Srilankan Tamizh Struggle

As they say, history is written by winners and so this will become too. A genuine and rational demand of the Tamizh people of Srilanka will go down in the history books as the story of a terrorist organization vanquished by the state army. Losers will also write history sometimes when they are left alive, but then when cultural death has already happened and Tamizh will cease to exist as a language because of the Srilankan Govt’s ‘Sinhala only’ policy , even if someone writes , there will be no one who would know how to read.

I don’t know whether it is still sedition in this country if I eulogize about the armed struggle of the Tamizhs and their leader Prabhakaran! But in the current mood I don’t think I would mind if I am charged so. It is a shameful thing to realize that how people are capable of seeing the same stuff in the way that suits their fancy. The Srilankan story is one such phenomenon.

Everyone in the past and present have just used the legitimate aspirations of the Tamizh people to their benefit and played politics. And the biggest complaint about the LTTE is that, it was an organization that did not mix militancy and politics. What a joke! The whole militancy situation rose because of the anger which the boys had on the politicians. I wonder whether even the seasoned politicians in this country would know about the genesis of the Srilankan issue. About how the British who put India in an eternal mess by dividing the country into two, created the same mess by uniting two different countries! The Tamizhs and Sinhalese were two distinct kingdoms and the Portuguese, Dutch before the British and also British for a while, administered them separately. And suddenly for the comfort of administration made it one and handed over the whole place to Sinhalese when they left.

It is a long story of systematic annihilation of Tamizhs, betrayals from within and outside and a violent end to the dreams. Just for the ignorants’ sake, a sample of two statements made by the President and Prime Minister of that country in 1983.‘We will break their (sic) heads. & We will teach them a lesson, are those statements. And the Tamizhs were supposed to have a peaceful dialogue with them!! Which also the Tamizh politicians did when they got elected with the mandate of getting a separate state! It is surprising that many people who complain about the LTTE’s policy of killing even the moderates, do not talk about how the very same moderates used these militants for their use and discarded them. A classic Frankenstein story! Haven’t we seen them once too often? Whether it is Bhindranwale or Osama Bin Laden or the local thugs who get killed in encounters every day??

How many are aware of the fact that India simply used the very same militants to trouble the Srilankan Govt because they were worried about Triconamalee becoming a US base! How the Indian Intelligence officials trained these boys at Indian camps? How Rajiv kept Prabhakaran under house arrest (in Hotel Ashoka, Delhi) while he flew to sign an accord for solving a country’s internal strife!!!

None of these arguments mean that I defend the killings of innocents & moderates by the LTTE, but it is also true that some deserved the killing. Atleast in Srilanka! Where there is a war going on, that too! People should realize that the Srilanka ‘Prevention of Terrorism’ act is one of the most authoritarian, vengeful act that even allowed detention without trial and cremation/burial in case of a suspect dying with no accountability whatsoever. So, people who pass such laws will die by a similar jungle law passed by another powerful animal. In modern history, this is the most blatant colonization that has ever happened! In modern history this is the most uncondemned pogrom that has ever happened!

And we live in a country that will peacefully conduct elections (albeit with money & muscle) and pride itself to be the largest democracy, but no one can do anything about these Tamizhs who were dying. And we have some assholes who neither know history, nor bother to grow brain will comment on all the articles that are published, condemning the Tamizhs for seeking a separate state. These good for nothing jingoists (the same guys would want us to draw blood in Pakistan, despite that being a sovereign state) would not even know the plight of the Plantation Tamizhs who were called ‘Tamils of Indian origin’.

India agreed to take back 5 Lac plus Tamizhs by the Srimavo-Sashtri pact (who the British took there for plantation work). And as of today the Tamizhs who repatriated after 100 years of living in the Srilanka have not been integrated yet in this country. They all are working as daily wages and still being treated as foreigners by the locals when their Govt has thought otherwise. And the politicians who observe fast between breakfast and lunch are not even concerned the status in the refugee camps.

And all the peace loving, straightforward souls in this country should stop to notice the celebrations in the streets of Colombo while remembering that India didn’t celebrate in the streets after Khalistan movement crashed or when Mizo Independence movement stopped in 1975. Is that what is happening there in Srilanka? If someone here can think that the Black Tigers sprung out of orphanages there and the children were put there on first place simply because the Govt killed their parents, then some part of the heart can beat for these souls.

The whole shortsightedness from many of the world countries including us because we thought that LTTE and the Tamizh issue were synonymous! And after 9/11 because a couple of planes crashed into high rises, terrorism was a bad word and they didn’t want hear of any more deaths. Definitely not when it was unleashed by the State! In the current world situation, even if you die you need to die as a white. The other colors are expendable.

There are a lot of arguments that one can place against the LTTE for which I may not have answers. Nor do I intend to find one. I for one do not want to confuse between the original cause and the means to achieve them. And if one sees this as a war between two states and not as a struggle between an Army and a terrorist organization as I see, many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall in place. When a moderate who wins on a mandate/plebiscite of getting a separate state accepts the Govt largesse as an opposition leader with all the perks, then he is definitely a traitor during a war. Would we accept any of our leaders doing a similar thing with Pakistan? Even a pro-Pakistan statement is considered as one against the state here.

Just for the heck, as an argument, had the Srilankan landmass been attached to the Indian mainland and the British partitioned us as Indian, Pakistan and Srilankan based on Hindu, Muslim & Buddhist divides, we would be still fighting for Northeast Srilanka like we do in Kashmir now. We would be the occupation army in that part of the world. But an indigenous army is a terrorist organization according to us. An outfit that had 50 cadres and 30 weapons in 1983 and grew into a well-oiled army is no joke and it doesn’t come because one jingoistic megalomaniac. It comes because of a genuine need. It comes because of aspirations and it comes when people get fed up on the peace process that was supposed to give its due. A country which secretly hero worships Netaji Subash Chandra Bose and Bagath Singh should have a different view about this struggle!

If a freedom struggle should die because one of the fighters/ leaders has his skull blown off, then there is no hope in this world. But then history suggests that it never works that way. After 21 full years, General Dyer was killed by Udham Singh for the Jallianwalabagh massacre.

The Sinhalese will pay and pay more. But then the blood of both the Sinhalese and the Tamizhs will be on our hands. We could have stopped this from happening!

Celebrating Women's Day

I have my own discontentment about such special days like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Women’s day etc. This is no different from the day when I decided to stop my monthly rituals for my late father. I was all keen and pious initially because I thought that those 30 minutes I spent on the rituals was the homage I pay to my dad and also stop to thank and glorify him for his achievements. And all of a sudden one day I realized that I never had to stop and think about him! He was always in me. In my thoughts and deeds and the unfailing genetic traits! In fact I was more working to lead my life the way he wanted which he would not have been successful had he been around instructing me what should I be doing.

In essence this one day dhamaka just doesn’t cut any ice with me. What’s the fun in wishing your mom on Mother’s day when you miss her all the time, but terribly impatient when she is around. What is the point of remembering and gifting the lady on a particular day when she gifted you with her blood, sweat, tears and not to mention her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)

So is this Women’s Day! As a self-confessed Masculinist (opposite of Feminist ???!!), I have my complaints about Father’s day not being celebrated with the same verve as Mother’s day! Maybe I don’t sweat too much about Mother’s day either, but hey there should be justice after all! And to think of it, was there a Men’s day ever? And don’t start on me about the clichéd refrain of ‘all days are men’s day’! Not if you know a man who can do everything a woman can do barring pregnancy.

But, does all this stop me from Celebrating Women? Hell no! My life has been surrounded by women, starting from 5 sisters to the extent of only rearing dogs of the feminine gender. So much so, that I doubt sometimes whether my thoughts were fashioned in the feminine way only. And each of these women who had been in my life is simply outstanding. These days when there is a measurable parameter in terms of salary, women are getting noticed and being appreciated as they prove that there no less than men, if not better.

But what about women like my mom? Someone who had changed cities every 3 years, reared boisterous children like us with my father being in the bank all the time, and ensured that each one of us had not only great education but also good manners. And to manage a house of 10 people with a paltry salary and get all the daughters married by saving within the monthly salary. And all the while, manage relationships with in-laws, getting herself updated all the time about what’s happening around the world and stay modern in her thoughts. Could there be any salary paid for all these? Well if so, then she could be one the highest paid in the world.

I had been watching one of my Harlequin Parrots laying eggs and hatching it. This is happening for the past 4 weeks. She simply didn’t even venture out of her little pot for food, as she had to keep the eggs under her feathers all the time. The tremendous resolve and strength that the tiny bird shows is an abject lesson on passion and strength due to that. Now when I see the little one getting the shape of a real bird flapping her oversized wings, do I also see a hint of pride and satisfaction in the mother’s face? I could not detect anything obviously. And that’s I think is what is womanhood.

The one difference that cannot be made up between men and women! I am not over glorifying the concept of child bearing and rearing here, maybe one day there will be a possibility of childbirth without the uterus. But the instinct of a mother can never be recreated. The fundamental sense of nurturing and natural leadership within the confines of a family has been there for a million years and nothing can change that.

There will be a day when the differences might vanish ( as it is almost now ) and we will stop celebrating such days, but the reason for why they should be celebrated would never get over.

There are many MCP jokes on women, but as a tribute to the women on this day and forever, I will give one here.

There is this couple and a visitor is asking the husband who takes decisions in their household.

The husband replies ‘Oh, we practice equality at our home and the decision making is shared between me and my wife’.

Visitor- ‘Oh this is very good to hear, can you tell how you freeze on who decides on what?’

Husband- ‘That’s very easy, all the big decisions are taken by me and the small ones are taken by my wife’

Visitor is taken aback a bit on this fake equality and asks whether he can have an example.

The husband says ‘I actually decide on who should be the prime minister of the country, what are the tax rebates the finance minister should give, the whether we should postpone IPL or not, and my wife decides on which school the children should go, what course they should take, what we should spend and save and where our investments should be and all such matters at the house. J

And here is tribute to all the women who take such small decisions….

And to my Harlequin Parrot called ‘Darling’ and the one woman I idolize the most for her strength of character, courage and immeasurable love.. My Mom..

Hope over Fear a.k.a Jai Ho

There are plenty of things that can inspire one to let their conscience wake up with probing questions. Life generally is a bitch as they say it just takes you where it wants to go and somehow you accept that it is where you wanted to go. But mind is an animal of its own cognizance. Here and then it questions the things which you choose to ignore because life’s path doesn’t tread into dangerous areas. You ignore the misery that unfolds in front of your eyes and as long as it is not personal you are OK. But it happens when your mind has traveled the distance and inspires you to dream that one day you will ‘Teach India’ or do a ‘Turtle Walk’ or sometimes more realistically, just cross an old man across the street. But then you don’t attempt any of that, because you are busy ‘rightsizing’ the organization putting a few more people to misery. Arre yaar, Life is a Bitch, didn’t I say that?

But certain stuff goes beyond that non-linear thinking that you have. It makes you real. And at these times, you just go one step further. Write your thoughts down. No, sorry you are still not going to do something drastic that will alter the course of events or improve the social fabric. You just record them for posteriority’s sake. So that you can feel good and hopeful that things will be better. This is just one such attempt.

I can’t call this as coincidence. The raves that Slumdog receive and Obama taking over as the most powerful man in the world! In a way, I think the reactions the world reserved for both of them are the ‘waking up syndrome’. Or the indefatigable hope that all of us carry. Someone once wrote that India’s malaise can be summed up in a single sentence, which will be ‘Can someone do something about this?’ No Sir, not me!!!! I am busy rightsizing, can some one do that. But I also hope that someone will do it. This is a standing example.

Someone has done it. Someone has conquered fear and chosen hope. Both the real life scene of Obama on top of the world and Jamaal winning 20 million bucks! They are hopes come true. But someone has done it for you. Never mind the charming smile in Obama’s face or the bubbly eyes you see in the diminutive actor who plays Jamaal junior.

Folks, actually some really did it. They said they can!

Like ‘Virgil’ said ‘They can because they think they can’!

Open letter to the PM

Sir, you did it! The same empty rhetoric! “We will not bow down to terror”! Fantastic respected Sir. But, may we know which country you are talking about? If it’s India, then you are afflicted with some deep hallucination. The terrorists haven’t bothered about whether you will bend or not. They have already bent you at the waist and having an orgy at your backside. Maybe you can charge them under Section 377 of IPC. If you are not aware what the section stands for ( as you are hallucinating anyway ), it is against sodomy. ( afterall you and your party want less stringent laws against terror )

You and cronies should be hanging yourselves by the neck if you have any shame at all. But then why would you have shame? You look like a puppet in the TV screen and on most times, I have to pinch myself to believe that you are a human ( not humane anyway, that we know, with the blood of so many Indian citizens in your hand ). For God sake, next time you appear on TV, do two things. One, move other parts of your body apart from the lips ( despite the fact you may be agonizing in pain at your posterior extreme ) and two, don’t use the teleprompter. Make some effort atleast to say it straight from the heart. Don’t read out reassuring messages to us. We are anyway much better equipped to handle grief and anger without your help.

Are you really serious about terrorism? If you have proof about foreign involvement, why are you not crying hoarse? Did someone promise you a ‘Best Diplomat’ award or what? If underworld is involved, why are you not making a demand on Pakistan to extradite Dawood? That’s the least you can do to add some bravery element to your stupid empty speech?! Why are you not unleashing fury at POK? Are you scared about the reaction of Pakistan and their nukes? Or is it that, you are suddenly concerned about our lives? If the second thought is true, Sir, please don’t worry about us. We are braver than you and we prefer getting nuked to getting shot by one bit, two bit terrorists.

Your inaction and weak knees have sacrificed many of our fellow citizens’ lives and some of the finest officers. If you need some inspiration to act firmly, shall I advise you to watch some TV? See what’s happening out there. The bravest of our men, getting airdropped and taking bullets for your cowardice!

Don’t you really think that you should have stayed with academics? Maybe write a paper on the Economic Impact of Terrorism than trying to deal with it? Why your cabinet committee meeting? Why not an all-party meeting? Why not ask Modi on how he managed to defuse bombs at Surat instead of giving speeches and announcing solatium?

The least you can do now, is to shut yourself at 7, Racecourse road. We don’t want the additional task of saving you and given our mood, we may forget that we have to.

Shame on us

Shame on us! A country of a billion people! Claiming to be a new power in the world! Boasting endlessly on what all we can achieve in the next 20 years! Maybe I should add ‘If we are alive’

How long this tragic situation will continue, we would never know. Maybe as long as we treat Indian lives as a cheap commodity. The US, UK and Australia governments have already issued bulletins advising against travel to India, their cricket tours cancelled, all for the few hundred of their citizens who may possibly be affected.

If you are in any of the Metro’s save Chennai, can you honestly say that you are not running the risk of getting killed any day? It just doesn’t sink on us. The famed Indian tolerance comes to our rescue here. So does our Karmic philosophy. If you gotta go, you gotta go! A dialogue that is drilled into our heads to accept any shit that is trashed upon us.

You could be in a train, in a cinema hall, dining with your family in a restaurant, stand in a chaat stall you could be anywhere! Sorry my friend, you aren’t safe! Because you are an Indian and you are dispensable. Mayawati has 350 policemen saving her and almost all our neta’s. You and I are second-class. The Home Minister will anyway condemn the attacks and we will go back our idli, dosa and vada paav’s. We will have some nice live TV action and debate and wait for another day to get killed if we already are not.

Maybe Chandrayaan will help us. Maybe we can find ourselves a safe haven in the Moon where we may hope to live longer. Maybe we can spend a few more billion dollars to amass weapons, which we will dust up on the Pooja days and lock them up.

How the f*** we are so shameless? How the f*** we celebrate Pirabakaran’s birthday in a high court complex bursting crackers? How the f*** we cry over the Tamil’s across the border and just don’t bother about cracking down on terrorists on our own soil?

If there was a plot to insult India’s sovereignty, this is it. Terrorists coming through boats from Karachi and strike at will at the very heart of the country. You think we will wake up now? Never!! One strike at them, a country got annihilated and for 6 years they are safe. For us, we cant survive if we don’t see blood in the newspapers as a daily diet. We will shake hands with the enemies across the border, play cricket matches and throw mud at Modi.

As long as Congress runs the country, your life isn’t yours. They are so weak and they make the country weak. We are having a cabinet committee meeting and the PM will address us at 7 pm, almost 24 hours after our country was invaded. I know what he will say. He will say that he condemns such attacks on innocent civilians, he will say that India won’t tolerate such things anymore and he will say we will crack down on terrorism and to added measure he will add it is cross-border. He will say that we have sufficient proof that it is a foreign conspiracy. And none of us will ask what the ‘F’ he is doing if he knows all of this.

And the people of Mumbai, will once again demonstrate their indomitable spirit and we will start trading first thing on Friday. Left to me, I will change the concept of that trade. I may sound jingoistic and I will have a hundred guys who preach on more tolerance. But I am not in a mood to listen, not when we spill blood on our streets.

Let us trade blood for once..

I am back

There is something about October. Could be a coincidence, but it is true. I just don’t write anything in October. Just went back and checked my postings. As soon as I had started two years back, just in the second month, I went into a shell and came back with a vengeance. Now after two full years, for the first time I haven’t posted anything at all. Not sure whether I feel vengeful now. But, thanks to Obama, one came out like flash in the pan and as if it is an addiction, next one is now being made.

Come to think of it, this is really an addiction. With no defined withdrawal symptoms or a detox program! Maybe you quit for sometime, but when you start, you start from where you leave. Just now, I saw one of very senior colleagues smoking. I knew he had quit long time back and suddenly he was back at again. And he said after 2 full years, he restarted when his dog died. Certain habits die hard. You don’t know when and how you start, but when you start it just doesn’t stop. Maybe writing is like that.

I was into too much reading and some of them real good ones. And maybe I wanted to drop the pretense of ‘I also write something’. And every time something strikes my fancy, I always felt that it has been written about in the previous blogs or just plain indifference took over.

Now I am back at it. Again, read it the Times on Sunday about writer’s block and on how the sheer thought of having to write something does not make one write. As it is claimed there was no pregnancy of words in me waiting to come out and if it was, guess it was akin to an elephant’s pregnancy. Just not wanting to see the outside world.

But when it starts, it gives a good feeling. Appears that I need to cram in stuff about all the things I saw and read in the last one month, be it an essay of Arthur Koestler or Dave Barry’s ‘Guide to Guys, or the fantastic movies like ‘A Wednesday’ and the US elections

Come to think of it , maybe there is a lot to write. I am back!! .

Hope

I have often wondered whether the Times of India takes journalism seriously and it is just about sensationalism!! The times guys don’t impress much, particularly if your diet for the last 25 years was ‘The Hindu’ and filter coffee in the morning. I often used to complain that, on all my tours the watery hotel instant coffee and some other newspaper is a sure formula to my constipation. And then Times invaded ‘Namma Chennai’ too. Don’t ask me why I subscribe! I generally don’t rationalize when it comes to English letters printed in paper. Anything goes with me. Constipation maybe, but indigestion never!

But Times actually arrived today. Not in full, but just by printing one small piece in its coverage of Obama’s ascent to the throne. It was a song from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Titled ‘Ebony & Ivory’, it goes like this.

“Living together in perfect harmony, side by side on my piano keyboard, Oh Lord, why don’t we?”

Nothing can aptly sum up the mood of the world at this very precise moment. As if God has listened to such sort of a prayer! It is almost like a personal triumph for everyone in the world. A black man becoming the most powerful person in the earth! And a real life heroism story playing in front of your eyes! Hollywood coming alive in the biggest theatre that is world!

When the world is split in fragments racially, religiously, financially, a black man from a middle class family, with Indonesian step-siblings, with a Muslim middle name triggering celebration in a small Kenyan village is something like God’s prescription to the suffering sinners of the world. It is like giving a message to us, saying ‘Hey guys, I haven’t given up on you yet’.

This is not the time to ask questions like he was after all half-white, he is not a descendant of the real African-American slave, he didn’t have the courage to stand up and say that ‘so what if my name is Islamic’, he is going to be more of a protectionist of American interests than the world’s interests etc. He simply gives Hope. That’s enough.

Hope to millions of people who believe in democracy, the power of ballot, to his race, hard work and people who have nothing left for them but Hope.

His first name means ‘Blessed’ and may God bless him really, for on him rests a million hopes.

Amen. !

Offbeat

All the offbeat news that appears in any website has got something to do with sex. Every now and then you may get a rare piece of a dog eating the cell phone. Even that is not offbeat for me. The dogs are intelligent creatures and they know the enemy when they see one. But this preoccupation with sex is baffling!

Or the fact that is termed ‘offbeat’ is even more baffling. Today’s headlines are the following

Fidel Castro has 'bedded 35,000 women'!

• Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has slept with 35,000 women in his 82 years of life, according to an upcoming documentary
• The 10 best Aphrodisiacs to boost sexual desire revealed
• The 6 most embarrassing sex moments revealed
• Here’s why booze and work don't mix Woman finds porn on brand new phone
  

See what I said? 4 headlines and all have sex in them. I don’t know what this is all about. The other day I read a survey that said that skimpily clad women in advertisement make men overlook the prices and go for the product. There is something really screwed up in our head. No, it is not one prude speaking. My collection of porn stuff would give a run for everyone’s money when I was young. But why is this offbeat? If everyone seems to be interested in and that’s what is read and if sex sells, it is mainstream! Maybe the bomb blasts are offbeat. The frequency of that anyway is fast making it mainstream too.

Some of these statistics and survey are seriously challenging. Some of them are mathematical puzzles. If Castro bedded 35000 women, if you go by a simple stat of one a day, then it would have taken 95 years to accomplish this feat. Going one step ahead if it was two a day, it is still 48 years. Now when was he running Cuba and what was the US afraid of. Their women!? Everyday 2 new women for 48 years! This is as good as the size they write about in porn magazines. Will give an inferiority complex to the Obama’s and the McCain’s of the world.

How exactly they collect this information God only knows. Maybe Castro would have told. But to me sex news seems to be an industry. There should be hoards of reporters with the mike thrusting out (no pun intended) asking people what is the kinkiest thing you have heard or done. Or the imagination is so very fertile that someone can concoct a piece like a 2 cm fish slipping into a boy’s penis.

Really sickening!

Paid to Piss

I almost decided that the World has lost its sense of craziness and become straight. I had a reason to think so. Usually it is the newspaper stories that give me dope to blabber something on the blog. And mostly they are some crazy stuff like robbery of a sperm bank or some unique survey happening that stokes the imagination in me and a few smiles. But recently all I was seeing was morose stories like Biker bleeding to death blah blah. When I almost gave up hope I got this gem. And the relief that after all world is a still a good place to settle down.

Listen to this story. Apparently at Tiruchi, people are paid to piss. Yes, I am not spinning a tale here. I read this in the Times. ( well Times by itself is a big humor, but it is that sick kind of humor ). The idea is to collect the urine and test it for its efficacy as a fertilizer. And the queues are getting longer by the day in the town.

I was wondering how nice it would be that this kind of job. Getting paid to piss! It is a different kind of thing that many do that in a corporate scenario. Strutting around from desk to desk pissing on and on! In fact if there is a selection process for this, I know of a super guy for this job from my earlier organization, but then he is capable of messing that also.

