Friday, December 23, 2011

Tragic Ambitions

The "storehouse of snow" beckons me on yet another weekend. Disguised as Rishikesh-yet-again, I will be up to (pun intended) more exciting stuff than your mothers can imagine. Now, don't start imagining yourself, since I doubt if you've ever exercised those faculties - metaphorically speaking, you're imagination fits a 30B. Admittedly, I won't be deflowering freshly fallen snow beneath my feet, or any snow for that matter, but there is a disciplinary shift involved here. Additionally, I shall be a witness to all those towering deities - that present a panoramic delight - whose names Ghoru throws into conversations as casually as the Indian (cricket) team lineup.
My return from this risque Himalayan circuit coincides with Boukreev's 14th death anniversary, which also coincides when I will start with reading his narration of the epic 1996 Everest (mis-)adventure.

On other fronts, things are holistically fucked-up.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Nothing in life recedes

To, Nothing in life recedes, but the stereotypes.

Isolation, Hr 4:
This guy is back from a long session of 'looking about'. Biting the cold. Straining his eyes to cut through the dense fog.
Subterranean roads - populated with hawkers returning home and cab drivers, - random streets, loops, the left-turn stratagem (in US it translates to the right instead of the left), the traveling salesman's problem. The prospects of learning fluid dynamics lie in ruin - however that doesn't hamper his ambitious postgraduate plans. The realisation of this recently-concluded pointless activity (one that also puts a guilt of ~10km of fuel consumption) sends him into a loony crackling laughter.

Some tea for comfort.

Now that the snakes have been silenced, the madman on the streets no longer troubles him, the girls don't demand his attention for their dirty politics, and no Kareena Kapoor prances around, he can compensate for a lot of inaction over the weekend. He shudders thinking of the forthcoming weekend, where he's clearly going mental one way or the other - he shudders thinking about himself the way he is thinking; but he also shudders thinking about others the way he sees them, as he shudders seeing himself in that similar image.

Monday, December 19, 2011

thistle bee ace

what the fuck do i do
what the fuck do i do
my head
hurts

my anger doesnt subside
i am trapped in my body with these feelings
it affects my whole life
it affects how i approach love

makes me want to react
to feel
to yell
to get mad
am i crazy? should i be locked up?
what do i do? i am dying out here.

and now i am back
i have remnants left
and i dont care
- i mean i say i dont
but i probably will

i don't know what i will do.
i just feel so unloved right now
which is weird, right?
everytime i have opened up
i end up on the ground
worse. i end up messed up.
i end up alone.
i am spent
i have nothing to give to anyone
seriously
life seems like an effort
sometimes
i can't take it anymore. dont you get it?


Someone told me: "There is truth in everything, even in error."
That's true. France didn't see it in the seventeenth century. They thought one could avoid error; and what's more, that one could live directly in the truth; It isn't possible; Hence Kant, Hegel, German philosophy: to bring us back to life; and make us see that we must pass through error to arrive at the truth.

What do you think about love?
The body had to come into it. Leibnitz introduced the contingent. Contingent truths and necessary truths make up life. German philosophy showed us that; in life, one thinks with the servitudes and errors of life; One must manage with that, that's true.

Shouldn't love be the only truth?
- For that, love would always have to be true

Do you know anyone who knows at once what he loves?
No. When you're twenty you don't know. All you know are bits and pieces, you make arbitrary choices. Your "I love" is an impure affair. But to be completely at one with what you love, you need maturity. That means searching. This is the truth of life. That's why love is a solution, on condition that it is true.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Overwhelmingly close to nothingness

I find myself into another prosaic venture, all coz I need to rid my mind of JS right now.

Sometimes i feel overwhelmingly close to nothingness, renunciation - look up the definition in Merriam Webster for a better aligning with my thoughts here; so much that I blast music into my ears to escape this foreseeable fantasy, just like i do to escape my flights of grandeur, of fighting the big battle, of sticking out in story of our civilization (but, alas, history is much like fiction). Ending up nowhere would be superbest, since that leaves me out of any factory-made mould (there, history "uncomplicates", so even our purposes are opposite). I seem a candidate for a dream, fleeting. From my construction of fantasies I become one myself - Howzzat!
I will awkwardly slip in and out; will end anstartywhere, will anywhere.
My circles fluctuate, more like recede, though I'd like them to be displaced. [My gut/core wants to use the word 'spin' and 'vortex' here, but I find it hard to make them 'fit in']

Oh, another aspect to muse ponder upon (I've been checking use of 'muse' since learning about its roots as a more potent reference to goddesses from Greek mythology ref. Scott Berkoun's (sic) "The Myths of Innovation" - it feels embarrassing to use the word 'muse' recklessly. 'ponder' is more apt, since it means merely to 'weigh' or 'appraise', which doesn't hint of a mental or creative leap) is the cyclical nature of things. Ignatius' Wheel of Fortuna. The Yin and the Yang. I don't understand nature that well, but our champions have often come a full circle (even Gandhi, as I learnt today, from a racist, fornicating, enema-delivering personality to what we know him as). Can either imagine it as a transition (as with the Shadow Warrior logo), or as being buoyed back into greatness from the depths of some samundar-roopi situation.
Human slingshot, I fancy one now.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Funny Indian Company Names

Some interesting (officially registered) Indian company names

MICRO SOFT UNDER GARMENTS PRIVATE LIMITED
COCKS AND CO. LTD.
COCKRAM PROJECTS INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED
TIT SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS PRIVATE LIMITED
PRIAPUS INFRASTRUCTURE LIMITED
GOOGLE ENERGY PRIVATE LIMITED
ROFLIN PLASTICS LTD

That reminds me, must register ROFL SOFTWARE before anybody else does.

Pics over the week

@paharganj: kids waiting for the school bus. i remember being lucky - our school delayed timings in winters.
NB this was on the dinosaur qwantz mission morning.


@noida: the jugaad


@NDLS. i didnt know berghaus were making jute bags for the common man... CPI-M would like that


@paharganj. evading the ticket inspector at the station, i stepped out into paharganj, to find some procession blocking the entire street. dhol-baaje, blaring loudspeakers, sheep-women chanting "Jai Shri Ram" and keeping an eye on the sweetmeats being distributed, and madamji-women who were instructing the sheep-women and restraining them when they forget their lord and start rioting for sweetmeats. women liberation right there.
the restaurant receptionist at one Hotel Hari Piorko described to me (assuming I was a foreigner, whoo!) "It is for a very important Indian God" (and more importantly in the name of that ashram guruji i guess).

