The Clown behind the mask

Sod off.

2010-08-10T15:09:00.000+05:30

Dear person,

Screw you.

You disgust me. What makes you think you can sit next to me in crowded movie halls and take your shoes off and assume that I will put up with the smell? Sitting there with a pathetic bunch of people, discussing server loads and client requirements in a fucking restaurant? Queuing up like bloody ants at fast food joints, pushing and shoving so you can have a better and more efficient weekend than others? You pathetic bunch of slimebags! Have you seen the uninspiring, banal nonsense you write in the “about me” sections on your networking websites? “I am a contradiction, I am unique and sweet. I’m still trying to figure out who I am”? Really? Have you read the poetry you write in your blogs? The moon shining down gently upon the soft cuddly teddy bears gently floating on a soft pink pillow on the gentle waves of that big melting-pot of human creativity, blogger.com? Melting pot my foot. People like you are what make blogspot what it is – an organic soup of human bile and excrement. Have you never read any poetry in your life? How can think and write nonsense like that and go about life as if nothing was wrong? Can you spell implication without making two mistakes? Can you form a grammatically sound sentence in the language you write poetry in? And since you ask me for it, here is my carefully considered opinion – your "creation" looks like an obese orangutan’s backside. Even the orangutan would want to hide it from view. And you flaunt it on your websites.

When I read about the Uncertainty Principle or listen to a Bach fugue, I want to kill myself. The standards are so high it would be futile to try to live up to them. It is so depressing. If you have heard about any significant human work at all, how can you write such shallow nonsense on your blogs and continue existing as though nothing was wrong? Doesn’t the immense corpus of human accomplishment have ANY effect on you? How can you bring yourself to upload pictures of your car trip to Nandi hills if you have even heard rumours about Ranulph Fiennes’ trips to the south pole, north pole and across Antarctica, an entire frozen continent all on FOOT? I’d be ashamed of myself if I were you.

Among the other things I’d do if I were you, the ones that readily spring to mind are spiking my own coffee with strychnine, hanging myself from the ceiling fan and shooting myself in the head just to be sure. What I feel towards you is beyond pure hatred. I pity you. From the bottom of my heart. And if you are still reading this and don’t feel offended or surprised, I love you.

Winnie The Dark Pooh – a pre-emptive Hollywood script

2010-06-16T16:02:00.002+05:30

After The Dark Knight, Spiderman 3, Casino Royale, Alice in Wonderland and The Incredible Hulk, the next logical dark/gloomy/philosophical fictional cartoon strip presented on the big screen would be Winnie The Dark Pooh. Here is a brilliant character sketch I have written for an equally brilliant screenplay, which is to follow…

The dichotomy of Winnie’s character is brought out in the colour of his coat. At first sight, orange seems to be a pretty unusual colour for a bear, but as the deeper inner psyche of Winnie is revealed to us through a series of encounters with the other main characters, more and more layers are added to it. Orange symbolises shame and embarrassment.

Tormented by the memories of a troubled childhood, when he was often made fun of by his friends at school for having “pooh” for a name, and lugging around the shameful burden of being a meat eating carnivore in the company of rabbits and donkeys, he always sought approval and social acceptance. The internal conflict seems to be fuelled by an almost Kierkegaardian refusal to accept circumstances at face value, as a result of which Winnie spends his days searching for purity and honesty, which is reflected symbolically in his quest for honey, which again being orange symbolises the ideological marriage between despair and hope.

We can only speculate on whether Winnie was indeed aware of his primal instinct to consume animal carcass but, at an elemental level his love and preference for monosaccharide resin regurgitated by insects seems to hint at a more fundamental moral dilemma which as we delve into murkier depths of existentialist philosophy, manifests itself in a need to steal, conceal, cheat and indulge.

All in all, the Shame of Winnie is as complex and sophisticated a theme as you will ever find anywhere. Anthony Minghella behind the camera and Daniel-Day Lewis as Winnie, Leonardo Di Caprio as the donkey Eeyore, Anthony Hopkins as The Owl, Jack Nicholson as The Rabbit, Sean Penn and Dustin Hoffman as Kanga and Roo, Robert Di Niro as Gopher and Juliet Binoche as Tigger. Watch out for academy award nominations and The General Awesomeness Prize for me.

Eureka!

2010-06-05T13:38:00.000+05:30

I was wondering if the earth rotated north-south rather than east-west, would we have day for 6 months a year, night for the other 6 and go through spring, summer, autumn and winter every day...

Do you know what it means to be in New Orleans?

2010-03-26T15:20:00.001+05:30

The beauty of jazz lies in contrasts.

The beauty of jazz lies in its almost ridiculous simplicity, even though under the bonnet its construction is head-alteringly complicated. Even though it may appear to be the background track to Tom and Jerry, it is not frivolous. It is classic and elegant in an artistic-Chivas Regal-sophisticated-middle aged-relaxed-whiskey bar-restrained energy sort of way. Even though the bop is all peaky and angular, the rhythm to which it fits has the curviness of western classical. Even its sober rhythms have in them the raggedness of the psychedelic rock genre that followed it. In their day, their melodies were unconventional and bold. In a post-depression society, they somehow dared to be jaunty! An optimism born out of depression perhaps, I can only speculate.

The beauty of jazz lies in contrasts.

Re-recordings, no matter how sophisticated, can never match the quality and depth of the sound produced by big-band musical ensembles. It must have sounded a hundred times more soulful in the dark silent whiskey bars of the west coast of USA in the mid 1930s, those beautiful jazz years.

Jazz music, along with the general theory of relatively is one of the greatest human intellectual achievements.

A tattered soul

2010-03-15T16:24:00.001+05:30

The sneakers in the first picture are my favourite pair. I’ve had them for many years. The second picture is that of my riding gloves – not my only pair, but the ones I’ve had for the longest time. In fact, I do not remember a time when I did not have these gloves. You will never know how dirty they look unless you’re either a very close friend or very brave.

But in a way, these dirty old things have seen the best and the worst of me. I still use them at times. I can’t be as reckless with them as I once used to be, but I still do use them at times. They fit me so well.

Over the years I’ve tried to take care of them, just like the way they’ve taken care of me. But time has passed, and no one around here is getting any younger. They look so worn and tired. Every day a new wrinkle appears on them, everyday another seam snaps. I’ve tried to mend them a few times, but maintenance-wise there appears to be only one direction they are headed. Maybe we’re all headed the same way.

Maybe I will get a new pair of sneakers or gloves after a while, but I will never forget or throw these away. These were not mere “things” I once owned, but for me they were organic living beings, whose lives ran parallel with mine for a while. Even now, after many years of use, there is not one thing I’d change about them.

I still sometimes decide to go on rides at 1 past midnight. When I do, I sometimes worry about the chain running loose or tyre treads wearing thin, but at least I know I don’t have to worry about my shoes or gloves or my helmet. They plainly know what they have to do, and they’ve served their turn unflinchingly for many years now. They’ve always seemed to understand the boiling irreverence of youth, just like they now seem to have the wisdom of many years on the road.

I don’t think of them as being sexy. I don’t talk to them, or give them “cool” names. I think that kind of thing is reserved for frivolous coffee-table motorcyclists. In fact, I’ve never even had their photographs until now.

These are not my riding gloves or my sneakers or my jeans…these are what I’ve been. These are who I’ve been. These are my most sacrosanct memories. They may not smell expensive or turn heads at some high society motorcycle-club meet, but I will never give them up. If you have a problem with my gloves or sneakers, you have a problem with me. If you think your gear says a lot about you, just know that after more than forty thousand highway miles, my gloves and shoes have absolutely nothing left to prove. Not even to me. Because the only way your helmet can get that fade and those scratches is by earning it on the road. They are cool because they don't have to pretend. Just know that I quite literally trust them with my life. That’s more than what I will ever say for you. If you say I have to get rid of these and get shiny new ones, here’s what I have to say to you –

Screw you.
.

Life and other such things.

2010-03-13T17:36:00.001+05:30

The title of this post has got nothing to do with what this is about. I just wanted to have a title like that. So there. What this post is about is what I've learnt from my experience with Hindi and Tamil movies. Here are a few life-lessons I want to share with you.

If there is a sewing machine in someone’s house, it means they are poor. There is always an unmarried sister or a sick mother in the house.

If a woman is walking alone in a white saree and there is fog around her, she is a ghost.

If a woman has green eyes, she is actually a snake.

If a rich girl and a poor boy meet, they will definitely fall in love and eventually get married. Either that or they die. Together.

Two people can’t just play snooker without anything significant happening. A cunning scheme HAS to be plotted, or an argument HAS to be had, usually about ethics or morals. If a person pots a ball, he is usually the winner of the argument. Or he is the one who comes up with the cunning plan.

If you see the feet of a little boy who is running in the first scene, he is going to grow up soon. And he usually runs to Bombay and Madras, in Hindi and Tamil movies respectively.

If someone has a drink, their speech becomes slurred and they drive dangerously or end up getting beat. No one in movies can have a drink without getting absolutely plastered. Even a sip of diluted breezer is enough to reduce the heroine to an incoherent burbling mess at a party where she would subsequently become an embarrassment to her father or husband, who would then give her mute, constipated looks of anger as she is singing in a slutty voice, usually with the cleaveage showing. There is no other way a woman can have a drink.

No one dies or gets hospitalised during a song.

If a little boy and girl sing a song at age 5 and then get separated, they will remember that tune till they are 25. And they will meet again and fall in love and either get married or die together. In the end, they will sing the tune in either case.

If a boy and a girl knew each other when they were young, they will definitely meet again. No matter how hot the girl is, she will not have a boyfriend till she meets her childhood friend again.

If it rains when two people are walking, there is no way they cannot fall in love with each other.

There are no traffic signals in car chases. No one runs out of fuel.

How many clichés can you think of?

Useless two-bit life-lessons learnt on the road.

2010-03-03T20:46:00.000+05:30

There are essentially two kinds of people in the world. Losers and Jerks. Losers are the annoying ones who are slower than you on the road. Jerks are the impatient ones who are faster than you. Most people fall into either of these two categories. People who aren’t Jerks or Losers are Spectators. So, Losers, Jerks and Spectators. Statistically and empirically speaking, apart from these there are no other categories.

You will usually find Jerks behind you and Losers ahead of you. (Refer: Murphy’s Law). If someone is driving alongside you, there is no way of ascertaining whether he or she is a Loser or a Jerk, though heuristics suggest that he/she is more likely to be a Loser.

If you have an accident with a Loser, it is obviously the Loser’s fault. If you have an accident with a Jerk, it is always the Jerk’s fault. If you have an accident, it is never your fault.

It is usually better to let the Jerk overtake you than die of hearing his loud horn noises, in much the same way as it is better to overtake a Loser as soon as possible than die of hearing your own loud horn noises.

If a person with a faster automobile is driving ahead of you and hasn’t pulled away significantly, he is a Jerk. A person with a slower automobile who has been deliberately keeping up with you is an annoying Loser.

If three people are driving one behind the other, the first one is a Loser to the 2nd and 3rd. The 2nd one is a Jerk to the 1st and a Loser to the 3rd. The 3rd is a Jerk to everybody. So, the classification, as you can see isn’t rigid and inflexible. People can be Losers or Jerks, depending on who is making the call.

Thus, it is easily demonstrated that the world is essentially made up of Jerks and Losers.

Which one are you?

Did someone say traffic jams were a thing of the past?

2010-02-28T22:09:00.001+05:30

The city of Bangalore seems like one big cram-your-circus-suitcase challenge. You know…the game where you have to cram your suitcase with all sorts of things – clothes, shoes, stereo systems, 2-inch dia stainless steel pipes, hacksaws, insect repellant, vinyl records, drilling tools, .357 Magnum shotguns, rexin upholstery, nuclear waste disposal canisters, lamp shades etc… and the winner is the one with the most stuff packed in while passing unnoticed through the security gate of the airport. Okay, so I made up that game…but what the hell, if there were such a game, Bangalore would be the World champion’s suitcase…do you get my drift?

There is more chaos than you’ve ever seen. Buildings and bus shelters are strewn around unashamedly, like a talcum powder spill in a miniature train set. In beloved Madras, for instance if you said Café Coffee day, Nungambakkam, everyone knew exactly where you meant. There would have been no two ways of interpreting what you said. Your word was good enough and you knew what you were talking about. You were a force to be reckoned with. Not so in Bangalore. There are 8 Coffee days in a 3 square km area in Jayanagar alone. It turns out it’s a big deal, because Bangalore itself covers only about 8 square miles. Now, this may be a good thing if you are in Jayanagar and are in the mood for some coffee, but not such a hot bargain if you have an office opposite to one of the Coffee days and want to give directions to someone so they can come and give you some money before they change their mind. Not a good bargain at all. (Actually, having a dozen CCDs around is not a great idea even if you are in the mood for coffee. In Bangalore, at least. Their coffee tastes like what gets poured down the waste drain in some chemistry experiment gone terribly wrong.)