Coming back to the Paid for Pissing story, I am wondering how they would have marketed it on first place. Would they have sent people on a door knock asking if they feel like pissing? Or would they have given an advertisement in the local newspaper saying ‘You got the Piss, We got the Pay’? Or would they have told a few locals and depended on ‘word of mouth’ ( can’t imagine my neighbor coming to me asking whether I would like to join the noble cause of Science research by agreeing to piss ).

Second confusion I have is that, what is the logic of this payment? Will they pay as per volume? Which means they should do it in a container?! Understanding the Indian psyche, I would not be surprised if a few guys adulterate that with pure water (they may not as it would make bad economics, buying water & mixing it with urine to make money, of course it depends on the price per ml ). Or will they simply pay them on a ‘pay per visit’ model? That also is dangerous with so many walking in and shaking but at the end of the day not much of volume being generated.

Assuming it was really a remunerative process, how people will work hard to piss? Drink gallons of water and rush to the payment counter! And fight to get ahead of others in the queue!( now that will be some real urgency ). Actually like our BPO’s and the KPO’s, this could be one area where we could be world beaters. As much as the software skills and the English speaking skills that put us in the world map, in this area of research, we can beat anyone hands down by the sheer volume.

Anyway, I got to piss now, but I am holding back till my next Tiruchi visit. Certain things are worth holding!

Surveys

The world never lets you be good. I am certain about it. While at one side, your parents bring you up or atleast try to bring you up as a model citizen and drum into your head about the good & the bad, the scriptures talk about the battle between good and evil, there is also something called reality. Or should we call it as research?

I don’t know how these research results reach me ( actually I know, in fact I hunt for them, but a disclaimer is always safe ). But they do! Now tell me, what do you chase in life? While we keep harping about peace of mind and stuff like that, major part of our life we chase money, power and pleasure to ensure that at the end we find peace of mind. All the wars that had been fought are either for Wealth or for Women. Somehow, all of us manage to attain some wealthy position whatever that could be. But this women thing is different. We get, what, one woman? It is a different thing altogether to get into a moral debate of whether polygamy is evil and things like that. One needs to be respectful to what elders have said and not get into any such debate. You should simply do what you want. Arguing is wrong! It is a greater sin.

But look at this research. It says bad guys get more sex. Apparently men with antisocial traits have a prolific sex life. And what do you do? Listen to elders and be a good boy. And get what? Yeah you are right! One woman! On the contrary look what our friend David has got to say. "It is universal across cultures for high dark triad scorers to be more active in short-term mating,'' News.com.au quoted David Schmitt, of Bradley University in the US, as saying.

Now really what pays? Be a good guy and chase hopefully all your life or simply take a leaf out of the new learning and become a bad guy. Of course also get the perk of a prolific sex life.

Not a tough choice. As Fido Dido says ‘Normal is boring’

God’s own survey

One more study and one more confusion! These studies are conducted with an express purpose of creating confusion in one’s mind is what I feel. Now this one is even a bit blasphemous. All along we dabble with harmless subjects like Sex and now suddenly there is God.

Apparently University academics are less likely to believe in God. So it is like this. Intellect can get you good grades, job, and boost your attractiveness but God? Sorry! Only 3.3 of the royal society believe in them as opposed to 68% of the general populace. So God in reality gives you better brains to have a pop at Him.

This survey wasn’t that confusing or it didn’t put me in a dilemma and all. I know I am religious!

While speaking about surveys, I want to add a few more titles atleast

• High Heels putting 20000 women a year in hospital ( A tall claim I would say! )
• Having a fling could save your marriage ( Marriages have got to be saved )
• Men's armpit odour biggest turn-on for women! ( What about foul breath ? )
• Sexual appetite leads men to seek immediate rewards ( One should have a good appetite always )
• Pretty girls more likely to be bullied: ( What a beauty! )

Sex & Shopping

Back to my favorite topic again! Of course which part is my favorite is something I would let you folks ponder about. Read a survey result recently! Apparently young men think about sex every 52 seconds as against young women who think about shopping every 60 seconds. It also says that ‘Assuming eight hours of sleep a night means shopping trips consume women’s thoughts an astonishing 960 times a day and 6,720 times a week’. Well mercifully such calculations were not made about men thinking of sex.

What is disturbing is that the survey says that 50% of women ( young that too! ) prefer to spend time shopping as against sex. Now this is an issue! The converse if it is true, how can a man have sex without a partner? Just as women simply indulge in what is called as ‘retail therapy’, how can a man indulge in ‘sex therapy’? If you are a woman, you simply walk out of the house, go to the nearest shop and buy something irrespective of whether it is 10.00 pm at Chennai and you are only shopping for haldi. A similar thing can’t happen for a man though. Just imagine you going out in Chennai and walk into a supermarket at 10 pm and look for sex. And if you are a heterosexual, the only one that can probably help you in that therapy is already shopping there for haldi.

What a cruel injustice to men? And on top of it, shopping something is perfectly legal and what men would want to shop becomes illegal. The survey also says that credit crunch doesn’t come in their way of shopping. 62% swipe their credit cards and indulge in what they want to do? And sex is a pure cash transaction and that too advance payment. I don’t think you can swipe cards there atleast here in India. And that is assuming that you only need to pay for it, because normal women prefer shopping to sex anyway.

And it also says that 40% of them are shoe addicts, which means that they keep buying different ones and try them out. Do you have that luxury as a man? World is simply unfair to men. Maybe that is why it makes perfect sense for someone to go shopping along with women thinking that the favor will be repaid immediately. Or just buy shoes and go home everyday. Even that won’t work really! They need to pick it up from the rack, they need to choose. So, when did you get such a luxury? Do you ever pick sex from the rack?

For all the talk about how brains are wired, this is some skew that cannot be accepted. How can you compete with shoes for attention? Unless your face is shaped like that! And that too knowing pretty well that it is a one time passion, because they will buy a different shoe next time! Now I understand why men sometimes have this fetish about shoes Maybe it is not fetish really! It is a well though out strategy or survival instinct. You love shoes and I love sex, better I make love to shoes could be an argument that can pass muster.

So guys, life is tough on us. Pretty tough! If you think you will ever get to indulge in your passion, better go to Shopper’s Stop and sit on a rack. And change to some other place the next day. Otherwise your life is doomed!

Car, Carrier & Career

Took the car after a long gap to drive myself! There are sick jokes about how about men love their cars more than their women. I was never one of these men at any time. For me a car was something that takes you from place A to place B. In fact I don’t even remember the numbers of the previous cars that I owned. I have never got attached to the machines so much. But, all said and done, since it is something you drive on your own and when circumstances force someone else to drive it that creates a lot of trouble.

First is when I take the position at the seat! I feel like someone has shrunk me in size, or I am traveling in a space shuttle seated in an embryonic position. That’s because the drivers adjust the seats and while driving suddenly look at the rear view mirror, all I see is the back seat. And the back seat is full with no one being there. That’s because in my absence the kids use the car for their classes. We will come back to that story later.

Another huge irritation is the odor in the car. I think drivers as a breed are hydrophobic. They probably take bath once in a lifetime when events like Y2K happen. And they spend their rest of their lifetime inside cars sweating to glory. Any amount of deodorant can’t kill that and I always wish that the office is closer than what it is, because I want to jump out of the car at the first possible opportunity. And the amount of newspapers that is tuck in all gaps that are available in the car! Between seats, in the doors, you name it and you find a newspaper. And drivers in general also come with a handicap of lacking a major apparatus in their body. That is called as brain!

Coming back to the kids, because of them one day I am going to become a millionaire. Sweet ones! Why I am saying this is because, they are heavily investing in a commodity that will become the rarest in future in a place like Chennai. Every time they venture out of the house, each one carries a water bottle I don’t know for what. And when they return they don’t bring it back into the house. Currently I have some 27594 gallons stored in my car and obviously it is greater than the quantity of petrol which is stored. One day I will sell this water to the masses and become the millionaire I dreamt becoming.

And currently apart from this investment, I have some 10 kg of snacks strewn around, 2 kg of books and notebooks, 2 bags and a 1000 audio CD’s. My suspicion is that the elder one lives in the car only. I obviously can’t find that out because she will be hidden by these treasures. The second one strongly believes that the car is a place where one sleeps. Guess she will become a driver by profession in future. But one promise I will extract from her is about daily bathing. The moment she gets in the car, she sleeps. I have planned to gift a caravan to her when she gets married, because then if there is a fight between her and her husband, all he has to do is offer a drive around the colony and she will fall asleep. And he can escape.

I am seriously considering renting my house and moving into the car completely. Anyway all our possessions are always in the car, the first one already lives there and the second one would not mind sleeping her life through. That way I earn some money by rent, keep off the drivers and keep my car mine in all respect.

After all I am a man and I love my machines!!!!

Real Life Heroes

Whenever I feel bitchy about life, there is one story I go back to read. And it is not fiction! I have always theorized that I have no need for books about positive thinking. They keep beating about the same thing again and again. And in fact there are many who had read Stephen Covey after I used a few quotes from his books, but somehow I have never felt charged up in finding effective ways in doing anything, as I felt that I anyway do it myself. Many books stand in my rack which has the collective brain of people who had made billions of dollars, but only few really enthuse me. And they are invariably first person accounts of how one built an empire. Books like ‘Made in America’ and ‘Winning’ have more impact on me than books like ‘Beneath the Arches’ or ‘Execution’. And of course some gems like the ‘The Go-Getter’ which charges me up tremendously. And movies like Lagaan which I see whenever I feel down.

But this story I talk is about the one whom I will qualify as a real hero. There are many rags to riches to story. Some of them on the business side and some of them from the tinsel town! The second one about the movie stars is still readable; somewhere I feel luck plays a part in those stories. The Superstar once slept for 3 nights straight in the platform near LIC and from where he has reached where is definitely mind boggling, but beyond all the blind fanaticism I have for him, I can’t fool myself that there was no luck involved at all. Yes, he is sharp, he had talent, he had the humility when he became successful and he is honest, but there could be a few other souls who possessed all these qualities too. But in the business side, there is surely a lot of planning, foresight and execution skills that creates a rags to riches story. Agreed that there are a few who made use of the loopholes in the system and made it big, but more often than not, it has been honest work and zeal that takes them somewhere.

Out of all that, I admire this person. He is E.Sarathbabu, the founder of FoodKing. His is a story that should be a text book lesson. And he according to be deserves Bharat Ratna. Sarath lived in a hut in a slum with his mom and 4 siblings. 2 older to him and 2 younger: His mom had a job in the Govt midday meal scheme at a salary of Rs 30/- per month ( and this was not long back where 30 buck could mean something, this is so very recent ). She supplemented the income by taking two other earning opportunities by making & selling idlies in the morning and teaching in an adult education program in the evening. And she educated all her kids. Sarath was a topper in school, but he confesses that when one does not know where the next square meal would come from, one does not think about career. All he was interested is to get a job and help mom. That he did even while he was in school by binding books and other odds & ends jobs. And then he got admission in BITS Pilani. He obviously had to borrow heavily for studying there and from there he got into IIM-A. Here is where he showed tremendous character and vision. He spurned down offers that paid 8 Lacs and decided to become an entrepreneur. He started FoodKing catering services and after initial months of losses now he makes 32 Lacs per month which is almost 4 crore turnover and he employs 200 people and that’s what he claims as his inspiration. To touch the lives of 1000 people indirectly. He has his dreams high and for a person like him, dreams wait to come true.

And he still lives in the same hut because he feels that’s where he gets the energy from and the money is anyway needed for the business. What a man he is. And he is all of 29 years old now. These people never cease to amaze me. My own CEO is a similar story and the way they practice humility is an abject lesson to everyone. After reading the book on Rajni, I thought I could have done a better job at that and was wondering who I can write about. And now I realize there is no lack of Superstars, real life ones.

I would want a book to be written about these home grown heroes and let more people read about them, particularly the kids who are in rich families but their parents were never so rich. At 67K an year, I now worry what my daughter learns. And Sarath studied with the help of kerosene lamp.

But it’s always the first generation people who go through the difficulties. After all it is only to ensure that the others don’t have to go through the same difficulties, isn’t it?

Petrol, Oh no it burns!!

There we go again. Petrol cost is up by 10% or Rs 5/- per litre. While I was at Dubai, on academic interest, I asked my colleague how much petrol costs there. And to my surprise he said, he doesn’t know and he drives one behemoth of a SUV. He nonchalantly said ‘I just fill the tank every time; I really don’t see how much a litre costs’. That would probably rank as a statement of highest order ever made that had made by stomach burn out of jealousy. Then I found out that it costs the equivalent of about Rs 16/-. And today’s news fuels the fire and some smartass has also made a slideshow in one of the portals on how much petrol costs where. And in Venezuela, it is apparently the equivalent of Rs 2.25/- per liter. Who said Petrol is highly combustible? Should only garland that person; so much is my irritation!

I can recall that when I first had some form of a fuel driven vehicle with me, the petrol cost was around Rs 6/- per litre and by the time the moped was delivered to me, it went up by a couple of bucks. Folks were teasing me about my luck even then. And in just another 3 years, the first Gulf war happened and the government in all earnestness introduced a ‘gulf component’ in the price and promised to roll it back after the war ended. The war actually brought down the International Oil Prices down, but the Indian Govt that had a administered price mechanism, retained the cost going back on its promise. After all the noise is only when the price goes up and when the people get used to it, there are no big repercussions for the government.

From there till today, the price in India has gone up 7 times and so are the international crude oil prices. In fact they have gone up even higher, so there is no use in really blaming the government now. There is only so much a Govt can subsidize. And as we keep drawing more & more of the natural reserves, we will only find the going tougher and tougher. I used to have a pet theory that there is always a balance that will be created by God at all times, so as the fuel costs go up and travel happens only on necessity, the cost of bandwidth will keep coming down and all of us have videoconferencing and other such communication facilities, without having to venture out of home. But, it is just a fantasy. Maybe in another 50 years we may be forced to eke out a living like that.

I made a quick calculation on seeing whether the standard of life has improved for me and should I qualify myself as a successful person if lifestyle is any yardstick for that. In 1990 when petrol cost 8 bucks, I had a bike that gave me 62 kmpl, so the cost of my travel per km was 12 paisa. Now at 56 bucks and a big car, I spend 7 bucks on traveling per km. 54 times more than what it used to cost me then. Has the salary gone up by 54 times? Sorry, post tax it is less than 54 times. So, in a way my salary increases have managed to beat inflation and keep me at the same level as 1990. This comparison can be made most of the commodities, though not in the same scale. It is a kind of treadmill effect that one has to keep running to remain at the same place!

Now, we will see a domino’s effect everywhere. This evening when I have to pick the rickshaw, the cost would have already gone up, so would the essentials because of transportation and mercifully it is the start of the FY when a hike is due to meet these costs. And the dreams that you wanted to pursue last year, get a long lease of life as they would still remain a dream.

So what has civilization and advancement done to us? Nano is now going to flood the streets taking a toll on the infrastructure and the fuel demand. The city officials keep introducing more one way streets, more traffic jams and thus more fuel burning. And we bring down the ozone layer along with this. And we will wage billion dollar wars for oil !

Sometimes, we look like barbarians. But if cavemen could read, they will kill me for this comparison!

She once had me

I get a message suddenly one day! It read ‘They have a 40 day old baby at their home’. The message was from Aruna and the ‘they’ were my cousin’s family. I was shocked for a minute. I haven’t heard of someone making babies in such short span as I have met these guys a month back and if she was pregnant, that would have been the most secretive pregnancy ever. And I started thinking whether they have adopted a kid. Anyway the suspense was short lived as I could not hold back for long and I enquired.

It was a pup. I kinda knew that my cousin had shifted to an individual house from his apartment as his daughter wanted a pup, but could not make the connect when I got the message. Then he called. The call lasted for about 20 minutes and we were two dads talking about child rearing. And while I was talking I realized how much I was an instinctive parent, albeit for dogs.

I had one! Or like the Beatles sang "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me". Gabriela was my life. She was at home even before our first daughter was born and did we dote on her? Gaby was a selectively intelligent girl. Unlike others of its ilk, it never used to display wanton behavior, rudeness or courage even. She was the most scared dog in the Universe after Scooby Doo. She will run behind me if there was a noise in home. But she was so doting on us too. She treated my first daughter as if she was her own and she dutifully traveled to all places my work took me, without whining one bit. After a terrible first experience of a break van travel when an infested tick bit her and we almost lost her, it was always a first class coupe or by road in the car. She was so very fond of car travel, that when it is time for bath and she instinctively realizes and crawls under the bed the only thing that can bring her out was the sound of the car keys dangling.

She never learnt to eat rice all her life, so she was on a diet of Nestum the baby rice food. She started off on Farex and graduated to Nestum. It was always first on the provision list we drew up every month. Maybe the shop keeper was wondering whether we had a baby factory. She had a peculiar mannerism of lifting both her front legs and jump with her head rotating. Used to very funny sight! Never once she will walk into the kitchen and if she was hungry, she will promptly stand outside the door salivating. She loved us more than her own kids. In the 4th day of delivery, she dumped all the pups and crawled under our bed ignoring the pleading sounds of her kids. Got into anxiety when my second daughter was born, because by then she was old! Would never eat for a couple of days if we went out of town!

I told my cousin life will never be the same after a dog. And it is absolutely true. Maybe I should have added ‘Life will never be the same after the first dog’. Because when Gaby died, it was huge blow for me. I was traveling and came all the way back home for her burial and returned. My sister, who had one with her, suddenly stopped talking with people when hers died. We tried having dogs again, but they were dogs, cute on their own right, but never Gaby. After 5 years of her death, words about her flow without difficulty whenever I think about her.

Felt like posting the blog below as an eulogy to her again

http://tsganth.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/gabriela.htm

Blood

Four blogs half-written, so many things running inside the head, but nothing finds completion. Anything I look at, there is some kind of emotion that rushes out , be it the Aarushi murder or the debates that ensue about how stressed children are because of that, IPL, Mallya, SRK, scams and then my own Dubai experience, all of them together have plenty to write about. But my own rule that I will never resort to chronicling just for the heck of Blogging prevented me from writing anything.

And one big source for my blogs was the offbeat news that I read, which I don’t see a lot these days. And posts about my daughters and every B Day that brings up warm memories about that bundle of joy that has transformed itself into a big girl have been done enough. And so are blogs that were written complaining about lack of ideas and a block that has appeared from nowhere. So, its literally quitting time for a while! Hang up the boots and just watch things around me without professing opinion about all of them.

But one guy here and another guy there promptly send reminders saying it has been a while since I wrote anything at all. Actually they are right. It’s been a while since I wrote even a cheque. Even my fellow bloggers have kinda dried up. Nair was blogging as if the world was coming to end the next day but now he stopped, Sid apparently is concentrating on work, and Manoj is recovering from the Dubai hangover.

But there was just this small thing; a sight that could have been missed by the thousands of people yelling around has made me start this rambling again. I was in the IPL match at Chepauk between the Super Kings and the Royals. I went to the match with some trepidation. I was eagerly backing the Super Kings, but the way those guys were playing was getting a bit tiresome and on the other hand, there was this real Super Hero in Shane Warne whom I would cheer for anytime, even if he was bowling against the Indian team.

Now Shane is the tabloid’s favorite whipping boy as much as he is a poster boy. I always used to wonder how on earth they land up with snaps of him partially nude and in bed with hookers. And his lurid text messages and his incorrigible womanizing nature that reminds me of the character in the comic ‘Monty Python’ that says ‘Man has two major organs, brain and penis, but only blood enough to run one at a time’. Shane epitomizes this conflict or the apparent lack of enough blood. But then it appears that he has to hold the ball ( pun intended ) for us to see his genius.

Maybe India being India, a straitlaced society which buries controversies of this nature under the carpet, our hero is yet to get stuck into one, though he has already smoked in a place where he was not supposed to and drawn the ire of few. Or he was really using all his blood into leading the side so admirably!

The sight that I was mentioning was about the short practice session in between innings on that game. He quickly walked out with his boys, planted a couple of single stump and placed a few balls in different lengths and was seen asking the bowlers to hit at those lengths. And at the end of the session, while everyone was getting back to the dugout, he diligently went to pick an old ball that was discarded at a distance by his teammates. A guy who has around 1000 international wickets, enough and more fame and one who would be worshipped literally wanted to gather that single ball too. And that is dedication. It’s not easy to see one of our icons doing this. How much ever one may love Dhoni, I can see a perceptible difference in his body language post Australia tour and he talks and walks arrogant. He made Dada wait for the toss and someone saw that as giving back to Dada forgetting that by the time Dhoni could walk, Dada was belting tons of runs.

But Shane was absolutely humble. Makes me think, what has a man’s habit and carelessness got to do with his persona. Why are we so keen in knowing what messages Shane sends instead of only bothering about what kind of deliveries he sends? Is it our lower self–esteem that makes us look at the flaws of a person instead of plainly enjoying the genius? Why is there an association always about what a man does and what he is? And as if we were in those positions we would behave differently! His team was clueless without him yesterday, looking up to the other Shane even for a standard field changing between the left & right hand batsmen. If a person could command such awe and respect from people around him, I guess we have no business to sit and comment from a distance.

For now, I wish Warne all the best for the semifinals and of course a bit more blood!

Feel Guilty

I had been giving a lot of thought on how much of stress and responsibilities people take these days. While it looks like a fairy tale run to land in a good job, earn lots of money, pursue dreams on getting themselves a nice automobile, home, be with the friends during their hard times and fun times, suddenly it is all too much to handle. And in a way unnecessary too!

Life those days was far simpler. The urge to excel in all formats of life is creating undue pressure on the system. Suddenly you wake up one day to realize that all this running is for nothing. Reminds me of a small story! There is this lazy bum who doesn’t do a thing in life, always resting under a tree and eat whatever comes his way. One guy who thinks that he should put some sense into this bum, asks him why he is wasting time! The bum replies by asking what the other guy was doing. He explained that he spends his life with a great career, earns doodles of money and he is working hard towards settling in his life early. The bum continues his questioning by asking what he intends to do when he settles, the career guy says that he will rest and be happy. The bum then says, that’s what he was doing already!

One big chase you have in life caring about folks, yourself, and all this is for to get rid of every single worry one day. I am certain that 90 out of 100 people will talk about their dream retirement. If that’s what the point is, why have all the worries now? Why can’t we simply throw in the towel and say I will create the retirement that I want right now? No not by becoming a bum, but by having some clarity of what we will bother about and what we would not! I am thinking of my own case. The past 15 days has been hectic, floating between one meeting to another, one city to another, throw in an odd ‘out of country’ visit and as if to optimize the foreign trip, sleeping just about 4 hours a day and then come back with a lot of goodies only to remember that you have actually forgotten many folks to whom you could have bought stuff. And only to realize that your office and your country was still running while you were away and you have so much backlog to catch up with before the next tour starts. One day I yearn for when I can sleep without having a thought of what I should be doing the next day.

And all this urgency and pressure doesn’t give too much of happiness either, because there are still millions of things that are left undone. Kids have their summer holidays and they want to be freaking out, whereas I am already freaked out. Mom is about 2 km away and the prospect of driving to meet her is an ordeal, leave alone telling the stories of how your life has shaped up in the last week. In midst of all this, your folks whom you never knew that they existed, who in peaceful times would not have spared a thought about you, suddenly have some idea about you should conduct yourself. A novel which was running at breakneck speed is not being touched by me now. The guitar has become dusty. Movies unseen! These are things I used to think as something that gives happiness and for that there is no energy, just because every bit of energy is spent of things that I don’t want to do.

