Friday, December 24, 2010

Perfect femme names (lower is better)

Above: what first (working) result for "Mamta" on google images throws

RankNameScore
I.Mamta3+2
II.Madge3+3
III.Amara3+4
IV.Mwgli3+5
V.Tammy3+5
VI.Pamela3+6
VII.Meg4+0
VIII.Ana4+0
IX.Anamika4+7

Japanese puns

Mushi wa mushi suru. = Ignore the bug(s).

Ika wa ikaga? = How about eating squid/cuttlefish?

Iruka wa iruka? = Is there a dolphin?

Futon ga futtonda. = The futon flew.

Sore wa sarada no sarada. = This is the salad plate.

Sake ga sakenda. = The salmon was shouting.

Hokkaidô wa dekkaidô. = Hokkaido is big.

Taiyô ni sawaritaiyô! = I want to touch the sun.

Share wa yamena share. = Stop telling jokes!
(This is often chanted menacingly when an adult pleads with the children to stop, just stop.)

Naiyô wa naiyô! = There is no meaning.
(This is the desperate cry of a weeping adult before the onslaught of children's jokes.)


梨は無し
nashi wa nashi. - There is no pear.

間諜が艦長に浣腸します
Kanchou ga kanchou ni kanchou shimasu - The spy is giving an enema to the captain.

雪が行
yuki ga yuki - the snow is going

善し由
yoshi yoshi - good reason.


wakusei wa kusei
mokusei mo kusei
(the planet stinks
so does jupiter)

Incest gods

Ishwara descended into the world of Brahma, arraigned him and his sons, and put an end to their incestuous proposals. But in spite of this a certain amount of mischief had been done; Brahma's sweat at the moment of his most passionate attention to Sandhya (his daughter) fell on the ground before her, and out of it was born numerous progeny; and out of the 'vital fluid' of Daksha (lord of creation, another of Brahma's sons) flowing down was born Rati, the beauty of beauties.

Manmata (another of Brahma's sons, brother to Sandhya, and the Hindu God of Love, who apparently throws love shafts much like the Pig in another mythology does) whose shafts proved deadly to others, succumbed readily to the charms of Rati, whose eyebrows were more perfectly arched than Manmata's brow; whose breasts were lotus-bud-like, pointed, with nipples dark as honey bees, and so hard that a teardrop falling on them would rebound in a spray; and the line of downy hair between whose breasts made Manmata wonder if by chance his bowstring had been transposed there. Her thighs smooth as banana stalks tapered down to her delicate feet, pink-tinted at heel and toe. Her hands were like sprouts of laburnum, and her tresses were like the monsoon clouds. Manmata was overwhelmed with love for Rati and married her.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Your closest friend is yet to arrive


250,000 years back, in the Pleistocene Era, evolution decided to fix the limit to our social relationship capacity - the radius of people and relationships that we could keep a track of. 25 years back, the nuances of genetics further narrowed the same capacity for me. 18 years back, research put these facts public, and their observation on our social dynamics further limited and cleaved the extents of our relationships within those capacities.
So it happens that our neocortex volume determines that capacity, which averages to about 150 for us human primates (mine should be lower, as empirically observed). A mesh of 150. Among these, a narrower - say, 50 - that hang dearly; 20 that stick close; and a mere 5 or 6 that resonate at our exact frequencies and talk our talk, whom we call our closest friends.

Even if we stretch our limits, or you claim to have a larger Neo-cortical region than I do, you could take your active social relationship limit to 250. Beyond that, new relationships are either futile, or end up displacing the existing ones. But even that calculation is weak, as we never know whom we might bump into and find endearing one of these days of our remaining lives, and have the need for inclusion in our nexus. That one person could potentially be your life partner. Or your best friend. Or your idol. Or your second-born's Godfather. Or even your third life partner, if you've divorced twice. Or your fourth, if after your third marriage you realise you really have an affinity to the same sex which is why your earlier commitments failed... you get my point.

Henceforth, how do we even begin to reserve space for our future relationships that would blossom, sans the guilt of pushing another to an inferior level, and also one on the fringes of that 250 limit completely outside? We need a 'Tatkal' quota - where one could just find a seat in our Neo-cortical Garib Rath.

The mention of our railways brings the fact to mind that this is India, where the great Indian art of 'adjust' has had the people cram their social lives with faces and more faces and the warmth of a thousand handshakes that they would never remember. Everybody claims to know every third person in a social setup, which makes their claim all the more dubious, or only hints at how degraded they assume a human social bond to be. More likely that person's just bluffing; their claims would fail on the mere premise of the time budgeting problem involved in maintaining anything like that monstrous social circle - we could be spending up to 42% of our lifetime in mere Social Grooming, which is highly disadvantageous in today's post-tribal societies. Imagine the drudgery when you find it all wasn't worth. "The lesser the merrier" seems to be apt for this age. I don't wonder why I respect my reclusive friends, who maintain a narrow social group - its only an appreciation of their humbling and evolved mean gene strategy. Everything else is petty subsistence.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Stay immersed in your head...
Then come up to the surface to breathe in the air filled with new dishes, faces, smalltalk which you feel like eavesdropping on, and John M's digestive travails. Dip back into the river of your thoughts. See the fascinating piles the words make, gawk at the logical conclusions further down the course; try shutting out the multilingual chatter smalltalk about yourself in the physical dimension, try looking involved, or try looking a traveler who's caught the pulse of the moment.

Ganga

Routine again. Step out, down to the river, maybe a 'Hi' to the freewheeling Baba in his bamboo hut along the way and share a chillum or some tea, finally down to the river whose lapping waves and the cold sands in the shadow regions serve a hint to its freezing waters, and the whirlpools at some distance a hint to its torrid nature, strip on the sandy shore, scream and come running and dive as John M does, or gradually walk in deeper and deeper as I do, for a slow sensory awakening, feel the hypothermia waiting at your physical threshold, another dip and then another one, and now in lost notion of all proprieties you walk back on the sandy shore shivering like a rattlesnake's tail and uneasily whistling, find the sun a blessing and sit down atop one of the rocks to sun yourself dry, talk and think like Plato, feel absolved of you 9-to-6-Monday-to-Friday routine, stare into solving the mysteries of geography about you, listen to the discordant truck horns in the distance, pat your canine friends who have confusedly followed you to the river, study the footprints, the ripples, the words that never get to you, the smiles that forever beguile you, the rugged spirit you will forever admire, the nostalgia you will fall into next when you're here.

The need for a thousand ears

Words run down the slopes;
A freshwater stream,
split into a thousand.
The thirsty come closer,
or so I wish.
But their thirst is not my affliction,
neither do I tout a permanent riddance.

These words and my visage is transitory -
a stimulant nobody would forever pursue.
Because every thirst is born of a new need,
where every journey leads to a new brook,
and every brook offers a new relief.
These are no ordinary waters.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

@ Lamington Road, Mumbai


Having visited LR for 8-bit game cartridges, presently looking for an adapter to get my cell jack do a 3.5mm audio out. The roadside stall owner left for something urgent, leaving his kid in-charge, who got fascinated with my lesser-known cellphone, and eagerly snatched it away at my first hint of being comfortable parting with it - straight to the camera mode, a few clicks (the result of which you see) sans the curiosity for the outcome, then onto games and other features, which I suspected would ultimately lead to them enabling paid services... hence me snatching the phone back.
Shoplifted that adapter.

