't publicise my own writings. I did that but with little effect. I got rebuffed on all sides and that took the wind out of me!! You see, I've an inflated ego that refuses to accept my dwindling audiences. Anyway the point of writing all this has no pre-emptive notion of either increasing viewership or making it to that list. The point is 'Art for Art's sake'.Period.
I've taken that adage literally too and I am now attempting a series of writings on some of my favorite works and why I like them. One doesn't have to read or write a blog for this ( trust me, where there is a wikipedia: there is no way!) but I thought it might bring some color into my blog which is otherwise conspicuous by the absence of any at all!!

This painting is by Diego Velasquez, a Spanish Baroque artist. Its called 'The feast of Bacchus'. Bacchus is, as is common in Greek mythology, the god of wine. From an art enthusiast's point of view, there are several things that can be noted; from the very baroque nature of the work, to the technical excellence of the painting,to the uncommonly fine rendering of the human expression, to the perfect use of light and blah blah blah. What is beautiful about this painting is that it doesn't look like a painting at all!! I love that ruddy-faced hat clad nincompoop holding a bowl of wine, I love the way his expression was painted and I can scarcely believe that it was painted and not photographed!! I don't pretend to know much about art but what I know is the hand that painted this masterpiece (and many like it) is the hand of a genius!! So much for my arty talk, I had best leave it to professionals, so content yourself by watching this piece of perfection; for all things related and otherwise, there is hope yet and wikipedia!!!

What's the catch?

2006-08-20T20:33:00.000+05:30

Catch-22. One is tempted to ask...why catch-22? I get the catch but why the 22?? Joseph Heller. Heller?? What the hell is a name like Heller?? Thats not even a name!! 'Oh Well, what the Hell', what's in a name one might ask. A lot actually. A name is....well a name, if there wasn't a name, there wouldn't be names. An apple is an apple because it is an Apple;everything red,round,dimpled and juicy can't be an apple just because its red, round and juicy, it could even be a water-melon but isn't because it could just as well be a plum or just an apple. Okay, let me not get into fruity analogies, I get horny(purely platonically fruitsomely horny) because I'm on a crash diet that involves eating everything except fruits because I happen to entertain a misguided aversion towards them. Let's get back to catch-22? What makes it so catchy?? Is it the 22 or is that the catch? Why 22? Well, why not? 22 is a comfortable number, its palindromic, happily convenient to read bothways for the insane and the sane who are really insane by the way. Why not 11? or 44? or 222? or just about any of the zillion numbers the decimal system has at its disposal? Because 22 is a neat, clean way of setting the catch.Because its even, so are half a zillion other numbers, but they aren't as fully even as 22. Its just about the right number to be a catch without being too small or too large a number. Human psyche has just the right conception of what is right without it being too wrong just like the case of 22 being just logical enough for the right side of the brain and just as much creative for the left side of the brain to agree on it as the catchy number and this is an objective observation that wasn't made by Sigmund Freud or any other observer of any kind simply because the division of the brain into left, right, dorsal, ventral, forward,backward was only a conjecture that they didn't observe but made it up only to compartmentalize everything they did observe into neat left and right compartments because then it gave them the leeway to explain inexplicable things as the functions or responses of the right and the left sides of the brain.