I don’t understand why this happens? While being branded as selfish, what is that one selfish thing one does for himself or herself? Come to think of it, it never occurred to me that I should buy stuff for me when I was abroad. Just as a memento, bought a sleeveless T shirt! Looks like we are simply incapable of being selfish, how much ever we would like to be! We fashion our lives not as what one is, but as what one is to others?! What are you as a husband, father, boss, subordinate, son, friend, sibling etc is what is appraised. Not just by others, but yourself too! We are so entangled in mire of relationships that we judge ourselves through that role alone. Why feel guilty if you can’t go to office, if you can’t take folks out, if you don’t want to entertain guests, if you can’t say yes to your mom?? While in this process we forget an essential person to feel guilty about which is you!

Why aren’t we thinking that we give a raw deal to ourselves? Why aren’t we feeling guilty that the body & mind that does running and playing roles is not being considered? Why is it a shame if we indulge ourselves?

Folks, I tell you, better start feeling guilty. Towards you and for what you are not doing to you!

Watch your Crotch

Can you believe this? A guy stole 101 vials of sperms from a lab and tried to sell it to a doctor for 25000 bucks! Don’t know where we are heading to? No, I am not bothered about loss of values, ‘look what people steal’ blah blah. The degeneration in terms of brain is what bothers me. You need money, you can’t make it yourself, you want to steal, and it is your problem. But why sell it for such a low sum? And the worse is that, the doctor tipped off the police because he felt he was being overcharged!!!

From human trafficking to baby thefts we have come a long way. Now steal them young!!! Maybe in future, we will have different rates for different sperms. I suppose atleast mine sells at a good rate. Will they then start kidnapping males, because it is easy to steal the source itself? Imagine what will happen if someone abducts you and in a gun point demand that you deliver sperm! My guess is that you won’t be able to. Unless Sushmita Sen or Aishwarya Rai happens to be the abductor. If that’s the case, you won’t think twice isn’t it? I will actually look forward for the kidnapping and get mighty upset if I am not kidnapped. Will probably haggle that you are the best in the business and why you need to be chosen over the other prospective kidnapee! Maybe then cite your track record on why you are the best choice and how many times you were kidnapped before and you have performed up to expectations. And even quote some significant achievements.

Anyway, these bums do not seem to appear so intelligent. They will always break banks, sperm banks I meant. Should appreciate their honesty in a way! They have not caused anyone any harm. Worked hard to earn their money by stealing sperm and may well have created a new industry, ‘Sperm for Sale’! Then like blood banks being frequented by the donors, we may even see people hanging out in front of fertility clinics selling their wares. But there are many dangers associated with this sperm stealing profession. Assuming this guy has sold successfully, being at Aurangabad he would have attracted the ire of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray. Because no one can confirm that they are Maratha sperms. Imagine the dilution of Great Maratha identity and the calamity that ensues for this country. Maybe they should start labeling the vials, classified as per religion, caste, region etc. Only 20% of the sperms stolen should be non-Maratha ones etc could come later.

I am dreading to imagine what all can happen because of this silly theft. Like the police asking you to keep your sperms safe, or boards in suburban trains saying ‘Watch your crotch’, it can go on and on.

As of now let me anyway be safe!!!

Limping Business

By this time, all of you with your neighbors and their dogs know about the famous surgery that I had a month back. Post surgery period has been a pain. Some serious pain!

Because when you walk around with the braces the story goes beyond traditional audience. Everyone who recognizes you as a human form asks you what happened. I dutifully narrate the story and the second part of the story gets more reception and audience. Because that involves titanium screws! I have by now narrated the story to a million people and the auto drivers in the stand near my office are now equipped enough to conduct their own surgery in case the auto meets with an accident. I remember seeing a slogan in one such rickshaw that ‘free surgery, if they crash the auto’.

Just think of this sequence of narration.

• In 1990, I fell down from a bike in the thick of the night because I believed that I was an owl or a bat and in reality I happened to be a human being.
• There is no fracture but just a swelling because fracture makes the knee looks like a Halloween pumpkin in the next nanosecond.
• I was not aware that it is a ligament tear because I was also one of those ignorant folks who thought muscle & bone are one and the same.
• I proceeded to start playing when the swelling came down because I always wanted to be on the field and cricket happens to be my passion for which I will sell my estate with all the loans.
• And I managed to fracture the leg because, I simply was bored having two proper legs.
• And I repeated the feat 2 years later because boredom can hit anytime.
• I believed that the ligament tear repairs itself because any damn thing in the body is supposed to do that.
• And people warned me about not opening the knee, because the people I talk about are medical representatives who go through 3 week training and believe that they are better than doctors.
• I lived with this problem surfacing every now and then , but I thought you were still a hero because no one seemed to think of me so.
• Then one day I had this mega fall that resulted in tearing all the ligaments in the knee along with the neighbors’.
• I decided to go for the surgery because now orthoscopy is not half as bad as open knee surgery and the orthopaedician needed a living.
• They graft and reconstruct, but leave a couple of screws because the doctor is in a hurry for a date with this paramour.
• And I have to take rest for 6 weeks in all because I hate going to office.
• But I am also one restless character who tried to escape my mother’s womb in 6 months, so I am back in office earlier than scheduled.
• Yes it pains like hell because my knee forgot how to bend and I am supposed to keep altering the posture frequently because otherwise you will start thinking why can’t I be regular to office.
• No, there is no issue going closer to large magnets because of those screws.
• Yes I would make a spectacle of myself in the airport security with the metal detector but then they are smart these days and despite the beep they know I can’t bomb as well as I fart.
• Should all be well in another 3 weeks and I hope so, because it is so damn tough acting like a cripple for more than 6 weeks.

Ok this is what I tell to a million people everyday. And that’s what has prompted me to do something. I am sick and tired of this narration and I have decided to make a documentary movie about this whole episode depicting real life incidents. This movie is going to be played continuously wherever I am, or maybe I will decide to have more prints than a Rajni movie so that I can distribute effectively and quell all the doubts in a single day and continue my attempt to walk like a normal human being.

The only saving grace is that the guys in the team seem to work harder and smarter when I am not around to advice. But my boss threatens to break the other knee as business is limping when I stopped.

Just Chill

Yes, it is a forward, can't help but posting it

• Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed.Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver." -- Jack Handy
• An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. -- Ernest Hemingway
• I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning,that's as good as they're going to feel all day.--Frank Sinatra
• The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.--William Butler Yeats
• Reality is an illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol. --Anonymous
• When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. --Henny Youngman
• Life is a waste of time, time is a waste of life, so get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life. -- Michelle Mastrolacasa
• 24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?--Stephen Wright
• When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit nosin, we go toheaven.Sooooo,let's all get drunk and go to heaven!-- Brian O'Rourke
• Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. -- Dave Barry
• The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.--Humphrey Bogart
• Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. --Dave Barry

Hundredth Monkey

I have always been amazed whenever I think about 1977 when Indira Gandhi was ousted from power. From 75 to 77, the Gandhis ruled the country like royal power and what they wrote was rule and what they said was dictum. But my surprise is not about the power that they wielded at that time. It was about the way they were made to lose it.

There are accounts that the emergency period in India had its own share of good things. The Babus were at office sharp in time and they feared going to tea leaving their umbrellas back. The government machinery moved in an unknown speed and prompted a few to say that India is still not matured enough to be a democracy yet and a benevolent dictatorship will what suit India. Did they open their mouth too soon? Appeared to be so! A bunch of geriatrics who had experienced British imprisonment, created a movement and how? To the extent of a rookie defeating Mrs. Gandhi in her own fort! It is a different story that old men were plainly old and not wise. Within 3 years their personal agenda overtook the cause of common enemy and they lost power.

But the story is about the movement they created. India is a not a place where we can claim that we have a literate franchise. There are still some pockets in the country that believes that Mrs. Gandhi and MGR are alive. If that is for the uneducated, I saw a question in a magazine yesterday that asked ‘where is osho?’ and these guys can supposedly read. To rally around such a bunch is not an easy task. But they did that.

It brings the point about the ‘Hundredth Monkey’ phenomenon. It refers to a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when an allegedly "critical mass" point is reached. This was initially proposed by a scientist called Dr Lyall Watson in his book Lifetide. This is in the same lines as the ‘Tipping Point’. A very interesting observation made by him watching the Japanese monkey ‘Mucaca Fuscata’ that washed the sweet potatoes before eating and how it spread across islands at a particular point.

I tend to subscribe this theory. Based on our own internal tipping point moments! Well, internally it is argument that happens continuously about the merits and demerits, but I believe when a particular decision is taken it is more about that moment than the rationale that drives it. Because the rationale was always present. We needed that time to arrive to accept the rationale. Still it is a marvel that this can be communicated outside when it comes to movements like what JP Narayan started.

Sometimes it appears that you just stay still thinking and doing what you want to and what is supposed to happen will eventually happen. The tipping point is not something you define. Looks like Fatalism is true after all. But then, my previous sentence can never be wrong if fatalism is true. After all, fatalism rejects bivalence of sentences. : )

Globalisation & it's ill effects

Let me warn you upfront. Just don’t get fooled by the title.

Dichotomy exists! There is no doubt about that. As a dad of two daughters ( of course one is too little to cause worries but I might be a tad early in saying this ) , you always start wondering who calls home and what transpires in that conversation which happens at a sound even grasshoppers famed for their ears can’t listen. But then deep in your mind you know that you were doing the same thing when you were young. Since phones weren’t there when you were young, it was standing in street corners for a fleeting glance which moves away faster than Mach 3 speed. But now you are bugged.

The elder one will be 14 in a couple of months. And already looking like an adult girl. And starting from a boy who is shorter than my car door who waves good bye religiously every day after school to a guy who has the voice of a girl, there are plenty. One day when I went to pick my daughter up from school, I saw her waving back to vacuum. I was mighty worried thinking that she has started seeing ghosts and not only that; she is also friendly with them. When I was thinking about the caspers of the world, I accidentally peeped out and saw this ‘world’s smallest boy’. He was shorter than the car window and it was he who my daughter was waving to. And mind you she is 5’ 3”!! While I was relieved that it wasn’t a supernatural issue, this smallest boy still remains to be a mystery to me. He can’t even be seen and at that age when we were quite tall we were dying to be seen.

Anyway, there are other characters too in the plot. For almost about a month, I was passing on calls to my daughter from a particular caller thinking it was one of my daughter’s girl friends. And later I realized that this boy talks like a girl. My criminal mind says that he fakes it to get past me and then speak with my daughter like Amitabh Bacchan. And then there is a Sardar! He apparently is an excited electron and gets kicked around by everyone and gives it back too. Adds a comedy value to the class, and fortunately he doesn’t have my home number yet. Though small in size, since my general knowledge suggests that sardars will grow to the size of earth movers, there is a bit of concern. As a dad & ex felon, you convince yourself that this is all part of the game and you are anyway there and sardars might not grow overnight.

But do you think your problem stops there? This is the age of globalization. The world has shrunk into what they fondly call as a global village and the sub prime loans of USA hits your sensex. Do you think the globalization effects stop with economy? Wrong mate, you are terribly wrong.

My younger daughter goes to an International School and her boy friend is called Jong Ming Park. He is a Korean boy. The guy who religiously gives Dora stickers to my daughter! And there is Sonji Wan who luckily is pronounced a girl. I anyway could not find out, but I am not prepared to think guys at Senior KG can go to that level to masquerade themselves as girls. I am not that much of a skeptic. It is plainly a Korean problem. I am thinking seriously about putting her in an Indian school before we start a world war. And my general knowledge could be good about Sardars, but I am not that good in Korea. Plus, the possible influx of many other nationalities with the government going out of the way to woo foreign investments!!

Anyway, I haven’t got into a guilt trip that if only I had been a nice guy ( even though I was taller than a car ) I can breathe easy now. No, it’s never that way. Atleast I had my share of fun young.

Grave Gravity

I am a waging a battle these days! All alone and none of existing strengths and skills would stand me in good stead. And the army of well wishers and friends that I have can do nothing about it either.

This guitar thing was a dream. The image of faded jeans with a guitar in hand and playing it like Jimi Hendrix is what perfect fantasy is made of. And if you didn’t have one like that, they are already searching for you in mental health institutes. Well, I am not one of the fugitives. I had this fantasy even before I had I grew hair in my chin. But then, fantasy is one thing, making it happen is another thing. Sometimes it was a distant dream to even think that it might happen.

Then I made it happen. The fantasy almost came true. To be precise it came 66.66% true. I bought a guitar and faded jeans. After all this is not an appraisal. There is no weightage associated with this. So 2 out of 3 is 66.66% anyway. The only thing that didn’t happen was the Jimi Hendrix part. The first guitar I bought served me right in the first two, so I carried it around with me to parties and somebody else would play that. And it broke one day. I have already written about my suspicion of that being a suicide by the guitar.

After 2 long years, I managed to find a master who would teach me at home and was I delirious? It is a different thing altogether that the string broke on the first day. I don’t believe in bad omens. For that matter I didn’t even think of that as a warning the Goddess of Music. I restrung it and bought another one and also got gifted another ‘out of the world’ guitar. The problem started when I had to learn.

The master insisted on carnatic music. I was very thrilled. And I thought Prasanna is an easier thing to emulate than Hendrix. And in carnatic they start with a simple lesson of Sa Pa Sa. Can’t really explain the nuances! You sing these 3 swara’s up & down if you really want to do something meaningful in carnatic. And after all this drama, I can sing that while going up, but I miss the Pa when I come down.

That is some serious gravity problem. It kind of becomes a free fall. I am simply unable to reproduce even such an elementary stuff. And that dashes my hope about me being anything in music. You may ask why I am bugged, after all I play the guitar and I am not going to sing. But then who knows. I haven’t shown how I play that to anyone who knows music. What if they find out I do similar mistakes in that too?

I have some serious thoughts. I am convinced that this has got something to do with gravity. So, I am going to stand in a pendulum type device when I play and some one else will turn me upside down when it is the turn of coming back. I am approaching MGM and other theme parks to get that kind of device built for me. Alternatively, I can consider settling down in Moon, where they don’t have such silly gravity issues.

After all, in the Moon there are no living things and what I create is what would be music. But if guys in NASA pick something up with their snoop satellites and you still suffer from my music, please remember one thing. Gravity is earth’s problem and just don’t blame me.

Long Live Shobha

She is an amazing woman. Who I rate as the one of the sexiest in the country! And this could be an affront for her, for she is more known for her candid writing, outspoken nature, being an iconoclast and everything what is a traditional Indian woman is not. Haven’t thought of her writing greatly, but what she stands for and how she can bravely say that, in a most backward nation when it comes to women, is a lesson for many. Despite our glorification of women as Shakthi, we keep them where the Goddesses of the country are kept. A dark and a dirty enclosure expecting divinity but by staying as a stone! We managed to chase Taslima out of the country because the country is run by pseudo secularists and the government just doesn’t have balls. Given this context and state of affairs, being Shobha De is an achievement unto itself.

And she turned 60 this year! I am sure she would not mind it when I say that the beauty of her self exudes in her looks too. As if, she dares nature against aging, as she had always dared many an opponent in thoughts and her views. And as the old joke goes, she lives with her husband and 6 children, 2 each from previous marriages of her and her husband and 2 of their own.

Long Live Shobha and the tribe you built.

Anger

Oxford dictionary defines anger as ‘a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure or hostility’ and the synonyms for the word are acrimony, animosity, annoyance, antagonism, blood of a bitch, blow up, cat fit, chagrin, choler, conniption, dander, disapprobation, displeasure, distemper, enmity, exasperation, fury, gall, hatred, huff, ill humor, ill temper, impatience, indignation, infuriation, irascibility, ire, irritability, irritation, mad, miff, outrage, passion, peevishness, pet, petulance, pique, rage, rankling, resentment, slow burn, sore, stew, storm, tantrum, temper, tiff, umbrage, vexation, violence.

My guess is that currently I have all the synonyms put together. I am in such a rage. If the one word ‘rage’ can explain my state of feeling! And worse is that I don’t know why am I angry and what I am angry at! At this precise moment, I think there is nothing good that happens on earth. Or atleast I am not around in the place where good happens! And I am sick and tired of cheating myself looking at all the positives and give myself lollipops to restrain myself from screaming my guts out.

Maybe there is one trigger that makes me angry at everything I come across, but I am yet to find that trigger. Whatever I come across, there is imperfection that hits me straight in my face. At workplace, sometimes I feel I am in kindergarten class, looking at guys with thick moustaches complaining about the pinching of the guy next, or they go around pinching everyone. Some of them religiously leave behind their brains and get very uncomfortable if I carry mine around with me. My driver instead of waiting on my daughter in her class takes my car that gives lesser mileage than a space shuttle to see his mother. Whatever money I seemed to earn seems to vanish in thin air. All friends who call have a sob story to tell. There are assholes who seem to happily live in earth with no attempt whatsoever to be fair and get their way with absolute meanness and selfishness. The first word anyone seems to speak is a lie. The house seems to be a direct descendant of Augean stables and I am in search of a Hercules. Small good things that happen are often succeeded by awful stuff. All the books that I read seem to have the same message and however hard I try to play the guitar it sounds unpalatably the same. People seem to be dying like it is World War II. This list can keep going on. But I feel depressed if I read it myself.

And there is copious amount of advice on how I should be looking at the world and replace such thoughts with positive ones. There is someone who tells me that I breathe in a particular fashion, I am going to feel on the top of the world. And since then, breathing has become one more task that I do. If I dig deep or think silently, I may draw up my reserves and create a list of good things also. But then it is an effort. I don’t know why it should be one.

More than anything else, if all of us are going to sit and think the positive ones, ignoring the ugly ones, who will teach the bad guys a lesson? Isn’t it time that you simply stand up and go give a few whacks to everyone who pollutes the earth with their behavior?

I really want to. But whenever I think so, two beautiful faces flash across my mind and I stop myself from doing something crazy. As long as these daughters of mine move around the house like a pantomime, guess I am going to be in control.

Cheers to Beer

At last some reason to cheer!! My belief that the world is not devoid of good guys completely has been vindicated. While there are more doomsayers in number, once in a while you see a bunch of guys who are like the three wise men of Bible, carrying good news. And when there are universities that do research about the certain destruction of earth some 6.5 billion years later, there is one research that has happened in the last decade silently and has come up with astonishing findings. I am tempted to doff my hat to them, but I don’t have a hat on my head. These guys would be in my dinner invitee list anytime and I would probably spend a major part of my earnings in constructing a shrine to the guys who were involved in this research.

OK, enough of the preamble! The title of the article I read today is ‘Eight Healthy Reasons to drink Beer’. Now you know why ranted and raved this much. The article goes on and on about how beer is so good for health and apparently it minimizes all kinds of illnesses starting from a stroke to diabetes. I guess we need to give more grant to these guys and am sure they will find out that beer is the cure for AIDS. I am cursing myself now for drinking water all the time. And that too knowingly that I can catch a bacterial infection, the moment I sip water that is not from Coke or Pepsi. What a fool I must have been? On the contrary, beer does everything good. It apparently gives brain a boost also! No wonder I am so very intelligent! The beers I drink works all the time on boosting my brain. I now know that for sure! They say that beer minimizes the risk of cardiac arrest, men who drink for 120 to 365 days a year have 20% lower cardiovascular death rate than others. I will sound very biased if I reproduce the article faithfully, so I am practicing restraint here.

And all this is apart from the regular reasons of feeling good, loose tongue, shamelessly making an ass of oneself, delusions of being a singer, thirst quenching, and excuse for having fun at the drop of the hat and so on.

Now I cannot help but laugh. I don’t know why I am doing all this substantiation. One should just indulge in beer. Period.

Death be Damned

It has been a season of deaths. Sometimes it happens that way. 4 years back, I had to contend with deaths of close ones back to back. As if it happened by clockwork precision. It was my closest friend & colleague in January and my ex boss the next month and my dog ( which I hate to call so, but calling it first daughter in this context is so very painful ) in March.

Now it kind of repeats! It started off with Sujatha. And now on a single day Raghuvaran and Arthur C Clarke! The first one was apparently 60. Who knew that? For me when I was 22, he appeared as if he was my contemporary. Much like Shah Rukh ( with whom he even shared a resemblance & of course with Benecio Del Toro ) he started in an amazing TV serial and all of us went around shaving our moustache trying to look like him and ended looking like monkeys. Later he understood Tamizh cinema so very well that he gave necessary doses of overacting in popular movies and went along silently with awesome performances in real good movies. He was in constant search of something starting from liquor, drugs, great love, guitar, divorce and at last spirituality. Just as I was thinking he made it somehow, he just walked off into death.

Arthur C Clarke was another guy! He created that interest in me for sci-fi unlike the others in the world who swore by Asimov. And later moved over to explore the sea, when he candidly realized that there is 3/4th of earth that is still unexplored and he had no business imagining about space. But his story about the notice to destroy Earth by superior aliens to build an inter-galactic highway smartly juxtaposed with our officials doing the same thing for constructing a flyover lives in my heart.

Certain guys really don’t die. They just cease to exist for you to believe that they did.

My homage to these two great entertainers is an ode that follows.


It has this uncanny knack
Of hitting you with shock

Long hands that can reach anywhere
Pauper or king you go nowhere

Makes you think how much you miss
Just when you are sunk in bliss

You dismiss it as no big deal
But bites you with astonishing zeal

You never sit and think about it
But it’s never far, this exit

You think you are racing ahead
Isn’t it always to meet it head to head?

It’s all pervading and powerful
But haven’t it always been sleightful?

Death let it be damned to hell
You just want to yell

When it takes away loved ones
Letting you grieve in tons

Atavistic Regression

I think being a man in today’s world is a challenge. A challenge that is relished by men who can stand up and get counted and something that is dreaded by men who belong to a different century! Plenty has been written about how the brains are wired differently and how men and women differ. Going by these articles one is tempted to accept traditional roles and think that men go out to bring food and women stay back to procreate, rear children and socialize within the community.

But think of it this way, this is true as long as you stick to the roles. But the issue starts when women are increasingly expected to don male roles outside and also the women role inside the house. It has always been difficult for people who had power in their hands to relinquish that. Very few men in history have demonstrated that capability when it comes to greater good. Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Empire when he pretty well knew that he himself would be a victim of his action. But then he knew that it was mandatory for things to move forward. So it doesn’t surprise me when men who want women to earn do not want to give up the traditional role as the figure head of the family.

But some men take it to extremes. At this point of time the only difference between men and women is that men can’t bear children. So actually it is one up on women in reality. They can do everything men can do, but men can’t. Maybe that’s what is hitting the men hard. So, they are tempted to keep women in perspective ( according to them ) by primarily seeing them as sex objects. And that thinking transcends various levels. From a highly educated senior management person to the lewd men on the streets pawing on women at new-year revelries! Men talking to subordinates about their experiences in nude bars and be shameless to ask whether they own a bikini to men who wet themselves up and down by looking at women.