Donating under pseudonyms


...Goes Away in the End

For once you see me not with the eyes of their eyes and speak to me not with the words they pieced for you. As terrible as you are, as unimaginative as you are, as goody goody as you never were, but it all works. There are things that stir, lips that form a smile, and a crescendo is reached midway - it could've worked no better, let me assure you.
For once I fly high into the air again, find that smile playing between the passing clouds again, come down with a friend in hand, raise hell across the lakes again, promise myself to care again, to share again, be beat in the sands, and lost in the currents again.

I could build a house around words tonight, or at least a plush toy that could also double for my couch pillow where I would occasionally fall asleep thinking of the long silences that kept things together. I could also try to reach out again, to press the reset button and give a fuck-all to these strange equations that torment as much as they dictate the course of things, just like once earlier.

And you know what I did? I took a deep, cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, "As guileless as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I have been expressed today, this is the moment that I start to forget. Time will wash away the sandy shores and dry away those placid lakes, where I once had my moments to remember."
And the moments tick by, time my eraser, as rest of the city sleeps.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

'Ol Yesterday

Hello to the saboteur of my panoramic lifestyle.
[we shake hands. I am reminded of “at laeva lacrimas muttoni absterget amica]

I work in a haggard corporation that finds hard to produce an involving film in its mission to educate employees about the way they do business. Somebody should get paid to keep an attention span through such an abortion – a polished and sterile narrator, sterile suits in sterile environs sermonizing, and such affectation that can only hint at drug abuse (sans the fluidity and originality of thought). Between the bouts of sleep and the bouts of diahorrea, I barely manage to grasp the revelation that we are a customer-centric organization with a zealous streak to succeed and drive the market - that was new, I didn’t realize that earlier, I feel enraptured.

Seized by these flashing images of snow fields inside my head – not vast endless snow fields, but in patches, like after a light round of snowing, where the charred ground and mottled grass feature in equal proportions with the carpet of snow. That is the look most villages in upper Garhwal region would bear these days, when the locals desert their villages for more comfortable ones at lower altitudes (they live in a duality), and first snows of the season have fallen. Even their Gods descend down with them. Much of the snow – or old snow – I’ve come across has been of this variety. Yes, I do not get to play in it or eat it or make out with some girl wearing furs, but it gives you boundless reign of adventure. Thankfully, it’s no sea.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

Our son is researching on outer space

All the sincere thoughts as a foreword to this day now possibly stand as mere rhetoric, knowing well that intrusive thoughts about intergalactic affairs would keep me involuntarily occupied. I should not be reading about sex in space, if I did want a sane day. Well, leaving out the recreational aspects of such read, it is an important research area on the future of humankind. Vomit Comet and The Uranus Experiment clips could give me more practical insight.
Imagine a spacecraft of the future, with a crew of a thousand ladies, off for Alpha Centauri, with 2,000 breasts bobbing beautifully and quivering delightfully in response to every weightless movement . . . and I am the commander of the craft, and it is Saturday morning and time for inspection, naturally.
I wish, for once, my Saturday morning would start with such hilarious inspections.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Weekly moulting

Coming across idols from the 60/70s, one could feel having lost a track of our society's progression...what 80s and 90s came up with was the image of a cosmopolitan brute, quite another universe from the likes of then-existing gods - Bowie, Beatles, and Bond. For a scholarly discussion to its roots, please get in touch with not-me.

So it happens I had another unstable weekend, and it was exciting in the latter half, halfway-exciting in the former half, and somewhere in between the two jumps I lost a track of my life and lay googling, and ogling, and doodling.
It was reformatory, but a wrong reform in the context of my vastly potential life that everybody finds could be well spent in the sterile and formal corridors of our always-hot industries. Who distracts himself with soul food? Who finds time for nature? Who tries fingering death on a weekend? Who finds the world? Who thinks about the world?, ultimately, Who thinks?

With the mental grease off, I could help myself with some facts. At 1430 we think of moving out. At 1440 I start with some movie on Varun's laptop. At 1600-ish we're done with another hour and a half of hollywood inanitites; we dig out and feast on some peanut butter in the meantime, jump gently. Finally we mutually help dragging each other out in the open, beyond those doors. And we move for the greener climes in the distance - it's a reservoir/dam that we've to get to; it should be the East/South-East direction that Varun presently points towards.

On the bike, and off the slacking. We drive on for 15 minutes before feeling lost (the roads are there, but Varun's unsure); asking around gives us unsure remarks about the existence of that place. "Directions to the dam, please" soon changes its general form to "Directions to behind that cliff, please" ... we were using our instincts to map the location to our present position, which would put it right behind the cliff next to us. (In under the next hour we'd learn we couldn't have done worse - well, blame it on Varun.) We change directions from what the locals tell us. We tear out from the hustle bustle, and now are slowly winding along a dirt track that boasts of some horrible mud patches that could kill our journey. We enter and exit small villages, and by the time we're hesitant of going deeper in, we're almost there, as we find out from a stoned villager. Some of the worst roads, and we land up by a quarry - work on hold here on a Sunday.
A teenage kid Imtiaz sleeping atop a white, minivan-sized generator watches over the orange bulldozer, while the operator himself takes a dip down there in a pool inside the quarry. We exchange words, gather intel on the directions and surprises that lay along our path, and start our trek with a rough steep climb onto the hill that the quarry itself has eaten into. THE END.

When you climb to the top of the mountain
Look out over the sea
Think about the places perhaps, where a young man could be
Then you jump back down to the rooftops
Look out over the town
Think about all of the strange things circulating round

Look at me

I do my little ramp imitation as I walk back to my seat from the bay door; pronounced steps, a slight swagger; nobody takes notice, and my kick stays with me. Back on the seat, hunched, drowsy, confused, restless, wasted; you could kill me had you seen me rambling forward on the chronological axis in this state. Boss-gamma-mama tries taking interest in my assigned task for a while, and after a while of actually trying to explain him the task at hand, I simply hurl some tech jargon to see him scampering away. I love seeing people scamper away like that.

I barely invest my time in anything while in this corporate zoo. Even scribbling down seems tedious – it’s like the spirit of the working class enters my body upon an entry in the office, making me do all this ugly stuff that I don’t want to.  My technical bent is a long lost brother now, a castaway from my own heart, like a king impeached partially by circumstances, much by guile, waiting with its forces outside the town for the day when it could claim its reign again. I doodle these silly things on my table desk (right now it’s a bad conception of Shiv Sena’s snarling tiger), conditional on access to a working whiteboard marker, rub them away, maybe write words in strange/skewed typefaces, or something in foreign language (Arbeit Macht Frei seems appropriate atm); I have lately ended up messing my trousers or those lighter coloured shirts with a stray marker trail.

In some time we are legally entitled to leave. "Well, we could. But we won't." The people around are on track to be voted the best vegetables in town; no insistence or convincing helps; an imitation war of sorts. I can feel a Silence of the Lambs in here...