Dom

Madan still refers to the lower castes in his Garhwal village as 'Dom'.
In the Middle East, the gypsies, called 'Dom', are Muslims.
In the Shina valley of Pakistan-controlled Gilgit-Baltistan region, the musician and blacksmith population is called 'Bericho', or 'Dom'.
It was nice to find an overlapping history of these people, originally lower caste outcastes from India, who migrated like they had wings, and came to be more commonly known as the gypsies.
Where do gypsies come from?
Domba
Gypsies — the dalits of European continent

Sunday, December 11, 2011

slow saturday

Switching between dimensions is HELL difficult. [what better occasion to use 'hell' than today, when I have just been back from those dungeons] Risking overlapping dimensions, however, is even more difficult - no wonder people are often undervalued or misunderstood. One is simple. Two is confusing, yet welcome . Three is a lot of questions to answer. Anywhere beyond, and you are inviting trouble and condescension, unless you can be Batman, Javier Bardem, Jeremy Irons, and Amar Singh, all at the same time.
This opinion from a teatime chitchat, featuring Monsieur Paranoid, against a setting of bar bells, cafe mocha, and an assortment of southie sweets. Monologues and dialogues. Metaphysics and porn. Confucius and Priya Rai. Stoicism and solipsism. Morality, perverse gods, hollow ideals. [I believe much of this has been the staple of all smalltalk since the past century - there needs be some research to confirm that. Though I wonder why, even after centuries of evolution, silence isn't yet in vogue; feels like the cowboys had something going right] Anything to pry open the metaphoric "shell".

Sleep has been the other detail in this day worth a mention. I slept. Yes, just that.

I was ditched in my proposed adventure by somebody, which started things on a dull note for the day, and kept it that way through it. Zipping through the 8AM cold. Ambiguous identification. Staring, scribbling, being nice. Overcooked noodles.
Life inside a video game.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Like I like

On an overdose of vitamin D. D for ... Dude
Yeah, the above line was plain sad.
But really, I am stuffed on 7667% of daily requirement of the vitamin today, thanks to the Shiitake (learn to pronounce it correct) served in my Teppan cuisine choices (of Prawns and Chicken) from the menu at Crazy Noodles over at TGIP. I'm high on Umami, too. The visit to the GIP itself was upon Shiv's insistence; he gives a classy touch to my regular decay. Well, my love for 'shrooms connects me to decay in a way. (But nothing connects me better to decay than plain mad love for decay itself)
During the course of our meal, the great mall was thrice submerged in second-long darkness - it was uneventful, except that the combined effect of the darkness, and lit decoration candles on each of the tables, left someone with a romantic yearning (that could not be fulfilled).

Speaking of sad, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol poster looked a bit sad - this guy, all by himself, suctioning to a glass pane for his life. That's not so larger-than-life, as much as it is dude-seems-i-fucked-up.

For a while between the Prawns and the Chopsuey, the floor was filled with paced footsteps, anxious expressions, unidirectional human bulk. Parents waddling behind kids holding a packet of chips (and miscellenia). Matriarchy leading their "healthy" Sardarji patriarchy. It was sort of a time prediction device, for I could guess that the 2245 Matinee show was on at BIG Cinemas next door; some horrible new-release about the sexual exploits of one Ricky Behal, the lead played by another of those random faces in the industry that you stop seeing after exactly 2 years, or 5 movies. As per the 13 ratings on IMDB, it ranks 9.8, which must make it the greatest movie on this planet - for those 13 viewers... I guess 4chan could rape IMDB next by up-voting one of H. Reshamiya movies, so that the future generation of watchers will speak of Tera Suroor alongside The Shawshank Redemption.

I see the aforementioned romantic yearning being fulfilled now. Tits! Honour!

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Sea Squirts!

I cycled really early in the morning. It wasn't too cold - I believe the likes of Ponds, Vaseline, and Boroplus will be annoyed at that fact, and presently forming some covert coalition to make the air dry. The traffic was an iota more in volume, and an iota less in discipline than I expected, but nonetheless manageable (as in i-can-listen-and-sway-to-velvet-underground-while-admiring-the-sunrise manageable).

I was on a self-appointed mission today.
Its conception goes back 4 days to the Sunday, when I, in the company of my really sexy girlfriends (yes, plurii), enroute to a friend's sis' wedding - one whose monologues once orbited only two words: 'vibhu' and 'love' - laid eyes upon this screaming cultural artifact amidst the bustle of Paharganj, and decided to return some day to fully absorb it. [Well, most of it is true, besides the girlfriend(s) part, and the hyphenated digression. But do you really need to pick on things when I'm on a mission here?! ... jeez... so...] My escape from the luxuriant trapping of the mink blanket had got me delayed (a 0635 departure, while the idealist inside me wanted 0615) which meant that my window of return shifted beyond the dreaded 8AM frame, but despite that, I was prepared to go all the way, and take the primitive Delhi traffic, consumed with the fear (and thereafter the guilt) of missing out on the spectacle that I just had to keep for a memory. I was lazy on Monday, unwilling on Tuesday, and lazy again on Wednesday; so today had to be it.

Got to Paharganj by 0730. Much to my relief, the aforementioned cultural artifact was still there, erect, menacingly surveying the sleepy junta of Old Delhi, threatening to stomp their tiny existence.


Seems like T-Rex was visiting India and decided to do a little modeling. Ryan North would be so, uh, proud?

This hoarding here is awesome, ironic, and hilarious.

Awesome for the obvious reasons. Planet Qwantz would love it.

Ironic because it speaks against the foreign investments in India that will, likely, unjustly crush the traders, and about going Anti-Walmart. Yet Mr. Designer here decided to use an artwork of a Canadian artist, lifted off the internet for free (who cares about copyright, right?). Way to be just. Or maybe he just loved the tee to obsession.

Hilarious, because those goony men showing teeth look more menacing on the hoarding than our favorite T-Rex here. I wish Utahraptor could join in.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Sleeping Beauty

Saw a movie with some parallel to the parable of Sleeping Beauty... that is, the original text, "Sole, Luna, e Talia" (by Giambattista Basile, in 1634), not to the sugarcoated Disney version (that itself comes from the original sugarcoated adaptation of Mr. Basile's version, in 1697). Actually, the original text isn't too off from what we know. If we ignore the minor edits to make it more accessible, and the fact that the original "prince charming" raped the princess during her sleep to conceive two bastard children, one of whom sucked on her finger - confusing it with her nipple - to wake the princess up, who then almost gets her children cooked and served alongside shredded lamb on the dinner table, its pretty much the same thing - they lived happily 'ever after'. Ah, fairy tales fill me with such intense excitement! In the movie I saw, though, the protagonist (or the antagonist?) - the prince charming - is jailed for the rape, and later kills himself by overdosing on Chyawanprash and Valium; it was a beautiful movie, though.

That also makes me wonder about Kill Bill: if Tarantino had allowed Uma Thurman to be finished by Buck (who was there to fuck).
"T3H Bride, fighting her assassins and an unwanted pregnancy." Having her water break in the last fight, and all...

Friday, December 02, 2011

shuffle

Rollergirl is in India! She hasn't got a clue about Shahrukh Khan.