They can’t bear the fact that women could be equals. If their wives can’t stand in front of them with bated breath and whispering humbleness, serving food and finding undergarments for them when they return drunk, men find it difficult to accept. But they want the money they earn for improving lifestyles. And worse is that some men still believe that women can’t survive single. True that more men will hit on women when they know they are single, but I have the theory for that. Women become single by divorce are best suited to handle the situation. First because they have experienced how bad men can be, otherwise they would have managed to stay in the marriage, second they would have survived a mean man for a long period and handling other mean guys outside when nothing at stake will be cakewalk to them.

It all boils down to Atavistic Regression. The tendency to revert to ancestral type! Whatever you are, you tend to revert to being archaic and hold on to the views fashioned by your ancestors. But strangely, I don’t think women suffer from this. They look forward. Maybe repression is an antidote to regression.

Going back to the challenge men face today, it is nothing but, about being civilized. But then it was always men who waged war and raped women of the enemies, and for them civilization is a tough ask.

Homage to Sujatha

How do you pay homage for a prolific writer who fashioned your thoughts and life in more ways than one? Maybe just attempt writing something yourself, hoping that atleast in such taxing situations, your thoughts and words would not fail you and you can manage to transfer the heaviness in the heart into words! That’s the way I feel now. When I woke up at the news of Sujatha passing away!

Generally news of death doesn’t disturb me much. I religiously read obituaries everyday as if it is an attempt to reassure that anyway people should die. When my father died, though there was a sense of loss, I didn’t manage to cry till I went back to see the empty bed. His physical absence had to be harshly reminded for understanding the loss which is hardly physical. But, now the feeling is strange. Here is a man who has lived for 73 years, and in my life I once managed a glimpse of him in a meeting and later by the good grace of my friend, had a private audience for almost an hour and came out as if I have achieved immortality status myself. The interactions have been just this. But I feel so very heavy and the loss seems to be personal. Truth is that I have interacted with him almost all my adolescent and adult life so far, maybe even more than what I did with my father.

Studying in an Anglo-Indian school where the Tamizh standards are appalling with the liberty of answering in English for Tamizh exam, my initiation to the language which is my mother tongue was pathetic. Didn’t have the current awareness that Tamizh was a great language and I would lose plenty if I didn’t know how to read and write was not much of a scary thought then. Till Sujatha happened!

From the moment I picked my first book of him and till now, the journey of amazement hasn’t stopped. Lately started collecting all his works and he had to confess to me that if I knew one of his works was not available, maybe it never was there. The obsession knew no bounds. Every single work would have been read a minimum of twice, if not more. Even if it was a half page snippet in a weekly which even he cannot remember! So much was his impact.

At this moment I pause to think what made him so special for me. Why do I feel a personal loss now, when I make light of deaths? Why this should haunt me no end and break my inertia to pick up the laptop and start typing first thing in the morning? How well do I know him? Why is it that whatever he wrote was like Veda to me? And why is that I feel that he can never be replaced, though I am certain that anyone who writes Tamizh, even just plain alphabets cannot do without his impact?

I understand that he just didn’t write. He had been a teacher all though my life. It is strange that how much you can learn by reading even plain fiction. His was always intelligent. And if distance education needed a mascot, it was him. Maybe the IGNOU’s of the world should have contracted him to write lessons. The content I have picked from him into making myself had been enormous. About 10 years back when I didn’t know the difference between a TV monitor and a Computer monitor I managed to get myself employed with an ISP. And as it is my wont, I assumed that I am a master of basic Internet in just about 3 months and lectured a couple of colleges. Well, all I had to do was pick his book on Internet and talk what he has written. Started feeling proud of being a Vaishnavite after his books on the subject! So much so that I feel that I know Mahavishnu personally now. Anything he wrote I felt there was something to be learnt in that.

His life was a lesson in terms of time management when I read about his scoffing at folks who ask him how he finds time to write. His life was a lesson in telling you how versatile one can become. His life was a lesson that constantly reminded you that whatever you maybe, you still have scope to learn. His life was a lesson that despite being a hardcore science believer, you can never speak with a certainty of an atheist. His life was a lesson in telling you that you grow young as long as you think young. In more ways than one he has been my guru. I find it strange myself to give so much credit to someone else, but I know inside that it is not a eulogy that comes in the wake of a fresh death. I am certain that I would acknowledge all of this anytime again tomorrow and in the future.

Talking of death, his best was about his own father’s death. I am sure he died a contented man in all respects, but for the yearning to read and write more. Reality sometimes makes you so cruel that you start thinking that why there are so many people who we can afford to let go live and the ones you want to live, go. There ought to be some reason! He wrote that he would want to go to hell when he dies, because he hopes to meet interesting personalities only there and he can’t stand the peace of harmony of heaven for more than an hour. But I know one thing for sure; wherever he choses to stay, that will be heaven for the rest of the folks there.

A stanza from Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality' can very much sum up my thoughts

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a newborn Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I feel kinda strange and queasy when I dwell more into this. Maybe I just drop the thoughts and pick a couple of his books and read again today.

He will continue to live.

Save the Earth

Just imagine this! You are on the verge of becoming the hottest thing in the Universe. And someone with a generous and ample butt is nudging you all the time that would eventually make you less hot! Completely baffling isn’t it?

Well that’s what is happening to Mother Earth! The guys at Sussex University are plush with funds I reckon! Someone has been giving them unlimited access to money and these guys are busy figuring out when Earth will destruct itself. Noble cause I would say! Only issue is that these guys have too much of a forethought. They are suggesting solutions for an eventual catastrophe that will occur 7.6 Billion years later. It is a different thing altogether that the Erath will become too hot anyway in a billion years and the planet will be completely inhabitable for any life form. And after that will have an inexplicable slow march towards the Sun for 6.6 billion years and commit suicide. Our friends are worried about that period. And are proposing solutions!

Thank Goodness it is not some kind of counseling to the Earth that it can’t commit suicide and really have a lengthy dialogue through a goatee bearing therapist who will dig deep into the billion year past history of Earth and find out what is that single devastating instance it had in its childhood. Or maybe try sending Bruce Willis or Will Smith to re-lay the orbit of earth with some heavy earthmovers ( or should I say spacemovers! )

Apparently there is a drag that causes Earth to start its journey towards doom. Tell me something I don’t know! Haven’t we all experienced this drag already? You meet a girl, she drags you like a moth to a flame and very very late you realize that it is doom. You are by that time anyway completely insane and in the same condition as Earth. Nothing grows in you!

So our friends suggest that we use a large asteroid to nudge away the Earth from the Sun eager to consume it. That’s where the first sentence comes in. You are trying to get hotter and someone nudges you away. In this case, it is all for good so they say. We humans are a funny lot! Always trying to redesign the grand scheme of things!

Anyway, I can sleep peacefully from now on. Because I know that the Earth won’t get destroyed. It is a different thing altogether that I have a target to meet and the month is dying is another 2 days and the destruction that would ensue is far greater.

Maybe I can give a call to the Sussex University!

Pays to Stay in Shape

Had always been convinced that taxes are fat and particularly when March arrives. But this news was appalling even for my standards. In Britain, they are proposing a ‘fat tax’!! Insurance firms are contemplating about levying a tax for obese people.

If your BMI is greater than 30, then you are dead. Well not literally, though that’s what the insurance firms seem to believe. Your premium would be up as high as 400 percent. Could have some funny impact! If you are going to be paying such a high premium, then you end up a pauper and thus have nothing to eat and automatically cure your obesity. Then what’s going to happen? Will the insurance guys reduce the premium or refund the amount? Why would they? They will be a bunch of happy guys because of the premise of you dying soon because you are obese and hence I have to pay is gone. So, they would not care much! Now look what all problems obesity causes!!

As usual I went on an exaggerated imagination trip and was wondering whether the premium will be proportional to the BMI of a person. And you may simply ask a person what is his premium and decide whether he or she is fat. For many of the worried people about whether they are over weight, they can now have a second opinion from the insurance firms. They ask you to pay normal, and then you know you aren’t fat. Invariably it appears being fat is a costly affair. You first maybe hog all the creamy and high calorie stuff from the junk food places, so you spend money. Then you go to a gym to reduce your fat or invest on exercise equipments. And later the premium also goes up. Hazardous to guess really! Some of the people who I know would probably have to take personal loans if they insist of having an insurance cover. I am looking at a possible positive point here. Are they going to be charging less if you are underweight? A thin person would then be lucky.

I was told by an insurance sales person that the last & lingering statement they leave with a reluctant buyer is ‘I am sure you do care about your family’. Now if this true, I guess the obese citizens are going to be one lot of irresponsible people!

Skills

Just how many of the skills that we acquire we manage to forget? Your guess would be that we never do, we just are a bit raw initially and then in a matter of time we get back to the fluency that we were known for. In fact it is an oft-used point that, though we don’t cycle or swim for ages, if someone throws us in the water, we will draw our reserves and manage to float.

My knee seems to have a different idea. Two weeks I had been in braces that didn’t allow the knee to bend. And when it was finally removed, my knee forgot how to bend. Mind you, I had been using it for ages and two weeks I don’t, it simply ditches me. I had been dragging my foot literally to take myself from point A to point B. And when the physio demanded that I walk as I would normally do, I forgot how I was walking. He had to demonstrate how to walk. This upsets me terribly. The physio had his explanation about the small bag of lubricant which stops performing its job once it is not used and now the joints are rickety rackety. But I am not convinced. You don’t forget how to walk.

And in your life you simply want to forget many things and you can’t, but the brain takes the liberty of forgetting essentials. This is not a welcome state. We have got to do something about this anarchy. What if it suddenly chooses to forget other essentials? Let’s say that you don’t sleep for a while and the brain decides to transfer that essential to the recycle bin, then you are in deep shit. On the contrary, you would wish that you don’t want to remember that you are married, but the brain chooses otherwise and constantly reminds you. This is complete indiscipline.

I can’t hazard the eventuality of such kind of anarchy. Maybe everything would turn out to be reverse. You forget to walk, but not to drive. You forget to eat, but not to feel hunger and so on. The physio says that it is raw and he can manage to teach walking. Maybe he will give me a license too certifying me walkable.

In a way, I feel it would be fun to see how far it can go in terms of indiscipline. I can use that excuse to put the worst of my behavior up and later claim I wasn’t in control of what I was doing. The devil in the mind is working and let me prepare a list before I forget or the brain takes over.

Soccer Balls & Knee Balls

At 42, you feel that you are at the peak of your life. You have seen all, you now have power, you have youth and your audacity can be backed up with actions and you aren’t scared of anything. You feel that you have enormous self control and the pain is never shown in your eyes unless it is extremely destabilizing. And then you break your knee. You are somebody else from that moment. You are the one who moved on your feet like a gazelle and in a TV commercial when John Abraham does a body maneuver dodging a bunch of kids off a soccer ball, your legs pain and you tell that guy, just be a little bit careful buddy.

But till it gets destabilizing you don’t accept it fully too. You would fly to all parts of the country, take 150km drives on a single day for customer calls and just look like an sorry a**hole when it is time to climb the stairs of the aircraft with your luggage. Guys who look like modeling for Rice Barn oil breeze past you, throwing a contemptuous glare at you that means ‘you youngsters’. That’s the time you decide you will fix it once and for all and agree to be on the operating table. Now that is a positive move, so you know that whatever incapacitation is, it’s just for a brief period and proceed. Being a creature of habit, you make a list of what all you want to carry to the hospital. It was almost similar to a work trip sans the formal attire and the jackets. You pack your ipod; you carry enough books for the entire stay which includes the time at the table, you carry all kinds of chargers and your bag appears as if that is being admitted for labor.

You start off warm and flirt with the sisters ( sounds like incest, but then they are younger than your daughters which makes it even more incestuous ) and make life miserable for all of them till they utter the word preparation. All of them are trained to say that in a somber voice befitting a British funeral parlor. Surprising they wear white and not black when they say that. They bring a bagful of disposable syringes ( a bag that is bigger than your pregnant one ) and place it behind you, but you know that they are intruders of your body and they outnumber the cells in your body and you start wondering how they will manage to use them all, maybe use some of them on the attendants. That’s the easiest part actually. They just make one big hole and dump everything through that.

But the prep is not about that. A guy turns up ( he is supposed to be brother, ok ! ) and tells that he wants to shave the entire hair of your body. Normally I am given to exaggeration, but this one is not, he left the hair in my head, but suggested that I remove my Frenchie ( ok even that too ! ). You are appalled, a sparse growth at your chin is surely not going to hamper a knee surgery for sure, but he is just an implementer, he just told that he was under orders from the sister to do so. Maybe the sister didn’t like the frenchie or the surgeon has a bad superstition about this. You are categorical that you would want them to reconsider that decision and if it is upheld you would rather use your Mach3 and shave rather than using the skin hair remover that he brought with him. You need to give into this, that guy does a thorough job of shaving, barring a small nick in the shin. Your earlier blood clot test suggested that your blood doesn’t bother to clot soon and you are wondering this new development would set back the surgery date by a day. And then he springs a surprise, he asks you whether you are A1 blood group, you are amazed and reply in affirmative and he casually tells that all A1’s clot late. Fine you think, you should have asked this question before nicking, my friend. But, you turn around and look at your leg and have images of Levers calling you for modeling for their skin removing products. And it sucks to see yourself plain and bald in areas you loved with hair always. The ordeal does not end there, the sister turns up and runs her hand on your leg ( mercifully only the leg ) and finds out that there are strands are hair that can’t be permitted. You beg for mercy and promise to be even smoother in the morning when the surgery is about to start, after all hair grows was your logic.

You start thinking whether we make more doctors than what you need because as of then, your life history is just known to a million doctors as they troop in and out for the interview. And at last you manage to shut yourself to get some sleep. You don’t even know whether you slept before a duty doctor wakes you up at around 4.30 am, wanting you to sign a document that bequeaths your life to them. This I know is thoughtful. I have read in crime novels that the elite special commandos always attack at this time of the day, because they apparently believe that the resistances are lowest then. You don’t give up so easily, you read them thoroughly and later regret why you did it. Because just after you read, you start thinking about your mother, childhood friends and everyone else who is not around you. And decide that the only thing you will regret is the unfinished Dave Barry book. Then you don’t sleep again. Not that you don’t want to, but remember I talked about those million doctors, they have million counterparts for the morning shift starting from that undertaker.

The anesthetist troops in and he gets annoyed because you are brushing your teeth as if you are going out on a date with him. He asks all kinds of questions which your mother would not have known about her mother and you make a honest attempt to reply each one of them. Actually he could have tried this interview for a longer time, because he was anyway making me drowsy and that’s what his mission was. He agrees to add a valium to your drugs, because by then you are anxious and all that bravado vaporizes. And the ritual starts again, the brother comes again and checks the new development in the hirsute areas and tosses a gown to you that could be the skimpiest you will ever get to wear and yet look grotesque.

Then one single shot and you know nothing. You had prepared carefully for the recovery and promised to ask the clichéd question of ‘where am I?’ and your friend who is in an officer at that hospital leaks out a question which the anesthetist would ask showing two fingers expecting your reply. The before surgery you wanted to reply that with a single finger ( you know which one ) , but nothing you remember. You are warned that in the post operative recovery period there is a chance of you blurting out state secrets and leave the nation in peril apart from the names of all your girlfriends leaving yourself in peril. But neither was a problem, as you don’t know any state secrets and you yourself have forgotten the names of your girlfriends. You wake up like a heavily made up hero in the movies and tell that you want to go home. There you go!! Training always helps. You are then touted as the best person who has ever undergone Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction. Then next you talk about the Builder meet and tease a friend. They all know that you are back. But that was a teaser. It takes enough and more time for you talk anything coherently and remember whether your daughters visited you. You are in a state of haze.

Everyone is happy barring me, because the next day the sheets are all bloody and with the leg like what you have, you start wondering what gender you are and what they cut off from you. Someone you manage to take a peep and convince yourself it is only the hair that is missing and go back to bliss. But the doctors and the paramedical have their KRA, the weightage and priority is as follows:

1) Patient should not sleep for more than 10 minutes ( while you understand the ulterior motive about checking whether you are still breathing, you think there were better methods.
2) Patient should not even feign happiness, because they then unleash a physiotherapist on you whose target is measured in the quantity of tears you shed.
3) Sisters should have prior experience in archaeology, as they would be needed to dig deeper into you for placing an IV cannula and excavate for that. ( once it comes out through your mouth and you start wondering that they could orally feed you medicines if this was the case ) and their results are in depth and size of your thrombosis.
4) The brothers on the quantity of urine you pass ( every time I topped beyond 700 ml which should be a new hospital record, though not yet recognized )

Was a fine bunch of guys who met their KRA always! But then you are used to this ritual pretty much yourself that you wake up every 10 minutes and press the buzzer and report that you are alive or hoard your piss to collect 700 ml plus and quickly cry when the physio walks in.

And after they get used to you as a victim, they quickly bored and wean off from you and that’s when you start missing them. You start realizing what all they did for you and their absence, and lack of smiles around you hits you hard and start waiting out for their arrival. You almost become a baby again and act like a puppy and wag your tail when you see one of the known faces ( not withstanding the fact that they show that you knee looks like a hardware shop and you have a lifetime supply of staples when they are removed and handed over )

And when the D day arrives ( in this case the Discharge Day ) you don’t want to go because you were so very confident about these guys and you are suddenly afraid to be alone without them.

You still wake up at 5 am, but miss the undertaker, you do your physiotherapy much easier, but cry when you realize that the therapist is not around who made a hard job pure fun and showing you birds in the marshland ), your symptoms of thrombosis fades but you smile at their attempt to find a vein in you and you know that these guys out there put you back on your feet. And you start looking forward for the review day and you start preparing another list which reads out the mementos you want to give them.

And you tell John Abraham in the TV, ‘just a couple of months buddy’, just that!!!

Capitalism vs. Communism

Bobby Fischer’s death immediately reminded me of only one thing. Ayn Rand’s ‘An Open letter to Boris Spassky’!

I can’t claim myself to be a great fan of Ayn Rand. Don’t know why, but I have found the books extremely dry. But years ago, I never had the courage to claim so, because it was fashionable to say that I read Ayn Rand and sprinkle your conversations with a few quotes from here or there. That was the time, where you felt that you need to conform to peer groups’ thoughts as a mandate. No such pressure now. In fact, being a non-conformist is more fashion now.

Having said all that, there is still one piece by her which I regard as the finest and in a way opened up my eyes towards communism. I grew up with a steady dose of communism with my brother being a party member and New Century Book house sold high quality print books at a very low cost. It was Ya Perelman’s ‘Mathematics can be fun’ that created a huge interest for Maths in me. And the Soviets were anyway claiming that all inventions of the West were done by them earlier, albeit secretly. But for a 14 year old, it was plain heroism. So, I was an ardent communist myself. If communism involved printing good books and selling at cheap cost, even today I will vote for the Communists. Anyway, one thing that changed my outlook on Soviet Russia and Communism was this Ayn Rand’s article. A chess match between a prodigal, eccentric Free world citizen and a highly organized genius of the Communist world was billed as a battle between Capitalism and Communism. Fischer won of course!

But the best that happened because of the series is this letter. Here I reprint it!



An Open Letter to Boris Spassky

Dear Comrade Spassky:

I have been watching with great interest your world chess championship match with Bobby Fischer. I am not a chess enthusiast or even a player, and know only the rudiments of the game. I am a novelist-philosopher by profession.

But I watched some of your games, reproduced play by play on television, and found them to be a fascinating demonstration of the enormous complexity of thought and planning required of a chess player--a demonstration of how many considerations he has to bear in mind, how many factors to integrate, how many contingencies to be prepared for, how far ahead to see and plan. It was obvious that you and your opponent had to have an unusual intellectual capacity.

Then I was struck by the realization that the game itself and the players' exercise of mental virtuosity are made possible by the metaphysical absolutism of the reality with which they deal. The game is ruled by the Law of Identity and its corollary, the Law of Causality. Each piece is what it is: a queen is a queen, a bishop is a bishop--and the actions each can perform are determined by it's nature: a queen can move any distance in any open line, straight or diagonal, a bishop cannot; a rook can move from one side of the board to the other, a pawn cannot; etc. Their identities and the rules of their movements are immutable--and this enables the player's mind to devise a complex, long-range strategy, so that the game depends on nothing but the power of his (and his opponent's) ingenuity.

This led me to some questions that I should like to ask you.

1.. Would you be able to play if, at a crucial moment--when, after hours of brain-wrenching effort, you had succeeded in cornering your opponent--an unknown, arbitrary power suddenly changed the rules of the game in his favor, allowing, say, his bishops to move like queens? You would not be able to continue? Yet out in the living world, this is the law of your country--and this is the condition in which your countrymen are expected, not to play, but to live.

2.. Would you be able to play if the rules of chess were updated to conform to a dialectic reality, in which opposites merge--so that, at a crucial moment, your queen turned suddenly from White to Black, becoming the queen of your opponent; and then turned Gray, belonging to both of you? You would not be able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the view of reality your countrymen are taught to accept, to absorb, and to live by.

3.. Would you be able to play if you had to play by teamwork--i.e., if you were forbidden to think or act alone and had to play not with a group of advisers, but with a team that determined your every move by vote? Since, as champion, you would be the best mind among them, how much time and effort would you have to spend persuading the team that your strategy is the best? Would you be likely to succeed? And what would you do if some pragmatist, range-of-the-moment mentalities voted to grab an opponent's knight at the price of a checkmate to you three moves later? You would not be able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the theoretical ideal of your country, and this is the method by which it proposes to deal (someday) with scientific research, industrial production, and every other kind of activity
required for man's survival.

4.. Would you be able to play if the cumbersome mechanism of teamwork were streamlined, and your moves were dictated simply by a man standing behind you, with a gun pressed to your back--a man who would not explain or argue, his gun being his only argument and sole qualification? You would not be able to start, let alone continue, playing? Yet in the living world, this is the practical policy under which men live--and die--in your country.

5.. Would you be able to play--or to enjoy the professional understanding, interest, and acclaim of an international Chess Federation--if the rules of the game were splintered, and you played by "proletarian" rules while your opponent played by "bourgeois" rules? Would you say that such "polyrulism" is more preposterous than polylogism? Yet in the living world, your country professes to seek global harmony and understanding, while proclaiming that she follows "proletarian" logic and that others follow "bourgeois" logic, or "Aryan" logic, or "third-world" logic, etc.

6.. Would you be able to play if the rules of the game remained as they are at present, with one exception: that the pawns were declared to be the most valuable and non-expendable pieces (since they may symbolize the masses) which had to be protected at the price of sacrificing the more efficacious pieces (the individuals)? You might claim a draw on the answer to this one--since it is not only your country, but the whole living world that accept this sort of rule in morality.

7.. Would you care to play, if the rules of the game remained unchanged, but the distribution of rewards were altered in accordance with egalitarian principles: if the prizes, the honors, the fame were given not to the winner, but to the loser--if wining were regarded as a symptom of selfishness, and the winner were penalized for the crime of possessing a superior intelligence, the penalty consisting in suspension for a year, in order to give others a chance? Would you and your opponent try playing not to win, but to lose? What would this do to your mind?

You do not have to answer me, Comrade. You are not free to speak or even to think of such questions--and I know the answers. No, you would not be able to play under any of the conditions listed above. It is to escape this category of phenomena that you fled into the world of chess.