I love this book. I love the names in it that don't really sound like real names. I love General Peckem in it. I love his prolix memoranda that is witty and garrulous enough for nobody to understand. I love the way Colonel Moodus gets punched everytime he doesn't talk. I love the way Milo runs his M&M syndicate where everybody has a share; thats what I'm telling folks here these days; I've got a share, a share in the auto fare that I pay, a share in the cakes I don't bake, a share in the IIMs, a share in living my life simply because everybody gets a share. I love the way everyone tells Appleby that he's got fireflies in his eyes which he obviously doesn't see because he's got fireflies in his eyes. I love Colonel Korn because he is the most intelligent officer around whom nobody likes. I love Major Major Major who would never be promoted because there can be only one Major Major Major who looks a bit like Henry Fonda. I love the Chaplain for his almost pious acceptance of everything ungodly and impious. I love the way Dunbar lives his life in boredom and pain because then life would crawl very slowly as it sure does when everythings bad and down in the dumps which makes you feel like its lasting for eternity(good things always come in a 'small' sized tee, cos it never fits).I love the way Orr has crab apples in his cheeks and horse chestnuts in his hands. I love the way Doc Daneeka dies and then tries to live some more. I love the dead man in Yossarian's tent who never made it to the squadron but died in combat. I love the Nurses Duckett and Cramer for all they did and for all they never did. I love the man in white who was never inside. I love the girls who would go ficky-fick whenever,wherever. I love Nately, Nately's whore and the kid sister for being the happiest family and knowing it too late. Oh, I love everybody in the book because they are what we are. And finally I love Yo-Yo, I love the way he hates everybody who's out to kill him, I love the way he loves all the women he ever loved, I love the way he doesn't bomb the enemies and I love the way he forsakes his life to get back his freedom.

But who cares whether I loved the book or not or for that matter whether anyone liked the book or not; it was a best seller,it made millions, it made it to hollywood and thats what finally counts.

Oh well, what the Hell.

The Gods must be crazy!!!!!

2006-08-11T10:32:00.000+05:30

What is wrong with the world??? Thats what I'm asking myself everyday now whenever I switch on the news channel. Ekta kapoor's soaps seem a lot tamer and emotionally less disturbing than the gory stuff in the news these days.
Another terror attempt foiled. Strangely that doesn't make me happy or even relieved.That people can plan such dastardly acts itself alarms me. Its strange that I should say that because I've always supported the so called terrorists, the axis of all evils and all the sucide bombers in the whole world! Call me morally depraved or inhuman, I can tolerate their causes for jehad but not the acts they carry out. An eye for an eye doesn't really work out here, does it? What is the great point in trying to kill a few thousand innocent people, smash up their planes and wreak havoc in their lives?? Will it alleviate the situation in Iraq? Will Israel stop waging a war? Will it make the Americans to pull out their troops? What the heck is going to come out of this??? Nothing, except stricter regulations and more flak for non-europeans, oh no for non-americans and non-Britishers. No more cds, dvds, books, ipods,liquids, fluids, nail polish removers, no liquid lip colors, no hand baggage and God knows what else!

I'm just wondering whether it will be easier to simply blow up the middle-east or do away with Uncle Sam altogether.....too close a choice to make.I can now fully appreciate Ulysses's predicament when he had to choose between Scylla and Charbydis!!

It has become a routine affair now to see newspapers filled with terror attempts, bomb blasts, scandals, botched up judgements and you know the rest. The other day I was watching Natwar Singh trying very hard to 'vindicate' himself on air but when Karan Thapar's around I guess it gets very difficult to even get a word in!! What I couldn't understand is why all the hue and cry about these shady deals? Surely, we've been there, done that. I really don't believe in this clean chit business anymore, even surf-excel wouldn't be able to wash away the stains!! I watched NDTV's 'United for Justice' with a teary-eyed Barkha Dutt hollering for justice. It didn't move me. I have reached the pinnacle of cynicism where I have ceased to believe or trust anyone or anything, that even the judicial system failed to live up to people's expectations is no surprise, just an expected development. What the retrial will do, I'm not sure but each time a wrong verdict is given I'm going to raise my voice against it like millions of other Indians, irrespective of whether I'm heard or not. (being cynical or otherwise isn't going to stop me.)

This August 15th will come and go, the way it has for decades now. What independence truly means, I don't pretend to know. A few more years of this sort of a muted celebration of independence, I will give up my Citizenship and go live in No man's land. The Gods must have been crazy when they thought of a world like this. The Gods must have lost it when they put Adam and Eve on Earth. The Gods must be cynical to watch the world obliterate itself into nothing. The Gods must be worse than humans to watch the mindless destruction dispassionately and throw a tsunami or two in our way as succor to our existence. These Gods cannot be, mustnot be Gods.