Will the I&B ever find something better to do than their agenda against smokers?! "‘smoking is injurious to health’ warning on cinema screens every time the hero puffs for character impact." Outrageous to see them sweat over this idealistic pursuit, that will seem foolish in retrospect. What about all the conclusive proofs of detrimental effects of alcohol, high cholesterol foods, and life in general? - should we ban everything?

Turns out that my little Mangalican piggy has nothing to do with the Indian astrological Mangalik; though I'm still unaware of the roots of the former.

German: death = mort; Arabic: death = maut... connect?

Radical garbage

She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.
You cannot forget more of these.

This content is contemporarily unavailable.
Apt for the reasons in the context as
below: beilow, willow,
bilow - my son, hold breath, fetch water, fire neurons...
fetch water dammit.
under pressure, outa controle,
on the pyreneees,
selling solada, drinking colada - pina, ina, capolina.
porto rico, rico enrico;
eiro, zero, dero, dero;
daper, colonel dapper, dapper drake.
womb, wombman, wombicite, ilicite, illict;
sandra bubbock, loock dar barren, barren munchhausen;
haus of the dead, deaed rising, deadmau5.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Connect with the Beat Gen

Attached is a lucky view of the Himalayas from the fields in Guniyalekh (spent a night here in 2007, remember?)


And following is the reference image (source) that helped me identify the massif - with beat icons Gary Snyder, Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg in foreground, on their stay at Kausani.


Its the same massif that you can see in both the pics - Trisul, Nanda Devi, and Nanda Kot peaks, at almost the same angle, albeit about 80km apart (as the crow flies). Even Kausani (at 1890m) and G'lekh (at 1890m) are the same altitude.


Here is a second confirmation: a painting of the same by Arnold Henry Savage Landor, ca. 1900.

END OF CONNECT

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Thus Spake Baba Damdama

"Give me, woman, thy little truth!"
"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"

I can picture at least 6 faces in Indian media who regularly come and talk on the talk shows talking a lot more at the usage of the above lines, that come from a 19th century classic ("Thus Spake Zarathustra", by Fakir W Nietzsche). Yes, Nietzsche (hereafter referred to as N) was known to be a misogynist. Its nothing surprising, though, his perspective has been a recurrent one through history and cultures. There's always the occasional ruffle in media over incubation-chamber analogy of the female specia. My (narrow) anthropological finds, though, make me believe that the modern society (American?) seems a little better - see how Maroon 5 and James Blunt can change the world for the good!

Some other great anti-pickup lines from the same chapter:
: Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution—it is called pregnancy.
: Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
: Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.

I pretty much LOLd at every line word up there.

What makes me even more fascinated with this perspective of N is its resonance with that of holy men across the holy Himalayan circuit (as much of it that i've seen i.e. Hardwar, Rishikesh, Kedarnath). Nothing better to start with drawing parallels than how the book starts:
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it.

That makes N your average Baba Damdama (Baba = holy man) that you find sprawling all over the lower Himalayan tract. They (holy men) have little veneration for anything but their own philosophy, much like Zarathustra. They are filled to the cup with misogynistic takes on anything concerning the...uh...gyne. They make the male species seem like some divine mutation, out-of-line with regular evolution.

But those folks and my old roomie aside, we have good faith that the leading generations will not think likewise.
That is because soon after independence, Jawaharlal Nehru commissioned a scientific study to put an end to this woman-vs-man debate once and for all...
The average woman was found to have an IQ of 3 pigeons. The average man was comparably smarter, about 5 pigeons.* Don't be surprised - pigeons are smart and were considered appropriate benchmark at that time.

This performance - which makes 'venerate' a synonym to 'torture' - is no reason to make any gender generalisation.

* In marital union, however, their (man-woman's) combined IQ surprisingly reflected a huge drop, to an average of 1/2 a pigeon. This fact of an average Indian pigeon outsmarting an average Indian couple, is why pigeon was denied the status of national bird. The Peacock was chosen (though later studies proved that even the Peacock outsmarted the average Indian couple, it was too late to retract the Peacock, as our handicraft industry had already put this bird on over 1,80,000 export items - as the reader should know, that handicrafts lobby is very strong here in India, only next to the mixing-blood-in-ketchup lobby).

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Some parallel to "conceit" takes over when the body feels at too much ease. Words drop jumbled on the floor and they dribble into the hollow of the coffee mug. Halfway gazes. Incoherent emotions. Warm blooded that we are, action-packed days feel closer to my type; dull urban experiences are just the right ruin for the psyche. "wrong, wrong, wrong..." is the chant through the minutes following this realisation; then I will hunt for a new disease to take over, some infection to override however things have been, some insignificance to push aside the other insignificantnesses of the day to the seams, so that I can fashion a wholly-new blot of insignificantness on my day's fabric ("Fabrique", I like to go French) and secretly wish that it were to turn gold.
Something rushes, something dies, something resigns, something meanders through, something loathes, something that doesn't reek with stench of existential bromides like at present. Whatever it takes to get the groove back ON; shoulds and should-nots; browns of nature or synthetic blacks; light and darks; shades of gray; pestilence; petulance; corruption; kingdom come.

Vikram Betal विक्रम-बेताल

मित्रों की सामूहिक सहमती है कि मेरा शारीरिक ढांचा काफी संकुचित हो गया है| मैंने आज कल्पित किया कि मैं शायद - अपने छरहरेपन और केशों की लम्बाई की बदौलत - बेताल के पात्र के लिए उचित रहूँगा| रात में किसी पेड़ से टंगा, आपको किसी सूनसान विस्तार में भय से भरता हुआ | बस मुझे बेताल की वह रौंगटे खड़ी करने वाली हंसी का रियाज़ करना पड़ेगा - ही ही ही ही...

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

I should print this URL on my tee, so I need not say a word whenever somebody tries to elicit opinion on the "battle of the burbs". As a superficial response to a superficial curiosity, it should suffice.

SOPA was supposed to be discussed in the American Senate today yesterday. No updates on it yet.
On personal thought space, shifting the responsibility for copyright protection from copyright holders to service providers is futile. It will also kill Google - in the aftermath of this shift, search engines outside the US would see greater traffic.

"Coming Down" by NO from Donald Mahoney on Vimeo.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Life Averages

Divine Comedy begins at the halfway junction of Dante's life, which, guess what, is not 50, but 35 years. This comes from the biblical life expectancy figure, that was 70 years (Psalms 90:10).
Since childhood, we've been led to believe the commonality of 100. People turn 100, then they die. Can't understand where the dumb figure of 100 came from - is it our decimal number system?, or were we brought up on an overtly-simplified treatise on life (100 sounds way more exciting than, say, 72, or 99)?