- What did you see, Clarice? What did you see?
- Lambs.
- They were screaming.
- They were slaughtering the spring lambs?
- And they were screaming.
- And you ran away?
- No. First I tried to free them.
- I opened the gate to their pen, but they wouldn't run.
They just stood there, confused. They wouldn't run.
- But you could - and you did, didn't you?

If we were a pill, we’d have tangibly seen ourselves losing our character with the daily circular motion of the sun that sets our lives stirring, dissolving us faster and faster in the ether of humanity, till we all contribute a common consistency to the impotent chemical solution called life that nobody would ultimately drink for no great thirst to satisfy. It’d just spill over someday, perhaps… as insignificant a moment as our entire lifetimes have been (or will be).

Friday, November 19, 2010

Occsionally white and nerdy

The 'Nerdcore being' dormant inside had a revision after "The Social Network" yesterday. Nothing great about the movie - nothing great about a standard plot of genius, success and betrayal combined with excessive depiction of women as fuck objects, - but it all was amazingly riveting - the direction, the camera, NiN, the geekery. I am a resurgent geek today, though still balancing my bitpop-and-API-doting in the office hours with an excursion to Mocha's for some beer and general life conditioning. Difficult times.

Have had plenty of prancing around since my feet combined with the cc-s of Rohit's Unicorn, and die wille fueled by Chandresh (major stakeholder of my weekend's fun), Shruti, and Malvika. Each day a different note, kinda like a disharmonious orchestra, a kitsch pop number. Hope it matures into a melody.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

On Kashid Beach

Afraid to die, or afraid to live? I have been having my rockstar day.
The sand all in my hair and the nape of my neck and in my toes giving that nostalgia of a couple of hours back. Lying in the ocean, periodically under and out of the sickly saline waters, staring up at the rising half moon, the soft cloud stubs that make shapes, and the burning humanity jamming out at far distance.
Now, the clapping of waves dominates the senses tonight. 0000hrs. Sounds of distant thunder do make you tingle in anticipation, but you know it wouldn't show up. A half moon brings some details to relief - like the shoreline, the ridges, and the tiny pebbles at the shore left behind now that the ocean has receded over the course of night.

My thoughts as tiny as those pebbles make it to the conscious. A muteness pervades - one that you get after a jump, bad T-rush, good fish. Oh how gladly I transmitted my head-load of thought/trash at a panicked pace to when over the phone with Anu and Ghoru (they must be thinking I'd just had sex).
//20101114

Sym Cam Lava

Oh, life is fun fuck.

Pa's karma has me sitting out here in Lavale, inside the ginormous Symbiosis campus, at the balcony of our trendy guest house, overlooking the landscape dotted by very few trees, and by symbols of human luxury - gold courses, homes of the rich (first thing upon my arrival, I was pointed out to the two lightbulbs that shine outside Jackie Shroff's home on the opposite hilltop), concrete industrial menaces, and ponds; that is just one half of my view - the other still lays enveloped in the morning fog that descended after a night of intermittent rain. It's 0900 but the air still conveys a semi-romantic, semi-obscure, somewhat broody mood. I bet the arrival of the glamour on the weekend does that - I could well imagine a Jack-Daniels-high Jackie Shroff in his Jacuzzi having a fuckfest with his half dozen women partners all day long, then descending down for 'a golf' at his own golf course in later half of the day, while his vaginae sober up for another evening's performance. Well, enough of my depraved self-projections; maybe Mr. Jackie Shroff is out there on his balcony right now, writing about the depraved, isolated, self-gratifying, ugly, and indulgent lifestyle of the new urban middle class (of which I make a part of).

In the meantime, somebody silently crept up to me, and called in others to join in, all outside my knowledge. I couldn't hear a single tick. As it happens, several ants have taken over my floor, clamoring for the cake crumbs which were a result of my morning tea out here with Pa. Ant lines on the marble floor reminds of "marching ants" - oh dear, I miss Photoshop.
A few birds - I can hear an owl or some deep hooting species, maybe mynah, and sparrow, and a peacock sometime back - contribute dully to this dull atmosphere. Sun has just been allowed a passage to the earth by the nimbus overhead.

Oh look, a first bird in sight, a white stork.

I will name my language Klingon. Wait...

Have been thinking of over-the-counter medication as a fad and for my pending (teenage) trip. It almost feels a necessity right now, when the weight of the world somehow gets lost in translation, and all that one interprets is a cured, filtered-for-consumption version of it.

Maybe I should learn a new language, because I have repeatedly found myself an F- student at my knowledge of words and phrases like 'future growth prospects', 'career planning', 'rat race', 'aspirations', 'life goals', 'compromises', 'being real', 'see Mr. XYZ's kid who's doing so well', 'marriage'. I should rather work on finding a langugage where all this condensed to 'जियो' or 'live on' and that would be all we could advise to our peers and the younger ones upon whom we see moralistic and idologistic-philosophy-pounding a prerogative.
Yes, indeed, Language is the solution to my situation - Let's invent one!

PS: the only other word in the vocab would be 'awesome'
PPS: In my context, certain words that should also be condensed whereforth they will lose their meaning - 'random hardons', 'stroking', 'alcohol abuse', '5AM-high', 'skinny dipping'

Friday, November 12, 2010

Burning eyes, the burnt rolled cigarette butts, and a pining to burn through the weekend. It's always interesting seeing where one branches out to, against the options available right before that instant (for me that instance would probably be an absolute confirmation/denial from Chandresh). Remember the Many-Worlds? The present possibilities look fruitful; even the present dejections seem productive. It's a simple equation - if I'm not on the road, either biking or biking, then I'm exploring the beaches; if not that, then I'm entering into the fictional world of Goncharov; if that gets a miss there's the terminal.

Time to write something long. Let me burn first.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Field exercises

Hiding behind the wall I could not see who was firing at me from the other side. I introduced some of my own fire from my M4A Carbine to get them into hiding, then tried to steal a look, and I did - there were two of them at the other side of the complex, themselves following a similar strategy as mine, and firing in short bursts, expecting to get lucky. I thought I could trump them with my knowledge of bullets having the power to get through certain walls at a certain angle…”wallbanging”. I fired again, several times, and my bullets tore through a chunk of wall.
I did eventually hit my present aggressor. He fell with his Kalashnikov. The one with him now took charge, pretty much the same thing; stupid AI. “Easy,” I said to myself, and continued my steady stream of fire. But with time, I could sense my bullets were going ineffective. I brought myself out of my hiding, to stage an assault. I was being careful, for he could just be sitting out there waiting for this idiotic move of mine, and so I fired a few times again, but those bullets only punched holes in the blue plastic barrels at the far end of the complex – I could confirm that the other guy wasn’t there anymore. Might he be circling around the building, looking to surprise me? Convinced of that logic, I changed my course, tracing my steps back ever so carefully. First thing I did was to exchange guns – my carbine for another dead terrorist’s Kalashnikov. I struggled, for I couldn’t remember the key to swap objects, but eventually I did. Soon I had circled about the building, without either of us surprising the other. I stood staring at the dead terrorist whom I had taken down a while back, confused as to where the other was hiding. I was out in the open, and a nervousness came over me. Could he have run away, or entered the building? Not too sure.