Here are some facts you will have no difficulty understanding if you’ve ever lived in Bangalore. But if you have never lived in Bangalore, I might as well be talking in whale language:-

It takes me 10 minutes to walk from home to office, a distance of about 10 minutes walking-distance…if you walk as fast as me…which is fast enough to cover the said distance in ten minutes…(I guess that is settled now.) But if I drive, it takes me 15 minutes. I am not kidding. So, if I am in a hurry to get to the office, I’d be better off walking than taking the car.

The weirdest thing about Bangalore though, that which confuses even people born and brought up here, is that no matter which route you take to reach a place from some other place, there is always another route which is shorter. Get this: There is always a shorter cut. You may join two landmarks by a straight line – a straight road or a straight street and think to yourself, “Ahaa! What can possibly be shorter than this?” Well, your attention span, for one, because you weren’t listening. Moron. I said, and read this carefully, there-is-always-a-shorter-cut. It could be another road which has lesser traffic, maybe a one-way, maybe one that passes through a residential area, maybe one that has fewer rumble strips on the road. (Yes, there are speed breakers in Bangalore, though whose speed they help break is a mystery to me. I won’t risk asking this question in public, because given their fondness for flawlessly logical retorts, I am sure the Bangaloreans will respond by producing a snow-plougher from the garage of the MG Road fire station. And expect me to understand that through the stylish process of second-order reverse-logic, my question somehow stands answered.)

So, don’t reinvent the trapezoidal wheel. Just park your scientific curiosity in a place where it is unlikely to be ever found again, maybe on the shoe-rack in the Iskon temple, and just accept this as an axiom. Do not question anything. Questioning only leads you into dark corners of logical fallacy where your mother wouldn’t want you to go, especially after dusk. Remember also that in this imperfect world, dumbass cows with large breasts and bloodsucking leeches buy turbocharged Porsche Carrera GTs, and the intellectuals get sent to jail and have their skins flayed before having their noses eaten by Nazi dobermans. So just repeat after me – There is always a shorter route.

-

Poetry

2010-02-27T16:08:00.002+05:30

.
Play.

Play. Fall. Get hurt. Bleed. Learn. Play. Fall. Get hurt. Bleed. Learn again. Bleed. Learn more. Play. Fall. Get hurt. Learn. Play. Fall. Learn. Play. Fall. Play. Play. Fall. Die.

Repeat.

In great stillness...

2010-02-24T16:01:00.003+05:30

When you reach great speeds, you reach great stillness.

As you go faster and faster, the frames become more and more blurred. Space begins to become warped around the helmet visor. The field of vision narrows down. The entire road and vista ahead shrinks to a dot in the centre of your visor. You are hurled towards this point at 136 km/hr by a staggering force. Every muscle in the body, from your jaw to the very tips of your fingers, is taut or clenched. The mind starts reacting to the slightest of provocations - a twitch of a chain link, a tiny movement of a dog 200 feet away, a cylinder misfire which might have been entirely anticipatory, the trajectory of a leaf falling from a branch. As you go even faster and faster, the mind processes more and more. It gauges, calculates, deliberates on, decides and acts upon an ever-increasing flow of information through the senses. When you stretch to an extremely high speed, you will suddenly find that the real physical world around you draws thinner and thinner. You will find that everything has slowed down, almost to a halt. The chain stops turning, the pistons stop in their tracks, the gears and cogs and shafts and bearings and sprockets all stop suddenly as if it were a change in timescale. Slowly you realise that time hasn’t entirely stopped, but is moving silently, impalpably, as if in slow motion. Then you turn your head around and see the landscape, which had suddenly become frozen. The trajectory of the leaf has become still and it is suspended in mid-air, slowly falling down. There is a lot more time in between heartbeats. You hear the buzzing of a bee, slowly flying by, as you view a macro angle, panoramic view of the suspended surroundings. You see the tacho needle nudging 9500 and shuddering violently as if in a fit, but it is strangely muted. You see it, but don’t hear anything you might expect to hear. Everything is still.

When you reach great speeds, you reach great stillness.

But it is difficult to keep this stillness for long. It is difficult to keep the mind stretched at this speed forever. Something is always bound to happen to break this balance, this beautiful harmony. A patch of rough road, or a truck in the hazy distance. Then suddenly you go just fractionally slower and the entire world screeches back to life! From nowhere the engine suddenly starts whining from the assault of nine thousand crank rpm, the chain roars from running too hot and dry. The intake and exhaust shriek in extremely rapid tandem, the tarmac below the foot-pegs suddenly an immediate presence. The rear tyre squeals as the tightly sprung rear suspension rapidly unloads causing it to lock up on downshift. The sensation of the earth moving backwards in a giddy choreography of violent physical movement. The pull back to earthly senses from that sublime speed is so tremendous and so sudden that it hits you like a bat in the face. As if dragged back by the force of nine thousand rpm.

Absolute stillness is pretty hard to explain. It is a state of mind. It is a place beyond fright or instincts or logic. A place beyond the immature eagerness to show-off, beyond the mortal fear of injury, beyond the calculated logic of riding physics. It is a state of being that is neither too eager to receive nor too keen to act. It is that fine line between peace on one side and fear, instincts, memory, courage, senses, pain and everything else on the other. It is beyond the limits of the road or the machinery. It may appear to the uneducated as a thrill or a sensation, but to describe it thus is to give it a false meaning. It is above thrills or sensations. It is art, it is electricity, it is poetry.

In great stillness we find ourselves.

PS: I feel obliged to write a post-script. The picture in this post was clicked by Boon when we were riding on the NH15 from Radhanpur to Barmer. That was Boon riding with a death wish on his P220 fitted with a K&N free-flow filter. On his motorcycle, he was safe at that speed. On yours, you wont be. Kindly ride safe. Do not cross 125 km/hr if you are riding an Indian motorcycle.

Romeo and Juliet

2010-02-22T19:50:00.003+05:30

The setting is a lonely dark street with a house towards one end. Outside a high window in the house a streetlamp tosses a puddle of light underneath. Juliet sits at the lit window, brushing her hair and getting ready for a party. A knot in her hair catches her attention for a moment, but otherwise she is engrossed.

A love struck Romeo looks at her from the darkness underneath her window. He steps forward into the light of the streetlight, and strolls towards the pole. He looks at her and says, “Hey, Jule”

Juliet shrieks and jumps with a start. She turns around and sees what’s going on in the street below and sees Romeo standing there, by the pole.

She says “Good heavens, it's you! Sheesh, You nearly gave me a heart attack there, you know?!”

Romeo just looks at her and smiles.

””So, my favourite boyfriend is back, huh? What are you doing here?”

“Er…. I don’t know, really. Just thought I’d come and say…er…Hi?”

“You really shouldn't, you know. What’s the idea? You can’t just go around sneaking upon people from underneath their windows and singing songs to them and frightening them half to death. That sort of thing really ruins their day. Anyway, what do you want now?”

“I… I don’t know. I would’ve already told you if I did.”

“So, are you just gonna stand there all night and wonder what to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Know what, you can take the whole night to decide what to say, but I’ve gotta run in five minutes.”

“Hey Jule…you wanna go out with me tonight?”

“No, of course not! And don’t call me Jule.”

“Hey, lemme take you out, just tonight? Let me take you out to Koshy’s. I know how much you love their grilled fish.”

“Dude, let it slide, will you? You’ve tried this so many times before…when has it ever worked?”

”What the fuck was I supposed to do, Jule? What were the odds against us failing? The die was loaded from the start, and I knew that! I knew what I was letting myself into when we first met. But I still bet on it. And you know what, I’d bet on loaded dice for you anyday, because you are worth way more than the risk, Jule. So I bet and voila! You exploded into my life.”

“Hehe, yeah. Silly days, those…I remember how we could never get enough of each other. Childish days, if you ask me. How foolish were we!”

“But they were beautiful days, weren’t they? What was that song, Jule, that sounded just like our story? It was some movie song we used to hum all the time, I forget…”

“Okay, so there was some song. What’s your point now?”

”Have you wondered ever, Jule, that maybe it was all just wrong timing. At that time, maybe we were too young, too green. Maybe the world wasn’t ready for us yet… Maybe WE weren’t ready for us yet. Have you wondered ever whether things might have gotten better now? Do you ever wonder if we might make it good if we try again? Just once?”

“Not working, dude…There really is no point talking about the past now. Michael will be here anytime and he is gonna be upset if he sees you here. Don’t make any noise, and quietly bugger off to where you came from.”

“Jule, do you remember the time when we used to work two shifts a day, when we were hungry and all we had was each other, and a dream?”

“It’s all past, Romeo. What the fuck difference does it make now?”

“It happened to us, babe! We lived it. We dreamt of making it big.”

“Get to the point, Romeo. I don’t have all day.”

“Come up on different streets they both were streets of shame
Both dirty both mean yes and the dream was just the same
And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real”

“It was never your dream. It was mine. And I’ve made it, Romeo. I’m living my dream.”

“Yeah, but what about our dream? Have we made it, Jule?”

“I think we blew it, dude. But honestly, it doesn’t matter a damn now.”

“But I still hold on to the hope we once shared.”

“Ha! Hope is sad business, mister. It sucks. It is the root cause of all the worry and misery in the world. It’s the reason for all the pain and jealousy and unfulfilled expectations. Hope is pathetic. It’s a delusion. Fuck hope.”

“Why did it have to end like this, Jule? Why is our past an unwanted presence in your present?”

“Why the fuck do you talk like that, dude? Like some fucking freak? Why can’t you just talk like, you know, like normal people?”

“How can you treat me like an outsider, like some stranger? How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?”

“Deals?! What the hell are you talking about? Are you accusing me of using you? Where is all this jealousy coming from? Romeo, I was never really in love till now.”

“Really? What was the deal with that doctor, then? What were you doing with that TV actor for three months?”

“But that was just a stupid crush! A brief midsummer night’s fling. And now don’t you read anything into flings!”

“What was the deal with me, then? Was that a fling too? Can I read ANYTHING into it at all?”

“Nah… Those were just butterflies I got attracted to.”

“But you loved them.”

“Hmm…maybe, yeah… maybe I'll always love them. All just butterflies, though.”

”When you can fall for chains of silver you can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold”

“I never got tied down. I never made anyone any promises! I just walk around, Romeo.”

“But I fell in love with you.”

“Whose problem is that?”

“Mine. I believed you. I believed your promises.”

“I never promised you anything.”

“You promised me everything. You promised me thick and thin…”

“Look, we had a good thing going, okay? But that was ages ago. It never meant anything. And it’s over now. Over! Stop feeling pathetic for yourself and get a move-on, now.”

“…I remember I was once your world. If I said something and the entire world said the opposite, you believed the entire world was wrong. And these days you just say “Oh, Romeo? Yeah…you know I once used to have a scene with him”

Juliet is silent.

Romeo says, “Jule, when we made love you used to cry.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“Whoa, what else did I do?”

”You used to say ‘I love you like the stars above and I'll love you till I die’”

“Fiction! I don’t think I ever said that!”

“Yes, you did. I know you loved me.”

“Okay, I must have said something that might have sounded like that. But really, Romeo, its not gonna work, do you realise that? So, stop following me and just bugger off and get a life. Do you understand? Stop stalking me. When the fuck are you going to realize that we just not going to work???

“But what about us, baby? You knew us back then! We were so good together, babe. What happened to us? We were invincible!”

“Things come and go. Times change, honey.”

“But I’m still the same person.”

“Do you realize how pathetic you sound? What have you ever done for me? What the fuck COULD you do anyway?”

“Yeah, I know. I could never cook for you. I could never make you happy. I kept forgetting our anniversary, and I couldn’t afford to get you that pretty velvet dress. I could never remember to water the plants, and I kept forgetting to call.”

“I’m telling you, no girl can ever stand nonsense like this. You’re lucky we had a good run. But no one else would have put up with you, because you were never good, and you’ll never be any good.”

“I’ll never be good enough for you, Juliet.”

“You were never good enough for me, Romeo.”

“But I did love you madly.”

“You’re just wheezing through a straw.”

“I guess I’ll always love you.”

There is silence for many moments. Both look in different directions.

“Juliet…”

“What?”

“Maybe I can't do the talk like they talk on the TV
And I can't do a love song like the way it's meant to be
I can't do everything but I'd do anything for you
I can't do anything except be in love you”

“’Heck am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t really expect you to do anything about it, I guess. I guess it’s just me singing into the blank universe, waiting for an echo…like the wife of a fisherman, who awaits him when he has gone to sea; who gazes into the sea and hopes; who drops a coin into a well and prays. That’s what I do, Juliet. I just drop coins into wells and trust the Universe. That’s all I do. And all I do is miss you, and the way we used to be.

“So what do you do now?”

“I jam a little way down the street with the tough boys from the harbour. All I seem to do these days is keep the beat and the bad company.”

“Do you still do drugs?”

”I’ve always been possessed by poisons. But it is a prison I’ve chosen for myself, so I know where the bars are. Now my imagination is a song. Now it is lying next to you under an ocean of stars. Now my imagination is kissing you through the bars of a rhyme.”

“Orion? Did you say bars of Orion?”

“No, I said bars of a rhyme. I can only kiss you through the notes of a song.”

“Oh, I thought you said bars of Orion.”

“No.”

“It sure sounded like it.”

Romeo beams at Juliet. “No, but I’d do the Orion with you anytime! You remember the time we used to do stars together from our balcony?”

