Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Indian Met Dept's pride


Behold this amazing graphic. Study it carefully for a few seconds. It is so detailed that I decided to add a border around it, like a picture-frame at Musée du Louvre.
Purple color clouds! More clouds of teal color, ash color, and yellow/red lighting rods. Raindrops the size of 50 calibre bullets.

This was dug up on the Indian Meteorological Dept's website. Apparently it's an icon to represent 'thunderstorm with clouds' situation. It managed to exceed its meaning and seems rather an icon for "holy fuck, run away from this city!" - something that I would plant on websites before doomsday.

I would suspect the IMD needs a color chart. Perhaps we could all contribute for sending them a picture book as well.

However I won't be surprised with this. Being a government facility, I could imagine people in the wrong places. Color-blind war veterans being assigned the post of creative arts at the met dept. Or war widows of our शहीद जांबाज़ रक्षक सैनिक who have to switch from the artful Chef's Knife to the inconvenient computer mouse everyday...

Met. Dept. Scientist: "Yeah, so we need a graphic for thunderstorm with rain: cumulonimbus clouds in a squall line formation, accompanied with streaks of cloud-to-ground lightning"
Creative officer: "वो क्या होता है जी????"
Met. Dept. Scientist: "eh, आप... आप बस कुछ रंग बिरंगे बादल बना दो वो mspaint software में"

Sunday, July 24, 2011

linkdrop

- I wouldn't be literally burning in anger if you don't get it right, but you get my point.
- Computing can finally be reduced to something tangible.
- Why facebook finds disturbing art disturbing is open to question.
- Skiing accounts draw envy; for they revel when the entire machinery shuts down in the worst months of weather.
- Not everyone has to count a Hamlet or a Five Point Someone in their list. Not the smarter ones, at least.
- Hollywood veterans still snicker over this scream.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

The little space around my mind

Goodbye my old hag of a Zippo. Your end finally cometh.

In a state of despair over forgetting a day (I believed it was Wednesday today, until the evening) I set about setting things right, as I am doing right now. My process was less of a organized thing, and dependent, rather, on disorganization to have me strike things on my list. Throwing everything down on the bed I set about with 'gaming' myself to a game where one clears the unkempt bed of all these pieces of debris (work-to-do debris) and wins. Childhood still works.
There was plenty, trust me - clothing, a helmet, a book, a lock, a tire, nuts and bolts, a camera, bicycle clamps, an unfinished grand unified theory, a lighter, and THE laptop (which basically means the universal set, but I'm discounting a billion smaller things right now).

The sticky raging silliness

Allow me to ‘roll’ back to this same day a week back in time: Camping under an adolescent moon at Balu-ka-Ghera, a trek of 2 days on foot beyond the exploited hills of Manali. Allow me another 3 hours of rewind, and you will find us all crammed inside our little 2-man tent: the 5 of us tossing about in search of a warm, spacious foothold asshold to station ourselves permanently for the evening Panchayat, a war in verbiage, a war to out-cool each other; scraping away any baked beans or peanut butter we could find in their respective cans, to layer it on our bread slices and savour the only worthy taste we would find for most of our trek; the magnetic flux of whiskey bottle (Royal Stag) at my end drawing everyone closer, tempting us into opening its plastic lid; masala one-liners that seem to stimulate our tastebuds; illuminating misconceptions that would go into our travel accounts; banter without stop. There’s not much audience this evening for music, owing to blown-out aging JBL speakers, plus a narrow collection of music on the iPod – Sigur Ros, Kraftwerk, Beethoven, Delhi Belly, David Bowie, Dev D…

Sunday, July 17, 2011

It has been a long while that I last wrote. I lost my hands, you know, or I'd have already written about an avalanche or two encountered while trekking forward on "Mt. Personal Life" (23000 meters). Just got my hands back yesterday, my identity the day before, and my thought process few hours back sitting on the footrest of Awadh Assam Express hurtling at a thousand kmph. Besides the glum talk, there were also world-appointing moments where everything seemed nice and perfect. Things gained, things lost.

It is hard to sum up the past month (and a a week or two). Going through cyclical turns in fortune, much like Ignatius' Wheel of Fortune (as imagined by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy). But in another respect, I'm not good enough to be compared with any protagonist, not bad enough to be compared with any antagonist either - heroes and anti-heroes have long since been forgotten in this core; the virtues and the morals have been biting the dust; the extraordinary, the deplorable, and the quotidian have been dissolved in a random gravy of whatever simmers to the top at the moment of sampling.

Brain pops at the question of longevity. Brain fumbles at the question of a quick suicide. Brain inverts at the question of social acceptance. Brain drifts away at the question of occupation. A lot to let you down, a lot to make you hurt.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Ich Liebe Lucknow

So you get to learn that girlfriend trouble could be sorted through with a convenient murder. And that arranging for a murder would put you back by 3 lakhs. And that the assassin would be handpicked by your friend - also your middleman - from Jaunpur. And in case your friend is well acquainted with the assassin - who will have 5 or 6 pending cases in this dark city, so another murder in his hands won't be a big deal - then it would be reduced to a lakh; but the money would have to be given upfront. No shortcuts allowed - slicing off a limb or two, or simply sending your enemy to the grave, both are equally priced. Again, I assert, payment through cash only.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Creature diaries

Somewhere close to Balu Ka Gera - beyond the exploited hills of Manali - a slender blotted figure steps out from his den as the moon moves into its latter half of this night. There's nothing to claim for novelty today, as always. Life has been routine; rains have been hard and troublesome; prey has been playing the vanishing act. "Thing are not sane," he begrudges to his own self in a moment of soliloquy. His tiny cushioned paws distort the fabric of the damp Earth and his insignificant choice over his direction leaves a significant trail - one which he hopes some nihilist deer would follow to feed itself to this beast in these hard times. He has not been particularly hungry, thanks to his lately-sedentary lifestyle, but seeing the bounties nature has the herbivores stocking on, he is tempted into hunger in sheer envy.