P.S: In midst of this chaotic mayhem, we can still look forward to ending our 113 days of agonising wait for the world's most reclusive baby-the 'Tomkitten' baby on Vanity Fair's cover!!!( She would've made the Playboy cover first only that Hugh Hefner's much publicised craving for Nicole Kidman upset the 'Tomkats'.)

Baa Baa Black Sheep

2006-04-08T12:02:00.000+05:30

Baa Baa Black sheep.....
have you any wool?
Yes sir, Yes sir....
Three bags full...and so on goes the nursery rhyme we had learnt aeons ago...and now I realise that this black sheep is definitely better off than me, atleast its got some answers where I've got none!! I've gone into one of my grouchy moods again and here I am calling myself the black sheep of the family.The family...?? I mean my parents, my sis and me are alright(My moms a bit batty though,she gets hysterical when the word education is mentioned) but its the extended version which gives me the jeepers creepers,umm coz thats where I'm quite infamous as the black sheep, prodigal daughter and the rest.
I always thought families are supposed to be happy,jolly and something solid to lean on but I guess its never that way..I mean looking at the serials today it seems to me that all the homicidial maniacs are living under one big happy family. Its the same with our happy family too, I don't mean that we are all homicidial maniacs plotting someone's murder all the time but you see its not really a happy family. I hate those tedious family gatherings we have at our grandpa's place on special occasions.Everybody's there..grandpa, grandma, sons,daughters, sons-in law, daughters-in law,gransons, grandaughters,dogs,cats,rats..oh everybody. And its really monotonous, I mean I can tell you beforehand what the people are going to talk about, its so stale and even after so many years they haven't changed one bit. Its the same old thing they talk about...first clothes, then jewellery and then education. Even the order hasn't changed!
Sample this: one aunt to my cousin-"oh my dear, how cute you look, what a beautiful dress, where did you get it stitched and the gold earrings my dear are just wonderful!!" You don't have to be a genius to find out how phony all this is...their voices are dead giveaways. One advantage of being the black sheep, is nobody is bothered to notice you and even if they do they'll quickly turn away.(they probably don't find anything to compliment on!)
You would probably think that atleast the food would be good but even there you are restrained,controlled...you really don't want the family see you hog like a barbarian and think that the poor girl hasn't eaten a morsel for days!! Family gatherings outside are bound to be worse, they always turn out to be unmigitated disasters. I for one have vowed never to attend them again in my entire life.
I really don't understand why people have to act the way they do...under that facade of filial feelings it seems to me that people hate each other, are selfish and simply beastly. All I want to know is why that mask of nicety, of concern?? I once overheard one of my aunts saying this to my mother:"...what, you think she'll get in CAT or what...even the toppers of my daughter's class couldn't crack it"...I mean to all intents and purposes she's right...I probably wouldn't crack it but whats the harm in trying??
Recently I had a spat with my cuz, she wanted me to go to Bombay with her and I refused. If she ever reads this, she'll hate me forever but I want her to read the inanities she said that day.."look this is my last call to you and I 'm never ever going to ask you anything in my life again...I don't care how busy you are (a short laugh here)but its my last call, I'm serious..you've always given excuses..but finally do you want to come with me or not?" I said no, ofcourse and hung up. This conversation I found to be so ludicrous that I had to laugh after hanging up.
Does it sound like I'm washing dirty linen in public??? I think not, I think this is the way with humans generally...one can only see one's own point of view and no one else's.
I'm happy people call me the black sheep...it only goes to show that whatever faults I might possess I 'm just a black sheep and not a multi-colored hypocritical chameleon.
P.S: Some people would like to think this account as wallowing in self-pity but I will disagree as I don't see anything pitable here, only anger and frustration towards humanity in general.