Oh yes, Comrade, chess is an escape--an escape from reality. It is an "out," a kind of "make-work" for a man of higher than average intelligence who was afraid to live, but could not leave his mind unemployed and devoted it to a placebo--thus surrendering to others the living world he had rejected as too hard to understand.

Please do not take this to mean that I object to games as such: games are an important part of man's life, they provide a necessary rest, and chess may do so for men who live under the constant pressure of purposeful work. Besides, some games--such as sports contests, for instance--offer us an opportunity to see certain human skills developed to a level of perfection.

But what would you think of a world champion runner who, in real life, moved about in a wheelchair? Or of a champion high jumper who crawled about on all fours? You, the chess professionals, are taken as exponents of the most precious of human skills: intellectual power--yet that power deserts you beyond the confines of the sixty-four squares of a chessboard, leaving you confused, anxious, and helplessly unfocused. Because, you see, the chessboard is not a training ground, but a substitute for reality.

A gifted, precocious youth often finds himself bewildered by the world: it is people that he cannot understand, it is their inexplicable, contradictory, messy behavior that frightens him. The enemy he rightly senses, but does not choose to fight, is human irrationality. He withdraws, gives up, and runs, looking for some sanctuary where his mind would be appreciated--and he falls into the booby trap of chess.

You, the chess professionals, live in a special world--a safe, protected, orderly world, in which all the great, fundamental principles of existence are so firmly established and obeyed that you do not even have to be aware of them. (They are the principles involved in my seven questions.) You do not know that these principles are the preconditions of your game--and you do not have to recognize them when you encounter them, or their breach, in reality. In your world, you do not have to be concerned with them: all you have to do is think.

The process of thinking is man's basic means of survival. The pleasure of performing this process successfully--of experiencing the efficacy of one's own mind--is the most profound pleasure possible to men, and it is their deepest need, on any level of intelligence, great or small. So one can understand what attracts you to chess: you believe that you have found a world in which all irrelevant obstacles have been eliminated, and nothing matters, but the pure, triumphant exercise of your mind's powers. But have you, Comrade?

Unlike algebra, chess does not represent the abstraction--the basic pattern--of mental effort; it represents the opposite: it focuses mental effort on a set of concretes, and demands such complex calculations that a mind has no room for anything else. By creating an illusion of action and struggle, chess reduces the professional player's mind to an uncritical, unvaluing passivity toward life. Chess removes the motor of intellectual effort--the question "What for?"--and leaves a somewhat frightening phenomenon: intellectual effort devoid of purpose.

If--for any number of reasons, psychological or existential--a man comes to believe that the living world is closed to him, that he has nothing to seek or to achieve, that no action is possible, then chess becomes his antidote, the means of drugging his own rebellious mind that refuses fully to believe it and to stand still. This, Comrade, is the reason why chess has always been so popular in your country, before and since it's present regime--and why there have not been many American masters. You see, in this country, men are still free to act.

Because the rulers of your country have proclaimed this championship match to be an ideological issue, a contest between Russia and America, I am rooting for Bobby to win--and so are all of my friends. The reason why this match has aroused an unprecedented interest in our country is the longstanding frustration and indignation of the American people at your country's policy of attacks, rovocations, and hooligan insolence--and at our own government's overtolerant, overcourteous patience. There is a widespread desire in our country to see Soviet Russia beaten in any way, shape or form, and--since we are all sick and tired of the global clashes among the faceless, anonymous masses of collective--the almost medieval drama of two individual knights fighting the battle of good against evil, appeals to us symbolically. (But this, of course, is only a symbol; you are not necessarily the voluntary defender of evil--for all we know, you might be as much its victim as the rest of the world.)

Bobby Fischer's behavior, however, mars the symbolism--but it is a clear example of the clash between a chess expert's mind, and reality. This confident, disciplined, and obviously brilliant player falls to pieces when he has to deal with the real world. He throws tantrums like a child, breaks agreements, makes arbitrary demands, and indulges in the kind of whim worship one touch of which in the playing of chess would disqualify him for a high-school tournament. Thus he brings to the real world the very evil that made him escape it: irrationality. A man who is afraid to sign a letter, who fears any firm commitment, who seeks the guidance of the arbitrary edicts of a mystic sect in order to learn how to live his life--is not a great, confident mind, but a tragically helpless victim, torn by acute anxiety and, perhaps, by a sense of treason to what might have been a great potential.

But, you may wish to say, the principles of reason are not applicable beyond the limit of a chessboard, they are merely a human invention, they are impotent against the chaos outside, they have no chance in the real world. If this were true, none of us would have survived nor even been born, because the human species would have perished long ago. If, under irrational rules, like the ones I listed above, men could not even play a game, how could they live? It is not reason, but irrationality that is a human invention--or, rather, a default.

Nature (reality) is just as absolutist as chess, and her rules (laws) are just as immutable (more so)--but her rules and their applications are much, much more complex, and have to be discovered by man. And just as a man may memorize the rules of chess, but has to use his own mind in order to apply them, i.e., in order to play well--so each man has to use his own mind in order to apply the rules of nature, i.e., in order to live successfully. A long time ago, the grandmaster of all grandmasters gave us the basic principles of the method by which one discovers the rules of nature and life. His name was Aristotle.

Would you have wanted to escape into chess, if you lived in a society based on Aristotelian principles? It would be a country where the rules were objective, firm and clear, where you could use the power of your mind to its fullest extent, on any scale you wished, where you would gain rewards for your achievements, and men who chose to be irrational would not have the power to stop you nor to harm anyone but themselves. Such a social system could not be devised, you say? But it was devised, and it came close to full existence--only, the mentalities whose level was playing jacks or craps, the men with the guns and their witch doctors, did not want mankind to know it. It was called Capitalism.

But on this issue, Comrade, you may claim a draw: your country does not know the meaning of that word--and, today, most people in our country do not know it either.


Sincerely,

Ayn Rand
Sep. 11, 1972

601 not out...

I rarely feel compelled to write about an individual and eulogize about him or her. I comment on things people do, the movies I see, the books I read and the various funny episodes that punctuate my life. But I can’t help but write about this great individual.

People get important in your eyes because of what they achieve or what they stand for. K.Balachander once told that there is no one who is a self made man, because you get made by watching and learning virtues from others, maybe just not in an acknowledged manner. So, unwittingly we pick heroes and role models on whom we shape ourselves. And as I said, they should have achieved something by skill or character. But this is one gentleman whom you will hero worship because of how he did it. As it would be in the rarest of rare case, achieve something by both skill and character.

Anil Kumble is a typical Indian hero of yesteryear vintage. You don’t get many like him who is so good in what he does but only what he does, does the talking and not him. The clichéd phrase of ‘unsung hero’ is just made for him. A tall & gangly bespectacled lad who had the mindset of a paceman, but practiced spin as an art is rare. In fact we used to joke that he picks his wicket on slower ones. He is such a quiet gentleman that his achievements are not noticed so very easily. And suddenly when you wake up that he has got 600 wickets and by the time he finishes he may well be 200 wickets above the nearest Indian is no mean achievement.

But even this one would have gone unnoticed but for the great dignity he displayed as captain in the times of worst crisis. He stood up to his team mate; he uttered the immortal words as if he had a tryst with glory that said everything in a simple sentence, proved that he is a great tactician off the field by withdrawing the complaint against the opponent, pushing the ball into the court of an aggressive bunch of mediocre human beings and on top of it, when no one gave a chance to his team in a fiery wicket, chose an offensive strategy to bat first.

Strangely in this country we need poster boys who can give good sound bytes ( barring Sachin ). And the others we go at length to belittle. No one talks about Anil in the same breath as the famous spin quartet while we are willing to compare Sachin with Sunny. And everyone talked about the doctored pitches in which he was successful. Absolutely crazy, no one talks about the English & Aussie pacemen taking wickets in pitches that are suitable to their craft. But when it came to Anil, it was always a helpful track.

But Anil battles gamely as always. Read somewhere that 601 should have been an Avogadro’s number that appears only in the text books, when he started his career. Now it is against his name. But then there is nothing strange about it.

For Anil, it has always been text books. Be it in his craft or words or how he conducts himself.

As your wicket keepers always shout, Shabhash Anil Bhai Shabhash…

Buffalo Soldier

Very recently saw the movie ‘Malcolm X’. I would say it is one of the brilliant portrayals ever done by an actor. Denzel was way too good as Malcolm X. The movie has been adapted from the book ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ which was co-authored by Alex Haley.

Alex Haley later went on to become popular with his book ‘Roots’, which on hindsight I am wondering why I didn’t include in my recurrent reads. Maybe because I haven’t read it a lot of times! A couple of time maximum I guess. But it rates as one of the best I have ever read.

Starting in 1700’s with the forced abduction of a black man from Africa, it spanned 2 centuries and ended up with the author, whose roots he claimed to have traced back to. The 1700 slave ‘Kunta Kinte’ was his ancestor.

Malcolm X, Amistad and this book are fantastic productions that highlight the misery of black people. To think that the most democratic nation, most developed nation was built on slave labor is extremely unpalatable. Today America stands for freedom and wherever they see oppression, they are the first to poke their nose into. But in 19th century, a black was considered as only 3/5th of a person and women were given the right to vote only in 1920.

America has been a breeding ground for double standards all through its existence. While the Americans were busy fighting Hitler, the Ku Klux Klan was very much active with it’s anti Semitic propaganda. While it was advising South Africa, America’s own citizens were segregated economically, physically and socially. There are many African Americans who still believe that they get a raw deal. We are now taking about a possibility of a woman or a colored President there, while a much smaller country like Sri Lanka was headed by a woman much earlier. Their treatment of coloreds had been worse than many of the autocratic regimes which they oppose. A Rodney King can still happen only there. I read a book which statistically proved that there are more blacks who lost their lives fighting for America. Be it a war or a sport!

As Bob Marley sang,

Stolen from Africa, brought to America,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.

It is such a pity that many of them would not know where they came from. In a way it is cultural rapes to let generations of people lose their identity. Like they say, behind every success there are a lot of corpses.

Sidey Sydney

If you put together all the words that had been used in the last 4 days about the Sydney test, I am certain that it will be more than what was used in Mahabharata. Aussie bashing, Expert opinion on cricket, Testosterone display and effigy burning was the national pastime. Sure there was enough and more grievance and rightly so, but in a typical Indian hyped way. All of us behaved as if our womenfolk were raped!

What happened exactly? We lost a test allegedly because of bad umpiring and one of our guys got banned for a racial slur. Didn’t reduce the GDP one bit, isn’t it? But for the fact that all of us were glued to TV sets and the Internet and thereby contributed lesser to the economy! But, we would have anyway found some way to do that, like the delaying tactics of Ishant Sharma bringing two right hand gloves. We are ingenious on that count.

It is a known fact that Ponting & co is no better than schoolboys and to expect grace and sportsmanship from then is like expecting a murderer to preach peace. These guys are not brought up that way. I am told that, every block in Australia has a huge ground but you don’t hazard a guess on their prose literacy skills. Less than half of the Aussies have the skills that are required to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work. And numerical literacy is even worse. This is ABS statistics. They are more interested in sports in their life and that shows why they are such a champion side, but worst ambassadors to their country. It had been even worse in the earlier tours.

Krish Srikkanth was at his marauding best in the same Sydney test in the 1985-86 series. Gavaskar & Jimmy scored centuries too and the Aussies followed on and escaped because of rain and bad umpiring while they were at 119 for 6 in the last days needing 86 more runs to save the test. Those were the days I was still in radio commentary and if my memory serves me right, Ray Bright who was holding the other end was given not out when he was caught in slips. I maybe wrong too, but there are plenty of such incidents. Greg Chappell was out lbw only 9 times at Australia playing 102 innings. He was never given out.

But those days we always sulked in the hotel rooms and came back with the tail between our legs. Now situation is different. We have found the financial power. The same jingoistic fans who burn effigies and the ones I complain about are the ones who flock to the matches and bring about the financial power. So now they demand their pound of flesh. And in India, there are no small measures, like no one can be little pregnant. We either keep quiet completely or make the whole world notice us. Now we have hyped it so much that any decision other than what we wanted will be a volte face for the board.

Sanity says that we should have handled this after getting rid of the emotions, but then it is easier said than done. While I distance myself and talk about our boorish behavior which is taken Australian proportions now, the fact remains that I have testosterone too.

I am happy that we can make people dance to our tunes :))

Steps

In a man’s life, he does take a lot of steps. Some knowingly and some unknowingly! This is not about those steps. But again, it is about the unknowing steps. I mean the literal one. My phone is supposed to be having some features on fitness. It does some intelligent job like measuring the steps I take everyday and the calories I burn. Of course it has the same features for running, but then who runs in life. The running that you do for all kind of unnecessary things in a day to run your life is good enough.

Now this phone says I take around 2010 steps on an average in a day, but that is carrying the phone ( but at home they anyway complain that I never stay away from it ). I am wondering where I expend these steps. This is an average of 1.5 km per day. I don’t recall walking anywhere. My home to car, car to office and back! In between a few steps here & there when I get called! And there are very few people who can call me to their place. Actually it is just one person, my boss! Rest, I pick the phone and call them to my desk. This AC issue in my room sure adds a few steps for my visit to the loo, but beyond that I am unable to think. However hard I try, I am unable to account these many steps. So it is now pretty clear. The steps that I take are both useless and unnecessary.

Gives me a perspective that maybe this is true for the figurative steps also! Maybe all of us keep doing something or other, but very few of them matter anything at all. If I delve deep into finding out the actual steps, maybe I will understand that I would be using more steps because I started doing something that is not needed. In life too, maybe all the actions are in effect only reactions, for an initial action by either you or someone else. Guess the key is in finding the meaning of that first action or in this case, the first step.

To quote Bhagwan Saibaba, “Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use”

Yeah, the first step should be a positive step.

WoW

This is something that has taken the fancy of Aruna. Well WoW stands for Women on Wanderlust. These guys, rather gals arrange trips for women alone as a group and pander to the wanderlust wishes of women. She has been goading Krithi to join her and she has already vicariously traveled as far as Egypt now.

Actually it is SOS time for me in reality. On many fronts! I am tempted to find out whether there is a inner meaning for wanderlust. Is it just about visiting places far from the confines of family trappings? Is it wandering away from men in reality? Or wandering towards men in reality, albeit different men! Everyone is bit by wanderlust. Whether it is men or women, that dream is there.

I always wanted to go somewhere on my own. I was wondering what do I go away from or go towards. Maybe the first thing that hits me as a great bonus is that I don’t need to do anything that I normally do. I don’t have to plan, I don’t have to keep timings and I don’t have to look behind my shoulders to do the certain things that I normally do. My beers won’t be counted. And I can practice my belief of using beer as a thirst quencher. Then I need not be worried about what others want to do, whether the kids are hungry etc. Maybe the same stuff applies for women also. Just plainly freak out!

But let’s come back to why I call it as SOS time for me. On two fronts! SOS stands for Sisters on Shopping-lust. That’s what it will be. In fact I have a deep suspicion that it is an alien conspiracy that makes all new launches let be known to these guys exclusively. Even before a shop is conceived to be launched they will come to know of it. It is a different story that the conception itself happens only because the investor is aware of the existence of these two.

If there is 30 minutes that goes by without anything to worry, Aruna will get stressed up. And the next minute she will call Krithi. Asking her to come for a de-stressing trip! And she is always more than ready. My suspicion there is, she would be waiting in her parked car at my gate and the moment the call lands she would be there and before you say Jack Robinson, they both will be out. There is not a single shop whose inventory they don’t know. In fact they get too busy around 31st March, because for stock-taking the shop keepers need to know about the inventory situation and they can’t call anyone else but these two people.

I don’t know what they shop really. But they will keep shopping and sometimes the shopkeepers will beg them to leave because he has a home to go. This could be for themselves or for each other. Alternatively even this can happen. While they are walking in the streets, if they hear the word shopping, they will be stopping. They would probably accompany them. It could be a stranger also; they will just introduce themselves, give them all kinds of dope about where you get what and take them along. The fact that they would end up buying more while they were supposed to play guide is my own sorry story. Let us not dwell into that.

So much so that I have suggested that they can make this as a career. Like what Kamal Haasan says, if your passion is going to be your job too, then there can never be a better life. In the process they can earn some money. I would not mind if it is in kind also. Like getting the n’th pair of sandals as that day’s fee!

Alternatively, they can do one thing as a pair. Krithi can convert her own wardrobe as a shop. Because it has more inventory than the biggest textile showroom! Aruna can then take someone along there and shop. And then having made money out of the sale, they can then go out on a shopping binge themselves. Inventory gets replenished. Money is not wasted. The shopping lust is fulfilled. So many things in a single stroke!

These guys also have some mysterious planning. My daughter Teju is now almost as big as a woman. So when Krithi buys something, to kill her guilt, she shops in the pretext of buying it for Teju. But then she knows she can flick it from her whenever she wants because she can get into the clothes with ease.

Have you ever heard of any guy paying EMI favoring textile shops? Well, I am that guy. This is apart from what they can buy out of their own earnings. There is a strong rumor floating, that one of Krithi’s friends collapsed out of heart attack once because she saw her in a dress that was once seen worn by her 3 years back. It was so unlike her to repeat, so I can understand the shock of her friend. Apparently the grapevine is that Krithi is contemplating to do some construction work at her home, which is to extend the balcony into some kind of a cantilever, because she needs more storage space for her dress. As far as Aruna is concerned there is no such problem. Not because the quantity is less, it is just that she won’t be too worried on where she keeps them.

A third member of the clan is now being indoctrinated that is Teju. What it would be if not for SOS time, when you start wearing slips to office instead of vests!!!

She smells good ? Stay Away !!

It is contrary to what you would do normally, isn’t it? If you come across someone smelling very good, nice perfume and all, you tend to get attracted or sometimes even turned on. Hold on for a minute. It may not be a great idea.

A recent research has concluded that women who are depressed tend to wear a lot of perfume because they lose their sense of smell. So if there is someone who is bathed in perfume, you better stay away, lest you become the shrink for their depression.

I am just wondering about all these kind of research and always keep thinking whether the converse of the theorem is also true. If this is true, then do women who stink are vibrant in their mind? Well this is just for argument’s sake. I don’t apply real logic to such thoughts. It is just that I was wondering whether all of us would be rewind times and behave like our ancestors, going around smelling women.

Fun apart, we surely are affected by smell. In fact the same research has concluded that the people who are depressed react well to aromatherapy. A friendly smell seems to help them. Whether we want to smell good or not is one side, but surely one should not smell like a pig.

One of the hazards of working in large organizations is getting bombarded by all kinds of smell on a daily basis. I used to wonder whether certain people collect body odor as a hobby. So much so the entire cubicle will stink. If they happen to be the boss, then it is a double whammy. You get assaulted by both his verbal diarrhoea and the smell that is created by that kind of infection. There are other people who have this problem of bad breath. There was this guy at my office, who is a pain if he opens his mouth. Both because of his potent weapon of mass destruction called bad breath and his muttering in Hindi without attempting to open his mouth.

With so much education that is attempted by the commercials, I wonder why people still come to work as they walk out of a pig sty. Maybe we should quarantine such people and unleash them on the sales team when they don’t do the target, with a stern warning that they would have to come for another such meeting if they don’t buck up. Would work like magic then.

OK, if my title sounds sexist and women want to be up in arms against me, here is my suggestion to them. If its men, just stay away ( irrespective of how they smell )

Brain Again

There is something strange about the organ brain. As it is about the other organs, everyone has one. Or atleast seem to have one! But we have never complained about anyone that their breathing is crazy, walking is stupid and so on. Somehow these organs, the essential ones at that like heart, lungs, kidney etc function equally for all people. Brain alone is a standout. I can understand that if people are born differently, like some one at birth has only half a kg of brain as against 1.5kg everyone else has. But it is not so, the brain weight has always been in correct proportions in everybody.

The problem arises when they start using it. I have a fancy theory that it depends on where the brain is situated in the body. Though physically it is always under the skull, the way it functions is dependent on where it’s heart lies ( brain’s heart I meant, some stupid kind of a metaphorical statement ).

For some brain is housed in their jockey shorts. They can think nothing else but getting into the pants of others. For some it is housed inside some safe vault in the body that we don’t know about, because they never use the brain and keep it super safe. For some the brain understands only numbers, all they think is money and anything is associated with money and money only. Even their own self respect! Some people seem to have developed it well in the formative years and exhaust it when they pass out of great institutions. They walk into huge corporations and offer value added bullshit.

Some have it removable. They promptly remove it when they start from home, act stupid all the while when they are out and return to re-fix it. For some it floats in a sea of tears, they cry first and think next. For some there is an inherent fear of exhausting it, thus they never use it once and save it for a rainy day. For some it suffers from a delusion of multiplier effect. Even little thing they do, they believe it is a great thing. Some senior management people have it pretty easy. They train the brain to just say yes. One day in a meeting if I mimic the Boss’s voice and say ‘I don’t think you have brains’, they will promptly say yes.

For me I guess I have it clouded by anger. First I get angry and then start thinking. And then get angry again after building some logic. Or it is more spent on tolerating other brainless creatures. And it is already running out of space with storage of junk information that an immediate disk cleanup is warranted.

I am going to have it surgically removed and just survive with Google only!!!

Balance Sheet

I remember making a balance sheet last year on how the year went by. Mostly it was good stuff and a couple of things I would have let go by, if I had a choice. A quick check on 2007, presents a similar story. I don’t want to get into the nerves of people reading this by making them think that I get all the good things in the world and how am I so lucky. The fact is that I am a bit lucky. But claiming this too very often when I have always had my share my minor discomforts and irritations all the time is strange even to me. And people around me claim that my discomforts are because of my blowing up my own trumpet. Some voodoo stuff it could be. Not that I am believer, but why advertise all the goods seems to be a logical question!

Guess it is my penchant to show off! I tom tom every good thing that happens to me! As if I am the only lucky guy in the world. Think it is an attitude of enjoying a secret pride of my success and telling the world ‘look what I have got’. But then, isn’t everyone like that? Wanting to showcase their goodies to the world? I guess so! Few people are there who would keep bitching and moaning even if they get the best things in life. I am not like that. When as a youngster, successes are rare & few and you don’t belong to the cream, not a very studious person, never seen first rank in lifetime, whatever little opportunity you get it, you tend to show off. That’s precisely what I do.

One of my ex bosses cured me of this illness when I always kept comparing who got what. That was supposed to be at work. In life that has never bothered me. Maybe that’s the reason I think too much whatever little happens to me and blow it in such a proportion that the world thinks, everything is hunky dory with me. But the point is that many things are too ordinary and I am good advertiser. All this enlightment happens only when you realize that a family member who is 10 years younger than you has achieved more in many areas and you don’t even know about it.

OK, I have said it all, but the fact remains that 2007 happened to be one of the best years of my life.

• I found an amazing person who turned out be my best friend
  
• I quit a job of 8 years at the right time.
  
• Got into a very interesting job that paid well.
  
• I made some good investments.
  
• Folks at home had a good year too I suppose.
  
• Did all the stuff I always do like buying books, reading, writing, listening music, watching films, partying, shopping, holidaying but everything in exaggerated proportions.