Juliet giggles. “Yeah, and later we used to make love.”

Romeo smiles. “You used to cry.”

Juliet looks away. Romeo silently gazes at his hands.

Romeo says, “What am I going to do, Juliet?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“How am I ever gonna fill the little Juliet-shaped hole in my heart?”

“Easy. Find someone. Maybe someone like you. A hopeless romantic.”

“I will love you till I die, Jule”

“Have I been speaking in fucking Icelandic?! I told you not to call me that. Don’t you get it?”

“Jul..I...Sorry…”

“Shoo off now. Mikey’s gonna be here, and he will be real pissed if he sees you.”

They both stand and look around, glancing at each other occasionally, and smiling whenever their eyes meet.

Finally Romeo says, “Juliet, I hope you realise that it was just time that was wrong.”

Juliet sighs, takes a step backward and smiles. “It is not going to work, my dear.”

She turns and walks off the scene. The street is dark and quiet. Now there is absolute stillness. The painful kind of stillness that sucks all life out of the air and leaves you numb. A deep mourning silence. The aftermath of a misfortune. But here near the streetlamp underneath Juliet’s window, there seems to be a slow jaunty tune floating about.

It’s Romeo. He whistles a serenade in the empty street to himself. Head down and hands in pockets, he ambles around the streetlamp and kicks a can. He pauses, turns back towards where Juliet disappeared and stares rather hopelessly at the darkness. He looks at Juliet's empty window, smiles and hums to himself, “Hey Jule…You and me, babe… how about it?”

* * *

From the beggarly bottom of my heart, I owe Mark Knopfler a colossal debt of gratitude.

Conversations

2010-02-21T18:39:00.001+05:30

What follows is fiction. But I might be making THAT up.

Loser 1: All troubles in the known universe have either or both of two root causes – words gone wrong, or a woman.

Loser 2: Or neither.

Loser 1: Never neither.

Loser 2: It is sometimes neither. It’s really funny then.

Loser 1(is taken aback): How?

Loser 2: Take the deal with Maldives for instance. Did you know they are fast vanishing? Isn’t that funny? I mean these islands are so small that they are like these tiny little specks of dirt on the beak of a chicken.

Loser 1: Tiny little specks of dirt on the beak of a chicken.

Loser 2: Yeah. Specks of dirt on the beak of a chicken which no one really gives a shit about, not even the chicken in question. They are so tiny that you can’t even notice them, much less know when they are gone. There are whales in the ocean bigger than these islands. You can’t even ride a bicycle because you’d get tired of making three-point turns all the time. And these islands are disappearing because of global warming. See, that’s a problem neither words nor women caused.

Loser 1: Don't you see?! That’s exactly what I mean. It is not caused by either wrong words or a woman, so it isn’t really a problem. You said so yourself. If these islands are not big enough to be even noticed, how is their disappearance a problem at all?

Loser 2: So, maybe its not really a problem....

Loser 1: Not at all.

Loser 2: Hmmm…Have you ever wondered whether…

Loser 1: Have I ever wondered how many women would be upset if the Maldives vanished?

Loser 2: …Yes!

Loser 1: Yes!! I have! I have! I wonder about it all the time.

Loser 2: Me too! Keeps me awake at nights!

Loser 1: So? How many women?

Loser 2: None?

Loser 1: None!

Loser 2: So, corollary to what you said, anything that doesn’t upset a woman isn’t really a problem?

Loser 1: Exactly… Er, did I say that, or was that you?

Loser 2: I think it was you…But Maldives was a class act.

Loser 1: Classic example, no?

Loser 2: Vintage.

Loser 1: One hundred percent.

Loser 2: (Leans back and gazes into the distance, putting his hands behind his head) Ah, the beauty of circular logic!

Loser 1: ( Also leans back and gazes into the distance, putting his hands behind his head) Man, we’re so smart, aren’t we?

Loser 2: Absolutely!

Loser 1: No doubt!

Loser 2: Yeah.

Loser 1: Yeah.

(Awkward silence for a minute)

Losers 1 & 2 (fiddling with their thumbs, not looking at each other) : Yeah…

Of cumin seeds and comebacks…

2010-02-18T11:56:00.001+05:30

So, after half-a-year of soul searching and other such nonsense, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really am no good at soul-searching. Firstly I didn’t know where to search, because I vaguely remember selling it to a slick looking man in a funny black cloak for an orange Popsicle when I was five. It may have been the devil, but I’m not so sure. It could have been Richard Branson, though what he was doing in a Dracula costume hanging around primary school playgrounds and selling orange candies, I don’t know. So I’ve let that one slide and decided to stick to cheap comedy cleverly disguised as sophisticated socio-political satire, which is what I’m good at. Cheap comedy, I mean; not sophisticated satire. I’m no good at sophisticated political commentary. I’m not good at sophisticated anything.

I wrote a poem. It began with “I have a head in my helmet. Not when its on my shoulders, but when its resting on the table. I have a head in my helmet which is resting on my table…”, but then I realized that it’s not really a poem because there is no rhyme or metre, and let’s face it, its ghastly.

Then I started writing a book, but after having written the page numbers and failing to think of a title, even a retarded one like Walk the talk or The River of dreams, I realized that I was pretty much scraping the bottom of the thought-bucket. So, I immediately dropped the idea. Smart move. Saved a lot of time.

And so, continuing in the fine tradition of quitting things that turn bad if I persist, I also quit going out in the sun, eating fruits, drinking coffee, talking to friends and riding the motorcycle and instead focused all my energies on staying indoors and taking a balanced diet of tomato pulao and narcotics.

Life is a bitch when you meet the wrong people at the wrong time. But you know you must have really run over her little puppy or something when she throws the right people at you at the wrong time. Perfectly right people at the perfectly wrong time. God is that cruel! Cruel!

I’ve lately been a bit of not-alright. Thanks for not asking. I’ve spent the last few months in a hazy mix of motorcycling and drugs. With this second chance, I will shake some of that off. Though hopefully not.

All in all, I’m thankful for raindrops, sunshine, butterflies, rainbows and other such general nonsense. I’m also sore about a few things, but honestly who seems to give a shit these days? So, to cut a long story short and to abuse an already overused cliché, I’m back.

Thanks for the applause.

That's all, folks!

2009-07-09T23:00:00.000+05:30

I guess its been on the boil for quite a while now. The job was getting on my nerves. It was mostly a joke. The best conversations I've had in years were with myself, on a single cylinder British motorcycle. But I knew I had hit rock bottom when people started mistaking the mask for the clown, so to speak.

So yesterday I did the most natural thing any level-headed person would have done in the same situation. I quit my job, and decided to take my motorcycle and leave on what will hopefully be a wild goose chase across the sub-continent in search of The Me. I don't know if I will come back to Madras, or to Blogger. I have no idea.

To the 4 regular readers of this blog, and to the dozens who arrive here from google.com looking for pornography, thanks for putting up with the nonsense. Be good and keep the faith.

Live gracefully. Die well.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Goodbye.

A few life saving tips from a guy who knows nothing about life.

2009-07-08T22:47:00.000+05:30

I don't take life too seriously, and life doesn't take me too seriously. It's an arrangement that works reasonably well for both of us. But here's something you will do well to remember for as long as you live:

Remember to never trust banks. Or hedge funds. Big corporations will ALWAYS want your money. The only thing that changes is how badly they want it and how much they are willing to pay for it. So you see fluctuating interest rates.

Follow business news. It is very amusing. You will very likely be reminded of a dog running in circles, chasing its own tail. But the difference is that a dog chasing tail is a zero sum game. Economics is not. There are always losers in an economy. That's the way of the world.

Never trust the media. They manipulate. They lie. They dwell on inconsequential controversies, like Shiney Ahuja's libido, to divert your attention from the really important issues, like global warming. They contrive the most unlikely conspiracy theories, yet they don't say the most obvious thing if it hurts the majority sentiment. They make such popular but ridiculously false proclamations as "Prevent global warming. Save the Arctic Penguin.", when the exact opposite is true. It is actually the penguins who are causing global warming. By breathing. One whiff of carbon-dioxide at the poles has the same effect on the atmosphere as burning down a forest or a coal mine at the equator, because the air is thinner. You are moving from the double ring to the bull's eye. It can be scientifically proven. Infact, I just did. If there were no animals or birds at the poles, it would be much cooler there and hence the ice wouldn't melt. So, in a way the surest way to save the Arctic Penguin is to shoot them all. Why then does the media urge us to save them? Because penguins are cute.

Penguins are not cute. That can also be scientifically proven.

Play Xonix. It is the only thing in the world worth pursuing. It is a seemingly trivial 2D computer game in which you have to trap evil little dots in progressively smaller areas in the face of irrational and at times absurd resistance by ever shrinking and expanding sticks. But you should be careful with the little dots. Mere contact with them can seriously undermine your mobility. Repeated contact is rumoured to have a detrimental effect on your very survival in the game, but I wouldn't know about that. The simplicity of the concept is astounding. Yet, its minimalism is matched only by its staggering range of probabilistic permutations. It's like walking into a mirror room. It will show you a million reflections of yourself. And reflections of reflections. You have quite literally infinite options at any given instant. It is a never ending fugue that will either elevate you to an orgasmic state of Karmic awareness, or depress you into a deep psychosomatic existential crisis. It will teach you, if you are inclined to learn, the absurdity of a purposeless existence and demonstrate the futility of endeavour in a way nothing else can. It is a fountainhead of profound philosophical thought.

Education is an industry and it is run by morons.

Let me rule the world, just for a day! I'll show you! I swear to God, you'd have never seen anything quite like it! Bearded university intellectuals and aviator shades will make a comeback. There wouldn't be any hiking gear or laptop bags. I swear to God i'll crash us sideways through the pearly gates in a trail of fire, leaving behind a wake of destruction and shattered window glass.

I have a vision of a madhouse, a seething charge of explosive creativity, where not a word is uttered that is commonplace, trite or uninspiring. The dull and the unimaginative would have no place in the madhouse. I have a vision of a world where thousands of young men and women break the shackles of slavery and wander off to the mountains, in search of the source of the great Amazon. A whole generation fuelled by Cannabis and a burning desire to set fire to the record. I really, genuinely, truly, earnestly believe that this is the only sensible way to live. Anything else is a compromise. If you fail to see what is to gained by such an existence, the ordinariness to which you doom yourself is entirely your problem to deal with.

The grass IS greener here. It is a dark shade of olive.

If only I ruled the world....

If what I said offended you, I just want you to know that I am not sorry. I'm not looking for anyone's forgiveness. Keep the change.

A knotty problem...

2009-06-23T22:09:00.000+05:30

For most part I don't understand iPod earphones. If you leave them unattended on a table for a couple of minutes, they somehow seem get entangled in a knot of such bewildering complexity that you need hyperbolic invariants and supercomputer algorithms to figure out how to untie them.

Mathematically, a tangled iPod earphone is the closest thing we have to multi-dimensional hyperspace and parallel Universes. Ancient Hindu saints and Buddhist monks knew about this. This is evident from the fact that the iPod earphone knot is one of the eight auspicious symbols in Tibetan philosophy.

What a tangled web we weave! Have you ever wondered what to really make of all the other regular nonsense we get up to? I do. So my mind is a very crowded place.

If aliens ever landed on earth, they would naturally think that iPods are the batteries that power human beings....and that people would go into a state of suspended animation, like energiser bunnies, if the power cable that is plugged into the ears is yanked off.

I wonder how Americans can make reconnaissance satellites that can spot a cockroach flapping its wings in a North Korean nuclear power plant from 300 miles above sea level, but fail to see a huge 2000 kg Russian satellite draped in bright reflective silver foil coming its way from 12 metres away, and collide with it?

I am at a loss to understand what we mean by the word "War Crime". I wonder what could be more criminal than war.

I have a pet theory - Man invented things in the order of how badly he needed them. The things which were really needed for survival were invented first and then Man turned his attention to the less important things. It is a sound theory, and it can be easily verified too. Beer was invented before writing. Spears, bows and axes were invented before bread and clothing. Plastic surgery, chewing gum and breast enhancement were invented before a cure for Ebola.

Do you know why they never mention the ingredients on aerated soft drink cans? The conceited bastards. Let me show you a sample. 330 ml Coca Cola - Caffeine, Phosphoric acid, Glycerin, Cocaine alkaloids, Chlorine, Ethanol, Toluene, Potassium Benzoate, Aspartame, sugar and water. It reads like the contents of a nuclear waste disposal canister. They know they will never be able to move a can off the shelf. Coca-Cola's ad punchline as early as in 1910 was "Quenches the thirst as nothing else can". Really? Whatever happened to plain water? Why should there be a toxic alternative to everything?

Why do sugar-free / low-calorie food items cost more than their regular alternatives? Shouldn't it be cheaper because it has one ingredient less? By the same token, sugar-free tablets should cost nothing.

Computers are the future of the world. Cockroaches can survive a nuclear attack. Some very serious nuclear firepower is wielded by North Korea and Iran, countries where top scientists are confounded by bicycle repair kits. When you put all these seemingly unconnected facts together, you will come to the same inescapable conclusion that I have - We must teach the cockroaches how to use computers. That would save a lot of cockroaches a lot of time.