Frodo, Banianwala and Grandpa

2006-04-01T15:10:00.000+05:30

Wondering who all those are? My neighbours!! Years back when we had moved into the place where I live now, the thing that had caught my eye almost immediately was the window in my room. It opened out to a couple of houses in the vicinity and the rest of the expanse was dotted with lush, green trees...a sight for sore eyes like mine.(you tend to get a bit poetic when you've lived in a concrete jungle for quite a while!!) That I thought was the most beautiful corner of the apartment and I continue to think that way inspite of not one person agreeing with me!! It was probably a year after we moved in that I realised that I had neighbours!! I'm totally an anti-social animal, where my mom had managed to make acquaintances, rivalries and a host of other things me and my sis had remained gloriously aloof. But then I had begun to discover the joys of peeping into peoples homes!! Just across my window was a very curiously shaped house, I can best describe it as a half-matchbox sort of construction(beats me coz the way the house is laid out,its darned easy for a burglar to break in),where lived a family which again I can only describe as strange. To this day I know nothing of that family, I don't even want to,coz that spoils half the fun I get out of imagining horribly wild things about them!! I'm given to literary allusions most of the time, so the first thing I noticed about the son of the family was his likeness to Frodo Baggins. I live in the fourth floor and I imagine its difficult for people on the ground to be aware of my presence but this guy soon found out and almost always looked up whenever he came out and that was embarrassing to put it mildly. I mean I wasn't making a pass at him or anything of that sort but the house itself was so beautiful(i don't want to start talking about their carpets...amazingly beautiful carpets!) that it invited people to stare at it!! A few months ago, in a fit of madness I enrolled into the only gym in the colony (THE most BORING gym in the world, the owner played bhajans and keertans most of the time, I could understand his piety but what got to me was..how the hell are we to shake and move and exercise to songs like "ohhh ek ladki ko dekha to aisa lagaaaa..."!!!) where the first person I saw to my horror was Frodo giving me dirty looks as if I had strayed into what seemed to be an exclusive domain of his. Needless to say I left the gym.
I had to shift my base camp so accordingly I started haunting the balcony where I would stare at a particularly favorite tree of mine, watching the birds (I named one pidwidgeon, it was so tiny!!!) when I noticed another specimen of the male species haunting his balcony. The man was wild to look at, great masses of unruly hair and always clad in a banian...I was inclined to think that he modelled for a banian brand!! The most noticeable thing about this bloke was that he was completely, head over heels in love with the telephone.People usually associate females with a fetish for gossiping and long coversations on the phone but I would say it would be very difficult to beat this man. Hours and hours he gabbled away, putting the phone down rarely,only to make new calls...I was again inclined to think that he probably worked in a call centre. And the next thing noticeable would have to be his clothing(or the lack of it!)..I mean its normal to own atleast a few pieces of clothing, your wardrobe cannot simply consist of banians alone!! Anyways I got horribly fed up of watching this tribal and I shifted back to my window...this time looking at a building and thankfully not its inmates! But I guess it was my turn to be spied upon now.My windows are usually open 24 hours a day and strangely I found myself being watched by a small boy with his grandpa from the building I used to occasionally glance at. What I thought to be a harmless bird watching thing had turned into a full fledged exhibition at the zoo! The grandpa and the son had taken to staring at me from binoculars!!! Gosh, I felt like some ruddy animal in the zoo what with that Frodo making sure that I wasn't spying to the grandpa who stared from binoculars..!!
Grandpa has moved away, some new people have come in but I haven't bothered coz you see, I've wisely learnt to put my nose and eyes where they belong...into the pages of my books!!

All in a day's work..