On the flip side,

• As usual warranted myself a hospital visit by tearing a couple of ligaments.
  
• Right time or not, quit a job of 8 years.
  
• Worried more about the folks at work than ever.

Doesn’t change my opinion one bit! It is always more good than bad. The time that goes by seems to be better every time, but it also gives a perspective that if that is true, what comes out will be even better, because you know that the next year’s balance sheet will look similar.

Genetically programmed to win

This is what Jack Reacher says! Well Reacher is the hero of all Lee Child novels. There are some characters that remain etched in your mind. Reacher, Dirty Harry, Harry Bosch of Michael Connelly! These are guys, to use a phrase to explain them best, are characters out of a story book. Well they are in fact.

The creation of such characters I wonder would be a fantasy of the author himself who he wants to be. All these guys have a common trait. They never lose. They are loners. The girls fall for them. They are anti establishment. They know everything under the sun. They are passionate about the job. They hate the bad guys.

My interest in them is about what I said in the title. Their belief! That they will never lose. Reacher believes that he is genetically programmed to win. He says that killing is his job, albeit the bad guys. As much as a lawyer would not hesitate to see a brief and defend the client, he would kill. No compunctions whatsoever!

I wonder how many of us are like this! Honestly speaking all of us are. Reminds me of an interesting perspective I read somewhere. That all of us born winners, in other words, all of us genetically programmed to win! It starts from our genesis. There are a million sperms that get discharged during intercourse. But there is only one that succeeds in entering the egg and fertilizing it. And that is the one that made you. It had to be stronger, faster and it should have had a desire to be the first, the one that will win. So you start with an advantage. We get made out of winning genes.

But then there are only a few who actually win in the real world. I haven’t bothered much to research or list out the traits of winners. I call myself a winner. I know what I do to be one. I have no guilt, no shame and no fear. ( no fear in getting something done, the normal or the abnormal fears of escalators are very much there ). More often than not I have found that, you just have to ask what you want. Many of them give! When you ask! Problem starts only when you start thinking of what could be the answer. Well, there is always a 50% chance of success, isn’t it? They either say yes or say no. Many say yes. Starting from a normal bargain in a shop or with a vendor! Utmost they say no, they don’t get insulted or hit you for having asked. For many, it is the fear of facing the answer which possibly could be no. But then what is the problem if they no. I read in a small Udipi hotel at Mumbai which said "We do all things possible, the impossible we take a bit more time”. Obviously the hotel owner was someone who landed at Mumbai for north Karnataka with just one rupee in hand. And made it big! Why wouldn’t he?

Sometimes by asking you may even get more than what you bargain for. Because the guy at the other end could be someone who fears to say no! And he is afraid that you may get insulted at the offer he makes. So he does his best. There are plenty of positive thinking books. I never read any of them. I have found no use for them. I know what I am, then why bother someone to tell me what I am. But many find them useful. I actually pity them. You are made to win.

Just go out and win!

Armpits in Advertisements

Sometimes I wonder what these ad guys are up to!!! I saw plenty of hoardings advertising Deccan Chronicle. It showed a lithesome girl with hands lifted up, displaying her armpits. And the caption was ‘Don’t Compromise’. Of course the first two letters of the caption ‘DC’ stood for Deccan Chronicle and there were highlighted. Now tell me what this ad means? What has it got to the newspaper? And what are they asking us not to compromise? Compromising on losing opportunities to see armpits?! Where is the connection? We want to use the female body form for promoting anything and everything, starting from water pumps to pan masala.

While this is a vulgar strategy for getting eyeballs at the advertisements, the endorsement ads are even funnier. Once Sunil Gavaskar endorsed Niki Tasha kitchen range! What has he got to do with that? He was cooking centuries and not curries! But they paid him to endorse the brand which he never uses in his lifetime.

Now there is a new fad. Celebrity appearances! In a recent function at Mumbai where a deal was signed between two businesses, SRK graced the occasion and he was paid one crore for that! Beats my imagination! Why on earth, he would be there and why he has to be paid for that?

For every good commercial there are 10 silly ones. Some of them socially irresponsible too! Like the Pepsi where they used a tea boy when child labor is a crime in the country. Mercifully someone filed a PIL and they withdrew the ad. There was a time you went to saloons for seeing some pictures with cleavage, a confirmed male preserve and domain. But now, they are everywhere, even promoting the toor dhal that you use everyday.

If things don’t change much in the ensuing days, I also should start considering about displaying some deep valleys in my blog for better readership!!!

Bonobos

The only certain way I pass time when I holed up in a hotel room on tours is by watching Discovery Channel. Quite an apt name, because I tend to discover something new every time.

George Santayana told ‘A country without a memory is a country of madmen’. What would he say about the whole species that evolved to its present form when it doesn’t carry the most important memories?

I saw this program about the Bonobos, the closest cousin we have in the primate family. Apparently we lost precious time learning about the chimpanzees to know more about ourselves, when in reality the Bonobos are even closer to us as a species. They are a matriarchal society and the group is lead by the females. The kids hang around the mom’s and the males every now and then display some empty bravado and get chased promptly. The females of the species are the only one in the animal kingdom that is sexually active throughout the year. Maybe that explains their being a matriarchal society. The females know that they hold the key, all through their lives. And the babies who lose their mom and orphaned are ostracized from the community, though the other kids continue to play with the orphan. But not without complications! Any issue between the kids, the mother invariably punishes the orphan kid. And the poor orphan kid writhes in pain with no one to take care and the kids that played with it on the first place and became the reason for its punishment are the only ones that bother. They try to pacify the orphan and bring it back to normal mood. It was so very touching to see that. And at the same time, the adults do care about smaller animals of other species when they get hurt. They take them under their care and ensure that they set them alright.

These are the memories I mentioned that we forget. In the past, we have done such mistakes of interfering in the quarrels of children and in the process get difference of opinions amongst adults, while the children forget that in a minute and start playing. We should have held on to that memory and made ourselves as an evolved species in the literal sense. The community living, the power of women in the community, the care that we showed to other living things, every little thing like this, we have forgotten! Now today because of the civil war in the jungles of Africa, we are even making our closest cousins extinct for their meat.

And this we call as evolution!!!

Let it be

This one happens to be my most favorite song of all time. Yes I am devoted to the Beatles, but this one is a peach. For many reasons, one is Paul’s smoky voice but the clincher of a reason is the lyrics and the ruckus they created when they made the song. John once said that they were more popular than the Jesus Christ. They were confirmed agnosts and when Paul wrote about Mother Mary whispering words of wisdom in his times of trouble, it was considered as a path breaking deviation in their thought process. But Paul later told the world that he wrote about his mother who was named Mary who once appeared in his dream to give a piece of advice. This is the trivia about the song. But I dig what it stands for.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Yeah there will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be
Ah let it be, yeah let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be
And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music,
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Yeah let it be, let it be
Let it be, yeah let it be
Oh there will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, yeah let it be
Oh there will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Ah let it be, yeah let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Though on a cursory look it appears as a disturbed man’s hopeful prayer, I think there is more to it. Many of the issues in our life, if left undisturbed and we can tell ourselves ‘Let it be’ get sorted by themselves is what I believe. But belief is one thing and practice is another thing. Certain things which doesn’t matter at all when time passes tend to occupy most part of our thoughts today. We are too worried about ‘what if’s?’ everyday. We tend to forget that the light still shines on us even when the night is cloudy. And there is someone who is always standing right in front of us. It is just a question of whether we are willing to hear the words of wisdom.

That is if we believe that we need wisdom.

Jaws

Fate catches up. Sometimes too soon in your life! Like when you are even just thirteen. I had been warning my daughter to brush her teeth properly and she finds exactly 10 seconds in a weekday for that chore and a princely 20 seconds on a Sunday. And you know what happens. Each tooth was proceeding in a different direction presenting a unique problem to dentistry, as if it has a mind on its own.

But she is so cute that the slipped order lent its own charm to her. And she was happy. It was I who suggested that we fix the issue. Didn’t know that if I was a dentist I would have been happier! Because you get to break people’s teeth and also get paid for that task more than what you are when you are a Business Head. We were given a choice of metal and ceramic braces, the ceramic one only being some 30K. It was another story where mom and daughter fought about which one should be chosen. My daughter looks pretty cute and there are already enough calls to home from her classmates, who incidentally happen to be boys. As it is I was spending a fortune on a cause which I would regret later and I wasn’t ready to double the cost and thus double the agony. Now & later! So we settled for a metal one. I even secretly wished that it will be a deterrent for the so called ‘classmates who happen to be boys’.

It started off with an expense even before I paid for the doctor. Since she was going to wear braces and she can’t eat hard stuff, she demanded that we go out that night for dinner. What she forgot was that she had separators fixed between her teeth to enable the fixture of braces. That was immensely painful and she could not eat. Having come to a restaurant and not being able was even more painful. So she went to the restroom and removed the separators!!! Thus it started. The next day was the actual fixing procedure and because of this adventure that got postponed.

The dentist saw the opportunity in this when she complained that the separators were too painful. So he decided to make more space in an alternate way. He removed a couple of teeth and I paid for it. It at last happened the next day. Now she is with metal all over her teeth and I have named her as Jaws. Her issue would be sorted out and she will turn out even more attractive.

But mine remains. She stays as cute as ever. And the calls don’t seem to stop!!!

Sidebar

My sidebar has been acting up. The damn thing is sitting at the bottom of my page. This I didn’t know for long. One day it suddenly disappeared and I attributed that to the Houdini stuff that is the norm in the household. I felt that I am being very harsh on my wife because we lost a fish and here I have a lost a sidebar. Fairness means that I should be blaming myself too for being a member of the ‘losing tribe’.

Sometimes it will appear to me there is really something suspicious about the mystery of such things getting lost. Fish & Sidebar kinda stuff! So, went to the extent of even thinking of taking some voodoo help. Anyway I was going to Kerala and with some luck if the voodoo guy is also not lost, I can figure out the shrouded mystery of our household. Sheer lack of time in the trip prevented that from happening. Don’t ask what why we were so short of time. Suddenly one guy started about the incompatibility he has with his wife and small things of life and there was a unanimous chorus.

When I resigned to my fate, I opened up the blog at home in Firefox and there it was, in all it’s splendor. That’s when I got my breath back. After all I am a responsible guy, I can’t be losing things like what folks at home do.

Now I am trying to fix that problem and there is too much of help available, just that none of them work for my blog. Change templates, remove pictures, shorten titles, check on the HTML codes, you name it, I have done it. Still the issue is not sorted out.

You know what; Firefox is a better browser than IE. Let us use that only.

It wasn't one more Birthday

I don’t know what I did to deserve such luck and honor!! Maybe it has got something to do with my previous birth when I hoarded tons and tons of blessings that I receive such a never ending supply of love and care. For I don’t see myself as a person who is very sensitive to others or as a great friend to people! I am such a lazy guy that I don’t take any effort to keep the flame of friendship burning forever and given the excess of phone calls I receive in a day, I hardly call my friends or even speak with them for 5 minutes straight when they call me. I don’t remember their special days in life; I don’t wish them and more often than not my actions had been selfish than the other way round. The circle is always limited to family and a few special friends. I don’t call my siblings on their birthdays or for that matter any other day. At office, I pretty much keep to myself and I can’t remember occasions where I have gone out of the way to do something for others. I have strong views on people’s actions and I don’t hesitate to say them in so many words.

I still don’t know why after all this folks show so much love. There had been a flurry of calls since last night and countless gifts for my birthday. Some of them being my classmates in college that I attended 22 years back. Guys from the previous office called me one by one and are planning a get-together on Saturday night.

The buzz has been around at home for a week now and my daughters stayed awake till 2 in the morning to welcome my birthday and keep that extended. My wife has been running around for a fortnight checking out on gifts that she could give me. And one special friend started working on those 3 months back. The kids in the office have decorated my room and have been running around for a cake and surprise me. I see genuine smile in people’s eyes when they walk across to wish me and it has been just a few months since I came into this office.

My eldest sister called me late in the evening and just before the birthday was about to end, gifted me a huge wooden elephant to reminisce my childhood days when she bought me a small one from her Kerala tour, which I ended up as a partner in my sleep for years to come. I kept that with me for around 20 years and it died one day. To gift me something similar when I am turning 42, just reconfirms the place I have in her mind. The kid brother always! I may grow up to the outside world. Never for the folks at home and I shamelessly retain that position and get extremely proud about it.

My daughter buys me a Boxing bag partly to serve as a vent to my anger but more for not ending up as a bag herself in my playful moods. My wife sends me a signal by gifting a Bluetooth device maybe suggesting that we should speak more than what we do now. And I had been wearing the device since it was given and atleast more than a couple of times demanded them to call me so that I will use it immediately. And she thoughtfully shops for bathmats and paper holders because I spend a lot of time reading in the bathroom in which I expect a dry floor. The younger one hand paints a greeting with the National Flag along with the cakes, candles and balloons.

My best friend goes overboard and remembers every single occasion that we had been shopping together and me casually saying that I like something. She prints my blogs as a book with carefully chosen photographs and spending days to get the layout right. She buys me a cycle because I once told that I could never own a cycle all my life because folks won’t buy me and later I grew up to buy only the Chevrolets of the world. She makes a collage of the family photos and buys a self tuning guitar ( maybe she wants me play it atleast once in tune ). Gets me a hand made glass idol of my favorite Goddess and just not to disappoint me folks also get me the n’th sneaker, (n+1)’th shirt.

To celebrate a birthday like this seems to be a throwback to childhood days. Even that I don’t remember to be of such great pomp and love. There should be something that is endearing in me to all these folks. If you ask me, I may not be a great friend to me if I am what I am. And I don’t know what makes me so special to them.

And I don’t think I can ever repay such love. Whatever I may try would not match these gifts. It makes the job of a lazy guy even tougher. But what other motivation could be there for someone to attempt?

Picasso said “It takes a long time to grow young” and Lincoln said “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it is the life in your years” and mine has been filled with life so far and I am marching towards growing young. And with such special people around, I sometimes get pretty greedy about wanting a hundred more birthdays!!

One More Birthday

Another birthday is getting over tomorrow. I don’t remember the earlier ones of my life or its significance. However, these days it is becoming a big affair. As if I am a star or a minister. There are too many people who call without fail to wish and I get flooded with presents. These are the people whom you know in the real sense; add to this, droves of people in the office who walk in to wish. Maybe because I sit inside a cabin and that means even not-so-known people peep in to wish.

Year on year I get to know more people, some of them get really close and a few become an integral part of my life. This means the list only keeps growing. The ones who are in the ‘known’ list are genuinely warm and the integral parts starts partying for this a week before.

I sometimes pity the people who would want to buy gifts for me. There was a time in life there were desires and needs. By God’s grace every single thing of them had been met and some of them superfluously met. Like 12 watches, 14 sneakers, 50 T Shirts, 85 Shirts, 6 perfumes and so on! I have more music collected with me that could last my lifetime or beyond, if I choose to listen to all of them in one go. Don’t ask about books; whoever gifts it would probably be secretly cursed in the same breath as I would thank them. Because the house is running out of space and with the current real estate trends, it is becoming a costly desire just because of storage space. The ones that warm me invariably are the hand painted greetings of my daughters, because that involves hell a lot of effort and every centimeter is filled with love. Being a man is a nuisance to the gifters that much. Choice is limited for a man. Come to think of it the only thing that would really make me feel wow is based on the effort and time the gifter has to put in choosing mine. Even Google doesn’t help you much in this area. So you can imagine, if God fails who can win. So when my father in law called me to find out what gift I wanted for this Bday, I told him that I have got all I want and one thing I would love to have more is ‘peace of mind’ and he replied that my wife would be giving a piece of her mind if that is so! But there are special friends who make every single thing count even in midst of these mounting challenges! Because of their genuine desire to see happiness in my eyes!

One of my friends had it as a habit in his family that they will get themselves dewormed on the Birthday. Just for plain convenience of remembering this annual ritual. I too have picked 2 habits lately. One is that I donate some money without fail. And store those thank you letters for the organizations like treasure. Second habit is taking stock of what I have done in this life. Though I think of it every year, I don’t stop with the preceding year only as an update. I go through the whole works again. Some stuff of the past gives me perspective, some give me smiles, some give me tears and some give me desire to do it again and some give me plain irritation about naivety and adamancy. I vow myself that I would not repeat any of the stupid things of the past and these resolutions are shorter lived than the New Year ones.

As I grow wiser every year I also realize that I am getting softer in my brain. Small things please me more than the big ones. As if I am a geriatric, thing that happened yesterday gets forgotten but I remember dates of small events that occurred some 30 years back. My audacity gets reduced year on year and I convince myself that it is a sign of wisdom. I get more agitated at the choice of dresses by my daughter, the very same ones I have not minded my wife wearing 15 years back. I keep telling myself that I am not turning into a prude but just being more careful about what is to be done. At the same breath, do stuff for which I never had the courage as a youngster. Sentences with the same count of words are spoken for longer time now because it is punctuated is err..’s.

Couple of years back when I turned forty I was almost getting into a depression because of that, as if that marks a watershed in life. Now when I know that I will again feel the same way only when I turn eighty, I can afford a laugh. I was wondering whether I was going through andropause. Nothing of that kind happened. And I stopped thinking about age unless when it is convenient to me or every year around the birthday to complete the ritual of stock taking.

Actually I guess I only grow younger. There is a reverse aging process and now I am worried where that will stop. At 18 like Bryan Adams sang or even lesser? That is a cause for worry. After all I am becoming old; I need something to worry about!!

Mush & Bush

These guys seem to be the perfect couple I have seen for a long time. If only they were married, they might have celebrated a platinum jubilee or something of that sort together.

Reason is simple, both of them ditch each other without batting an eyelid, or so we think. But looks like they are aware of the ditching that is imminent! One tells the other that ‘Hey better watch out I am gonna to do something that will make you hang your head in shame and eat your words, but I suppose you will back me up, whatever you may say in public’.

Look at what all this Dynamic Duo has achieved. Together they cultivated the terrorists. OK, it is Papa Bush and not this errant kid. But nonetheless, Kid Bush is a perfect son material whose only aim seems to be completing the unfinished task of Papa. The Americans wanted the Taliban against the Russians and Mush was the perfect foil to foster them and he did so also. And suddenly the Frankenstein of the terrorists fly a plane inside buildings in the US of A and our Superman is agitated ( for once correctly so, I always believe that India also should be giving such fitting reply Vijayakanth style ). They need a place to start the raids from and whom do they call? Their best ally against terrorism, the great Mush! This guy is not a terrorism fighter, actually he transfers terrorists. So he tells them ‘OK Guys, the theatre of operations has changed and all of you can you please relocate to Kashmir’.

Everyone is pleased because an American life is more precious than an Indian life and that has been achieved. But the terrorists seem to add salt in their food, so they don’t take the slight so easily. So they fight against our friend Mush making him a martyr in the process and he clamps emergency for this reason, while the real one is to cling on to office. The saviors of Democracy, the Americans turn a blind eye but makes all & sundry to comment that they don’t approve of Mush’s actions. As if he cares! Because he is anyway too mushy with the Bush!

But for the love affair, Americans would have trampled all over Pakistan like what they would do if it was Iraq, Grenada, and Fiji etc. They instead broker peace between the democratic face of Pakistan and the dictator and make a good package for international press to gobble up. If things become worse, they might provide asylum to Mush in the white house ( after all there are too many bedrooms in there ) and hatch a whole new plot.

I would really appreciate it when I see Bush ditching Mush in reality, because then it would be a true American response ‘All things but American are expendable’. If not, we will wait for the wedding anniversary of the most celebrated couple in the world!!!

Indomitable Showman

Orson Welles was known as the ‘Indomitable Showman’. He excelled in theatre and cinema. And whatever he did was a show. I started thinking the same about myself. Not in a stage though. Somehow everything that I do happens to look like a show. Not that I want to put up a show. In fact most of the times, I simply act on impulse and later it turns out to be something phenomenal. As if I had sat and squeezed my brain to effect such a coup.

Guess, my life is driven by a predetermined script. In a way I think everybody else’s too. And if that is true, God had been in a terrific mood when He scripted mine. As though he wanted to create one of his best scripts, with the right twists and turns and the protagonist winning at the end! Not a very original script, nonetheless an interesting one.

On all occasions in life, I let my impulse run the next course of the events. It is not exactly impulse. But an attempt to be honest to myself! It is something like ‘Is this what you want to do, ok then do it’. And then worry about the consequences later. Unless the action and its results are illegal stuff! Mind you, I mentioned illegal, not about social code of conduct or morality blah blah. I need to have substantial reason to cross that line maybe.

Whoever visits my place get awestruck. They have one look at the house and the kind of fun all of us have in the family and really start feeling insufficient in life. Some of them have come back to tell me that I have a great family as if I sat and created one like that. In fact, my life runs on providence. I never put on a belly despite gallons of beer. That was one example. My kids are the clichéd chip of the block. They put up an even better show for the audience. And so is my wife. She gets into her humorous best when there are people watching us, and cracks all jokes only at my expense. Plus the fact I have a terrace that overlooks the sea and many a visitor had been unequivocal in their opinion that I have the best home. And we hide from such people for the rest of our lives. Because if they hazard a revisit they might see one member less in the house, as we are in a constant attempt to decimate the others. What cute kids they would say, and these cute kids are the most dangerous living assassins in the whole world. And what a nice pair they would ay about me and my wife. Ok I am not telling anything now!

The point I was trying to make is that, none of these shows are preplanned. Maybe it is genetically coded. Because we just take the stage and perform. Or maybe that is what is our true nature and assassination attempts are for plain fun. This house on the seafront, I have written earlier too. Happened out of sheer luck! Never had an inclination to buy a house, leave alone a penthouse at the beach! But, a hangover that prevented me to go to office which lead to reading the newspaper in full and attending a property fair during the weekend because of that and landing in this house the same day.

Now I did something similar this Sunday. Saw an advertisement in the paper for plots at Kodaikanal and went ahead and booked it. He wanted 50% of the value for booking and I had 5% with me. But as usual, bullied, pulled strings and make him accept that. Now, looking back, I would own a house in the beach and a hill station. Can’t get better isn’t it?

It is as if I am destined to be a showman. Point is that this impulse stuff is extremely dangerous. I have 4 days to make up 5 Lacs and I don’t have a damnedest clue on how I can do that. Anyway let’s leave it to the script writer. Why bother too much? It is His plot and let Him unravel the knot.

My business is just to be of a showman!

Irreverence

Have always been thinking that how much people listen to you is directly proportional to how irreverent you are about issues. I guess it is a vicarious pleasure. There are things that you want to do and want to say, but something stops you from saying that and when someone else does that, you either feel happy about the fact that your thoughts have been echoed or the fact that someone at last gets to say what you always wanted to say.

It is mainly because we are too strait-laced to speak out our mind. I read somewhere that no one ever says that a new born infant looks like a monkey. In fact many of them look so. It is only after a week or two they have some features that get prominent differentiating it from a monkey. But all of us say the baby looks cute. No I am not saying that you tell the parents that their new born looks like a monkey. You don’t even confess that to your partner. Really funny!