Suddenly I felt a shock run through me, I was numbed, I was down. I woke up.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Gardening

Foreign Flower
Something clambered up to the surface in me yesterday - the primordial desire to cultivate. As I ambled along the open spaces outside my office complex, there was a strange sensation in observing the grass artificially growing in modest patches. More than those verdant patches did I find interest in the dug out portions of the earth – the brown earth, often clumped together in fist-sized chunks, the roots haphazardly sticking out, in a violent fashion, like a scene of genocide. The gaping hole in the earth was strangely inviting; maybe it was an invitation to creation, somebody had to fill it in, I wanted to be that somebody.

My envy for the day went towards the gardener, whom I had caught at work earlier in the day. He was working on a tiny patch of grass, right there as you step out the conditioned environs of the office. It was nothing very challenging – he had carved out an area which he was methodically carpeting with new grass. I was drawn-in to the extent of forgetting the embarrassment of conveying my idleness (when you are a worker, you do have to look busy – a cellular conversation, smalltalk with fellow colleagues, a notebook to scratch on, those darned shoe laces that never stay put… anything but an extravagant display of nothingness).

We humans are a grassland-loving species, we like to put our lands to use, to cultivate, and I won’t doubt a wider reach of this instinct. I have grown up seeing lots of Uncles sharing a passion/indulgence for gardening – scoops, rakes, watering cans – that you wonder why they only blame the opposite sex of being sedate in their own artificial worlds. I have heard of army men growing gardens to escape their dull routine abroad – creating a new landscape within the new landscape that they have been posted to. Alas, I presently have nothing but a couple of dying/dead plants in tiny pots on my balcony; they get little sunlight and no human attention. There is no grass I could grow, no garden I could rake of dead leaves in the autumn, or rose bushes that I could prune. Another cry inside to get back home asap.

Remember Shirke ?!

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Why so light?

Won't be long before I drift into my today's sleep; 0830 in the morning. Being irresponsible with your schedule is exciting; Juhu beach is exciting at dawn as well; so is Shruti's company. Already having come a full circle, rest of my waking hours would be spent trying to catch sleep; hard luck for me that life has such abundance to offer and yet we have to steal everything, including sleep, including our own expression. I also have this entity called 'office' where I'm supposed to spend time and get rich.

Mumbai is a crazy city. By the time - 0700 - we were on our way back from the beach, the traffic had swelled to an extent that it seemed no different from 0900. There were cops about, sneaking about traffic signals, writing a new chapter in the Indian history of corruption - its INR 50 for jumping light, 100 for no license, and 200 for no legal proof of owning the bike. I was miffed by the noise of traffic constituting my dawn, a day that had begun so serenely.

Rewinding back, this morning I woke up at 0540 with a tingling sensation all over the body. I had only an hour's sleep, and the jumps were still pumping through me, hence the condition. As usual for the first half of the week, I found myself wondering about the weekend foods that could've got me this stomach upset.
To remind myself, tonight is going to be another night of indulgence - Abhishek's only got this day before his religious dedications restrict him from meat.

// 20100907

Burn my shadow away

Was overcome with an unbearable tide of emotions by this evening. To my luck I could sneak away from the office sans a trace. Wiled time at R-City; then later, dismayed at the find that there existed no Shopper's Stop inside - I had free coupons to feed my materialistic minimality - I immediately employed a rickshaw to get me home. Melancholy took hold through the journey - I walked into my apartment in mere folds of flesh, there was a vacuum inside.

I was reminded of that which a few of my friends confided to me "I wept on many days"; their experience of living by themselves and facing the de-humanizing aspects of their employed roles brought from thoughts into tangible weight of their tears.
Well, keeping the trend going I too tried, but I couldn't - it seemed ridiculous and self-defeating. Had I not forgotten the fact that I was also out of toilet rolls and Maggi, perhaps I'd have bawled.

Archival Diary Entry//20100907

Friday, September 10, 2010

Warming hands by the fire again

My travel log might see some fresh ink soon. My shoes will taste some real soil again. My lungs will breathe in some happy air again. My skin will feel the touch of wild flowers (as I tie on a mountain slope) again, and the numbing sensation of sparkling brook waters will haunt my feet for more days to come. I
have gone malnourished in the hunger for adventure, I have gone mental in the lust for my being with nature. I hope this could give me answers. Sikkim and Bhutan is on the cards, have to fill the boat that will rock those corners, have to make plans.

Ich imagine coming across some travel author who takes me in for her protege.

Marriages are made in heaven

It would not be surprising to see why religion and arranged marriages go well. India is a shining example, a country that boasts of a "religious character". Marriage is a bond between two people. IT takes forever for two to know each other. What better than train them on the same framework, same decition-making guidelines, mo matter how flawed or historically inconsistent they are? Unless somebody can define themselves or sum their living in a word - eg Hindu, Muslim, Christian... - they cannot sell. Selling ourselves is what religion is for. Who cares how well people personally know each other, learn to guess the instinctive side of other's character? When there's a framework that the society (unjustly) rewards you for why be particularly unique, or try to find the perfect soulmate?
"Marriages are made in heaven", when interpreted this way seems logical. We have created a stable framework, supposedly written and ruled by an otherworldly entity that punishes us for a thousand deaths if we break the code. Hence they know those rooted in a religion would not dare break that code; they would not dare anything less (or more) towards a human being by the type of relationship they're in with. Hence a mere background check for criminal record and genetic defeciencies works well. Oh how easy it gets for them. And then they cry about the thousand sins, deviancies that their bile pushes them to.

And that, of course, is the original opposition to an inter-faith marriage. Like getting a Java expert into a C# project. Like pairing an OOP expert with a procedural programming adherent.

Someday my life would find this occurence...
"Sugar, I've always been a PHP guy and you're a VB.NET gal. This cannot work between us."

Monday, September 06, 2010

trouser-gyan

I should rather put this in my other blog, since a 'geek' isn't restricted to the computer domain. So it happened that I savoured content on the construction of trousers in the past hour. It started with the attached description of my newly-purchased trousers: "...cut in flat-front style, custom fit. Sits just below the waist, straight through hip and thigh, with straight leg opening..."
What be flat-front? What be this 'below-the-waist' stuff? Why is it straight through my thighs?

And so my trouser-gyan led me to finding out why my uncle's above-the-waist style of wearing trousers holds such a charm, the purpose of pleats (that isn't always applicable), and the story behind cuffs at the bottom. It led me to suspect my recent purchase; as a result I have decided to do away with the cuffs, trim my waist handles before I could put on these trousers, be more analytical the next time I'm out for another pair, and never iron my trousers the wrong way (which, I have been led to believe, I have been doing since eternity). I might as well have them custom-stitched - back to the days when my father would have those done for me; he would surely be astonished at this profound learning.