2006-03-27T18:30:00.000+05:30

Some days can be very trying on your nerves...like today. It was a totally messed up day right from the beginning to the end. Labs. Records. Two words I hate the most in college life.( I loathe everything else!!) I hate writing records, I don't see the point of it. A totally futile activity if you ask me, I mean why write something you've done and recorded in your observation anyway? The whole point is to practically perform and verify the facts we've been learning so why write reams and reams about it wasting time!! We have a Process Dynamics and Control(PDC in short) lab this sem and its the worst thing ever that happened to us. We have a core subject that goes by the same name and we have a total loser guy teaching it. That man is a curse, a black spot ruining the future of chemical engineers like us! He's an enigma...a code nobody not even himself would understand. We have been performing 8 experiments from two months without knowing why the bloody hell we are doing it anyway and where on earth are we going to use it! To top it all this abysmal fool announces that he wants to conduct lab exams for us without explaining a single calculation and an empty record book to go with! It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that we've been literally pulling our hair out with the experiments!! 6 graphs per experiment and there are 8 like that, a total of 48 graphs!! Holy Jesus!! I haven't even done one yet and I've absolutely no clue where to begin from!! To make things worse we have an even bigger moron teaching us some shit that sounds like management science. For days now we have been hatching various plans of eliminating that loathsome man from the face of the earth without much success.That man seems to be impervious to insults and bad behaviour. We have insulted him in every possible way but the man comes right back like jack-in-the-box killing us, literally killing us with his lectures. I have never seen a man so humbuggish, so self satisfied , so conceited and so thick-skinned that every thing goes through and above him!! I have exhausted all the abusive language I am capable of using but in vain.College is meant to be boring, it is meant to squeeze the life out of you...in the end you would look like a dried up lemon badly squeezed and damaged!! And its miraculous how we manage to end up getting all the physcos,weirdos and morons of the world in our department!! If I weren't a part of this foolishly civilized society I would have derived immense pleasure in torturing these people, frying them and chopping them into a zillion pieces and feeding them to the crocs!!! I might sound frustrated and a bit over the top but this is exactly what I would do to these blighted blighters of the world!! Anyways things aren't all that bad...finally somebody did check tickets on the train and mercifully somebody was caught travelling without one!!(sadistic on my part but its a disappointment to me if everybody is a good,dutiful citizen like me) Plus I did some shopping on the train..there was this woman selling leafy veggies and I couldn't resist the temptation of buying some of it!! I had a nice time chuckling to myself seeing all those bewildered faces on the train watching me buy coriander and spinach!! Gosh how could I??? Well, people of the world I'm off coz the days not over yet and I've got to get back to something I hate the most.Records.

Cat on the wall

2006-03-16T10:59:00.000+05:30

Classes can be fun sometimes...all you have to do is get an animal or two and you can see the whole class shriek, dance and create a general commotion that is sure to drive the lecturer out in sheer desperation. And thats what happened today(the animal had come uninvited!). Thrice a week we have classes in the morning in a school building that has been standing firm since the time my father was a lad,where we spend two hours doing quant, verbal and logic exercises as preparation for the CAT. The building has remained rock solid all through but the same cannot be said about the benches and windows in the classrooms. As we walk into our classrooms there are rows of benches gathering dust, dried leaves and God knows what else! There is a raised platform where the faculty stands and does their job with their backs to us and themselves facing the black board spraying the chalk dust everywhere. The classroom is huge with a high ceiling and there are a couple of meshed openings to let light through(ventilators)situated at the top of the walls, well above the windows and are provided with ledges which undoubtedly must be full of dust too.
As usual we came and took our places and the class began(it was Indices,surds and logs...an interesting topic being taught by a totally uninteresting individual).It wasn't even even five minutes since the class had begun that we heard a cat purring the whole corridor down. We were surprised to say the least coz we usually don't even hear human voices...certainly not that loud. Then the purring that had suddenly begun came to an abrupt halt. We continued with our class. The moment the lec opened his mouth to give us a few tips the purring was back, louder than ever! All eyes were turned bang onto the corridor again! Here was a soul in deep distress...probably a CAT aspirant who turned into one with all the stuffing these people gave him and out on a morning walk Vendetta mission. As the meowing continued some of us realised that the cat was actually in our room..actually on top of that ledge which was above the window and which was directly above my head!! People around us moved away to safer distances but we sat there waiting for the cats next move. Whenever our lec would start speaking the cat would meow its lungs out(i presume they have lungs) prompting our sir to brand that cat as an american national as it was apparently allergic to quant...coz according to him Americans have an innate aversion to Math.( dunno how far this is true..he could be talking about people like me,far closer home who have an aversion to both americans and math)We had to evacuate our benches and move to other places.(I hate the Goddamned Americans...why do they have to make refugees out every race they hope to own??!! even their cats are no better!!) The cat probably had enough of us for a day so it attempted to get down,meowing all the time like a blood thirsty warrior stuck in a useless battlefield. It leaped down onto the window and now with all the crazy meowing we had girls shrieking their heads off!! The whole thing looked like a mini jumanji with a one-cat army causing a stampede. The poor bloke was actually trying to find the safest way out and these people had made life back down on earth so difficult that it went back to its ledge cursing loudly. The lec was totally pissed off that a few silly girls had managed to retain a nuisance he had been trying to get rid of from the beginning of the class. By the time he complained about the cat to the few people manning the corridors and came back, the class was over. People streamed out of the class quickly but we stayed back to help the troubled soul come down...no such luck, it was already dozing away! We told the people outside that there was a cat stuck inside and asked them to remove it but half hoping that the cat would still be there when we came back for our next class...coz this was the best class we had had in recent times!!