If it goes down too, why is it called a Lift?

I have a doctor-friend who has killer looks. I wonder if it’s a good thing in her line of work.

In the days of black and white TV, did they broadcast snooker games?

If there are aliens observing us, I guess they'd think we're quite peculiar. We cut down forests and then pay a lot of money to buy clothes that would make us inconspicuous in a jungle. We have jobs we don’t like doing, so that we can buy things that we don't need. We have desk jobs and lead a protected life. We've never seen a river or a stream, yet we wear 50m waterproof watches, even though we know that if we ever get that deep in water, reading the time would be the least of our worries.

Why?

Told you, my mind is a very crowded place.

Things you wish you had said

2009-05-25T17:53:00.000+05:30

A good friend of mine recently analysed my feeding philosophy in his characteristic witty manner... It was so brilliant that it just HAD to be mentioned here!

"You believe in abortion, but not murder. That is why you eat eggs but not meat."

Sheesh! I wish I had thought of that!

And now for something funny...

2009-05-25T00:56:00.000+05:30

I met God.

He seemed to be a pretty cool chap. A bit aloof, I’d say, but cool undoubtedly.

Yeah.

It happened when I was in the heart of gult-land, Hyderabad, where I had to go on an official trip. As I entered the office complex, I asked the security person where I could find a certain building. He said, and keep in mind that he was gult, “Go straight down this road-u, you will find a grey building-u. When you yenter that building-u, a God will be sitting there. Ask that God, he will tell you where the building-u is.

Stunned, I hurried to meet God, who was allegedly sitting in Bldg-5. As a matter of fact, I even spoke with him. He was really chilled out. He wasnt even wearing the weird clothes and accessories I had imagined he'd be wearing. He was awfully nice. He gave me directions to get to Bldg-5, too.

I just wanted to let you know that if you are in Mecca or Hrishikesh or the Vatican or wherever, looking for God, you are looking in the wrong places. God is actually chilling out at Bldg-5 in an software office in Hyderabad, sitting cross-legged and reading a newspaper, apparently unaware that so many people are looking for him all over the place.

And you know what’s the most unkindest cut of them all? I have a suspicion He is gult.

(For the uninitiated, God is gultspeak for Guard – something I discovered later. Imagine my disappointment!)

.

When the music is over...

2009-05-21T21:38:00.000+05:30

Here is a word of advice to straight-haired girls who spend 2 hours a day in front of a mirror, trying out a dozen shades of lipstick, and splurging money on cosmetics and hair products, spending precious time worrying about how they look - you will never, not in a million years be as beautiful as the woman I love.

Nefertiti.

In her time, she was the queen of Egypt. She was the most powerful woman in the most advanced civilisation on earth. She was also the most beautiful woman ever. And do you want to know how she ended up?

This is how we will all end up one day. Filthy rotting corpses right fit only to be eaten by worms. Yet look at her decaying body and her legacy. She lived a beautiful life. She died old and wrinkled and frail. She died a beautiful human being. You will be lucky if you look so graceful in death. You will be lucky if some young man whom you will never know, in a far, faraway country thousands of years later looks at your picture and wonders who you were, how you smiled, how much you were loved. You’d be lucky if he looked up at the stars thousands of years after you’re gone and wondered if you once saw the same stars.

Here is a word of advice for denim clad young girls in strip malls. What will be left of your good looks after a few years? Just some wrinkles and a few old bones. Ask yourself – what will be left of you after 3500 years?

This was Nefertiti - the most beautiful woman in the world.

A word of advice: Age gracefully. Die well.

(PS: Thanks to Meg for the bronze make up, the inspiration and the constant reminders)

Quiz - Part I of many

2009-05-15T00:28:00.000+05:30

Guess who eats who

Warning: weather report ahead!

2009-05-12T21:31:00.000+05:30

Dear blog reader,

If you are in the business of weather forecasting, pay special attention to the following sentence: You are a blithering idiot. If you earnestly believe in the veracity of your forecasts, that is. Otherwise you are plainly a pig-headed moron. Weather forecasters in Madras deserve a special mention here. Why should ignorant people be hired to tell other ignorant people what they don't want to know? And have you seen these jokers?

Why do they wear those stuffy, ill-fitting woolen suits, that make them seem like obese rhinoceri in tight-fitting dinner jackets? Have they ever seen themselves in a mirror? Who clears these harebrained morons as suitable for television audiences? This is broadcast to millions of homes every night for half an hour. What is the health ministry doing about it? How can any civilised culture view radioactive plutonium as a health hazard and yet let this morbid nonsense loose on the unsuspecting public? So the weather-people on TV have so much going against them already, and I havent even started on the meaty bit yet - the actual business of weather prediction; Which is essentially whimsical unscientific speculation by a badly dressed man wearing a wig, grinning like an idiot and vaguely waving his arms about over a map, usually accompanied by retarded 2-D graphics and loud cheerful music. Just what is the bloody point?!

Would you notice it if you heard the exact same weather report on two consecutive days? How many days in a row do you have to see the weather report before you realise that you have been shown the exact same black boring X-ray of the India map since 1957?

The only thing that changes from day to day throughout the year in Madras is the thermometer reading. So inevitably, the only thing that the weather forecasters talk about is how hot it is going to be. What can the weather forecaster on Sun News POSSIBLY say that you didn't know before? Weather news is actually a contradiction in terms, because there is nothing new about it. Pause for a moment here and ask yourselves - how would your daily routine be different if it was 34 degrees C as opposed to, say 33? Scientists who work on drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases in hermetically sealed NMR laboratories have personally told me that they don't much care for 1C differences. So what difference does it make to Mr.Kettle-face (see the pic below) who sells tea and rice cakes in a roadside stall near Aminjikarai post office?

My forgiveness is a raving lunatic. Right now.

Get out of my face.

More things about the universe that don't make sense - Part XXIV

2009-05-10T20:23:00.000+05:30

Here are some more questions you are not going to understand.

1) Why do some people say life is hard? Life is hard compared to what? Being dead? How would they know?

2) Why is the alphabet in that order? Why should the alphabet be in ANY order? The only place where it is used is to spot a word in the dictionary. But with computers and what not these days, even that is not necessary any more. So why?

3) THIS report says that America recently broadened the scope of its unmanned air strikes in Pakistan from the semi-autonomous tribal areas to include the province of Baluchistan, in order to "smoke out" the Taliban (whose presence in Baluchistan, incidentally, was merely alleged). This followed speculation by senior members in the Obama administration that Pakistan was heading towards a total collapse of democracy and ultimately State failure....So they are saying all this because Taliban infiltrated certain regions in the North West Frontier Province? That raises an important question which I am sure millions of readers of this blog want to know the answer to - If the US Air Force does not hesitate to bomb the streets of Karachi and Quetta at the slightest suspicion of Taliban infiltration, how would they react if the said terrorists were standing on the roof of a 200000 b.p.d oil refinery in Saudi Arabia? Would they bomb it? What if the terrorists were dancing naked on an offshore oil rig in Alaska? Would they blow up costly Exxon Mobil infrastructure? More importantly, if the same terrorists were holed up somewhere in the Grand Canyon, would it merit a surgically precise SWAT retaliation from the American government... or would it call for carpet-bombing of Colorado? What if they were hiding in a Wal-Mart store in a marginal southern electorate somewhere in Alabama? Where would they drop their bombs?

4) If my previous question left you groping in the dark for answers, this should help you make up your mind - The Americans won't think twice before calling in an airstrike by F-16 fighter jets to blow up Madison Square Garden because there were a few garden lizards in it. See this.

5) What's all the fuss about sedentary jobs? NASCAR drivers and fighter pilots have sedentary jobs. The orthopaedic doctors people visit when they have problems resulting from a sedentary lifestyle have a sedentary lifestyle.

OK get back to your pathetic lives now.

Encore!

2009-04-26T22:42:00.000+05:30

Rental lease payment. Electricity. Unsolicited household chores. Packaged homogenised milk. Children. School fees. Castor oil. Kerosene. Purified semolina. Grocery rations. Palm oil. Raw rice. Wheat. Not enough. Not enough. Money is not enough at all. Hey! Rs 0.0625. Rs 0.125. We broke the coin accumulation container. Rs 0.25. Rs 0.50. We borrowed money. We mortgaged the container, the vessel...yet even after begging for Rs. 0.05 and Rs 0.10, not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough.

Knowledge fruit.

Louuuu

2009-04-20T21:19:00.000+05:30

Hey! Alcohol. Anchovies. A used piece of tobacco wrapped in temburini leaf. Bat. Hut. Garbage bin and a tea shop nearby. A 4-seater tricycle. Kite. Manja with a bottle. Bail. Marble. Cotton wrap-around. Pot. Shall we sing gaana rap songs? Ms.Anjali. Marketplace. Knee-length trousers. Mr.Kanniappan. Ms.Muniamma. Messers Giri, Gaja and Mani. MGR. Sivaji Ganesan. Rajnikant. Kamal Hassan. Armpit whistle. A slap reducing cheeks to powder. All shows running house-full. Pettai rap.

I love Madras.

Tzazae

2009-04-19T18:47:00.000+05:30

OK. Would some nerdy university type reader point out to me the exact difference between a hydrocarbon and a carbohydrate?

If you are an annoying, nerdy reader and you don’t know the answer to that, die in shame. You don’t deserve to live. If you do, please go to the comments section and post the answer. After you do that, quickly run along and get a life. Or better still, die. I will reject your comment in either case.

Alright, I need a favour from you. I should not have insulted you. Sorry.

Die in shame anyway.

In school, they tried to sell fructose as a carbohydrate and paraffin as a hydrocarbon. I called their bluff. Without going into boring details, let me tell you that essentially they are both the same. So I asked them why paraffin cannot be a carbohydrate, as it also releases energy upon combustion. Then we could all have candle wax for dinner. They looked shocked.

It is not the wrongness of their world that annoys the marrow out of my bones. It is their stubbornness to not change their outlook and their pig-headed reluctance to believe that other, more elegant worlds might possibly exist.

Education is an industry and it is run by incompetent morons.

What lies have I been fed! What a vortex of deception my life has come to be! I think it is sad that the truest thing in my life right now is a song. It is sad that no one understands the anguish. Because all I've got are words, and sometimes words are not sufficient. Sometimes I don't even have words. But the honesty of its music is unbelievable. It just cuts straight through the curtains of life's nonsense. It is fresh and white and pure and the filth of the world cannot touch it, no matter how hard it tries. I feel like I am gazing at the northern star from a wildly spinning carousel of lies. I don’t mind the discomfort, the hypnotism, the deception and the nausea as long as I have my sight on the distant, constant star, which looks at me and smiles, as my father used to when I sat on uncomfortable carousels when I was a little boy. I couldn't wait to get off the carousel and run back to him. If I had to give up everything else in the world and have one thing, it would be my childhood. I detest the pretence of being a man, of knowing what I'd be doing 5 years hence. I want to die a boy. Yes, that is what I would ask for. I have fallen in love with a star.

I am scratching and clawing at the frayed ends of sanity, struggling to hold on to impossibly thin strands of normalcy. Somebody throw me a frickin’ bone!

Terrible day + Coffee = Bad idea.

Apologies.

Saturday night revolution remix

2009-04-15T21:35:00.000+05:30

Did you hear about the coup in Madagascar, in which the president was ousted by a DJ who thought it would be cool to rule the country for a couple of years? The DJ just gave a press interview and declared that the president had been relieved of his duties. In an embarrassing turn of events, people ran amuck and there was general confusion everywhere and the President, not knowing what to do, and eager to avoid any confusion quickly resigned and handed over power to the DJ who obviously seemed to know what he was talking about.

I swear I am not making this up.

Click here to read the article.

More things about the universe that dont make sense

2009-04-05T19:46:00.000+05:30

If you feel, after having read the posts in this blog that I have already exposed most of the major flaws in the design of the Universe, what follows will take you entirely by surprise. Indeed, I have been giving the matter some serious thought, and have come to the conclusion that the world is upto no good. And our only chance of survival is letting me rule the Universe. Here are some more reasons why the Universe needs to be scratched off and a better replacement installed.

* What does it mean when someone says they will "definitely give more than 100%"? If 100% means total and absolute - that’s all they can possibly do. If they say they will do 110%, then 110 automatically becomes the new 100%, because they just showed that they could do not 100, but 110. So effectively, they end up doing a mere 100% after all.

* The Scandinavians invented the ice skates in the 5th Millennium BC. They also invented the ski in the 3rd millennium BC. Would you say it was impressive progress? A prematurely born gorilla which had been dropped on its head when it was born would have figured that out in less than 10 minutes. What took them 2000 years to get to the ski from the skate?

* If everyone in a group is unique, can one say that he is unique, just like everyone else?

* What is so "secret" about the secret service agent who tags along with the President of USA wherever he goes? I mean this guy has a two-way radio transmitter with earplugs and a 9mm Heckler & Koch submachine gun and a kevlar bodysuit and he looks around menacingly while a dozen cameras are trained on him. And he is being shown on every news channel from Easter Islands to Alaska. Everyone can see him and what he is upto, but in the glare of all those flashlights, he definitely cannot see anyone. And come on, no one is being fooled here. This guy can't be the president's interior decorator! He has to be a secret service bodyguard. Which brings me back to the question - what is so secret about him?