There are always two things that are expressed. First is what your mind tells you and the next is what the social compulsions make your tongue to say. Few years back, when I was referring about a girl at office to one of my friends, he acted as if he has heard the name for the first time. In fact that lady is cynosure of many eyes at office and I was surprised that he hasn’t noticed her so far. And then told myself, maybe I am afflicted with a chronic disease of getting to know about all good looking women. Later I learnt that when he had a chance to speak with that girl, he had some 3 years of common history to share and lot many common friends. This guy had known about her all along, but simply feigned ignorance. Now tell me, why on earth you would act like that?

That brings up the point of this blog. Saying something honest has become irreverence. When I keep telling what strikes my mind and am pretty sure that it is the same way majority population of the earth would feel, I say that. And I become an irreverent speaker while everyone squirms in their seat when they hear but imagine themselves saying it. Kamal Haasan tells this dialogue in a movie ‘I think it is better to study and go to an exam than visiting a temple and attending the exam’. Absolutely true! No one stops from going to the temple, but then you should first study. Now people think it is an atheist statement. God is an examiner, yes! But not for your answer papers in a 10th standard board exam!

So, I was rather surprised when I listened to another dialogue from the movie ‘Man of the Year’, when Jack Menken says this to Tom Dobbs “Everyone's going to be writing about how honest you are and how straightforward. I just hope your honesty doesn't undercut your irreverence”.

Actually it is the other way round. Honesty never undercuts irreverence, it accentuates that. If you are honest, you tell what you feel and that invariably becomes an irreverent statement. Because half the world is made up of liars.

Delirium

Of late, my blogs have increasingly become critical about marriages. And invariably they are the ones that get the maximum responses and I keep joking about how I stir up the dormant emotions in everyone’s mind. This is yet another post about marriage. But it is slightly different.

All the while, I kept seeing marriages through the prism of the married lives of my friends & acquaintances, or sometimes my own and look at all the stuff that goes wrong with the institution of marriage. Most of them tend to agree and some like Sid differ. In this entire melee, I completely stopped thinking about the great feeling it can create. Mostly, in the bunch of guys we are, if someone says that he is getting married, we feel sorry for him and start cracking the typical jokes. Not once we had jumped in joy about the news.

Today was such a day. But before that listen to this story! There is this girl. Who happens to the cutest you have seen in a long time and an absolute pet to the bunch of rowdies that we are. Surprisingly, all of us took such a liking towards her, that she became that kid sister for us. She worked with us. And most times guys were afraid of her questions than their boss’s. She can create terror in the mind and absolutely nonchalant about the childish behavior of many of us. And she was a very trustworthy soul that each one of us sometime or other would have confided things that we would probably be ashamed to confess to others. She never had been judgmental about any of us and maybe saw us as grownup kids. In effect she was the best friend each one of us could have when we were so to each other in the gang.

And there is this kid guy in the gang. Each one of us is called by a relationship and his was that of a kid brother. To all of us! And the pastime of the bunch is to tease him to tears. He is such a sport that he never takes anything personally and laughs for the jokes cracked at his expense. Anything and everything there will be some wisecrack at that guy. And there is no mercy shown or indecency spared. The whole party gets livelier and livelier when the jokes start flowing on his account.

Then we all split from the workplace. In a gap of around 2 months, none of us worked in the old place and by some good grace, a few of us landed in the same place, but the ties were so strong that, one cannot see beyond this gang. The loyalty was very clear and there was no inclination and energy to find new friends, as we were invariably in touch with each other.

The girl works in the office as two of us. And she walks in today to tell me that she is getting married. Normally I would have taken such news calmly and with some close friends laugh at him and say why on earth he would fall into such a trap. But with her, it was different. All of us wanted her to get married and our only worry was that she should find the right guy. And then she also tells there is another good news, which is the news of the kid brother also getting married. Life can’t throw such surprises in the same day. And then she tells me they are marrying each other. Give me something that can be better than this. Impossible! Two of the people whom you loved so much and they decided to get married and what else can be better?

This created a laugh riot in the gang through a teleconference and as usual his legs were pulled and condolence messages poured for that girl. But each of us knew that we were so proud of our friend, or rather friends and we were laughing our guts out because that is the only and the strongest emotion we could show. But there was happiness in everybody’s voice and huge pride in his voice particularly.

If there is one marriage I want to last for eons filled with smiles and happiness every second, this would be that. Because it happens between two of the best people and they deserve nothing lesser.

But suddenly he needs to be respected more now, lest we get censured by her. Ellam neram!!

Pony Tail

I should probably be the only bald guy in planet earth to use a detangler. Let me explain. Guess I read somewhere that all self respecting guys in their teens, want to be a communist, grow their hair, want to play the guitar, zip in a motorbike, get bitten by wanderlust and write poetry.

I have self respect. So I was no different. I had all these desires barring poetry. Didn’t want to torture others, you see. I always wanted to be a communist and even before I was into my tenth standard, I was running behind these communist party members distributing their vote clips. I and my friend once thought that Cuba should be the best country to live in. Bought a bike somehow and zipped around.

What eluded me though were the guitar thing and the long hair. That’s because I wanted the combination. Both of them together! Once upon a time, I had hair in my head, but no opportunity to buy and play the guitar. Atlast, when I had the money, I bought a guitar. But that is when the hair deserted me.

It was so bad that I was managing the hairdo in such a way that I didn’t look bald. If it was raining, despite my desire to drench in that, I never ventured out, because then the cat will be out of the bag. The few strands of hair that I had will get pasted on the head. Let it rain, who cares was always my attitude.

But luckily I found out that I had typical male pattern baldness. That meant that bald in the front, the hair at the back was ok. So started growing it! It is one thing that hair will grow and it is another thing that it will grow as long as you desire. Ultimately I guess it took two years completely to have a decent pony tail.

Now with the rubber bands, pony tail and the guitar, I have started learning. But the issue is that the rubber bands tangle the precious pony tail. And I use the detangler. I don’t think the Hindustan Levers of the world would have ever imagined that even bald guys could be the target segment.

For me, as long as it grows I don’t care whether it tangles. Tell me one thing that grows without entanglement and enmeshment.

Kingfisher

Flying Kingfisher is quite an experience. One of the best airlines I have been with, these guys really go out of the way to make you comfortable. Not without issues though. It is the sort of concern typical Madurai folks show. They are there always, whether you need them or not!

First, I guess Kingfisher guys take your home address somehow while you book the tickets. I say this with a reason. The airport is around 17 km from my place. But at around the 10th kilometer near Guindy itself, I see these red shirts. These guys are prowling around to see whether any one is carrying a Kingfisher ticket sleeve. If you do, that’s it. They almost fight and get the luggage from your hand. Maybe, even if the luggage is comfortably kept in the boot of the car, they will somehow manage to get it collected and carry it while they are seated in the car. So much passion they have towards helping you. Well things haven’t gone this bad yet.

But, surely they prowl in the airport car alighting point. With that expectant look of a pimp in their face! And they just have to know that you are flying KF. One day, this guy just plucked the luggage from my hand and started walking that I started shouting ‘thief, thief’. Who knows really! It could be so, isn’t it? Then understood that he was a KF guy trying to help me! They tag along you all the way till you check in and pass through the security check. You can never have any independent mind. If you want to drink a coffee or browse through in the bookshop, just forget it if you are flying KF. They will not allow you, because they want to help you.

And the hostess’s!! They would not let you rest unless you agree to have something. It is almost as if they have cooked it personally and it is an affront to refuse the food. It becomes such a scene when they constantly implore you and you keep refusing that the fellow passengers start thinking that you have a row with them.

I don’t know how far they are going to carry this service. Guess the next time they will send someone home to pack my stuff and if I fly business class, maybe I will get a hostess coming home the previous night itself. :P

Retirement Plans

Apparently 82% of India’s rich do not have retirement plans. I don’t know whether I qualify as rich, hence belong to this group, but am sure that I would belong to the category of ‘no retirement plans’. Somehow never been serious about saving money! I keep reading about a serial article on a Tamizh weekly on how people manage their monthly budget.

Every one of them seems to save atleast some 10% of their salary. I have never done that so far. I never could see myself holding back on spending on something I wanted then, thinking about keeping that money for something I would want later. Maybe it is not in my DNA. I don’t think that my dad had any savings at all. But my brothers are good planners. I probably picked that gene exclusively.

My philosophy about money was always different. I have never thought of saving some 30% of the salary when as an absolute amount it was peanuts. In fact that 30% amount could be a day’s salary now. But funnily I don’t save that absolute amount even now. Surprisingly I am never scared about it either.

Every now and then a thought will creep in, about how these kids today are so smart that they start saving and hoarding money from the first year of their employment. Folks who had worked only for 1 year so far have more bank balance than me. Only saving grace is that my credit worthiness keeps increasing as my play slip gets better and better.

Couple of occasions I have sat through analyzing where money goes, and with the benefit of hindsight also I see nothing that I could stop spending from. Maybe yes, I can control the spend on superfluous stuff, like more clothes, more music, more movies and more eat-outs. But tell me one thing, all along your life when you were a kid or when you were earning some paltry sum, you always wanted a few things and you never had the money for it and suddenly you find yourself capable of getting them, should you stop yourself from that indulgence?

One doesn’t even know how long they can pull along and setting aside money for a late life, sacrificing happiness of the current one is similar to the Egyptians leaving stuff in the pyramids for the mummies. What will I do with that money if I don’t get a chance to spend? What if I cut on my beer now and save the money, and when I retire if I become a diabetic, who will drink the beer? Or for all you know, I may not even like beer anymore. And that today’s beer money will be spent on the then current indulgence! So why not indulge while you are still taking a conscious choice?

I also hate to imagine some doomsday theory like, what if I get incapacitated and not capable of earning, and what if I don’t have enough money to have a decent life if I pull on more than what I plan to! In fact, the guys who make retirements plans today are anyway planning for a maximum of 20 years from retirement, but what will happen if with all the modern medical advancement, you happen to live till 100. Living in penury from 80 to 100, is worse than taking that chance while you are at 60 and healthy enough to work still.

Well all these are not excuses for my incompetence to save money. I can save if I really apply my mind. But I keep postponing every year, thinking that the next year I would need only this much money to retain my happiness and the excess salary can go into saving, but then these buggers in every budget increase the beer cost, taxes etc. Maybe I will take a tough call this year. But still I will not be a fully convinced guy about sacrificing something which is very clear and present for what I assume to be future.

Afterall money or no money, once you grow older, you become senile and you only become a nuisance to your kids. It is not that, if I was a millionaire, my kids treat me better. In fact I know these lovely ones. They would always treat me the same.

And hopefully return the pocket money I give to them now. And that is some investment I am making!! If I can’t trust them to provide for me and if I have to trust a bank more, I might as well die than retire.

Honest Rascals

One of the biggest problems with men seems to be the constant efforts that they take to woo women. Irrespective of their age and the women’s age! I am not generalizing here. I am very very certain about what I say. Kushwant Singh cites one of the three most obnoxious habits of Indian men is ‘name dropping’. He talks more about people who peddle favors by dropping names. And I include name dropping of a different kind.

I have seen many an intelligent man, who has a wide spectrum of knowledge. Be it music, literature, theater, history, sarcastic wit, academics, gift of the gab, writing, you name it, they are there. But the biggest issue is that you will never get to know it if you are a male yourself. All these are reserved skills and knowledge. Applicable only if your anatomy is different from theirs. Highly respectable otherwise, they would not waste a chance to display their array of awareness, and you get lucky only if you don’t mind wearing a sari.

What is it with these men? In fact when I listed out the knowledge set, I was wondering I may qualify too. But despite my self-deprecating writing tendency and a penchant for flirting, I am unable to include myself in that list. I have never once used Somerset Maugham to get me a female listener. Of course I have ended up discussing a few of these names, but that’s when I realized that they do share the passion on specific areas of my interest. And it makes a good conversation. And obviously I don’t dig more of Maugham the next day and keep asking them whether they read this book or that book. I may have even ended up trading books, but never once called to find out whether they read that and what they liked about it.

But this breed is different. Maybe they read the dictionary for a pastime and choose 10 words for the day and then create situations that will warrant usage of these words. I had this friend of mine who carried a Financial Management book when he came home for a coffee. That joker could have left it in the car. His idea was to make me know that he reads that book. Now that is something. Firstly I am not a female. Second, I would probably laugh at people who read a FM book even if the next day is a semester exam. You don’t read such books!

That clown was an exception. Maybe he had some aspiration desires and he tried to impress me with that book. But the clan that I talk about will never display this intelligence anywhere else, but if a chance occurs they will pound the females, non stop with their awareness levels. I probably want to call them Googlies. Quite an apt name, guys who would Google any information on earth just to parade their gray cells and the intentions anyway is the wrong way. I feel it is an insult to do this intellectual strip tease. Maybe they would not mind doing the real one if they pack six-pack abs. For them, they should be seen. But why not show everyone yaar?! Why reserve it only for the other gender? Do you think that men don’t deserve such honor? Or, are you afraid that you will have to endure the spectacle of an intellectual strip tease in return?

And who tells them that this is what woos women? I have heard of guys who will see palms and palm themselves off in the bargain. Should be world’s oldest trick as a dialogue opener I guess. I am certain that the women who are subjected to this are having a hearty laugh themselves and maybe compare notes. “Hey did that joker come to you and tell that you sing like Lata Mangeshkar”. And they know there are atleast a million Lata’s in the office space, if they happen to croon and look good also.

My friends luckily are the ones who don’t even get inspired by my beer drinking prowess. If I manage to adopt such techniques, they will straight tell me ‘Moodu’( meaning ‘close’, but in a very derogatory tone ). And the ones who really think I am intelligent are the ones who are intelligent themselves, so they can see through it, if it is a part of a mating dance. So, I don’t attempt such daredevilry. More often than not, it pays to tell what runs in your mind, rather than enlisting the services of Gabriel García Márquez's ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Primarily because I haven’t read that book! And the ones that I read like Penthouse Letters are not quotable even if it is a wild woman. And after all this, any which way I am accused of being a scene stealer. One thing I always did was, I kept these tools and flirting separated. Never had followed up the next day on what was an ice-breaker the previous day. I thought long and hard whether it was a unique strategy employed by me, but at the end of it gave myself the benefit of doubt. Whatever I did was an adult transaction and that I think is an honest behavior.

The ‘forward kings’ (because they first forward the mails they receive to a set of girls and then only read it themselves) are actually backward in nature. So I would rather wait and get those forward’s from the very same girls. These are very adolescent characteristics. Amateur psychology, Amateur astrology, Listening to English songs for the heck of it and parading those are all samples of such traits! If one is carrying these well into their adulthood, one would make a fool of himself.

And the worst insult is that women don’t even attempt such stuff. They are supremely confident that any which way we will do all the hard work, or they simply think that men aren’t worth the effort. And we constantly prove them right! Or, they think that all these attempts are not needed because, as I read somewhere men think with some other apparatus other than brain. Shame on you Brother!

I may sound patronizing and also appear painting myself as above all these, which I am not. As a fellow member of the clan, I have one piece of advice for you. Look for the new John Miller advertisement. There is enough space in this earth for Good Looking Rascals. Maybe I will change it a wee bit. There is space for Honest Rascals.

Be one!

Shrikanth Who?

Folks at home are a funny lot. They ought to be. That’s where I got my sense of humor anyway. They have never lost an opportunity to demonstrate it. Be it my photo in full glory, or my nickname.

When I was young I was called SriGundan. Sri is a take off from my name, but Gundan stands for Fatso. Now this is humor at its best. As far as my memory goes I have been only as fat as a telephone pole. And not that they have all been drumsticks to call me fatso! Still I was named so.

When I chase the etymology of all words that I come across and even get successful at that, this one eludes me. Even they don’t remember now. To get them prophetic and right, I had been trying my best with Kingfisher, but still I fail in that honorable duty.

Now I realize that you really don’t need any reason for naming a nick. Or for that matter all the reasons to have a nickname, because I don’t think one gets called by their name ever at all. I don’t remember calling my daughters by their name. So much so, if I call them by name they know that I am furious at them about something. Invariably they are Pattu, Chellam, Puppy doll, Meen Kunju or sometimes even something I don’t understand what it is. So it’s really not about what they call you, it is just that you can’t be called by you real name.

In office they call me TS, friends call me Ganth, Daddy by kids, Uncle by the whole world, Boss by the team mates and if someone yells Srikanth, I look behind me. Only my mom does justice to my name still. I can’t be complaining too much, because I have kept hoards of names for my friends, colleagues and family. There was one guy I named Pulli ( stands for fullstop in Tamizh ) because he was of that size. Many such names were used and to great embarrassment after 25 years if someone refer to a friend, unless that nick is told you can’t really relate who they are talking about it. So some IIT’ians and Senior Counsels are Mullan’s and Pencil’s.

Once I happened to meet the brother of a friend and I recognized his face, but could not place who he was. And he also smiled at me. When I managed to ask him how I know him, he said he was Mohan’s brother, I still could not place him and I was exasperated. He understood my predicament and mentioned the nick of his brother at last.

But these kind of faux-pas apart, aren’t these names etched so much in your memory that any reference to them takes you back to those happy days and you start wishing that being SriGundan was more fun all said and done!!

Playing Games with Marriage

After a thought provoking blog like ‘To be or not to be’ ( it was thought provoking, isn’t it, please say so, can’t accept 1339 words getting wasted ), once again a marriage topic. People are going to think that I am obsessed with the subject. Well I could be, only as a subject and nothing else. But this is more of fun stuff.

Games2Win has launched a game called as ‘The Great Indian Arranged Marriage’. Well let us first give it to their Humor and the liberal use of oxymoron in a game title. What is so great about an arrange marriage I don’t know, but the CEO claims that their website gets a lot of international traffic, so like the famed Indian mysticism, this can also be sold successfully.

The game has a tagline stating ‘Celebrate the sacred union of two hearts – The Indian way’ and a monkey initially jumps up and down before the much meaningful graphics takes over. Now this is fun, celebrating sacred union of two hearts ( I had a typo stating ‘scared union of two hearts, later corrected ). The game has various stages and starts with a phone call between the prospective bride and groom with an army of relatives listening on either side. Then it goes on and on with various rituals coming into play, like Engagement ceremony, Mehndi, Sangeeth, Wedding, Reception etc. Would become more popular if they go well into the night, but that’s not the case to be.

Anyway, I was imagining Sid playing this game after his account of a long ordeal that is the marriage event. Best part is that you can choose to lose the game in the first level itself by telling something crazy on the phone. I didn’t want to venture further. But I presume that you would have that opportunity to call it off at any point of the game.

Now that is something. Holding the key to escape anytime!

Cash Burn

Sounds like a press release of a Corporate, isn’t it? Earnings lesser than spends and hence cash burn! Well if it is about my own finances and I am perennially in a state of cash burn. And most of the times, I can never afford to buy stuff in cash, hence use credit cards. :)) So there is no fun in talking about it! Mine is a story of increasing equity and market value on paper which I will encash one day and become a millionaire. Well atleast that’s what I dream about.

This is almost a literal cash burn I am talking about. The crackers for Diwali! As a kid, I was no different; terribly fascinated by the crackers and wait for the day my dad would buy crackers. There used to be a rivalry among us friends on who gets the maximum value of crackers that Diwali. As usual figures will be inflated on claims, but the litmus test comes on the D day. There had been silly instances of getting up early and sneaking around to gather the paper rolls that are left over by others who burst crackers and leave it in front of your house to substantiate your inflated claims. At some stage, the desire on Diwali was more about wearing new clothes and checking out what the girls wear.

Then there was this gap if around 15 years, till my first one found awareness about crackers. And that is what is creating the cash burn. Life those days was simple in terms of buying crackers too. Now the choice is too much and at the end of the day all of them create a terrible noise or a firework display in different forms. And this year, it is Chinese invasion too. The simple Sivakasi crackers are now made in technical collaboration with Chinese. Good thing out of that is the rockets are getting shorter. Apart from that it is only a question paying more money for the same stuff. One of the most ridiculed MRP’s in the country is on the cracker boxes. Invariably it is sold at any price ranging from 30% of the MRP to the MRP itself, depending on the gullibility of the buyers. No idea why the government hasn’t regulated this so far.

And these days, when I see those left over paper rolls they all look like money to me. But then certain things in life never change. The gleam in the kids’ eyes, the breathing of only crackers, crackers till the D day arrives and the rare energy level before sunrise and the sudden discovery of siblings on phone. Nothing changes.

Only thing is that you wish it would have been better to have stayed as a kid only. Sometimes growth in intelligence is a pain like the great poet Bharathiar laments to God.

To be or Not to be

A Shakespearean quote would be the apt beginning for this piece. This is not got anything to do with the dilemma of Hamlet of whether to live or die. Or what could death bring as against the known miseries of life. Though maybe something equivalent! Has the same intensity and trouble in deciding. It is about to be or not to be in marriage!

Diwali eve brought a friend home. I invited him because he was alone at his place ( wouldn’t call it a home ) brooding over his loneliness with only rum to accompany him. I have known him for many years now and he along with his wife made awesome company to us in the early days. They met in college, promptly fell in love and married against the wishes of their folks. But they were a cool couple, with her competing with me in drowning bottles of beer and laughing loud. He is a pretty sedate guy, but has a great sense of humor. They had seen their share of trouble and had come out of it and have a lovely daughter as proof.

And then suddenly things went sour. No one knows why! She simply turned crazy. Skirmishes turned to violent fights. Somehow there was always an artificial high, buying of property, changing cities, promotion in jobs that kept the marriage going. And then the bubble burst. They started living in the same house but used different bedrooms, with a daughter caught in between. While, this arrangement was going smooth for a while, at some point of time, even that got collapsed when she started telling her daughter things unmentionable even in my standards of audacity & transparency. And that was it for him. He moved out of the house and found himself a place. It was definitely not one sided as I write it to be, as we were friends for both of them and counseled both of them on various occasions. Used to take both their versions with a pinch of salt, but what made me think in his favor was what she was poisoning the kid’s mind.

This guy was all sad when he called, because his daughter was not visiting him for Diwali, because her mother is planning to take her to a friend’s house. While we were talking this stuff, a call landed in his phone and it was his daughter. He was being escorted by an uncle to whom she was dumped to for Diwali by her mother. That was a shocker. She didn’t allow the kid to visit the Dad and neither was she willing to celebrate it with her, but palmed the kid off to someone completely unimportant. And the daughter wanted to see the dad. It is a different story that she made it to our place and we had huge fun for about 30 minutes. But she made me cry when she left. A kid all of 10 years, being poisoned by mom, with huge love for dad and wanting to be with him, but had to lie to her mother about seeing him and go to some corner of the city to celebrate Diwali with neither of the parents, with them being alone to themselves. How cruel it can become?

I have had my share of friends who wanted to separate; somehow to all of them I have advised patience and asked them to work it out. There was one girl, who already was living alone, but I persuaded her to go back and the next time I heard of her, she was heavily pregnant. With these guys also I made that attempt. Not because I am against divorce, but something tells you in your mind that there would still be something left to be tried. And it comes from what you know of the couple, their stubbornness, their love to each other, and their willingness to compromise on beliefs for the other. When I realized that part about my friend’s wife, I asked him to quit for his own goodness. We knew about the kid, we anticipated this shit, but still there was only a limit someone can take. Another friend of mine, when it was getting a little bit too much for her that included abuse, simply went to office one day and never went back home. And what kind of ordeal it would have been for her, to take a decision of leaving a 7 year old son, who is now at college but she hasn’t seen him again. Another friend of mine has been visiting the court for almost 10 years now, because the divorce is not by mutual consent. That joker of a husband of hers, who ensured that she went through sufficient abuse, claims that he wants to live with her. Maybe he thinks the abuse is not still sufficient.