Me,Myself and I

2006-03-15T15:49:00.000+05:30

Its been just couple of days since I re-read 'Catcher in the rye'. Books like that always tend to make me a tad too grouchy. I always relapse into the-I-don't-know-where-I'm-heading phase. And I really don't. I have read a couple of books in which the protagonist is a confused loser like moi who's trying to get a foot-hold in life. And they always wake the sleeping monster in me and I go hammer and tongs with myself trying to make sense out of the whole madness I wallow in. The problem is that basically I don't understand a lot of things, a horribly big list. Every New Year I would try to make that list, but I know when I'm licked! Till date many new years have gone by and I haven't even started on something that might just resemble that list of mine! Now, I think I'll take the liberty of putting that list down here...I can't understand people, I can't understand what I'm supposed to do or be in life, I can't understand my being in a rat race(I knew I wasn't human!), I can't understand my peers, I can't understand my mom who's job I know is to fill my ears with success stories of all kinds and hoping that I'll take a cue from that, I can't understand my Dad who says I've got to have a goal, an aim...what am I supposed to aim for...cracking the CAT,GRE or any other God forsaken exam or a job with a fat salary or a well to do hubby...what what what?? I can't understand myself, I can't understand why I have to be answerable to people about my life. There's a lot more I don't understand...but I don't want to go into all that.
Years ago (must be five yrs) I had read a book by William Somerset Maugham called 'The razor's edge' and I loved that book, since then I must have read that book atleast a fifty times. Its about a guy called Larry. Its about how he goes to war (the first one), how he doesn't understand what he's fighting for and why and loses his best friend(who was just as alive as he was)in the war who is taken down by the 'bad guys' for no fault of his. He comes back with a confused and disturbed state of mind, with questions he has to find answers for. Then begins his journey of self-discovery and it takes him ten years to find those answers he's been looking for.
Thats the undercurrent in catch-22 where Yossarian is the bloke who can't understand himself and his mates, thats the idea behind Holden Caulfield's messed up life, the same as in Five point Someone, the idea in my story and probably in yours too.
I'm writing this down partly because I have nothing else to write about and partly because I've got to get it all out of my system once in a while. Every person probably goes through this and finds their answers but I can't write about what goes through in the minds of others so I just write about what goes on in mine.
You see I don't want to live the life of a second-hander, I don't want to be the person 'who could have been'.

Jack of all Trades

2006-03-14T11:26:00.000+05:30

Ever since I've started blogging (there is no ever since actually, its been TWO days for God's sake!!) I spend more time thinking what to write about than actually write. Like yesterday...as I was winding up 'The Great Railway Bazaar' my mind had already begun to list the various topics I could choose from for the next days post! I was thinking of the books I could write about, the sights and sounds that had appealed to me and other crap like that. I then asked myself why on earth had I to decide what to write about when it was for my eyes only...I mean I could write about anything under the sun and leave it at that. Why was I writing on Blogspot?? Is it because I want to be heard? Is it because I want people to read what I write and compliment me on my writing skills even if they are non-existent? Or is it from a purely selfish motive of admiring my writing even when no one else does?? I guess the answer is pretty obvious yet I choose to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to that and settle for a safer answer that is I love writing. I used to write earlier and save them in a folder I had named 'Discover yourself'. I wrote articles on Chinese feet binding, the art of mummification, the riddle of Pompeii, Ta-peshala:master of the spirits and other gory articles like that(borrowed from the discovery showcase) only to discover the sleeping Hannibal Lecter in me! I stopped writing after that cause I wasn't making much headway into discovering myself,it was more of reliving the tortures I had seen on t.v!