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Flying lessons in the morning

It is 8 in the morning and often my day starts much beyond this. But at the present moment, I am well awake, bubbling with thoughts, and feel excited (in its classical literal meaning). Hot water from a soaked towel runs over my left buttock, losing its intensity, yet fulfilling its purpose by the time it breaks into tiny streams that would cascade down the thighs and onto another towel underneath me. I am filled with a relief.

Imagine me a sybarite; but the deviants would probably guess better - I am recovering shortly after having an accident.

Friend: Aur weekend me kya plan hai
me: my wkend started with flying lessons in the morning
*not of the kind you'd expect
Friend: ok
me: ahem, hey, wht'd you infer, btw?
Friend: Inference, I don't know
I would like you to explain
But I have seen you online the whole night
so was a little worried
pyaar to nahi ho gaya na tujhe
me: pyaar ka koi vichaar nahin
Friend: just joking
what are those flying lessons
me: so it happens that my proactive day - another weekend where I woke up to ensure my eternity - started with a 9km walk from my cousin's place to back home, and I got hurled in the air by a bajaj avenger midway
Friend: you mean and accident
* an accident
me: yep, tales of the common man
Friend: kaisa hai be?
what about injuries
I hope it's not serious
me: no, nothing broken. nothing bleeding.
Friend: nice way you put things up
me: my rear took much of the damage
Friend: That's great
me: jeans and shirt torn
Friend: vo sab to thik hai
galti kiski thi
me: both of a swerving autowallah and a speeding biker

But I, like every man, am a being of pure survival. It did not take much time for me to come to senses. Survey of my limbs, survey of the bystanders' reactions to ensure I wasn't bleeding, gathering my sensory impulses to analyse the extent of my injuries, then taking a few deep breaths before breaking into my first words to communicate my disappointment at both the involved parties, then recollecting the spills from my pocket scattered on the road.

Shaqeel, a cab driver that represented the best of humanity at that moment helped to wash my bruised palms, and volunteered to drive me some distance ahead. To his surprise, instead of hinting at an anxiety to get home in haste, I got down by the shores of Powai Lake. "Sit by Powai Lake to catch the sunrise" was on my itinerary, you see.
Alas, the sky was/is too cloudy today. I did enjoy the serenity, nevertheless, my eyes wandering off to the far ends of this lake to imagine a bask of crocodiles somewhere. Then some more listlessly staring-into-the-horizon, I started feeling the boredom and the pain and headed for home. Pain makes for a bad awareness - it sucks you inward, to your core Darwinian impulses, you cannot come up with a metaphysical theory or chart your future.

Now it seems difficult getting back on track with my superhuman fitness routine that would've been starting this evening.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Fantasy cocktail - (theoretical) pleasure of pain

Launching an offensive against the roaches that breed in my kitchen, and seeing them flit about shortly thereafter after the poison has entered their system was a defeated satisfaction, because I didn't hate them enough to imagine them dying. What I could imagine was a torture experiment:

Me standing upright, being tied on all my axes. A section of both my arms would be cordoned off from the rest of the body; perhaps a 5-inch strip starting from the elbow and towards the hand. This section on each arm would be exposed to certain species of insects that have a historical notoriety for their assault on anything living. For contextual comfort, let us assume ants (preferably the black or red ones) on the left arm, and wasps on the right. The ants could be incited by some sugar syrup on my arm; the wasps could be teased by a throbbing in my arm, having me clench my fists repeatedly. The whole thing would last for 180 seconds, after which the insects would be sprayed with smoke, so as to merely lose their grip and fall off, without meeting death.

Preparations complete. Let they be let loose.
The ants tear through my flesh; the wasps inject into it. Rapid firings in my head, unbearable pain. This would be those Discovery Channel shows we so curiously watch, taken to the extreme - makes you wonder why we are so curious about it in the first place. First minute would be the most exciting...the insects would learn my existence and communicate of my solitary existence in the otherwise vacuum that they've been put in. They might probably try befriending my arm at first, and playfully caress the skin, before coming to a conclusion that their attempts have failed. This would be the first minute of our rendezvous - the most amusing and least interesting as the insect behavior is quite indecipherable to us humans.

The next minute would start with a swelling dissatisfaction for the wasps as they could neither trace food nor friendship, nothing except this throbbing unfriendly tissue that my arm is; the ants would have discovered sugar centers on my arm by this time, and thanking their gods for the excess. With these facts, the ants bite into me in joy, while the wasps sting me in disgust. If I were spiritual, I would fain accept the ants' actions. If I were of the Rosseau clan, I would be elated at what the wasps were at. Being an educated person who is familiar to both, I would expect myself to be in rapture at my physical annihilation.

The third and final minute would be mine. All mine, as the ants would have reached the soft tissue beneath my flesh while the wasps' poison and pain of the sting would have been announced all across my nervous system. Each individual finger would try a heroic effort to stretch across the divide, but to no effect. Every extremity of my body would be twitching involuntarily. I couldn't possibly be more agreeable to death than at this time. Darwin would probably set sail again to formulate a new theory. By the end of this minute, I would have collapsed entirely into myself.

(to added effect, and to further impress Kafka, we could have these insects etch out my crime, which I am able to decipher at the end of the last minute)

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Marina and Ulay

There was Marina, and her lover Ulay, who planned to make an example of their love, and decided to represent the coming together of two hearts unlike any other couple. The year was 1981.

They would cross the great distance of the Great Wall of China - Marina started walking at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China, and Ulay began walking at the western end, in the Gobi Desert, at the same moment. They simply walked towards each other along the Wall until they met in the middle 90 days later.

They had thought that they would get married when they met in the middle. But by the time they managed to actually do it, their relationship had disintegrated and their meeting ended up as a kind of divorce ceremony, marking the end of their love and work together.

In the process of stretching human limits, and being the proverbial pair that bridged distances despite all the hurdles, the wall turned into a metaphysical entity that reminded them of their own limitless capacities, and the challenges that they could take for themselves. It reminded them of a dimension beyond the mundanities, even beyond the motive force of love that started it all in the first place.
Try as much as we could to dissect and reason these two lovers, only experientially-gained reasoning could explain this.
Well, thanks to some help online, I would not be making my back any worse than what I presently have, which was as a result of fiddling with a few bikes in the garage to make space for parking.
Note to self: need a stronger knowledge of applied physics and a stronger upper body frame.

With Oakenfold's beats pulsating gently through my head, I can mull back over a change in my office landscape over the past few days. Some of my closest friends will be missing. Gone, too, are the cute 'village girls' that I always found loitering about; I'd generally amuse myself with lipreading their inainities, as well as obsessing over the awesome few. Now I will have long empty hours of no or little code to fiddle with, which, willingly or not, is can help me find time for office naps, table tennis, and frivolous, flirtatious chats on gtalk after hacking over the corporate vpn. On retrospect, today's hour of sleep right after lunch was probably liberating. I could swear my dreams had brought another vivid scenario to life in tat hour, but I fail to remember it now.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

durian, ravana

We had known about mango being the 'king of fruits' all this while. Seems that was just a national label, since the real king of fruits is something else - methinks a sampling is needed, and also the great challenge against your olfactory senses in making the first bite.