Monday, November 14, 2011

Weekend, Aurally

The past weekend gave me a bumper opportunity to refine my aural taste. I was off to Rishikesh, that promised at least 12 hours onboard those rickety sarkari buses, another 6-12 hours of rambling about, and a chance few hours through a sleepless Saturday night (my body clock's messed up). The newly-possessed iPod Nano was guaranteed to be my best companion, if not some smalltalk-hobbyist in the bus or during my hike. So right before leaving, I loaded it with 'appropriate' music (a very selective choice, as dictated by my then-mood and sentiment); and further created a 'todo' playlist for the new stuff. Of the (potential) two dozen hours that I imagined I'd be plugged in, reality saw me at it for only a third of those - half the hours in the bus were dedicated to sleep, Rishikesh ghoom went sans any accompanying iPod, and the hike was best-enjoyed (and best-survived, too) tuning my ears to nature. But even those few hours gave me enough to listen, like, and reject.

Dooba Dooba

me underwater

keepin' it crazy, keepin' it fun. HIGH FIVE!
Back from Rishikesh, dodging all make-believe spiritual invalidation again. Great Success!

Its Leucauge Venusta time!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Weekend Mistress

In the autumn I set out for my spring.
You,
in whose veiled face, I'll search
for the pieces to put together in the grand puzzle.
In whose playful heart I'll search
for the warmth that leaves me cold each day.
Fluctuating, receding, displacing,
you, to make me forget
some things that forget me.
With you,
I'll spend some hours under the sun,
endless and singing.
My weekend mistress, here I come.

Monday, November 07, 2011

Wrong Math, Sir, Wrong Math!

I have a secret game. I had expected its disclosure with the publishing of my best-selling biography around 2030AD; but that motive can be given up for the short-term reward of sharing with a close circuit of netizens my worldly misadventures, and another malicious aspect of urban existence.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

And... screw the day

The background music - generic piano mashing to what seems like Murder 2's "ऐ दिल संभल जा ज़रा" by who looks like Korky Buchek over at my neighbor's - to the time of my writing this blogpost was un-invited for, but it merely adds to the detail of this lousy day. It is 2150 now, when I had imagined either satiating myself on one of the world cuisines that Toystory was to introduce me to, or chilling out in the company of Sir R - a paranoid parallel to DFW, or out on a weed-hunt with the Pope.

I've been wearing the same yellow tee with "Tennis" print on the front that I had on myself the previous night, the one that was subjected to abuse by an uncapped red marker over the entire night, as I twisted and turned in my sleep, to now look like what I'd believe reminds of when Chip was mutilated by the twins in Submarine (but really it bears more similarity with the blood brothers scene in Superbad). My bedsheet also soaked up some red-marker love, and now bears eerie red patches, besides the black ones acquired from the uncapped-Parker-Pen-tragedy a couple of months back. Right now I will have to convince people that it isn't human or vampire menstrual blood. But some more misfortunes of this nature, and I can go entrepreneurial and try selling it off as an authentic Polka Dot bedsheet.

Visited the market sans any currency, only to find the ATM machine down as well - engaged for a while in learning about some old sethji's distress at the machine approving of his transfer but no cash being dispensed. Loitered a few blocks. Got lost. Disrupted my cousin's sleep, and mooched off some Peanut Butter while at it. Double Unders with the jump rope on first attempt.

Rishikesh: back ON

Anticipating to be spending my next weekend at Rishikesh - the holy city of thug monkeys, misogynistic sadhu babas, and avant-garde architecture. Of all the commitments I've failed to meet (repeatedly) lately, Rishikesh would be there at the top. Having entertained my friends with the restrictive urban outings, and having entertained the demands of microscopic family politics, I can now briefly reveal the digit next to the index to all these factors, and go shuffle aimlessly about in the white sands, pet unpet dogs, chase away urchins, eat sooji (semolina) cookies prepared in teeny-tiny roadside ovens, and fight off monkeys (that often attack to steal those cookies). Also hope to catch on lots of narcissistic, Fritjof Capra wannabes wandering about with a predatory eye to anybody with a nice body, or a heavy pocket, or an empty expression - weekend peddlers of concepts like "light", "time", "being", "god", "oneness", "life", "death", "nirvana", and myriad others.

Last, I remember being there with John, and hold fond memories of a bongo drum that I, sadly, couldn't steal off a weed-smoking Sadhu Baba who lives in a canvas hut near the river (the whole plan was to get him high as fuck, then run away with the drum, but we were short of time on the last day).
Before that I remember spending mere hours in Rishikesh with Saurabh, on the last leg of our suicidal retreat from Dodital. We had Paranthas, then we rushed for our bus.
And on the visit previous to that, I had befriended a Solvenian soul-traveler - our soulful bond born of her thin appetite that always brought forth an invitation to share, which made for my primary motivation to stick around her, especially around the meals - who was a tolerable company, until she came to sharing her spiritual quotient. In the end she was overtly joyed with our time together, I was too busy identifying the last of that banana cake on my tastebuds.

I'm already sniffling. My (pocket form-factor) scribble-book has re-emerged from the depths of my drawers. Rishikesh mode seems ON.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

Manhood Cure विश्वास के साथ

Step I. Build up a cogent argument:

"Upon marriage the man cannot satisfy his woman, has to bear the embarrassment because the female has manifold lust inside her, and wants only the man who is abundant - not one who comes too early and goes limp. The female starts to loathe such men. At that time the man - who is ill of the disease of impotency - feels great pangs in his heart about why he's weak, why he doesn't feel the hunger, why his disposition is such, and why he has to face ridicule because of his lower stamina. Even with a proper diet there's no improvement in his body - waist, chest, and legs, why they develop a pain? When he sees all this, he is scared and feels guilt at his past actions, and in such agitated state, says to himself..."

Step II. Entrust faith in (quack) cure:

"You or your friend caught in any kind of illness for a long time, and finds wasting thousands of bucks on ridiculous medicines, and is depressed, then without hesitation visit our regal store.
WITH CERTAINTY
We will give you good advise that you shouldn't worry everything has a cure, but to understand it you need experienced practitioner and proven medicines. We have been into this for a long time, curing all complex and secret illnesses, and have thousands of patients who thought their life was a disaster but with our cure they regained their original potency and felt joyous, and have managed to make children. Come, today itself, to be filled with vigor and change the impotent man to a man, and the man, to a young man..."

Step III. Profit!!!

[१० रूपए की मूंगफली के साथ मिली काला नमक की पुडिया पर यह ज्ञान प्राप्त हुआ]

Sinkholes

This page on sinkholes around the world is sure to pep Aditi up - she's very 'pakka' of the popular 2012 doomsday theory. The collection of pics on that page is quite daunting - even India (Ahmedabad) features.

How'd I latch onto the trail of sinkholes this morning? While at inside the Dhankar Lake, in Spiti with Yogesh, locals sitting along the shores of this desolate location shouted to us about a 60-ft "window" at center of the lake. At that time, both of us, n00bs at swimming, got a scare, and decided to stay to the sides. I have been intrigued by the prospects of dying of a fall into an unanticipated sinkhole ever since.