* Why do women love men who can play the guitar? I read somewhere that it’s got something to do with skillful use of fingers. I mean, what else can it be? Their conceptual understanding of Quantum Electrodynamics? It HAS to be skillful use of fingers. Then why won't women drool over typists and tailors?

* So Australia's contribution to the Book of Inventions is the Non Returning Boomerang. (Pause for effect) ....What is a Non Returning Boomerang? Is that a euphemism for something? Are you serious?! So the most significant Australian invention in the last 50,000 years is a stick?

* If my understanding from this news article is correct, General Motors is in a very bad financial state - demand is falling and there is excess capacity in the factory. So, the company needs to spend less and save more. In order to become a lean and efficient production machine and tide over the economic downturn, it has to cut down on costs and reduce the corporate excesses. So why they need a 23 billion dollar loan to do that? Economist-readers, explain.

* A word of advice to engineers who design puny 125 cc mopeds and garnish them with huge fairings and trapezoidal headlamps - and this is a subject I feel strongly on - If you drape a Chelsea shirt on a cow, it does not become Frank Lampard. And Roberto Carlos dressed in a tutu can kick the living daylights out of Mohun Bagan. Remember that. That's all I have to say on the subject of contemporary automobile design.

* "Movie sequels are sometimes better than the original. Because they usually have a bigger cast, more violence and bigger explosions. They are just more cajunga." Remind me, are we talking about the two world wars here? If this trend were to be allowed to continue, Max Payne 7 would start and end with uninterrupted handycam coverage of the Piper Alpha fire.

* So, what exactly is the deal with this "New Organic food" anyway? The other day, I saw " New Organic apples from Australia" on sale in the supermarket. I told the clerk i didn't fancy those and that I'd prefer the old fashioned inorganic ones instead... Oh didn't he remember the good old inorganic apples? The Iridium, Molybdenum and Polonium ones? No? They didn't stock those in the store anymore? What about apples made of weapons-grade titanium? Why was he grinning like an idiot? What did he seem so embarrassed about?

* What would you do if you had to melt down the plastic of a microwave bowl if you only had a microwave oven to melt it in?

(i am the princess of Hawaiki and i have a pet koala bear named lemon soda.)

2009-03-26T22:57:00.000+05:30

Just when I was convinced there was nothing that could disgust me more than the sight of a software engineer, I got an email from the HR department, which showed me how utterly ludicrous my assumptions were.

I think you'd better take a look at this.

Dear All,

We have continuously brought to your attention that your safety is of paramount importance to us and we have taken several measures to ensure your safety.

Recently, we have observed that few employees are not using the company night transport facility provided for them to reach home after their work. The reason being offered is because they stay in nearby locations, they prefer walking to their residences. We have also observed that some employees get down half way through and take detours during the night, possibly someone picks them up midway to drop them home.

Please note that the company views this as unsafe for an employee to be taking such risks and warns against such shortcuts to safety regulations. With immediate effect, we request you to please use the night transport facility, that has been provided by the company, for it is meant for your safety. Avoid walking alone in the night to evade any possible threat to you. Please go home early and avoid staying back late on campus if you are not on duty.

Incase we find employees violating the safety instructions, disciplinary action will be initiated against them.

Thanks
Regards

Human Resources Team

And this -

If I were to believe this HR propaganda, I'd think my biggest worries in life were how to pacify an angry computer and how to walk back home safely at 10 in the night without getting raped.

Yeah, right.

I admit I have...umm..."modified" many facts in this blog. I sometimes do that to enhance the aesthetic clout, if you know what I mean. But I swear by the souls of my dead ancestors that I am not making any of this up -

* I once had a super-cool motorcycle accident at 60kmph when going back to college from the Nandankanan forest. It was in the middle of nowhere at 11 PM on a dark night. (Don't ask me what I was doing alone in a forest at 11 PM on a motorcycle. I do that sort of thing from time to time.) Head on collision with another motorist. I was not wearing a helmet. Not a soul was around. I was unharmed except for a few minor bruises, but my old motorcycle was reduced to a knot of twisted metal. It broke my heart.

* I've slept alone in a cave. In the wild. Panther territory. (ok, the nearest panther sighting was 7 km away, but it still counts.)

* I've driven a Tata 407 truck from Chungathara to Manjeri in a sloshed state, to put it mildly. To not put it mildly, I was schnockered like there was no tomorrow. 20 km of treacherous ghat roads and steep cliffs. And I was absolutely plastered. I was the one who had to drive because in our group of 4, I was the most sober. I made it downhill alive and at an average speed of 20 km/hr. There wasn't a scratch on the brand new truck.

* I once travelled 90 km on the Mangalore-Kannur highway in a 9-Tonne truck with the driver hopped up on Hashish. It was the most thrilling 75 minutes ever. It was like a time-warp - blaring horns and green aliens and flashing headlight beams-carnival of mallu music and exploding colours. I came out of it with a sense of mild nausea and a new-found respect for life.

* I have been involved in a man-hunt for a criminal accused under IPC 420 and IPC 307 (the latter being attempt to murder).

* I have received 2 death threats and several kidnapping threats. I have also been involved as a mediator in a kidnapping drama that involved car chases, police brutality, rioting workers, trade union negotiations, and a furious rally of bureaucratic emails. The latter being the most traumatic.

So I told Nimisha-from-HR where she could stick her new directive. Nimisha or Anita or whatever her name was. (all those 3 syllable names ending with -A ...I really cannot tell one from another.) We live in different worlds, Nim...and my idea of occupational hazard is slightly different from yours. I don't expect you to understand the chasm, but merely to acknowledge that it exists and to respect it. That's all I ask. But that is obviously beyond you.

How I wish I could show you, Monisha. I wish I could introduce you to the many delights of diving head-first into the 30ft deep Chaliyar at the Tamarassery ghat. I wish I could get you to read my 800-page treatise on the art of living, entitled "1001 ways to sing short-haul shanties with friends on empty city roads at 2 AM with half a gallon of Smirnoff and THC in your bloodstream, lie down on the grass, stare at the sky and try to connect the dots, finally stumble back home and try to argue with the door and convince it that you were actually in the library and were dropped home by an anorexic Unicorn named Zzed who happened to be passing by."

How I wish I could tell you that in life, there is always the risk of death, but that's neither unusual nor unreasonable. ( And in my case - irresistible). Everyone dies. You can't say I haven't tried, Nimisha. I have tried to show you. But it has always been an exercise in futility. I have always been dogged by failure. Like I was teaching Algebra to a cow. I am tired of having to put up with you, Priyanka. You, with your handbag and your coloured straightened hair, disgust me. I don't even know your name!

I've decided I'm not even going to protest. I swear to God, next time I will just put a .357 Magnum to your head and spray your brain on the wall. Never mind that it would be the biggest Health & Safety disaster since the Amoco Cadiz spilled 230000 tonnes of crude oil into the English Channel. Only this time I would spill some lard on the wall.

One more email, I'm warning you… just ONE more, and the camel will go home with a herniated disc.

(you don't really notice what i type here, do you?)

2009-03-19T22:18:00.000+05:30

Look at this picture.

This is the evening rush at the bus bay in the “development centre” of a famous software company, or, as the Asmat cannibal-tribals of Papua New Guinea would call it, Buffet.

And you can stop scanning the picture now. You will not find me there. Unless I am swishing a diesel-powered chainsaw, wearing a maniacal grin on my face or standing in a corner with an Ebola syringe contemplating the importance of life, I will NOT walk with that crowd. If I see one software engineer, I have seen one too many for the decade. The salivating, nose-picking sleazebags. Look at them! Herded like livestock into cattle-class buses and food courts.

So, I am sure you are beginning to get an idea of how much I hate being even in the same postal code as one of these software engineers. But ……there is one thing that makes this sea of fat, sweaty farm animals more inviting than an empty 5-star swimming pool on a hot summer day.

Yes. There is something which, if it was my only other option, would send me running gleefully towards the nearest crowd of software engineers like a little boy on summer vacation, taking my shirt off and diving right in.

I have just suffered exposure to it. So at the moment I am a bit busy reeling. I will tell you about it later.

What part of "Sod Off" don't you understand?

2009-03-19T13:55:00.000+05:30

Let me make a few things very clear.

I don’t like cuddly puppies. I don’t break into song when I see the sun set. I don’t sing songs in the rain. I don't like receiving email forwards with macro-angle, soft-focus photographs of smiling babies, telling me how wonderful friendship is. I don't like babies. I don't think just sitting around and burbling incoherently is a worthy pursuit. Nor is it attractive in the least bit. I don't think babies know much about friendship, either. I can't stand the sight of starry-eyed lovers who gift each other soft toys and key chains with initials. I believe they should be bound and thrown head-first off a tall building, the lot of them. I don't keep soft cushions on my dressing table. I don't have a dressing table. I don't dress. Nor am I especially fond of tables. I am not gay. I don't ever say good morning. But I always humour people who say good morning to me, although I privately sneer at the absurdity of passing a personal value judgement on what is a customary diurnal astronomical occurrence.

I don't become speechless and misty-eyed with gratitude when I see a picture of the Grand Canyon with a message assuring me that there is hope in the world and that tomorrow will be a better day. I don't like lovesick puppies. But what I dislike even more than "cute" email-forwarding morons is people who can’t mind their own effing business. The self-appointed moral police, who make it their business to go around springing nasty surprises on couples in beaches and parks. My political views range from extreme right to extreme left depending on the issue in question. I am not a pig-headed moron who takes one principle or opinion and stretches it to fit all known situations. Take off your silly scarves. What cuddly toys and predominantly pink-greeting cards brain-dead morons give other brain-dead morons is entirely the problem of the brain-dead morons in question. Not yours. So, get the eff off it and stop bothering the lovesick dung-beetles. If you want to keep yourself busy, go and figure out how we ended up with 2 billion mouths to feed in our country. (Let me give you a hint - It is because of people giving each other something. And it is not greeting cards.)

I know some of the things I said may have offended you. I am not sorry at all. I couldn't be less bothered. If you have a problem with me, it's entirely your problem.

Normal service is resumed. Happy Valentine's Day, suckers.

For whatever it is worth, I offer my soul…

2009-03-16T22:54:00.000+05:30

You are going to think I am crazy. What follows may not make any sense to you at all. Or it may make such beautiful sense that it will break your heart. In either case I can't say I have much of a reputation to keep up, and if you don't already think I am crazy, by the time you finish reading this, you might have made up your mind one way or the other. Since I have nothing to lose, here goes...

What do you see when you hear a song?

Do you have to hear to understand? Speak to tell? Do you have to understand a song to love it?

Do me a favour and download this song and listen to it before you read any further.

http://www.mediafire.com/?nlyhnjiijdg

I absolutely love this song. I don't even know what it means. And you know what? I don't even want to know! I don't want to go to the bother of getting it translated only to find out that it is about a goat eating a cabbage. Even so, it is such a beautiful song that it wouldn't make a grain of difference. Language is inadequate. Words are not at all important.

Rani maak il youm
Ghadwihiyaa
Ghir il maktoub heelaqeena

Such passion and earnestness in the voice as can only be shown by someone who has discovered some great secret and wants to share it with you in all earnest; show you the reason and the purpose, but you are blind and you don't see. Hence there is a vain desperation in the voice.

You realize, without anyone ever having to tell you that this is a song of the desert. The cymbals, the strings and the drums. The Oud and the tambourines. Beads and trinkets. Sheepskin water bags. Little ornamental thimbles. Alabaster. Riches and treasures of the desert. Winters in Cairo. Faya-Largeau. The bazaars of Alexandria. Yet…

1:25 to 1:46 - This could not have come from people who had never seen water. This came from people who knew water, had held it and cherished it. I know what it is. This is the music of waves crashing against rocks. This is a country where people soak up the early morning dew from desert grass in a piece of linen and then carefully wring out the water droplets into a vessel. This came from people who worshipped water.

1:46 Wihiyah
A solitary shining pebble on the beach. Just like the way you can spot a shiny red ball in a sea of beige, you can catch that one word - Wihiyah! And when you throw that pebble into the ocean, no matter where it lands, the ripples spread out from there and it becomes the geometric centre of the ocean and the Universe! Go back to that one second when he says it. 1:46 -that is the pivotal moment. The "anyway..." of the song, the see-saw on which it rocks back and forth...

2:42-2:44 Ghir il maktoub heelaqeena
The voice quavering as it trails off, like the thrashing tail of a fish. The rear end of the car twitching nervously under heavy braking. Springs contracting, red hot valves opening and closing many hundred times a second.

How the voice randomly slithers like an electric eel under a layer of divinity! Mere words cannot capture it. It flits in and out between sheets of music.

Oo rani nebki winnoh
Magotli il sheqb il maatrooh
1:25 – Ma…trooh. Throttle over-run. That most beautiful of all motor racing sounds! That blip on down-shift, the engine howling as the cogs rev furiously for a brief moment. The slurping manifold intake noise. Backfire, tongues of flame leaping from the tailpipes.