Well all that I've written so far is merely to prolong my post so that it doesn't appear unnaturally short and futile to the keen but patient reader. I've named my post Jack of all Trades and by this time you must've realised its not me. Its about my milkman, rather former milkman. He is one of the Jack of all Trades I know and I thought of writing about him.

We had fired him a week ago as he was never on time and blah blah blah ,let me just call it insubordination. Some balance amount was left that he had to return to us but from that day we never saw him in the vicinity (it does take some skill to escape my moms keen eye) but yesterday night he was back, politely asking my mom whether his johnies had returned the money or not. Mom informed him of the new arrangements and how the bill would be settled into that account and so succeeded in sending him away..well almost. He stood there twirling his fingers clearly with something else on his mind. He then slowly said that he wanted help...his cylinder had been stolen.Precisely speaking he wanted my dad to help him as the cylinder was from the same company dad worked for. Dad had previously helped people to get gas connections, get complaints written about theft or gas leakages with the distributor for the area and so on. Mom told him that Sir wouldn't be able to help him this time as he was with some other department. But the interview wasn't over..this time it was mom asking him questions about how he managed to let a cylinder get stolen ( its big! 14.5 kgs!!), when and where. What surprised me were his answers. He lived in an apartment like ours so the next obvious thing to ask would be don't you lock up? He said he was the watchman of the apartment and stayed down with the his doors open most of the day. Mom asked him how did the theft take place...he's supposed to be the watchman! Then he said he was an auto-rickshaw driver during the day! Then we asked him where his wife had been..you see somebody had to be at the house. He said she worked for the apartment people so she too wasn't there!! So who was there? What a man - a milkman by dawn, an auto driver by day, an account settler by evening...and a watchman by night?? Too many hats for one person is what I thought! Had there been a few more hours to the 24 hr day, I'm sure he would have found himself a few more money making vocations!! Listening to that amusing narrative I remembered a quote I had read in the TOI a couple of days ago.."
quis custodiet ipsos custodes?- Juvenal" (who will guard the guard themselves?!)

Well I have finished with my abnormally long narrative which,after my writing it,doesn't even sound remotely funny. And before people start hitting me with milk cans I had better sign off promising to write something a bit more enagaging for tommorrows post!!(What the heck, I'm the only reader so I can afford to have lost my imagination for a day!!)

The Great Railway Bazaar

2006-03-13T11:33:00.000+05:30

This is the book,by Paul Theroux, that I'm reading now. This is the second travelogue I've attempted to read, the first being a couple of years back (The road to Shangri-La)...guess I took my time to come back to the genre. What I liked about this book the moment I laid my eyes on it was its title and the fact that it was a journey of the author from the confines of the British Isles to the Land of the Orient, almost half a world away as he puts it, by trains. From the magnificent Orient Express to the Lake Van Express to the Teheran Express to the Frontier mail to the Rajdhani express to the Grand Trunk Express to the local to Rameshwaram....you get the idea.

He opens his book with lines that go 'Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed and never upsetting your drink.' Exactly how I would choose to describe the trains I've known since my childhood. The best part of the book is not the places he visits but the journey he makes. Most of the times when he's describing the Asian trains, the stations,one image keeps popping back and forth into the view...that of penniless beggars, of starving,pot-bellied children running along the train hoping for the travellers to throw out some leftovers or a few coins. It is very depressing to read those descriptions but things haven't changed much even till today and that was way back in 1975 when he wrote that book. From the arid deserts of Afghanistan to the plains of Pakistan to the entire length and breadth of India to the tear drop of Ceylon to the woes of Myanmar...its a long journey unto life in its truest colours.