Sinkholes are also some fodder to thought: if such sinkholes would be common on our planet (something which the doomsday proponents would have certainty in), then would our societies have a more depressing take on life itself? This leads from the existing metaphors that derive from nature - i.e. mountains to suggest a challenge, or bogs to suggest decay, or a tree to suggest proliferation/prosperity, etc. What metaphors would a sinkhole give rise to? Would it lead to anxiety towards continuity in life? Would it lead to wisdom like "On the best of your days, you might find yourself buried 100ft under."?
Second line of thought (a straight inspiration from David Cooper): that if acknowledgement of such large un-fillable holes were common, would we ultimately - note that this is the far end of my deductive chain - see women in a more potent role in the society? The 'hole' - void, gap, vacuum - has traditionally been seen as something incomplete, and an invitation to 'filling up'. This consensus that a hole needs 'filling up' also derives from a certainty that it is always a minor fault in a major feature. But what when the hole is the feature itself? Women have also been, too often, compared with something incomplete. These are metaphors intersecting here. Go infer.

While we're at speaking on sinkholes, I'd rather pay for this {insert synonym list for 'incredible' here} 4:18 short, than Ra-One types shit in the multiplexes. Presenting: Dean's Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Invalidations over the weekend


  • Nike says my right foot is flawed - being shorter than my left.
  • The dentist says my chewing is flawed.
  • Pa says I'm not as aggressive as he was 'back in his days'.
  • Ma says I'm eating too much.
  • Gramma says I'm eating too little.

The Facebook Song



Stuck at Rohtang Pass in a minitruck for 6 hours, on the return leg to the Hamta Pass Trek, this 4-minute gem made my memory of those hours spent cycling through a thousand Punjabi songs that were on the truck driver's USB drive (attached to his truck stereo).
Ended up with a briefing about the song, as well some insight into the trucker's personal life, his gmail ID, his facebook life, and how his girlfriend who had recently broken up with him deleted him from his facebook and had changed her own password.

Some observations:
- The singer endorses Apple (Mac, iPhone); maybe Apple is subliminally trying to enter Indian market.
- The hot girl owns a Compaq. He will never date her once he knows she uses a Compaq.
- The guy could be a data hacker @ facebook. The girl doesn't pose in any corporate environment.
- The girl cycles through a dozen wardrobe options along the video. The guy changes into just one other shirt, and one suit.
- The girl spends time eating strawberries, applying skinpacks, manicuring, and cooking food (sauted vegetables, if I can guess correctly), besides using the laptop. The guy is only seen drinking coffee, and sharing a benign smile with his lifeless laptop; also dancing alone in a facebook cubicle.
- The guy's fb album (look at 2:39) hint he's a pro photographer.
- The guy's house has better light fixtures. The girl's got a better kitchen.

random takes

ಪುಷ್ಪಕಣಿವೆ ರಾಷ್ಟ್ರೀಯ ಉದ್ಯಾನದ ಹಾದಿಯ ಸುಂದರ ನೋಟ *

An excursion to the airport yesterday. What an offensive affair - I've seen better railway platforms. You could find me sitting and staring offensively at: BMI > 40 crowd, poor taste in dressing, people infected with i-will-play-bad-music-on-my-phone-speakers disease, mismanagement, 'paan' spits, pariah dogs, 'sarkari' muscle, sad games the children invent, and parking spaces, among the other stuff that made it outrageous to have 5 sensory inputs (visual, auditory, tactile, haptic, olfactory) at disposal. Confirms why I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

कर्मवाच्य देशभक्तों के नायक अन्ना अब मौन व्रत पर हैं - कुछ भी नहीं कहेंगे | और फिर टी.वी. बोलता है की "अन्ना ने कहा है की वोह अपना मौन व्रत ३ दिन और कायम रखेंगे "| अन्ना कुछ कहे बिना सब कुछ अपने ब्लॉग पर कह रहे हैं| यह धोखे के बराबर है| शब्दों का लेन-देन वैसे भी आजकल ऑनलाइन होता है - मैं खुद कितने ऐसे दिन गिन सकता हूँ जब वाणी का प्रयोग न के बराबर रहा - तो फिर अन्ना के व्रत का क्या महत्व रहा? मौनी होने का अर्थ क्या अपने विचारों को समूचे समाज पर थोपना होता है? जहाँ तक मेरी समझ थी, मौनी तो अपने मौन से दूसरों को खुद अर्थ ढूँढने को उत्साहित करता है|
As for another aspect of keeping a resolve of muteness, I would contend that this entire nation sits in a state of muteness, anyways. When was the last you saw somebody heckle a policeman on the streets for accepting bribes, or stage a (non-politically-motivated) agitation outside a politician's for fooling an entire nation, or rescue a child labourer at construction site or hotel, or kill a misinformed conversation among their friends? Anna is just making us realize how impotent we'e been all our lives, and people hail him for glorifying the impotency?

* This is the link on wikipedia tamil page for Valley of Flowers to my 2006 travelogue. Bot translation on Google Translate gives "Puspakanive National Park and the beautiful view of the path" - [Puspa = flower] - can somebody help with a more accurate translation?

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Kickass Rangoli streak




All moi.
And oh, Happy Diwali, world.

To append to the day, was a dream where I had forgot where my office was, and was walking while suspiciously eyeing an office complex. Eyes met with a svelte girl walking next to me, who was welcome to our exchange. She felt stupid why we were walking this way. Then she made for the exit of that complex, and sure thing, I stayed with her. Now she felt weird about herself, firstly coz it was her first day back in the office after some time abroad, and secondly coz her actions and eyes and movement were a mirror to mine. I assured her that there was nothing weird about it. She turned out to have a tounge-twisting South Indian name. I asked her to go out with me, and she replied in affirmative.
Whoo!

Enfield trip now online

Double whew, my Enfield trip's image gallery was finally uploaded and curated. Right before the festive spirit of Diwali. Now I don't have excuses to stay indoors.
This is only the first set of images, however, and my second leg of Delhi-Nainital solo still remains to be uploaded. I will need to break open the codebox and relearn some PHP/JS to make that possible.

Hamta Pass Trek now online

Whew, my Hamta Pass trek's image gallery was finally uploaded.

Bhrigu Tal now online

Phew, I can take a breather now that my image gallery for the Bhrigu Tal Trek, from Oct of last year, is finally online. It took a whole year in curating, ahem.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Meme Weekend

Things should start with a homage to Mike "Buffalaxed" Sutton whose youtube account was killed earlier this year. Benny Lava was sensational and would be fondly remembered (I still ask people "who put the goat in there?"). But not to worry, the phenomenon of 'soramimi' continues elsewhere on the tube.
UPDATE: Buffalaxed got back on youtube; Benny Lava is back, too.