There is this that ‘Tipping Point’ when people decide enough is enough. And I think that happens when they don’t see any future in the relationship. It cannot run on past glories or what the society prescribes. For many of them, it is the stigma associated with the act of divorce. Especially women, but my friends had been bolder in that context. They knew that it is not the society that sleeps in the other half of the bed. It is them with that demon and they better handle it themselves, rather than wallowing in misery inside, but put up a brave front and a fantastic show for the society. After all, the society would not be there when you want them. At its convenience, it becomes too decent. Non-interfering and it may include your own folks. It is your decision and you need to take it. And the only thing that matters is that whether you look forward to peaceful time with the partner for the rest of your lives, if not and you are sure that it is going to be terrible, if you don’t quit it will be a mighty waste. And surprisingly, we don’t feel accountable for our own happiness; we somehow think that it is martyrdom that is fashionable. We feel that giving into one’s own pleasure is crime and we always have to think about the rest. BS it is. Maybe if you really feel that way, atleast you should start feeling accountable for you own sadness. Don’t pursue happiness, but atleast ensure that you aren’t sad.

I was listening to a very wise man in TV this morning. A college professor who talked so very beautifully about Hinduism, Manusmriti & Samskaras specifically! Only when you hear and understand what the religion has prescribed, you will come out of the shallowness that we all seem to have presumed as intelligence. The Veda’s were oral forms earlier. They are believed to be Anaadhi ( without beginning ) and they always existed as sound waves in the Universe and our great ancestors had the power to make meaning out of those vibrations. The flip side to that was, it was passed from person to person and we don’t know which interpretation is right. This morning the Professor said that Divorce was allowed as per Vedas and he listed out a few reasons on what constitutes the ground for divorce. But when I hunt the Net, all mention on this subject is lopsided. They claim that women can’t divorce, but men can. And in the same breath there is also some supreme glorification about women’s role in a household. Even the Prof was telling how in Brahmin rituals we have the lady of the house standing behind the man and touches his shoulders through a Dharpam, because a wife is called Sahadharmini and that means she is a part of your dharma and you fulfill your destiny only through that partnership.

Anyway, the more you try to seek solutions from outside, the more you get confused. To my friend, if I had talked about Manusmriti when this crazy woman of him was sending anonymous letters to the tax guys about frauds in her husbands business, he would have bashed me up transferring all the anger he had on her against me.

I am convinced the laws of the society are just roadmaps for life. If you are sure, where you want to go, why the hell you need maps for!!!

A380

Look at the temerity of these fellows. They sell the tickets for 100000$ and give you the ultimate in luxury. And then come back to tell you, keep your hands off each other. I am not saying that everyone in a flight like that will be groping around. But this is too much of moral policing. If you say, keep your hands off the crew, it is understood. Quite a decent request! But you are not supposed to touch your partner I believe.

Just have a look at that bed. The setting is so romantic. And you are served the best of wines and cuisine. Sydney to Singapore takes 9 hours. You enjoy all that and like it comes in a K.Balachander movie, place a Bhagavad-Gita and turn the other side to sleep.

Isn’t it too much? What exactly is their issue? I keep reading steamy stories about this kind of stuff happening in the 737’s. You can probably complain about indecent exposure in public space, if there is no privacy provided. Just imagine, what will happen if Laloo puts up posters in first class coupe’s that reads ‘Keep your hands away’. No, not from the window, but your partner!

Maybe someone will keep an eye on the proceedings always. And the captain may come up with an announcement saying the ‘Hands Off’ lights are switched on. In all Airbus 380’s consumption of alcohol and smoking is allowed, but sex is completely prohibited, and sex detectors have been fitted inside all first class cabins. Or, every now and then the crew members might peep in and remind to keep the zipper closed and sit upright.

Looks like, according to Singapore airlines the only thing that should be up is the Aircraft!!

Kindly Adjust

I happened to go through an article about Pondy cuisine and that prompts me to write this. Looks like, there is a national trait called ‘adjusting’!

Everyone everywhere wants someone to adjust. Be it a crowded seat in a bus, accommodating more people than what is possible in a small car, giving lesser money than what is due, not keeping timelines, everywhere this trait is evident in full glory. It is taken for granted in this country that people will adjust.

Maybe this is because of the famed tolerance the religion has inculcated in us. Hinduism without being asked, kindly adjusted many practices and heresies and thus was born Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.

While in many occasions this trait has worked for good, I also believe that is the weakness of the system. Let us look at a few good ones. India is cultural bedrock for the world I would dare to say. The religion thrived because it was willing to adjust and hundreds of missionaries and thousands of invaders could not manage to kill it. Within the nation, with so much of diversity, we have always been willing to adjust and accommodate in many things starting from basics like food. You probably will have the most adjusted Chinese food in the whole world only in India. While catering to the taste buds of Indians, they somehow manage to retain the Chinese flavor. And such attitude always gives room for two different types of restaurants. Authentic Chinese and Chinese! You name it; you will get all cuisines of the world even in a place like Ratna Café, but cooked the Indian way.

But look at the flip side of this trait. We accept the most immoral and corrupt criminals as our elected leaders. We don’t care whether bigamy is practiced by a CM, but arrest a guy if he is a commoner. Because we adjust! We adjust with poor customer service. We adjust with bad time sense. We adjust with vulgar behavior. We adjust with lousy leaders at work. We accept mediocrity. We accept husbands as God. We adjust with thieves as maids. We adjust with drivers because they have their idiosyncrasies. We adjust, we adjust and we keep on adjusting. That was one funny and thoughtful campaign by VIP for their briefs. But how true it is! We can’t say no to someone who wants jostle in our car when we look forward for a peaceful 2 Hr drive with good music. And that someone will not even matter to us.

The nation is infected with a malady of not being able to say NO. In bold letters to anyone! You are asked, whether you like it or not, you adjust. And nothing happens out of good spirit. When it really comes to a situation to adjust, they won’t. In a 5 star beach resort, the steward would not allow me to sit in a table, because the restaurant is supposed to open 10 minutes later. A mobile phone that is just 3 weeks old malfunctions and I don’t have the service guys quickly fix it. When it is needed, no adjustment is made.

I am just wondering, whether people cannot say No, or is it that they will say No when it involves effort from them. If they are not directly impacted, maybe they will adjust.

I am at loss completely to figure out. But I will adjust!

Artificial Milestones

Lately I am getting feedback that I keep writing for the sake of writing and some of the posts do not mean a thing, but for the fact that they add to the number. Consciously there is a couple that would have been done that way. But, almost all of them are written with the same earnestness.

When I start writing a post, it surely is because a thought is triggered. Some thoughts grow further, some gets stunted. The grown ones find better expression and the half-baked thoughts with the some masala fillers get classified as ‘Bhlongu’ ( stands for Bhongu Blog and Bhongu can be loosely translated to unreal/superficial ). But I know that I don’t write anything for filling up space. There is no necessity also. If I start thinking about the relevance of everything I want to write, then I may dismiss most of them. Who cares about many of the funny episodes that I write about what happens at my home.

I don’t get burdened about saying something meaningful in everything I speak/write. Unnecessary pressure that is!! Not always you can do that. If I say so, I will sound like a director who is still wet behind his years talking about giving a social message in the movie he has done. After all who cares about a message in a movie? I look for engagement. If it engages me, then it is Paisa vasool. Similarly, when I say something the only thing I attempt is keep readers engaged.

All said & done, the blogs are expressions in a written form. And I am yet to see someone who always is lucid in his thoughts also. If only we can hear thoughts!! Then all of us will meet the fate of Mel Gibson in ‘What women want’. Anyway, such a preamble was needed because I was toying with some stupid thought as I was nearing my 200th post here. My daughter was asking what I was planning to write about. And I thought of Artificial Milestones.

Somewhere deep inside, all of us are driven by milestones. Or deadlines! Not like the cricketers claiming that he would have been happier if the team had won. Bunkum it is. Who on earth has ever done that? These guys who would be running like a steam engine without brakes will start moving like a bullock cart at the sight of a century and then give sound bytes which are so very altruistic.

We are happy about milestones. I was happy when I first got my 5 figure salary and got sloshed. I didn’t waste an opportunity to tom-tom about it. And in each and every such minor accomplishment, I was always happy. When this blog was just about 10 posts, it was already a conversation starter and ice breaker with girl friends.

‘You know, that is the same thing I have written in my blog too’
‘Of course I have my blog, I do blabber something in that’

So all of us have intents, some malicious, some useful, some harmless and milestones do excite us. We always want to reach somewhere and when we manage to recognize that thin line between a pipedream and a goal, we want to reach that goal and get happy when we do that.

So folks, I am happy about crossing 200 posts. I am first of all, happy about the fact that I overcame my inertia, my fear to write something and masking it as laziness and most of all gained the confidence that I can frame my thoughts in a coherent manner and put them down in words in an acceptable manner.

And thrilled about the fact that I can pick a nothing subject and waste 1000 words on it! And my ability of pass off a Bhlongu in the pretext of being honest! :))

Apocalypto

’Apocalypto’ as a movie triggers a lot of thoughts in your mind. The tag line for the movie is ‘When the end comes, not everyone is ready is go’ and the quote with which the film begins ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without until it is destroyed from within’ tells the story themself.

It is about the declining period of Mayan civilization and one man’s fight to escape from the sacrificial altar. Powerfully captured in the visual sense, the language is which the movie is dubbed gives tremendous scope to see the movie more visually than anything else, suspending the viewer from reality to quote Mel Gibson. Learnt later that the language is Yucatec Maya language! He has been absolutely right, because I have never watched so many pairs of intense eyes in a single movie.

Sometimes a movie can leave such a tremendous impact that it keeps running in your mind even after it really ends. At first I thought that tag line may well be apt for describing the movie itself. You don’t want to go, when the movie comes to an end. Very few directors have the art of making the viewers empathize with a movie completely. A feeling that you belong there and you are watching a story unfold in front of your eyes! Mel Gibson is one such guy. Be it the ‘Braveheart’ or the ‘Passion of Christ’, Gibson transports you to another world altogether. His penchant for perfection is very apparent in the construction of each scene.

Apocalypto is no different in that aspect. It is shot in such a way that you feel that you could smell the wetness of the soil and the fear of the people. A simple storyline of abduction & escape can never get more thrilling. The movie just draws you to the edge of the seat in the 10th minute and keeps you there for another 2 and a half hour’s.

There is a lot of gore and violence but somehow, as a viewer you tend to accept it, maybe because the story is set about 1200 years back and having been doled out a lot of senseless violence in contemporary movies, you somehow think it is perfectly OK for the men of that age to behave that way.

I kept thinking that though centuries have gone by, some fundamental human traits have never changed. The blind beliefs about God and our rituals to please Him, the fight for supremacy, the strong subduing the weak, the family ties, the loyalty to clan, the senseless behavior towards tribes that are not yours, civilization and barbarism coexisting and the scant respect of human lives, nothing has changed in 1500 years.

The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. And yet, there are behaviors that are completely incongruent to what civilization is defined for.

Now after a millennium, we are far more advanced but hold on to the same traits. So fundamentally nothing changes in such a short period. I had always maintained that whatever changes that is required in many touchy areas like female emancipation etc, the change can only be evolutionary and not something that can be achieved in a few years. Traditional men remain traditional.

Though I see plenty of movies, reviews or mention about them in my blogs have been rare & few. Unless I am really touched by the story, narration and the performance of the actors and the packaging of the movie as a whole!

Apocalypto fits the bill, perfectly.

Biting Truths

My house is becoming a veritable comedy show. As it comes in the Jim Carrey movie ‘The Truman Show’, if someone plants a TV camera at my place and airs a reality show, I am certain that folks will have laughs of their life.

For starters, what will call you a place that has more toothbrushes than the number of teeth itself in the household? And we have 3.5 people at home. Every morning starts with the challenge of finding your toothbrush. Maybe that is the reason I am so sharp in my brain, because I start the day with the challenge. Being color blind, my ordeal is doubled. I am lucky if I get up as the last guy amongst the 4, so that I can feel the wetness of the bristles and figure out which is not my brush. It still doesn’t solve the purpose of finding my own. But atleast I eliminated three brushes. After a sincere attempt, I proceed to brush with one of the leftovers, which need not necessarily be mine.

I was using a different technique altogether. It stemmed from my habits. I apply huge pressure if I am using my right hand, even in writing. So much so that you can see the imprint some 10 leaves away in the notebook. The same was true with brushing also. In its 3rd week of existence, my toothbrush appears as if it hasn’t seen oil & shampoo for a hundred years. So that was identification that it is my brush. But, in the 4th week I was almost brushing with the brush handle than the bristles, so started changing them every month. So once again they appear so very new and similar. The technique is no more in use.

With all this, you are tempted to think that we should have the cleanest set of teeth in the universe. Sorry, that’s not the way it is really. Because my elder daughter takes exactly .01 second to brush her teeth, so much so I seriously think that she just applies paste on the brush and washes it off, without coming anywhere near her teeth. So, the brush actually is more sparkling white. The younger one is not that bad. She likes the taste of paste, so takes it to her mouth and eats it. So her timing is around 10 seconds. Maybe she has sparkling white intestines.

So, as you would know by now, the stand in which brushes are kept broke down one day unable to hold the weight of all of them. Now they are in a container type standee. So, even if you succeed in spotting your own brush, extricating it is another challenge. Invariably they all come as a bunch. Pretty social folks they are. And sometimes or most of the times, the standee becomes a sleepee and all brushes fall down.

Guess, I am going to make stickers with our names on it and also start keeping them in our wardrobes. After all each one of us have separate wardrobes and the brushes can’t get mixed up, unless the servant maid ( who is an interminable source of comedy herself ) picks them and give for ironing. That way they will get mixed up again or really get pressed that I start using the handle again for brushing.

Never realized that marriage can bite me like this!! But then the smiles of the kids, whether yellow or disorderly, are worth having a yellow set yourself.

Shangri La

What is that with these tortured souls I don’t know!! And I am not including myself in that. Wherever I see an intelligent soul, whatever I read about the geniuses, all of them talk about a calling in their life. And some responded to that call, a few still wait for the call. I am in the second half of people. I am waiting for that call too, but nothing but stupid phone calls come to me.

Sometimes I feel that there is going to be no call at all. It is not as if I am waiting for a miracle to happen one fine morning inside my head and I construe that as a call. I am wondering what that would be, if at all that happens. It is always about finding a purpose in life. Beats me!

I don’t know what is wrong with the current purpose in life? Someone pays me handsomely and I go around kicking asses. May not be a glorious purpose in life, but still I kick someone else’s ass, so I don’t feel tired about it. Maybe if mine is kicked I would suddenly start searching my purpose. Long time ago, I wrote a piece called Chase, and then also I had the same confusion. Later, discovered that the chase would be to find the lost combs! Now that Airtel has introduced ‘Search made Simple’ my search for the combs would also stop.

Jokes apart this purpose business baffles me. I see a pattern here. All these searchers travel east and land up at India and that’s where they find their calling. Some smoke hashish and see God, others simply follow a modern guru like a lapdog and consume whatever he dishes out. They learn some mantras and keep repeating it in an anglicized manner like a broken gramophone record.

So what do we do now? We are already in the place where called folks arrive! Maybe God is my next door neighbor, I don't know. But,I can’t understand why instead of just peeping above the wall and yell for me, He wastes ISD to call these firangs. I think this whole ‘calling’ business is some industry. Maybe secretly funded by Indian Tourism Development Board! Should be bigger the Voice industry itself.

There are plenty of books that sell dreams of the exotic east and the meditation and yoga ( I am not discounting these at all, but I don’t know whether they are panacea for a materialistic white guy ). And there is word of mouth also. Guys who go back home and spread the good news of the magic of the Orient. Not that I disclaim the power, but I guess the search is something really deep inside you. You dig yourself deeper and deeper, and then you understand what you want to do really. And that could be as simple of status quo, go back kicking asses and retire or maybe just give into your wanderlust and roam for a while and come back hoping that everything from now on will be different.

Sometimes you dig too deep also there is an issue, you would not comprehend a damn thing and get completely clueless about what little you knew already about yourself. There is this series of articles that come in a Tamizh weekly in the title of ‘Care of Platform’. Those guys don’t have a roof above their head. But they seem to be happy within their purview.

Sakichi Toyoda popularized the concept of 5 why’s and Jim Collins also talks about that in his book ‘Built to Last’. For anything and everything, simply ask 5 why’s and you will arrive at a root cause. At a more philosophical level, the 5 Why's also demonstrate Dr. Deming's principle that the real problem usually lies in the deeper system rather than in the performance of an individual who is working within that system. So instead of simply worrying too much and searching for a answer a conscious drill down will help more.

Having said all these, if one is living in a concrete jungle and works in another for 18 hours a day, an Eastern book with its glorification of the serenity of the Himalayas, the pristine Ganges, the Hindu mysticism would definitely give a ray of hope.

There are just Bisleri bottles lying around in all these places nowadays. And of course you can get Maggi noodles also. But that can’t constitute a purpose, isn’t it. Finding Maggi?!

Music - My Soul

I am really not qualified to make such lofty statements. In fact, modesty is not a virtue that I possess. And I am always keen to showcase what I know and sometimes showcase as if I know also. So, if I say something that is remotely modest, then it only means that I respect it too much or I know too little about that. I can’t say that I know too little about music, but the sheer vastness of music makes me feel that I would not have heard even .001% of it.

I used to keep saying myself that Ilayaraaja is a God. And make claims like I became a theist when I discovered music and if Ilayaraaja and music is true, then God does exist. I was not really feeling odd to say that, because I knew a fair number of people who don’t stop with making such claims but also perform pooja.

It is just not Raaja, though he is the one who could make a discerning listener from a novice out of me. At various situations, various forms of music and different composers have occupied my heart fully. I was a late bloomer so to say. Didn’t read a single English book till I left college and haven’t listened any other music than Tamizh film songs till around the same time.

Then Beatles happened. It was easy listening because I could make something out of their music and lyrics. It was simple and it was as if I could relate to what they sang. Then one by one, I graduated into many composers and genre of music. And got this huge realization that music could be anything and one does not need to be particular about what he hears as long it pleases the ear. So with equanimity, I listen to everything from basic Carnatic to 50 cents. My mother could not fathom what I listened in rap which she used to call as mantras at a funeral ceremony. But for me it was just as cool as anything. There was a rhythm in what they did as music and my brain could decipher it. No big hang-ups about the social messages they claim to spread from within a deluge of bad words. It is just the sound that touches some chord inside me.

But lately it does more than touching a chord. The other night there was an involuntary smile in my face when I heard a strain of Raaja song. Once, while I was listening to Yanni, I dozed off with a smoke in hand and burnt my shoulder. Now, with the advent of Prem Joshua and Karunesh in my life, there are strange things that happen. I can feel the music spreading in my body. I may sound insane. But I swear that it happens. I can now understand the IIT’ians favorite pastime of Floyd, Vodka and Grass. Those guys probably would have even communicated with God.

The more I think about music, the more I get surprised about the simple yet powerful sound forms creating such riot inside the head. It creates some kind of anamorphism. Or like a chameleon, it can take the shape of whatever situation you think of. Sometimes the blue sky, sometimes the sea, the green grass, the rain, a river, expanse of a valley, immeasurable universe, endless travel, on and on!!

It really is a gift to play and create music. I guess they are God’s favored children. To be able to manifest a feeling inside you by their sheer genius! Subbu tells that he feels that he is almighty or feels closer to almighty when he listens to Prem Joshua. How true he is.

If there was a choice in life, I would rather wander aimlessly playing music and live with nature. In my wish list of going to Himalayas and listen to the Vedas, I should probably make a correction. I want to listen to a musical rendition of the Vedas.

I will then die peacefully. And more importantly silently! For it seems that is the best form of music I can produce.

Peculiar Men

Every one in the world has some idiosyncrasies. No two persons are alike and it also robs the charm of life if we are all prototypes. But there is something that we assume as basic traits and we have drawn a code that human beings live this way.

But, once in a while I come across really peculiar people. And I get reminded of the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘A Most Peculiar Man’. The song goes like this.


He was a most peculiar man.
That’s what Mrs. Riordan said and she should know;
She lived upstairs from him
She said he was a most peculiar man.

He was a most peculiar man.
He lived all alone within a house,
Within a room, within himself,
A most peculiar man.


He had no friends, he seldom spoke
And no one in turn ever spoke to him,
cause he wasn’t friendly and he didn’t care
And he wasn’t like them.
Oh, no! He was a most peculiar man.

I have deliberately omitted the last stanza as of now.

But I am surprised about such type of men. Complete misanthropes. Living in a world of their own! No, they are not autistic. I have seen many a child that is autistic and to a great extent I understand their behavior. These men I talk about are perfect guys holding senior positions in good organizations, have a great family, but their world is the one where only they belong.

They don’t worry about what’s happening in their partner’s life. Maybe they would have the best person as a partner, but he would care a damn about it. After all he would be worried about a small incident that happened at office in the past and call up home to warn that he is in a terrible mood, so it’s better that no one comes across him when he return, lest he loses his cool. As if he ever was cool!!

Would live a few blocks away from relatives, but never once would visit them or encourage them visiting his home. Would never attend any social gathering and if at all it something is social about them, it would be hanging out to have a drink with their cronies. And then the drinks will help them draw further into their own world, unless there is a deliberate intent of wallowing more into misery, so that the rest are concerned about them.

Would have habits like not eating in any friends’ or relatives’ place (hotels are ok ) and would have the temerity to order for food from the friends' home, in the rare occasions of visiting a friend. No, they are not austere either. Money does mean a lot to them. Would always be thinking and worrying about how to make more money. But it will be extremely difficult in a world of fools according to them. Pretty ironical I would say. Their world is just them and a world of fools for them would be a tacit admission of them being a fool.

They would be embodiment of chauvinistic male traits because they anyway don’t respect human beings and women are lesser human beings for traditional men like them. For them, it is a question of how no one understands them in this imperfect world. Would have no interests in arts and music should probably sound like bats screaming in the night ( maybe there is something wrong with their ears, they can listen to sounds that are more than 20000 decibels and that means they live a very loud world )

Nothing else but their own welfare is primary and they refuse to acknowledge that there is something wrong with them. Would not attempt to listen to friends ( if someone claims to be a friend ) and it is impossible to have medical counseling. After all there is nothing wrong with them.

I am at sea to understand such misanthropic behavior. I would really like to carefully notice someday whether they can smile at little child, look at flowers; listen to what others go through in life. What kind of people would lack basic social skills? Even the Selfish Giant of Oscar Wilde creation understood that his trees started bearing fruits when he allowed the children to play in his garden. What would change these people?

They should, because if they don’t, life will be like what the last stanza of what Paul Simon sang.

He died last Saturday.
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he’d never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room;
And Mrs. Riordan says he has a brother somewhere
Who should be notified soon.
And all the people said, what a shame that he’s dead,
But wasn’t he a most peculiar man?