2:10 to 2:21
Lonely desert nights. Inky black sky. Caravans. Camels resting beside palm trees under a scintillating ocean of stars. Canvas tents. People dancing and singing around bonfires to the hypnotic sounds of the oud and the flutes. Nights of merry dancing and celebration. Swirling skirts of the Bedouin girls. Camelskin tambourines. Flashes of skin in the light of the camp fire.

The vibrations transmitted back through the tyres and suspension arms and steering column back to the wheel, which frantically vibrates, and the helmet thrashes around in the cockpit. The chassis flexing by an almost imperceptible margin as the car slips out of the tug-stream, leaning on tyre grip, cornering as if it were on rails.

2:21 to 2:44
What impeccable modulation and control! The voice blends in inconspicuously with the surrounding, as a backdrop to the night's bonfire and revelries. An accompaniment to the cold desert night and the glittering crescent of the Mediterranean moon. Shadows and silhouettes dancing on the tent walls. The smells and the sounds of the desert. Dry river beds. Sand dunes. Acacia. Sand storms. Oases; fertile islands in arid limestone plateaux. Phantoms of water. Bedouins and their sheep.

Weight shifting to the front right tyre, as the highly sprung rear suspension is rapidly unloaded, approaching the far limits of mechanical grip as it just about begins to lock up, then ease off the brake and bring the rear end back in line, riding the kerbs as the left and then the right dampers are stressed, and finally emerging sideways in a tidal wave of savage power with the rear wheels spinning away, frantically grappling for traction, soft compound slick tyres scrubbing on the road. Hint of opposite lock to catch the rear stepping out of line for a heart-stopping moment. A calculated slide. Controlled rage though every corner, 26 times a lap, lap after unforgiving lap, 78 times. The deep blue of the Mediterranean crashing on the cliffs of Algiers and Annaba. Peace. Quiet. Solitude.

1:02 –
Shtaydeer il galb il khaali
Shtaydeer ha dellali
Wonderfully dynamic patterns, repeating endlessly, as if you are looking down at the tarmac from a plane while it is taking off, except that it never takes off, but runs along the tarmac endlessly as if in a dream. Patterns repeating themselves endlessly. Non-deterministic, recursive Mandelbrot fractals. You can never escape them. You cannot flee from order. Mathematics always catches up. The faster you go, the more fragile you become.

3:06 to 3:50
Waala dirtiha biya
Megwani nebki megwani
Ana illi dirt inniya
Widnoubi aleek intiya
Falling rain. Mist hanging around huge trees. Sweeping corners. Spirals and great arcs. Rainbows. Slick tires scrubbing on the tarmac making screeching noises, leaving great black arcs of rubber. Cars vanishing as quickly as they appear.

3:36 - 3:47
Maqbool - the rasping, metallic shriek of the 3 litre V12 as the taps are opened for just a fraction of a second and the twelve featherlight pistons flare and the crank revs up to 19500 rpm and then back to an idle 5000 in the blink of an eye, as if nothing ever happened. And revved back up and down again and again thrice in a fraction of a second.
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=56zbHewJHJE

Hasnou awni dima maghboul
Hadi hiya halet l'amour
It is a place in your mind which is isolated from hurt or passion. You are lonely there, living with your memory, consciousness, anger and fear. Nothing from the past can hurt you. Not the ecstasy of reunion, nor the trauma of betrayal.

Pushing to the extreme limit of adhesion and grip. Delicately balancing the chassis with the throttle and the steering wheel. Balancing extremely high-sprung machinery on a knife edge at 180mph. Feeling the dampers push the wheels on to the tarmac just so, making minute modulations of the throttle so as not to upset the natural harmony of the springs unloading, leaning into the corner. "The faster you go, the more fragile you become." In that one orgasmic moment, you realise the absurdity of all art. There IS order in the Universe. Total discipline and method. When there is no chaos, how can there be any art? It is absurd, because you cannot subject a deterministic entity like the Universe to value judgement. There is no pleasantness or unpleasantness. There are only consequences. How can you criticise a consequence? And since everything we know is a consequence of something else, how can you criticise anything at all? How can you judge something that is deterministic and inevitable? Beauty only arises out of comparison; There is no beauty without criticism. In a slotted world, how then can something ever be called beautiful? The mysterious desert, with its untold myths and rumours. Pigeons and doves flying with the limestone-white minarets of Ghardaïa in the background, deafening whispers echoing across the centuries in its courtyards . It cannot be real! It is just too…beautiful! Are these mere shadows dancing in the mind? These are expressions of irrationality! But how can something so beautiful be so irrational?!

Each little thing pushing the next little thing. Every little ratchet, valve, pushrod and pinion all working in an absolute harmony of engineering precision. It is clockwork. How can it possibly be so beautiful?! The quintessential dichotomy of our lives!

Shtaydeer il galb il khali
Oo rani zayt fi hleli
The sustained assault on the senses. The heat and the exhaustion. Dehydration and the G-forces straining the muscles. Focus and concentration. 900 bhp. And in the midst of all the noise and vibration, in the survival cell, in that sacred place in your memory and consciousness, inside the helmet there is calmness. Way beyond the threshold of pain and agony, you are floating in stillness. In solitude and peace. You are untouchable. You have Control. Power.

Music, Mathematics, poetry and metaphysics are not fundamentally different things. They are just different frameworks for seeing and understanding the same essential thing. This view and understanding finds expression in different forms - in an otherworldly song or in evocative words or in expressive engineering.

Whatever you can imagine is real.

I imagine perfect harmony. I wish I could show you, but words are a poor excuse. Words are not enough. My most sincere apologies.

What do you see when you hear a song?

Serendipity! Part 2

2009-03-09T12:03:00.000+05:30

Since the last post, I've had nightmares of a power-crazed, attention deprived psychomaniac of a software engineer tying me up in a chair and giving me an Ebola culture injection, while telecasting it live on blogger.com as a warning to people who make fun of software engineers. And I always wake up and realise that in such a situation, the Ebola is actually a deal-sweetener. Ebola is fatal 99.998% of the time. So, obviously when I am bound and gagged and have no choice but to listen to a software engineer talk, an Ebola injection can only improve my chances of survival.

On the way back to Adyar Bakery last weekend after the evening's mental exertions, wondering whether any more brainwaves were to be had that day, I saw an old man on the road. He had a bald head and a great white beard.

The contradiction occurred to me right then. Imagine my surprise! It was Charles Darwin this time. He was wrong. He had to be! I quickly drove back home to write about it. I've had neither the time, nor the patience nor the inclination to write about it, but since I promised that I would tell you about it, here it is...

This God person they keep talking about... he cant be very smart, can he? He makes living beings in his own image and then they go and evolve on their own and become something else. Have you ever wondered whether God looked at evolution with a growing sense of unease that all was not going according to plan? If He had wanted us to be the way we are now, he would have made us this way 100000 years ago, wouldn't he? I mean, if he really is omnipotent and all that.

I am already losing my patience. Don't ask me to explain. My theory has got something to do with why the prettiest woman in every population set chooses to date/marry the man who looks most like an orangutan. (Coleen McLoughlin & Wayne Rooney, Elisabetta Gregoraci & Flavio Briatore...I could go on. I will, later.) This primordial attraction to men teetering on lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder indicates that maybe women are genetically resisting evolution. Maybe reverse-evolution is the most natural course.

Gah.

Keep the change. Really. Can't be bothered to explain any further. Figure it out for yourselves, for once. Go away.

Serendipity! Part 1 of 2

2009-03-01T20:56:00.000+05:30

The following account is loosely based on a true incident.

I was standing by the side of the bar at Adyar bakery last evening eating éclairs, quietly minding my own business. Three pretty girls walked in through the door from where they could see me across the crowded sitting area. From a distance, they just stared at me for what seemed like a whole minute.

I am not the prettiest of sights when I am eating éclairs at Adyar bakery. (I am not the prettiest of sights even otherwise.) But still, they seemed to look at me unflinchingly. Suddenly I stopped eating. The cogs in my brain started whirring, churning out ideas at an alarming rate. The possibilities were overwhelming!

And then it happened.

The prettiest of the three stepped forward and smiled at me. Time stood still. A slow heartbeat later, the penny dropped. I could feel the excitement building up. She floated past me in what seemed like slow motion as I ran out screaming “It all makes sense now! Murphy was wrong! Murphy was wrong!”

Murphy’s 117th law states “We always have the least of what we need the most.” A direct contradiction to this remarkable law occurred to me when I was sitting in AB yesterday. See, if scientists are to be believed, there are 500 million Ebola viruses on the head of a pin. And since we have only about 3.5 lakh software professionals in the whole of India, it means only one thing. Murphy was way off the mark. Edward Murphy was actually, really, really wrong! The theory I am going to propound might scream sacrilege at hordes of bumming aficionados and intellectuals alike. But every great theory worth its salt is greeted with denunciation when it is born. So, here it is -

“We sometimes have the least of what we need least.”

(Yes, this means that the list of things I would do to avoid seeing/talking to /meeting a software professional includes, among more horrifying things, getting an intravenous injection of the deadly Ebola strain.)

I cannot replace one of Murphy’s laws. My intellect is too small and insignificant for a feat of that magnitude. I can at best put forward a corollary. It could be my contribution to science! Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Vimal-Murphy exposition–
“We always have the most of what we need the least. We may also have the least of what we need the least. Except when we have the least of what we need the most, or most of what we need most.”

Except that it wouldn’t be an exposition so much as a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive set of effectually arbitrary pronouncements, and is a contribution to Science no more than Alice in Wonderland was to the Russian revolution. But at the end of the day, who can honestly say most other scientific theories aren’t?

PS: If you didn’t understand my other claim to fame, watch “The Beautiful Mind”. You will realise how great I am. If I tell you what revolutionary theory I stumbled upon when I returned to AB a couple of hours later, which I will - in another post, you will genuflect.

Beauty or Brains?

2009-02-26T00:13:00.000+05:30

I think Fiat Linea has the best looking grill I have ever seen on a car. I say that because I have never seen the Aston Martin DB9. The Linea is unquestionably the best looking automobile in India today. And that is why I will never buy it. Let me explain.

Look at this. This is the Yamaha YZF R15. A thoroughbred racetrack motorbike.

It looks staggering from every angle.

Except this.

If you look at it carefully, you will notice that under those huge fairings is a really skinny rear tyre. And it is such a bloody eyesore. You will also notice, if you have even the most rudimentary sense of aesthetics, that it looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger sitting atop a telegraph post.

That's what you would think. But therein lies the rub. That is no ordinary tyre. It is a bespoke MRF medium-soft compound tyre which is finely tuned along with the chassis and the rear suspension package to provide optimum grip and traction under all riding conditions. But more importantly - and here is where it gets interesting - it is evidence that somewhere, in the boardroom of a huge bureaucratic multinational organisation, the engineering department managed to convince the marketing and advertising departments. Which means there is a very good reason why the bike looks like a famished Somalian goat from behind. Something about that tyre was so phenomenally good that a bunch of overpaid corporate fat-cats sat quietly and listened to an engineer.

It is a fact that functional things seldom look good. Have you ever seen a beautiful turret drill? Or an exquisite parachute harness? See, that's the point. You wouldn't marry a woman because she has a purse that has 28 secret compartments? Fair enough. But if you suffer a puncture in the middle of the night on a deserted highway and you desperately need a puncture kit and possibly even two sets of spare tyres, wheel rims, the tools to change the tyres and maybe even a can of petrol... remember it is not her nice legs that will come to your rescue. Then you'll wish you hadn't made fun of the purse.

So guys, the choice is yours - Not having to wait for 6 hours for the highway tow truck to show up? Or nice legs?

Try this

2009-02-23T23:38:00.000+05:30

Try this -

Seach for "famous mexican porn star with fat ass" on google.com and click on images on the search results screen. See what website comes up first.

Honestly, this wasn't my idea! That sitemeter thingy showed me that someone from new york had arrived at my website from google.com looking for just that.

If you don't believe me, here is a screenshot.

Ha ha ha!

2009-02-23T12:27:00.000+05:30

Guess who is the latest celebrity in town!

http://www.hindu.com/edu/2009/02/23/stories/2009022350080400.htm

Read the newspaper, you morons. See today's edition of The Hindu - Education Plus. Check out Education Industry's newest pin-up boy.

Maybe I should wear sunglasses and a false beard, to avoid getting mobbed. OK, queue up for autographs...

Maybe when all this nonsense is over, I will quietly retire to the countryside, far away from the intruding public eye.

Maybe I should drink less coffee.

OK now don't show up with a pin at a hot-air balloon festival. Keep your comments to yourselves.

(OK I was kidding. I love fan mail.)

If you lived in Orissa between 2004 and 2006, don't ever go there again.

2009-02-23T11:04:00.000+05:30

You will be disappointed.

Oriya girls are very pretty, of course. But I wouldn't go out with one for the same reason that you wouldn't eat dinner off a hospital floor. Of course the floor is sterlised and germ-free, but as a choice of cutlery it somehow seems inappropriate.