For LP this weekend, I have 10-hour marathon looped videos lined up
- Trololo
- Tunak Tunak Tun (a new found appreciation. these, and these guys also do it nice.)
- Badger


Here's an epic priest battle in AoE that saturated my nostalgia core. Knowing that my ancestors had priesthood for a profession, I got great kicks out of it.


Age of Empire acknowledgement phrases:
darwin, omus, eurin, dadadee, alauren, rogan, ibultar, zumantaa, digimous

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Notes on the 200km Brevet this Sunday

 
Photos:
My (excess) gear, the starting venue in Gurgaon (Haryana), about 30km into the day, beginning of Nuh Ghati climb, first Control at Nuh, resting midway with fellow strangers, curious children at second Control at CCD

Eunuchs and Baba

Writing just to fight off sleep, which always grips me somewhere between these hours and hampers productivity. I’m not very productive anyways, at least not towards the role I’m supposed to be playing in the office, but being a pseudo-manager of this place, and expecting eunuchs* to raid the office anytime for a Diwali ‘chanda’ and aim for my ball-sac if I’m seen snoring, I’d rather be on alert.

Yes, eunuchs drive my days this week. They were here last Saturday, when I was partway-sleepy partway-high (on Bhang), and we had a really incoherent communication, with me trying to explain there is no ‘Boss’ in the office, and offering them Rs. 10 to make peace, which they mocked, and left with threats to visit the coming week. They expect at least a few hundred, I assume (I was off-mark in my assumption, as explained below).

Sunday, October 16, 2011

cycling 200km

have to leave in a flash. gonna be with dinosaurs of the delhi ncr cycling circuit. for 13 and a 1/2 hrs... yikes!
4 in the morning. i have managed to misplace a glove. curses. have to be out, anyways. for 13 and a 1/2 hrs...
always told my parents i'm not in the right company.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

three things

First thing:

Diwali's near, and the cacophony of human joy occasionally explodes in my ear.
Fireworks generate three very noticeable forms of energy: a tremendous release of sound, bright light, and heat. I hate all of these. Anything 'tremendous' shuts my Pyloric Valve.
For the next few days it would feel like a warzone. [well, if it were a real warzone, i'd have some advantage thanks to the towering feature of the cellular tower on my rooftop. ]
Noxious smells of several compounds (a permutation among - upto - 20 chemicals) will linger in my nostrils, and remind me why i gave up on fireworks. Ears will maintain that lingering rattle through my evenings, forewarning me that I'm to evacuate approximately 0.03s before a carelessly-fired rocket explodes on my balcony.
The eyes won't be particularly bothered, unless out there on the streets where prepubescent idiots plant atom bombs on the road... the only way to read into such a misfortune is to be on the look for kids cupping their ears in a mix of fear and excitement, or people staring at the road as if they are collectively high.

Two more things:


I just concocted "Lacto Bhang" drink (weed milk).
I presume this would be what the Indian bride serves to the bridegroom on their wedding night, to initiate a few hours of reckless rumpty.

My cottage cheese preparation of the previous week seems to have evolved into a fungus pod.
I'll give it some more time in the name of science.

gurl stops meking out


Dopamine overload !!!!11

Sunday, October 09, 2011

The Mocha-Bhang Coffee

Might I, my good Sir, propose to you the latest in coffee: the Mocha-Bhang. Its two of mankind's favorite 'C' ingredients collaborating together: coffee and cannabis. sweetened.

In India, this variant of cannabis is called 'Bhang', that is traditionally had with cold milk on days of religious ecstasy or as a date-rape drug. Bhang is like a log strike on the head - it thumps, and then completely stuns you for the next few hours. Those who never thought life could trip find that very encouraging, which owes to its popularity.

Bhang is found, sadly, in select places. Jaipur and Bikaner have theirs documented well over the internet. But what the foreign travelers miss to report on due to its tourism-unfriendly ways, and the local travelers miss due to it having too much of the character of India, is Lucknow, and that how Bhang is sold on the street in the main old market area. Since I now own the knowledge of its coordinates, I have been prompt to fetch some; first agenda out in this city.

Now I seem to have too much of it, and after my experiments on successive nights of mixing Bhang with: mango juice, apple juice, rhododendron extract, banana shake, oranges, and mouthwash; I have come across this deadly combo of caffeine and the 'golis'. The texture of the coffee, mixed with Bhang, feels thicker, and it goes down as a smooth sensation. The slight bitterness of Bhang is compensated for by the sweetness of the sugar in the coffee. A foamy top cover on the coffee ensures more gentle communion with the Bhang. Being hot, the fat molecules in the milk help squeeze out the THC from the Bhang. It all goes down well and slow.
I'll give it 5 Stars!

Saturday, October 08, 2011

chapter two

What does it take for one to return to civilization? Or 'how long' - what the TV audiences ask - to calculate their commitment to watching it on the television.

This game show exists in HIS world.

People are left in a forest - any random people chosen by lottery - stripped of all their 'posession', literally naked. They then find their way back into civilization, and establishing themselves back into our cultured society, and we get to see their lives through hidden cameras.

sboJ evetS

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it — you've got to go sometime
This goes out in the name of all those who sobbed over Steve Jobs and flooded the pipes with tributes, all reflecting a common agreed perception of this individual. Sadly that is because everybody seems to like him from his Wikipedia page - the latest fad for lazy people who need to write or express the least of social propriety. I won't wonder if half of them earlier believed that he was that creator of Facebook in that movie last year. Its ironic because the guy they mourn was himself someone who had an evolved view on death, and saw it only as a simple transition, as silent as he did it in his sleep; the energy should be freed of empty bodies and see a more violent flow through some other individual. We should already be chasing him where he left us off, moving technology (and the zen) faster than before, and into reflecting the austere mind and vision of this God.

A consequence of him being so popular, I have seen a lot of wannabeists out there. I hope there's another of him - someone original - that doesn't even know about such a visionary, and hasn't grown feeding on his images.

हर रात सुहाग रात

presently stable, aware. no fatigue, no palpitations, no creeping sleep, finally, at 1100AM. 
i don't appear so dazed and distracted now, which was first owing to the Bhang last night, and then owing to the run this morning.
3 big days of nothing lie ahead.

definitely will refuse going out for any movie with cousins (as I have given up on Bollywood, and rarely does any good Hollywood stuff get screened in the 'plexes here). as a matter of fact, walking along Anand/Shubham film halls in the dense old part of the city, and seeing the sad state of affairs they were in, I could only dream of taking over one of those for regularly screening art-house movies, and the real good B-grade stuff (unlike the "हर रात सुहाग रात" - loosely translated to "Every night honeymoon night" - types shit presently showing at Shubham, the film hall where I remember seeing Spielberg's Jurassic Park with my family in 1994 and confused at what the scientists exactly did there).