I should probably make a new entry for this dedication to the cinematic masterpiece Raavan (that I got to watch only yesterday evening), since it was overpowering. But the efforts it requires would be too much for something whose script does worse than a Vivid production, and whose team should receive public lashing in the following order:
  1. script writer
  2. screenplay
  3. aishwarya rai
  4. vikram
  5. abhishek bacchan
  6. mani ratnam
For those who think otherwise, pls get in touch with me over wood-baton-tuesdays or leather-whip-thursdays.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Taking over the town

This day was exhilirating, both sides of the cinema screen - a fledgeling story going on either side, and life mimicking the art that it sought out towards. I should count the day as epic, because never before have I indulged in cinema - the movie theatre types - to the extent of catching 3 first-day releases in succession in two different movieplexes. And it's been my first being chased by a nimbus cloud, hot on my heels. And also a first of sitting through an entire movie soaked in the rain caused by that cloud.

Impluses, when diligently followed, often unfold into a fond memory, if nothing more overpowering. But more than often they overpower you, and it is amazing to see yourself transformed, feel your senses synchronised with your inner morals, all this without subscribing to any formal education; the natural course of life seems more potent and successful for your future than any pretensions and formalities we abide to in the society.
What strikes me is that learn being impulsive, appreciate the call of your subconscious, and soon you learn to challenge your impulses to throw something even better and more liberating to you. Things like this are first class adhesive for the various snippets of your character that your fragmentarily find yourself into.

Office, you ask? That took a holiday owing to the itense feeling of liberation that I woke up with; or to put it officially to the bosses: "allergic rashes and severe muscle pain". It's delightful to be keeping a separate public profile or I'd be crippled from making this mention here.

Evolving into that pseudo-spiritual ToI supplement, am I?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Where does wanderlust come from?

Father's Day is fast approaching, and by coincidence, I am preparing for a trip to Nainital, where I’ll be with my father, who always migrates to the happier altitudes for the summers. Here’s something that I feel is a sorts of inheritance from the man.

Why do we travel? Or maybe the better question is, where does wanderlust come from?

I was thinking about the origins of my own travel curiosity and remembered my father's stories of traversing great distances, either as a necessity or out of impulse.


For a background, my grandfather was from a remote village in Kumaon called Guniyalekh, that lies a little beyond another slightly-lesser-remote village of Padampuri, in the district of Nainital. Family tragedies and the cause of employment had him settle down in Lucknow almost 80 years back. He kept his fascination for his roots alive by building a cottage in the quaint village of Gethia, not far from Nainital. Come the summers, Gethia would serve an ideal base-camp for visits to our ancestral lands that lay deeper in Guniyalekh. My father recalls the entire family travelling the distance in equal portions by bus, on mules, and on foot. Those were the days of denuded dirt tracks through forests and dangerous stream crossings, and I’m still surprised to hear of my grandma and my aunts’ courage and struggles to travel these distances. Being abused and seduced by the nature, all at once.

My father took a difficult resolution upon my grandfather’s death, that he would legally obtain rights to the lands – or whatever was left unoccupied of those – in Guniyalekh; the longing that lay in all hearts now turning into a hope, a hope that turned into expectations from my father. Having graduated in law, and choosing teaching for a profession, a man who spent much of his time extolling and preaching the ideals of ‘kanoon’, now set forth for the corruption-laden legalities of the real India. More than the legal procedure, it was the travelling involved that could make a person submit to defeat. After several trips between Lucknow and Nainital, endless juggling between Gethia, Nanital, and Guniyalekh, fighting the bureaucracy in Nainital, and death threats by selfish villagers who had their own plans of illegal acquisition in mind, he managed to get a piece of eternal satisfaction that everybody wanted... If the geographical pinball of a great acquisition wasn’t sweet enough, there are his tales of spending snow wintry nights in shacks out of necessity, going on a snow leopard hunt with the villagers, among the others.

The sights, smells and sounds that I lust for must be nothing but a nostalgic fact to my old folks, I am just trailing on their footsteps, clutching for a version of my own.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Note-to-self: avoid getting run over at the nearby crossing from time to time. It was a lighter vehicle today, however, so I'd have escaped only with a crushed leg.

The weekend has Mumbai that I've only seen on the reel, feel closer - the skies are expected to raise hell over the next couple of days, and the municipality is doing random silliness to curb the damages of the rain.
I returned from the office yesterday night at 2330, clutching a sweaty tee and cycling gloves, and a book expounding the unbearable lightness of being. The sight of half a dozen colony resident canines crowding around a small tin case sheltering the water pump confounded me. My approach had the dogs distracted, and agressive petting followed. The question of the creature inside the tincan still remained. The building guard soon arrived to intimate me not to go closer, as there was a snake inside , which was why the silly dogs were crowding around. Against the routine logic, I homed in closer. My findings brought forth the fact that it was a large mouse. Of course, I traced out the snake as well, cramped inside a small opening in the rocks not too far from that pump.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

zeitgeist

Cookie Monster: hey
Guy Harlot: hi
Cookie Monster: saw iron man 2
decently watchable
Guy Harlot: tell me something that isn't
i saw badmash company - its also similar
Cookie Monster: come on !!!
except for anushka sharme
the bloddy movie was
insulting ur intelligence
bleeding madras
are americans really that stupid
and us indians tht inti
Guy Harlot: well in yashraj chopra world it is
and anushka sharma was the downside of it, i'd say
that guy mad after prostitutes was the best of the lot
Cookie Monster: lol
anushka sharma downside
somebody tht hot??
Guy Harlot: have i mentioned before that she carries ZERO appeal
oh yes, it was at sakley's that i'd mentioned that
now she makes me see a company colleague in a less harsh light
Cookie Monster: ohh pls
shes beautiful
awesome figure
Guy Harlot: so being skinny is her winning point?
Cookie Monster: she aint skinny
Guy Harlot: well anushka sharma and sonam kapoor do not appear so gorgeous after their recent public works of art
Cookie Monster: public work of art??
Guy Harlot: this movie of anushka's, and sonam's kitsch spice mobile ads
Cookie Monster: lol
Guy Harlot: in the current light, if they offer themselves to me, i will merely enjoy a tit or two before backing away
Cookie Monster: hahahah
if they offer themselves to u??
Guy Harlot: of course, they can. there have been greater miracles in the timeline of our planet.
Cookie Monster: yaa like the advent of life
Guy Harlot: yes, and the medical condition called micropenis
i say you'd rather not investigate into the latter
Cookie Monster: ohh boy!!
i should have listened to u
so whts up?
Guy Harlot: i'm seeing a discourse on erotica
"अँधेरी रात में, दिया तेरे हाथ में"
Cookie Monster: lol
wht the heck is tht
Guy Harlot: indian women being deflowered by radical postmodernists
we shall resume our discourse later

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Untitled

They all had gathered in the drawing room. It was 12:30AM in the night; hence every moment of their forced waking was a restless one. Their restlessness was also met with an anxiety that grew with every soft step of mine across the room. Silently, I circled the small table at the center, my eyes distracted into studying its minimal features, as if they could reveal to me the exact words to represent the gravity and urgency of my thoughts in a simple fashion. I cannot remember how much time I’d spent testing their patience; they stood there like lethargic vegetables, feeling perplexed at my present behavior, and only too willing to crawl back into their beds. However, they were sympathetic enough to assume that I had come across some interesting incident or an idea that had been lost in the process of translation into speech, and by the mathematics on my face they tacitly bargained into sanctioning me time to express myself. Well, they had to wait anyways; I could not let them get back to their beds without breaking to them the news of my death...