I was in Bhubaneswar last weekend. I was expecting it to be a pleasant trip down memory lane, but it turned out to be the most depressing time I've had in the recent past. (If you can't type the word "depressed" on your mobile phone in less than 2 seconds without looking at the screen, call me. I would love to see a relic the giant wheel of evolution left in its wake. Really, turn the dictionary mode on and try it - it’s like punching in a Morse code! "going" too, for that matter)

I never thought I'd say this, but for the first time since I set foot in Bhubaneswar in mid '04, I didn't feel at home there. But then, I never thought I would say Wyk! Mag die duiwel jou haal!, but I just did.

The roads are now mirror smooth and a mile wide. Not at all as I remember having left it 3 years ago. The airport lobby looks more like an airport lobby than a medieval poultry farm. New malls have sprung up where there was once barren land. When the landscape of the city changes, something happens to it. It loses its personality. Bhubaneswar isn't the quaint little town I once knew. Instead it had become a bustling city astir with activity.

As I was being driven around in this suddenly-unfamiliar city, I could see disconnected fragments from the past. An old restaurant here, a familiar banyan tree there. It was a ghost town. Maybe change isn’t always a good thing. The medieval poultry farm was cramped and dirty, but it had a charm that a thousand mass-produced Coffee Day outlets cannot match. Bhubaneswar didn't have malls or multi-storied car parks, but then it wasn't run-of-the-mill. I sort of liked the narrow streets, come to think of it. Orissa isn't a place you go to armed with a briefcase and a Wi-fi phone. No. You go to Orissa when you have a couple of months to spare and spend the time in a hazy mix of motorcycling and drugs.

But it was heartening to see that some things have not changed yet. Locals are still astounded by the sheer complexity of an escalator. You still get Ghuguni at 5 AM for 5 bucks a plate. You can still get a tolah for 5 bucks. (Yes, I checked. Although it used to be Rs.3 in '06, I remember. That's a CAGR of 29.1%, which is still higher than the inflation of most other essential commodities.)

My reluctance to make fun of all things Oriya is matched only by the ease with which I know I can. I don't want to talk about it. It was really sad to see that Bhubaneswar had all the symptoms of a city which had succumbed to ambition. I decided that I will never go there again. I love Bhubaneswar too much to see it decay into prosperity.

The Genesis of a Revolution

2009-02-10T22:55:00.000+05:30

A most worrying thing happened last week. I told a colleague at work that my motorcycle wouldn't start because the decompressor was jammed open and there was no compression in the cylinder. He advised me to "shut down" the ignition and reboot the motorcycle. And laughed out loud. I don't know what I found more distressing - his absolute lack of knowledge of mechanical components or his shockingly tasteless sense of humour. Now, I can tolerate most things, but I am really impatient with imbeciles. I could sense a Ctrl+Alt+Delete joke coming on, so I promptly pretended to get a telephone call and sneaked away.

I believe that the quality of humour prevalent in a given population is one of the important indicators of its average intelligence. I firmly believe that we as a race are falling in a downward spiral of diminishing creativity and unless something drastic is done to improve the situation, we would all soon be flopping about, guffawing uncontrollably at Youtube videos of dogs running in circles.

Intelligence levels are falling at an alarming rate. Let me remind you here that IQ is not a measure of absolute intelligence. It is only a measure of how intelligent you are compared to the rest of the population. If you plot the intelligence of an amoeba population on a normal graph, half of them would have an IQ of more than 100.

Deteriorating standards of humour is not the only alarming trend, though. What is more worrying is the dwindling number of scientific innovations. With over 2 million engineers graduating every year, you would think at least a few hundred would display some ingenuity and create something useful; but No. The level of common sense is appalling. I mean we are a country of 2 billion people, and yet look at the engineering progress we have made since the medieval times.

I am not a nerd, but I am proud of what engineers have done for mankind. And it pains me to see that the brightest young engineering students end up in software companies with their heads shoved up a computer's backside. The problem is super-specialisation. I mean, it is comforting to know that if my mobile phone has a defect in its 137th microchip circuit, there are 10 million engineers who are willing to kill each other to repair it for 50p. But the same engineers would be clueless if circuit #140 failed. Why? I know insects that are more skilled than that. The problem is that we have too many engineering colleges and not much engineering being taught. The best engineers and innovators never had any formal education. Look at Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and Colin Chapman. They had nothing more than an old shed, a few worn out tools and the glistening Spirit of Innovation, against which all the deemed Universities with all their shiny yellow buses seem shallow and hypocritical.

The problem is that that mirror of our society - that Facekut thing, shows a bleak and gloomy image filled with catatonic cows grazing on a toxic wasteland. The problem is dozens of incompetent morons on 97.3 FM radio with a collective IQ of 48, who talk non-stop for hours on end and yet say nothing. Those blithering idiots. And they seem to have the whole world wrapped around their fingers. They are seen by impressionable little children as cool and admirable. Those RJs are what is wrong with the world. The problem is Blogger.com, which screams "Create a blog - its Free!" - Yes. That is what we need. More and more idiots creating blogs because its free. "Go and throw up over the Mona Lisa - It's Free!!" Reality shows are the problem. How ordinary does your life have to be before you start watching glimpses from others lives for your own entertainment, and discuss it with neighbours for the next 12 hours? The problem is that "single, available male from Delhi" on Facekut called "loverboy4u" whose only brush with literature is a pathetic excuse for a sentence, which is just a few concrete nouns shabbily strung together with words like “dude” and “cool”

If that Facekut thing holds so much sway over such a huge majority of the youth, it also has a moral responsibility to stop being a mirror and start acting like a beacon. It owes that to the society. And I don't see that happening, ever.

So, what is the solution? Is it more rigorous education, better colleges and infrastructure? No. It is far too expensive and not much fun. Besides, it will be eagerly taken up and managed by the same imbeciles who caused the problem in the first place.

But don't worry. I have been giving the matter some thought and as always, I have a solution. Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable if you look past the symptoms and focus on what the problem really is. The problem isn't a scarcity of technological innovation or a lack of greens in the diet. Those are merely the symptoms. The problem fundamentally is a lack of imagination.

And how do you cure a lack of imagination?

Slow down. Read what follows syllable by syllable.

Listen to me very carefully. Shoot the grumpy old Thermodynamics professor in the face. Legalise marijuana. And take the insane more seriously. Remember that insanity is only a statistical parameter, and all real progress depends on the minority opinion. Listen to the minority opinion. It is probably the smartest thing you will ever do.

A little imagination and a thimbleful of Cannabis can change the world.

Think about it. Imagination is the only thing you truly possess. It is your only hope, only salvation. If you don't have imagination you are no different from cattle. If you don't have imagination, you don't have anything. The first man who was willing to undertake a voyage "around" the world, relied on nothing more than mere suspicion that the world may not be flat as everyone else believed, and his own undying belief that the earth was round... I mean, what evidence did he have in the 15th century that corroborated that the earth was round? None. So his adventure was based on a wild, risky plan. He had the nerve to do something wild and achieve something extraordinary. He knew he might fall off the edge of the earth if he was wrong and the rest of the world was right. But if there was a risk, he was willing to take it. If he had to be laughed at, or die for attempting something that stupid, then so be it. That was the price he was prepared to pay for his conviction. What we need today is that scientific curiosity. What we need are people who would be willing to trade all they have for one moment of revelation. We need people who would rather be laughed at for defending their "fantastic" ideas than spend their lives wondering about what might have been. The educational system should reward inquisitiveness as opposed to mere rote. The education system we have now rewards the ones who can imitate best. But what good is imitation if we aspire to move forward? Curiosity should be incentivised. Knowledge should not be a means to a better or richer life. It should be a reward in itself.

History textbooks should carry historians' opinions, not politicians'. Science textbooks should come with a very visible disclaimer that all of science is merely based on our interpretation of observable facts, and it may or may not give the complete picture. And that there lies an implicit assumption that the scientific process can explain the world. And that need not be true. The Universe might work just as well based on the rules of Peruvian Voodoo. Scientific rules exist only until proven otherwise. Give in the reins. It's time to be bold and declare our ignorance. There is nothing shameful in a search to find the truth, inspite of our very human limitations. And nothing is more dignified.

=======

Just when I was thinking of hanging up my gloves and taking a long break from blogging, DP went and did this. Then Adamsballs decided to step back into the ring. All the ingredients necessary to spark off yet another bout of creative diarrhoea are now present. Except Time. That bitch. It's a bit like assembling dynamite on a rainy day. You know you can blow up the Parliament if only it stopped raining. If only someone held the umbrella while we rigged the explosive. What we need are matches that are not soggy. What we need...is a plan.

What worries me is that I sound like such a regular guy at times.

On Piercings

2009-02-03T22:18:00.000+05:30

A friend of mine announced yesterday that she wanted to get her eyebrow pierced. Now let me tell you at the outset that I have body piercings. I'm not going to tell you where, but its quite easy to guess if I told you that when I was born my parents took a long look at me and decided that almost everything was quite alright anatomically, but what I really needed was to have my ears stapled.

Honestly, I don't really understand the concept of body piercings. In my opinion, the whole idea is quite Neanderthal. I mean, piercings were quite necessary if your name was "Ug" and your idea of state-of-the-art technology was a wooden disc. Because then you would be sufficiently indistinguishable from your evolutionary predecessors, which would justifiably necessitate a marking of some kind on your body that would help identify you as a different species so that you don't accidently mate with an orangutan. Piercings were therefore microevolutionary catalysts that ensured progressive advancement in the gene pool.

But this is the 21st century, we now have that Facekut thing for gene pool refinement, and I don't see why we should not discontinue the ghastly practice of punching holes in one's body and dangling bits of metal from them.

I was 15 before I realised that the whole piercing thing had a sexual undercurrent to it. But it took me even longer to figure out what the deal with tongue piercings is. You can imagine my shock when I finally connected the dots!

Of all the things that make me think Evolution was one big practical joke....

Look what I found!

2009-01-31T23:41:00.000+05:30

Another diamond!

"The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose." - Ecclesiastes 1:5

What does it take to convince a child riding a carousel that it is not the entire world which is magically spinning around him, but the carousel itself which is rotating rather pointlessly around an ordinary, rusty pole? A lot. Nothing less than a portkey.

How detached does one have to be from contemporary science and technology, how clueless does one have to be about how things work before one comes to the conclusion after seeing the stars and planets streak majestically across the night sky drawing great arcs, before one comes to the conclusion that it’s not the planets which stream across "our" sky, but our humble planet which goes round a beggarly star situated at some arbitrary nook?

In a medieval world, the astonishment at the novelty of the suggestion would have been matched only by the embarrassment it would have caused a lot of people. Imagine the awkwardness establishments would have felt when people found out that the things they have been told for the past two thousand years were absolute baloney.

I believe that was the defining moment in History, when we as a race stopped all the nonsense we were upto and started talking some sense. Everything cool that was ever invented since then, including Atari's Space Invaders (1977) and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (1905), is just blown out of the park.

An idea's genius is in direct proportion to the number of people it embarrasses. On that basis alone, I rate Nicolaus Copernicus' Heliocentric theory as the most staggeringly revolutionary idea EVER.

(Just in - Petrol prices to dip by Rs.5. Yay!!!) Anyway...

2009-01-28T21:59:00.000+05:30

Imagine intelligent beings like ourselves living on a TV screen, like in Pac-Man. They would be 2 dimensional creatures living in a 2D world. People would be little dots or circles on the screen. Nothing in that world would have a height. If a "ghost" got trapped inside a circle, there'd be no way it could escape, because there is no height, and he can't "jump" over the wall. Prisons in this world would just be closed circles or rectangles.

Imagine a strip of 2D land, like a flat cricket pitch. The only way to get from one end of the pitch to the other would be to walk the entire length of the pitch which would be, say, 22 yards long.

Now a 3-Dimensional being like you is watching these 2-D beings walk along the length of the pitch. You just "pick up the pitch, roll it once and stick one end of it to the other and put the Pac-Man ghost back on it. This is a very simple cylindrical strip, which would have to be described by a system of radial algebraic equations so complex that the Pac-Man ghosts would never be able to figure it out. They would still continue to walk the 22 yard length from one end of the strip to the other, unaware that on their regular journey they are actually twisting and turning in a dimension completely unknown to them! But since they don't understand the concepts of thickness or rotation, they would only see a flat, unimaginative stretch of cricket pitch as they walk.

But a really smart 2D being standing at one end would realise that the other end of the cricket pitch is not 22 yards away, but right below where he is standing! In fact, he is standing right where he wants to go, 22 yards away! He is "superimposed" upon his destination in a strange dimension! If he had the ability to move in the "strange" third dimension, he could just dig a hole in the pitch right where he is standing, and cross over. The other 2D beings would just see him mysteriously apparate, 22 yards away. He could cross thousands of miles in the blink of an eye! People would be amazed at what he did, but wouldn't be able to figure out what exactly it is or how he is doing it! He would open their minds to endless possibilities! Some would dismiss him as a dangerous anomaly and would warn the others against him.

Every once in a while something comes along which is so bewilderingly different from whatever we are used to that it challenges our very idea about the limits of possibility and stretches our minds in dimensions that we never knew existed. These need not be great, revolutionary ideas or actions. Sometimes, simple, ridiculously insignificant things like discovering a hole in the floor can turn your world upside down. This for me is the ultimate evidence of higher intelligence and the inadequacy of our own imagination.