Friday, October 07, 2011

kkk

कोड़ा कुत्ता कब्ज़ा 
रोती रेत 
खेत खून खुमार 
सौंधी सर्पाकार सलिल समूची 
प्रकृति पृथ्वी पारदर्शी पतंगा 
लहरों लोहा लचकती लालची 
चोटिल चमकीली चादर चमेली चोली
बोली बादल बरसते बाशिंदे बदलते 
दस्तक दशा दुरुस्त द्रव्य द्वापर 
शिखर शरारती शौक शतरंज
नस नवीन नसली नफ़ासत नतमस्तक |

Gorakhdham Express

Being slim(mer) - not as paunch-ridden as the average humanity - brings its own advantages to travel. Firstly, I can (figuratively) lounge on my modest berth, with all my paraphernalia in the vicinity - to stand a testimony to that is this present moment of me scribbling away on my upper berth in the train at 1240 AM under the dim glow of berth locator lamplight that peeks through the curtained wall (yes, some elite philosophy, this, to have curtains in all A/C coaches). Let me not get into my inability to catch sleep either coz of a creeping insomnia (as of late) or due to a light stomach.

Much of the past couple of hours of sleepless restlessness have gone into imagining shallow-DoF scenes of me doing random awesomeness, and of Grecian love tragedies.

Am involuntarily exercising my olfactory senses into identifying several puzzling and a few right unpleasant human smells in this A/C coach - unclean railway linen, stomachs stuffed with aloo-gobhi-bhindi-palak-roti about me, and my own need of a bath, round up the possible causes. Aurally, there's the occasional muffle of my own head scratching against the railways-provided towelette that makes something like a beatbox effect, ruffle of some surrounding passenger's sheets, a tinkle of bangles as some married woman twists in her un-husbanded sleep, whirring of overhead fan 2ft from my head, rattling of panes, hooks, and bottle holders. There's also the great metal fatigue of the rolling trains that we have adapted to relegating as background noise. Gorakhdham Express shivers through the night and often breaks to stop dead in its track to allow me this moment of cursive writing.

Now things smell of Hydrogen Sulphate. Nostrils hurt.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Nonconformist head lead to insomnia

So much for an attempt to coerce myself into sleep; I'm still up at 0320. The conditions ideal to a proper sleep - darkness, A/C, a double layer of mattress, and a glass of milk a short while back - all failed, owing to the head that doesn't agree to send the body into a state of paralysis.
Says Mr. Lee: "Nonconformist head lead to insomnia very soon."
Hence here I am at my chair again, with a spinal column unhappy working extra hours, trying to hate this aspect of me, and also to scoop out all thoughts, process them into words for consumption in leisure time along with a cup of coffee.

Deep musings into the following events:
Kissed by a prostitute. Evading charging elephants. Held hostage by militants. Slapped by a prostitute. Making a movie. Mt. Everest. Bhutan.
Fucken neurons had to start right when I was at the crucial junction of sleep; return flight to reality. Will somebody please compensate for my missed hours of sleep?

From the deductive process of a nerd: Life is nothing but a robust API. Its all about having suitable Event handlers in place, preferably as compiled code rather than interpreted code.

Look, some black squares!

This, yes, this, was how you'd have found me through half of my day. Doesn't look particularly appealing or productive, does it? The couple of guys besides me at the office would be thinking I'm having some denial phase, or performing some pre-Dussehra ritual to bring fortune and prosperity to my home. What I was upto, in fact, was a cyclic moment of nerdiness, that cycle having long come under arrest and taken to rust, and only now seeing some labored movement, owing to the demands of my employer and the resulting diversionary delving into AR (that black square thing being a marker that can make parallel universes sprout from your palm).
Slow creepy day, in retrospect, spent in a half-dazed resulting from yesterday's dash to Nzm to bid a second farewell to Shiv, and then return late in the night - a night that also involved the prostitute chronicles. Hard to hate humanity when the social circles involuntarily narrow down to a few beaten-down faces between the hours of employment that hold no common thread to debate upon, and are as adventure-less as our moms.

Another anthropological observation made today, that despite having an entire population of jerks, the men still find reasons to invalidate the opposite gender and find their arguments and expectations frustrating, particularly after experiencing the things that trend in a housewife's head. This would be due to a difference in perception of the necessary security devices. Indoor worlds, ideal worlds. If we take "society" or "culture" as an accumulation of security devices, this brings to a conclusion that the women in a household are truly the beholder of our culture - a culture of always-expanding hyperbole of security devices.

Day flows into the next, and I'm still awake. Somebody save my eyes and my head.
Wonder if she wakes me up this morn, as I've been hoping she would.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Delhi prostitutes

UPDATE: Prostitute at my doorstep.

Funny condensation filaments - that seemingly jut out from the fields along the R. Yamuna to my left - make a convex shield-sorts above me. I occasionally gaze up to collect and make whatever i can of this fascinating sight that reminds of aerodynamic flow, and pedal along, and eat some more of the road. Surprises to the common man returning home tired, as a cyclist zips by, whistling to signal his approach.

Surprises to this cyclist, as his eyes steal a scene from the city's underbelly: a couple of prostitutes (ugly and man-like, as be the norm), sticking out from the dense grassy growth along the road, not far from Akshardham (to think that religion and sex don't mix, hah!), seemingly fixing their rates with a couple of freight-auto-wallahs, one of whom looks a boy of mere 12 (but at least somebody's compensating for me by starting out early; 'maintaining the balance', as we say).

Insert King Crimson's choral verse to "Ladies of the Road" here:
All of you know that the girls of the road
Are like apples we stole in our youth.
All of you know that the girls of the road
Been around but are versed in the truth

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Rough cuts: Innovation and Education in India


Post-Brahma, India has had no creators. Only slaves. Production en-masse.
Watching The Social Network for the third time - second time in the same day - I couldn't help but wonder if innovation needs anthropological studies, to see how culture and the culture of innovation go hand-in-hand. D and I agreed to a common envy for Mark Zuckerburg, and also cursed our low-key college days at NIEC that now makes us feel kinda losers. But I bet that even the IIT-ans feel the same way. After all, India is a huge sweatshop: we dont invent, we replicate. (really cheap, too!) All the 'young talent' that graduates in this country, is a bunch of jerks. We don't have any Angel Investors here, because nobody wants to invest in a bunch of jerks.

Education-wise India is in a stalemate. Every education in India has a political context.
Take an example of PhDs: that the way PhDs are done is an insult to the academic process. Most people who enroll for a PhD do have their PhDs successfully finished, but it isn't because they end up learning on what they started their research on, but because they end up learning the exact science of 'successfully finishing a PhD in India'. Yes, 'Successfully finishing a PhD in India' needs inclusion as an official course in our Universities, since most will actually end up with that for majors, going through the same curriculum of:
- bending over to superiors,
- false co-authorship of papers,
- twisting outcomes,
- adjusting to external expectations,
- and basically just "doing as they're told".
We make friggin' Nobel Laureates of such people! Hah!