Saturday, May 29, 2010

things

May has been hard hit by my emotional state of crawling deeper into my shell. Inaction and inexpressiveness have been the defining labels. This blog has not seen much love.
 

The week that just ended was defined by setbacks -

Firstly, the Naxal audacity ballooning, and resulting in several more deaths over the week that went by. Imagining an outcome is scary - for our government would bear these scars forever, economic development will be thwarted, the regions would see intense warfare and bloodshed, there would be more grisly decapitations featured on the news to which people would boast of their disgust during dinnertime.

And then my plans of travels in Europe going into the dust with a fractured Visa process that our governments have fixed upon. It is very irksome, having the resources and inclination, and yet feeling crippled is not a feeling I've come across often.
Now I'm considering agents, bribes, and tearing through these frameworks to see how its done. One last flounder before I give up.
(similar frustration)

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Am I starting to dislike office?

It is getting growingly uncomfortable avoiding snowclones in daily expressions.
How awkward to trip into the '...than fade away' mode at the start of the week. Well, the concept of a week rarely holds significance when each and every day is a revelation of sensations about things around us.
Observing human behavior soon turns to sorting through litter, as there is rarely something that would make you feel proud of not being the furniture that you sit on... Well, on retrospect, I get more from my chair than I get from my friends and foes around me. Maturity has a new definition - "A state of immutability of finding yourself vegetable existence fulfiling".
Utahraptor, WE NAILED IT!

Monday, May 24, 2010

OMG OMG OMG!

OMG OMG OMG!
What are we doing reducing ourselves to oblivion?
Arguably, oblivion is our fate, as the statistics and much of our timelines prove, but need we force us through the hole?
What will be of us when we are decaying away, eating our own weight in namkeen mix and wiping the roaches off our lips?
It is agreed that physical deterioration is insignificant in today's world; we can burn ourselves away to a miserable light mass of fleshy bones, or a horrid fat monster, but how would be handle the mankind's new bastion - the mind? Do we have enough to keep us hooked? Have we promised ourselves extravagant nostalgia 10 years down the line? Have we created memories that can prove our flourish in times to come?
Just what will we be doing when we touch 40, retired, lethargic, thinking of wading through life for another 50 years or so?
Is there anything to keep us from being defined as merely a reservoir of sexual energy when we turn 30?
Is there anything to keep us from being defined as a mere corruption of excretory functions when we turn 70?

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Halfway being

With his character being scalded by the water from the geyser funneled through the water spout onto his tender and grimy body, he went into thought. His brainy mass started working on several thoughts at once, possibly one for every thin yet firm jet of water that hit him through the spout.

First, as the soap worked around his chest and legs, he saw the thought - one that cropped in his head midway the night - to its entirety. Yes, they were still in a state of infancy, a degenerate bullish existence (ref. Ch1, "Hackers and Painters", by Paul Graham). They still saw much things in the light of 'cool' and 'uncool', and their modus operandi of making acquaintence was immediate confirmation of their validations/invalidations, and a hope for the other person for the same. They had reviewed so much in so many, yet it only seemed to make them worse in their judgments. He wondered whether he should formally approach them and de-commit all the commitments that had been exchanged in the process of mutual acceptance.

Now onto the nape and the back, and he was reviewing his (partial) renewal of zest and activity in life. Weekends always made him mull over that. He saw himself active enough, happy enough, and fit enough for all of his day's activities - nightly ping pong games had it all covered. He had no concern for a cosmetic body, for he was neither in a profession that would require that, or in active physical relationship with a woman who would desire that.

The shampoo negated his thought process, as the surfactants seeped into his eyes and had a burning sensation. The dimension of his awareness narrowed to the hair on the floor, then dirt sediments stacking up around the drain pipe, and the color of his bathroom mug, which he had believed to be green, but in fact, was purple.

Soon, with the bath done, and the drying in process, his thoughts shifted to the immediacies of his crowded life. He had office to be at on a weekend, he had to - definitely had to - take care of his laundry, maybe there was cycling to take up later in the day, he had a college friend to meet after 3 years, he had his cousins to take out for dinner, and help his NGO friends with their website; crowded life. With the fabric of the towel now running softly over his body making gentle finishing strokes, he dreamt of company a girl he'd like to see himself involved with, and let the assuaging thought hold on for an equally fleeting moment.

Cold coffee, sleep, and hopes for a fabulous day in his pending wakefulness.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

K&K

"Books are immortal sons defying their sires" - Plato

So it is Peter Soren Kierkegaard's birthday today - today, if you are still on American time (EST). His 197th one. I had, surprisingly, been reading about him since a day back, stumbling upon his reference in one of the dinosaur comics. The man's gonna be by new fad.

Karl Marx also shares the same day for his birthday. Having been horrified at the continued legacy of his political writings, I have never delved a bit into him. Nobody says I should.
Anyways, both their 200th birth anniversaries are near; I believe there'll be good cult celebrations around those months. Shmoop, probably would hold some festival. Knowing and celebrating these people 200 years since their conception is immortality, indeed.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

I think about you all the time

Should introduce a 'friendship contract' to my close ones. There would be a clause demanding concern and the act of keeping in touch. This thought comes from lots of incidents of my old friends being unresponsive, and failing to keep a general tab on each others' lives. Each one to their own shell. Each one to reducing others' lives to a fascinating drama; and feeling bored when the fascination runs out.

Saying this is contradictory to my nature. But I feel like being T-Rex at this moment, with my hypothetical hypocritial idealism. There are ones I think about they'll never know, while there are ones who I know so well yet think so little about (and so little of)... "Dont worry, I keep myself surrounded with insignificant people and myself", as I convinced Kirti sometime back.
But the situation of knowing somebody well, thinking about them at lengths, and keeping out of touch all this while bewilders me.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

irked

It'd have been a charming morning had my friends not been lazy about going out cycling or for a walk.
It'd have been a charming morning had my roomie - my backup option when the friends ditch - the time to go out for a stroll.
It'd have been a charming morning had my other roommate not been burdened with the obligation of driving his friend to an interview, and left the bike for me for a morning drive to some nearby beach.
It'd have been a charming morning had the milkman milked the cow by the time I'd arrived, so that I wouldn't have to make a second trip.

A frustrating start to the day. But that made me write, nonetheless.

I'm not qualified to say that

It's odd when people find themselves not qualified for an opinion or a suggestion. Generally, they convince themselves of this disqualification on the basis that they themselves couldn't buy completely into the fact, or - worse - from their emperical study of their own nature of going against this thought when the situation demanded of it. And the more personal the opinion is, the more conflicted we feel sharing it.