And the story hasn't changed. Waiting for the local trains everyday at the Vidyanagar and Malakpet Stations I have nothing to do except watch people...watch people spit pan onto the tracks, watch people wash their clothes, watch workers smoking bidis and cussing loudly, watch people throw the leftovers in some corners of the platform thinking no one would notice it...but the dogs do,watch children defecate openly on garbage dumps on the platform;just next to public toilets which are spotlessly clean because no one ever uses them and just watch people get down the trains and get on. Its not about how poor the country is, its not about how people misuse public property, its no insight into human life, its just about an India on the platforms, an India on her journey.

Thats the best part about trains, they don't see, they just go on and on..from one station to the next one, just like life.

One Foggy Morning

2006-03-12T15:38:00.001+05:30

Wake up...Morning walk time..words I hate to hear when I'm slumbering. Today was no different, Dad waking me up to the sound of those ominous words. I woke up, put on my glasses and looked out of the window(thats the first thing I do everyday) only to find that i couldn't see a thing.FOG.Fog in Mid March in Hyderabad! The only thing unaccountable in India apart from the politics and Indian cricket has to be the weather! This year has been unexpectedly chilly,hot,humid and chilly again! And today beating all that is fog, miles of fog..the whole place looked like a bloody hill top view! We got ready quickly and headed out with a handful of biscuits and a FiveStar in my pocket(walking is definitely more pleasanter when you are munching something!). Our daily walk (well almost daily) takes us round the entire perimeter of OUCT- from the college of technology to the science blocks to the arts college to the landscape gardens and back to where we parked our car near the administrative building. Today we decided to head to newer,unexplored parts of our realm.We headed straight into the Renewable Energy park of the college of tech. As we walked past the wicket gate a strong smell of eucalyptus leaves wafted out and set the tone for what was to be a two hour joyous expedition into the place i know i'm definitely heading for tommorrow. We walked into this park, this garden apparently untouched by the hands of man,where we were greeted by the calls of peacocks,sparrows,mynahs and other birds whose names i'm not aware of.There were trees everywhere and not a single human soul in sight for miles.This was the place Dad had been coming to for a couple of days now and so was eager to show me around.There were rocks,there are always rock formations everywhere and anywhere in and around hyderabad, as old as a couple of thousand years inviting us to be their guests.Dad sat down on a grim looking hard sort of a rock but i ran away to find greener and softer pastures. And i found one..just a little farther off from where my dad sat i found the perfect place.Two rocks with a ridge in between, one to put your butt on and the other to spread your legs on. I sat and looked around, it was like a courtyard of an old forgotten temple ( this was a temple of learning..with the college labs and classrooms facing me!) with huge,old trees standing high above me and their branches of verdant green leaves almost touching the ground. The ground wasn't hard and unielding,it had rained two days ago,it was soft,brown and beautifully cold with layers of dried leaves,twigs and files of ants and other insect populace taking their walks on it. The sun came out through the clouds but it didn't look like a sun anymore,more like a silvery moon shining not too brightly. The whole spectacle looked peaceful and natural and so inviting that every moment you felt an impulse urging you to throw yourself on the ground and take it all in. Dad and i then went round inspecting every tree...the tree that fascinated me the most was a huge strapping tree with the greenest leaves you could imagine! I didn't know what tree it was and then Dad said it was a jamun tree! I stared in disbelief, dad simply plucked out a leaf,tore it into two and held it under my nose. It was the jamun smell!! We then ate a few leaves,they tasted just like jamuns and saw the fruits that hadn't ripened yet. We moved along to find mango trees, gauva trees and huge peepal trees. We spent almost an hour there absorbing all these delights,savoring them with no one to share the spoils with! I don't want to call this place 'paradise' because it would be an insult to the beautiful earth...this was earth,brown,green,unspoilt and alive just as the way it should be.
We then had to reluctantly continue with our walk which is just as pleasant as this place was and I hope to return to it tommorrow,to my joie de vivre! And till then I'm just feeling good...good to be alive.