Saturday, October 01, 2011

balcony sleep

So many of my posts lately been including some aspect of my sleep. Well, then, this one goes no different. Its weird that the most talk-worthy moments in my urban living are when I'm just a motionless bag, an example of mere respiratory processes, of hibernation, of out-of-consciousness existence. But sleep does become a quest, at times, like yesterday when I had to manage a midnight basecamp shift to my balcony, owing to a really long power outage that not only had me restless and fringe-perspiring in the bed, but got worse when even the inverter backup turned cold after some hours.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

keep waking me up

Coerced my eager-to-be-out-and-about self back into sleep at the 0515 alarm. I was entangled in some dream again, but now this 'Venus in Furs' track has conditioned a sure-shot wake-up response in me, as I fumble about in a dazed state, often in a more-aware-than-expected fashion, since locating my cellphone is often difficult. Body clock is screwed - either my body feels humbled at any period of rest extending 4 hours, or has some 3AM circadian trigger which has me often find myself awake around this time. [leaving the environmental factors - mosquitoes that come uninvited, or an overzealous temperature setting on the Air Conditioner, or the neighbor's guitar&keyboard sessions - aside].
So in effect, I wake up to 4 alarms -
  • 2 artificial ones at 0500, 0910;
  • 2 inbuilt (body factory settings) around 0300, 1035.
Maybe my mind has become so scared of drifting away from the physical dimension that it routinely knocks to check if things are right.

The best pet?

I have been stuck in a complex decision-making process. Which of the following would make for the ideal pet:
  • piglet
  • cats
  • lamb
  • monkey
  • kangaroo rat
  • arctic hare
  • turtle

Short ride and back

Back from a short loop on the bicycle that made me shed exactly 2 sweat-drops worth of effort. Sad, I know, but I had to switch sides at the floral loop ahead of Sec 18 that goes over and merges back into the Greater Noida - Delhi road; the traffic congestion was too obvious to decide against. It usually isn't so, when I get my dose of adrenaline (spiked with minor amounts of dust, sand, and vehicular exhaust) with a long loop in the geometrical plane that also seems like a loop in the temporal plane - into the past, I meant. Well, obviously, we only have the capacity to think into the past, because we cannot think into the future, because the 'future' - even though it already exists by my theory - lies in an unprocessed, raw form, upon which the 'present' acts and processes into the 'past' so we could really get a grasp on the temporal dimension, only that its after it will have happened.

References to traverse back on the temporal plane, or 'Into the past', is a vague term now, anyways, a dimension that spans across 4 cities of varying geographical content, across 3 beverages of varying sugar content, across 5 kinds of alcohol of varying age and proof, across 3 kinds of chocolates of varying cocoa content, across several kinds of food, across 3 bicycles of varying built (ATB/Road/MTB), across 3 accidents of varying horridness, across some-dozen friends and acquaintances of varying 'je-ne-sais-quoi' factor, and across 4 institutes that constituted my engagement at all times. In the wisdom I sense upon myself right now, I say "Ameen" to this realisation - that the past is dense and scattered enough to not bait myself back into.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

bogus start

Nostrils imagine smells in the following order:
- Matar Chat, or shallow-fried boiled peas with Indian masala, topped with nothing but some lemon. Reminds of an evening at HazratGanj in lucknow.
- Light streaks of mint dancing about my nostrils, a strong ticklish aroma. Reminds of mint chocolates.
- Peanut butter. Obsession since forever.

Not good for an already-delayed beginning to the day. I'm not the one to blame - the one who jumped out on first strike of the morning alarm, from a dream about herding sheep and village girls through forested valleys, and punching people. I later slept in disappointment of C not responding to our plans for a run on the basic course.
Now I know why I've been intuitively feeling cheated at purchase of new shoes - they put in a right leg half a size more than the left one, its a ridiculous error, and I'm not even sure if the Nike folks are gonna appreciate my request now after coupla' weeks of use.
Been toying with the circuitboard here at work with plastic pens and spoons, owing to a faulty something that fudges up the power backup. My dimension of work has never been this expansive-yet-vague as in this present job.

Have been feeling hungry since morn, but not entertaining the hunger calls, since the day already feels so screwed.

Monday, September 26, 2011

opinions and weekend

Settled on some opinions in life:
  • That my lolicon choice in anime is the silver-eyed, frazzled-sunset-brown-medium-length-haired, size-28-ish, 5-foot-6-ish, purple-silver-halter-top-wearing generic female stereotype.
  • That India is in a state of comic-book rot. Chacha Chaudhary, Nagraj, Super-Commando Dhruv... oh gimme a leash. Squirrel Girl - whose character came to life in the Marvel world with my onset of puberty in the real world - put it best in one of her panels (on whether she liked comic books): "I do. That was back when comic book worlds were places you wanted to escape to... not from."
  • Debating helps people solve their identity, as well as digestive problems. I hereby warn all my friends of having their blood on my hands, if they get honored with some lifetime achievement award for contributions to a mere theoretical framework.
  • I know you're being a dick, but why should I?
The weekend had me leaving my trail all over the city. I plug myself into several mutually-independent social circuits and make myself believe that I'm completing a social loop of sorts; imagine the current pulsating; am a capacitor when at my best, an infinite resistor when at my worst.

Majorly ordinary

To be extraordinary one has to settle with the more ordinary matters first. One feature of the ordinary, however, is that it allows great freedom in how you do things or when you do them. Being ordinary, means being as insignificant as everything else, and you don’t have people holding a gun trigger against your head.
Insignificant things don’t get people holding a gun against your head, or having some avalanche in lurk, or necessitates crossing a river at its full run.

In other words,

whatever shit you
cook,
it won’t matter.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Girlfriend talk

Got into a conversation over girlfriends with the neighbor - yet again, to my dismay. He makes them look as essential a commodity, as my uncle does with the toaster, or parents do with an automobile, or friends do with security devices in life. I suspect he uses the concept of girlfriends as a conversation starter, like people wearing fancy watches, or those who gain fat on their bodies to fake higher caste.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Apple Girl postcard from Manali

Things that are meant to be shared, but are hard to keep part with. This photo, well is actually a postcard, was picked up at Manali. The intent to keep this one defeats the original purpose for it was made for - to be sent to friends afar. I think it comes under the same situation as a beautiful stamp, which people'd rather collect than use on a snail mail.
Say, if a chair comes under use as a table, would it still be called a chair?


Friday, September 16, 2011

hold you close someday, i will,
to break your heart.
impossible is what we were meant to be;
impossibly close so we
could share a common breath,
and for you to kill me with your eyes
the slow onset of a mischievous smile;
then thin air you'd become
that i breathe in like a perfume,
again to let go.

you run away from me now
as my haemoglobin enriches everything but me,
a fountain of all that I ever was trying to be,
to get across to you.
but I lay dead as you run away
and, dead, I shall wait here for you forever.