For example, there's Priya, who recently backed from giving an opinion on one of her best best best friend's taste in choosing guys. She was there, she could see the dysfunctional side of it, she knew the mess her friend was gonna get into, she was concerned about her, yet she won't let her know - all because she feels she's lost her right to, since she sees her friend in her own shoes; similar things to what she'd herself gone through. Two-faced, hypocrite, so fake.

At a level, this seems a shining example of indiaviduality - people owning up to their character, and setting their own check on what they're allowed to share.
But consider the ultimate consequences of this strategem. Would you restrain yourself from giving an opinion on all that you ideally think of, but couldn't do? Would you stop yourself from rethings that you've always been led to believe in, but never found to be true? I believe the neurosis would set in sooner or later.

Like when you stress to those young 'uns on the importance of school grades with the realisation that the cream of the crop didn't fare any better?
Like when you share fitness tips with the realisation about your craving for chocolates and butter chicken?
Like when you support woman empowerment knowing that you and everybody else in it spent their teenage years in endless pornography, reducing the image of a woman to nothing but...?
Like when you educate your children on the virtues of an outstanding life with the knowledge of how average you are?
Like when you scold others against throwing their heads out of the car windows knowing that you yourself feel mighty heavenly about it?

Thursday, April 01, 2010

For the Sachin fans


Sachin,
Screw you for being the unambiguous cricketing genius.
Screw you for always being the safe option.
Screw you for making everybody look wise.
Screw you for dumbening down a million over-the-tea conversations.
Screw you for giving the girls easy conformity.
Screw you for leaving the aficionados with too many facts.
Screw you for lowering expectations from any of the other players.
Screw you for being unimitable.
Whom do people speak of, 20 years down the line? Still you?

Old horses

Knowledge refresher
Sridevi: 1963
Hema Malini: 1948
Rekha: 1951

It is startling to find that Sridevi is, in fact, not far from our modern-day bollywood badshahs. What's also startling is Hema Malini looking fab beyond 60. And Zeenat Aman, at 59, still conveys relics of her amazing appeal. It must be hard to keep looking awesome for two generations or more!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Oddoscopia

Weird dreams again. I underwent pangs of calling off a relationship for, like, 30 minutes today, all inside my head during sleep.
Even my first coffee after waking up from the dream turned bad coz of the milk
And my stomach doesnt feel too well from the chicken (of 3 kinds), fish (of 2 kinds), squid, and crab I had yesterday.
The dogs of the neighbourhood look needy and cute on this breaking dawn. Might as well step outside myself, pet them, go out, trek, jog, climb trees, spot deer.

after marriage

K: where's the economic bnenefit of her working
K: you can let her live on her salary put your salary into investmnets
A: i would rather prefere to earn more and let her live off her dream
K: let her do things of your choice
K: mere khyal se one has to go for his career one has to concenterate on the family

[this transcript prepared over a vodka&rum session]

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

My life to live

Coinciding with the 2009 women's day was my viewing of "Vivre sa vie" (1968) aka "My Life to Live", about the spiraling life of a girl Nana (Anna Karina). The movie ends with the realisaiton that it was never, indeed, her life to live.
The movie is considered an epic in French New Wave cinema. It goes far from much of the film-making that we know of, even the format of the script divided into a play of mere 12 scenes/tableaux. It'd take some conditioning to appreciate it, though I did catch some of the wave in this new wave...the Joan of Arc screening, her first time, and the philosopher. This kind of cinema needs great involvement and noticing nuances and cues.

The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe

It could be our story: about a painter obsessed with portraying his love.

And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion there were admitted none into the turret for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.

And when many weeks had passed and but little remained to do save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame of the lamp. And then the brush was given and then the tint was placed. And for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work he had wrought. But in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and aghast and crying with a loud voice: "This is indeed Life itself!" turned suddenly to regard his beloved: She was dead

Wanna play Muscle March

Monday, March 08, 2010

I dream of genie

I daydream very well. And lately, is been a reminder of how badly I need more of it.
So there was this one very interesting sequence while catching a nap in the office; there were images from my past, images that were a fantasy, images that I can't frame.

Just a couple of hours back, some channel switching on the tele got me to Discovery Channel, where they were showing x-ray footage of a snake swallowing its prey. Until that moment I hadn't been aware of this missing scene from that earlier dream - one involving snakes. I remember myself stepping into the frame of an old village courtyard, and upon sensing danger, looking about for snakes, and finally finding one - a 5m long Indian rock python.

With great dreams come lavish interpretations. Snakes can hint towards:
- Knowledge
- Temptation/Libido
- Transformation/Transition
- Failure from committment
- Hangover from past (relationships?)

The hard part of it is trying to choose your line. Trying to determine the precedence of cause over effect is always a dirty ground. A snake dream state diagram should help explain things better. In the making...

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Don't curb your enthusiasm

So there are days when you have a fixed routine, 9 to 7 kinda work, a sad lunch, only chips and coffee through rest of the day, you know ... ending up with a general lowered expectations about your own self.

And there are days when you start on a positive note, take chances with your bosses in the heirarchy, think about expanding your horizons in your personal time, think nervously about those others, rationalise your being, soothing your ego.

And there are days when you beat all perspectives, being like water, start out with stalking wild deer, take chances with your bosses and stick it to the man, have an extravagant day with the code, expand your horizons, expand your circle, feast and enjoy the beauty of an urban existence, get into trouble with the cops, feel the thrill of the night, setting record times on your bike; and you feel the wafer-thin layer of all apprehensions and high grounds giving way.

Let's call them the day before, yesterday, and today.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Thinking about him



Camou,
and Camou

 

Eckhart Tolle came upon a realisation, at the age of 29
I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.


Am I crying out loud for something by hinting at that? Just a bad day, you say?

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Indian zeitgeist :(


Google (India) auto-complete for "can girls"



Google (India) auto-complete for "can guys"
I have fondly fallen for a 2 month-old calf at the milkman's.
I hope this needs no explaining.
A visit planned this morning to see him again.

They generally milk the ma cow LIVE, because me and a buddy get there early enough. Before the milking begins, the calf is let free to raid on its ma's udders...and thereafter pulled away, and the milking commences. Still hungry, the calf responds to my petting by suckling on my fingers, as if it were its ma's udders.
I realise. This story can branch off anywhere. Or be symbolic.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Our friends, as Nash et al put it

The world is a game. And this game is defined by game theory. See it as the iterated prisoner's dilemma...we have repated exchanges with other individuals, and each adopts their own strategy which is built from being rewarded/bruised several times in exchanges in earlier stages of our lives. Being 'mature' is what we call adopting a consistent strategy in such exchanges. However, considering the family as a single unit, being 'mature' is when you can exactly mimic the strategy of your elders.

We choose our friends based on how they play the prisoner's dilemma. We are mean and selfish in naked reality. 'Ethic' is just another word for the strategy. Societies and countries are defined as a geographically consistent stragegy.

The concept of Karma dissolves here. Karma hints at a tit-for-tat strategy, where we assume the entire universe to be retaliating if we ever do.
Tit-for-tat is also how much of our heartlands of UP and Bihar work. Quick justice. Unfortunately, tit-for-tat is not the best strategy in the long run (it succeeds magically in limited duration exchanges, though).