Innocuous incidents strewn across the pages of history, like little sparkling diamonds in a brickyard.

24th November, 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes "On the origin of species". The world-changing Theory of Natural Selection was not an idea honed, polished and developed over time. It was probably a stroke of genius, a lightning bolt of inspiration that illuminated all of creation for a brief instant before it vanished, leaving the world in darkness again; and Darwin spent the rest of his life painting for the world a picture that the lightning bolt of inspiration revealed to him in that moment of clarity. The most significant achievement of Darwin's theory was that it exposed the limitations of being human by revealing that human supremacy on the planet was either a matter of opinion or a mere evolutionary accident. Imagine the surprise and shock such a "preposterous" idea would have caused in the mid 19th century!

1st June, 1967 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Though composed predominantly of nursery level rhymes and wild noises, it impacted culture and music like no other album before or after it. Everything before that was inconsequential. Everything since has been the aftermath. I mean, in our collective recorded existence of about 10000 years, never before had such a tremendous explosion of colour and sounds been seen on such a large scale, causing such mass hysteria. Never before had rowdy been seen as cool. And it all seemed so effortless!

3rd June, 1984 - Monte Carlo. A young Brazilian called Ayrton Senna, in his first ever Formula 1 street race, in an uncompetitive Toleman car, cuts through the pack overtaking 4 world champions. In torrential rain, he waltzed around the cramped streets of Monaco, running circles around vastly superior cars as if they were going backwards. As an exercise in stripping a task down to its barest minimum essentials, those 31 laps around a soaking wet Monaco racetrack fall in the far outer reaches of what the human intellect can achieve.

These incidents were so benign that they are so easy to miss. Yet they are portkeys to a parallel Universe. Can you recognise a higher dimension if you are sitting right on it?

My Presidential Manifesto

2009-01-20T20:44:00.000+05:30

This climatologist predicts that the average temperature of the earth will be up by 1.8 degrees C in 2050. Absolute rubbish. Can you believe it? 1.8 degrees Centigrade over 40 years! How did he calculate that?! Really, I am sure he can't even tell you what the weather is going to be like tomorrow morning. I mean, who is this joker and what does he know about chaotic non-linear deterministic models that qualifies him to make judgements on current and future climactic states? And how exactly did he arrive at 1.8 degrees Centigrade, I'd like to know. Even if he lists all the factors he accounted for while making the calculation, I am sure I can list 10 more that can throw off his estimation by several digits over a 40 year period.

Sodium bicarbonate is a useful chemical. It can be used as a fire retardant, baking additive, deodorant, desiccant, stain remover, odour repellant, pest repellant, toothpowder, cleaning agent, degreaser, antiseptic and mouthwash, among other things. On the other hand, the only contribution Klaus Toepfer's overpaid team of climatologists have made to mankind so far is some arbitrarily chosen number resulting from a calculation based on some ridiculously flawed logic. So, in terms of overall marginal utility to the well being of our species, polar climate, economy of the free world and the Universe in general, the average weather forecaster is clearly less useful than a pinch of baking soda. So if you see Klaus Toepfer's climatologists dangling from a cliff alongside a spoonful of baking soda and you were allowed to save any one, you'd do more good to the world if you chose the baking soda. It would be the logical choice too, as you cannot use Toepfer's weathermen to clean your teeth or bake a cake nor is the great scientific machinery going to come to a grinding halt if they fall down the cliff. It would merely make a microscopic dent in the enormous population of the world and leave its intellectual capital untouched.

I am not suggesting that the earth is getting any cooler. I don't even deny that the world needs to be saved. I'm the first to admit that the world has a rather peculiar habit of often burrowing itself into situations from where it has to be rescued. All I am saying is that there is no way on earth Toepfer's weathermen can calculate the temperature of the earth 40 years from now. I am sure they are a bunch of losers who wanted to be big-shot UN scientists when they started out, but didn't pay enough attention in school and ended up being dopey half-assed weathermen on Fox TV whom you can't even rely on to accurately tell you whether it rained yesterday. The first practical step towards reducing global warming would be to stop listening to these idiots.

Here are some more practical things we could do to prevent global warming:-

*Kill the whales and dump the carcasses on islands. Less buoyant, blubbery fat floating about pointlessly in the seas would mean lower sea levels.

*Excavate mud and rocks from the bottom of the oceans and dump them on islands. The oceans would become deeper (lower sea levels) and Tokyo would have lower real estate prices. Because no one would want to live there, what with the piles of slushy muck and dead whales on the roads.

*Load SPF-120 sunscreen lotion in a fleet of a dozen 300,000 MT oil-tankers and blow them up in the arctic sea. The resulting sunscreen spill will be enough to protect the sea life and the polar ice caps from the harmful UV rays of the sun.

*All said and done, the chief culprit is sunshine. Let's be practical about it. Trying to cool down the earth by using CFL lamps and eco friendly cars is like trying to stop a speeding train by wheezing at it through a straw. A more practical approach should involve blocking the sun's rays. The idea is to place a huge sheet of heat resistant, light-absorbing amorphous sodium crystal that will block the sun's rays from hitting the north pole.

Click on the following image.

I did some black-magic and came up with this - The polar ice caps have an area of 50000 sq. km, and the sun is 150000000 km from the Earth. To shield this area from direct sunlight, we would only have to take a crystal the size of the Onyx dump yard in T-Nagar and put it in Geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 148800000 Km. That would be enough to cast a shadow on the north pole and thus keep it cool. We have sent satellites much further than 148800000 Km. Voyager I is now 100 times farther than the sun. So, the altitude should not be a problem. If we can somehow accomplish this, we would have not only solved the global warming crisis, but also made the solar system's biggest sunglass.

Now, that's something we can all look back at and be proud of.

That and the sunscreen spill.
.

Things I'd like to see invented

2009-01-13T21:31:00.000+05:30

1. Wireless electricity - Like Bluetooth. You'd be able to connect a wireless electricity transmitter to the plug socket in the wall, and run electric appliances in the vicinity without connecting them to the mains. It is really quite simple, once we have mastered the principle of Spatial Force Transmission, which is:-

2. Spatial Force Transmission - You'd be able to move objects at a distance by applying force elsewhere. It is different from telekinesis in that the absurd concept of "mind power" is not used. You would have to physically push a joystick (while sitting on the sofa), which would in turn transmit the force through the fabric of space-time to close the door of the fridge in the next room. The idea doesn't use the fictional concepts mind-power or cosmic energy, but rather relies on the solid practical foundation of Energy Credit; which... would have to be invented first.

3. Energy credit. In layman's terms- On-demand Force: There would be a universal energy ledger, which you would be able to access through an energy card, which is similar to the present day credit card. If you need more force than you can physically muster, you'd be able to borrow some, which you would then have to repay later. For example, if you needed to uproot a teak tree in a hurry, or kick a penguin into orbit, you'd be able to borrow some extra force from the Energy Syndicate, which you would later have to return to the Syndicate in many small installments by doing say, 1300 push-ups. Or by pedalling the flywheel of a generator for 3 hours. You might have to pay an interest on energy borrowed, i.e. doing more push-ups than the energy-equivalent of which you borrowed. There would be an energy stock market, and you would be able to trade in energy futures and options. People would speculate on volcanoes and Supernova explosions. Obesity and winters would trigger a recession. But then, you can figure out such trivial matters for yourselves.

You would also be able to lend/borrow time this way. If, say, you want to save time on your commute to office, you can borrow time from yourself. Your hour long commute would be over in a second, but to compensate, you would have to sit idle at home for an equivalent amount of time. There would be time-hedge funds and futures markets, where people who anticipate hectic activity would be trading in time-shares with idle people. Market sentiment and hence the price of the shares would be affected by the forces of demand and supply. Idle people would be in much demand, and hence be paid hefty sums of money to sit around doing nothing. Increasing economic activity would mean more work, and hence more demand for idlers and bums. This would go on until the world reaches a state of frantic industrial activity, where production and business undertakings would reach a state of frenzy, and the person who can do the least amount of work would be paid the highest salary. There is nothing in contemporary economic models that prevents elements of unintended consequence to apply to non-stochastic mathematical frameworks. Besides making me and an old comrade of mine the wealthiest people in the world, it would also serve to establish the exact money value of time. Just how much will a busy man pay an idle man for time before he runs out of marginal utility. In this case, that would be the market value of time as determined by the classical economic forces of supply and demand.

5. An interesting application of Force credit would be paid-weight losers. People whose job it would be to work out and lose weight on behalf of obese people who would pay for such weight-loss services. Relevant pricing models would apply. Blah. Go, figure.

6. Invisible trains. Now who wouldn't want those? As a population control solution, it is far more effective than contraceptives. Less clumsy than contraceptives. And going by the general public's awareness of train accidents at unmanned intersections, more discreet too. What's more, for it to be effective on a large scale, it doesn't need expensive and unnecessary media and press publicity. Au contraire, the less publicity it gets, the better it works.

7. Teleportation. But you had already thought of that, hadn't you? If you've never, ever wished to be teleported, I would like to meet you. And get your autograph. Because on a percent basis, you belong to a group more exclusive than the Apostles.

Some of these developments may seem out-of-the-ordinary. Some may even go against the grain of common sense. But if you think about it, the idea of attaching an ox to a peculiar model of furniture went against all common sense in mass-transportation. If you ask me, on a fundamental level, the question of What is more important than the question of How. What is the question we have to ask ourselves. How will inevitably follow. It is a lesser task that can be figured out by technicians and engineers.

And once the How is achieved (of course by lesser tactical minds who merely follow our broadly outlined "what" strategy), the next question for us to ask is "How much for a dozen"?

In my opinion, if you figure out whether to manufacture it in China or Taiwan, the rest neatly falls into place.

I should be made the President of the world.

On why childhood was a particularly tough time

2009-01-08T22:19:00.000+05:30

Reasons why childhood was a relatively troubled time...

* There was the burden of options. I could be a bull-fighter or a professor of medieval Peruvian architecture, or an Olympic javelin thrower. Now it's a relief because I don't have to anxiously wait for things to unfold.

* Whenever I was in doubt as to what to do when faced with a tricky situation, the answer always was the same as what Barney the Dinosaur would do in the same situation. That usually involved a lot of reverse psychology. These days it's much simpler - I choose the option that takes lesser effort.

* In late 2006, I made the grave judgemental error of falling victim to chicken-pox. It was a reminder never to leave your early chores unfinished. Especially the childhood ones - you never know when they will come back and bite u in the backside. In my case - when I had to negotiate with a granite quarry-owners Union in North Kerala for the sale of 28 heavy duty trucks. That smoke-filled room with 15 whisky-drinking bearded men sitting stone-faced around an empty chair with a placard that said "Vimal - Gone home to Mommy" is the most embarrassing thing never to have happened to me.

* I thought Paris Hilton was a notorious hotel in France.

* I would wait all week long for a series of electronic images to appear on the TV. 10:30 AM on Sundays, when Ducktales would get over, was the most depressing time of my life. At 10:30 in the morning, Sunday was already over and the rest of the day would inexorably slide downwards and merge with Monday, when I had to go to school again...for 4 days in a row! Would I ever make it to the end of the week? It seemed like it was going to be the last Sunday ever! Was it going to be the last Sunday ever?! Was it?? Was there any justice at all in the world? Oh, why did Ducktales have to end?!

That half-hour every Sunday morning was the highlight of my life!

Years have passed. Many Sundays have come and gone. I lived. I now have all the 100 episodes of Ducktales on DVD. I can see these iconic images whenever I want. But it doesn't fill me with the same excitement and anticipation anymore. I don't wake up at 7 AM anymore to brush my teeth, bathe, eat breakfast and act nice so as not to upset the parents before switching on the TV at 10, nor rub my hands together in hysterical excitement when I see the marvellous and wonderful adventures of Uncle Scrooge, Launchpad and Gyro. There was Webby, Doofus McDuck, Fintheart Glomgold, Magica, Uncle Donald and Duckworth... There were the Beagle boys and Scrooge McDuck's great-nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey! Duckburg was a magical world! I somehow felt that I was a part of that world! They were all so awesome, and there was nothing I could do!

The trouble with awesomeness is...it is so much trouble.

So, as an adult I have fewer problems than I did when I was a child. In much the same way as an astronaut whose spacesuit is on fire in outer space while he is trying to fasten a loose screw on his spacecraft has fewer problem than the geeky-looking guy back in Space Command in Houston who just remembered having packed in the wrong size screwdriver.

Some more things about the Universe that don't make sense - Part II

2009-01-07T23:20:00.000+05:30

In the following few paragraphs I have, for your benefit, succinctly summed up everything that is wrong with the world. Read on.

What exactly is the function of the earlobe?

What exactly do the judges of a Miss China beauty pageant do? I mean, it could be the easiest job in the world or it could be the most difficult job in the world. It's like either picking the winner of a lottery contest or choosing the crankshaft with the highest micrometre finish perfection out of a batch of 100,000 pieces. Either way, it’s pathetic.

What exactly do the judges of beauty pageants do in other parts of the world? It is a remarkably arbitrary task of commodity screening, and is no different from selecting potatoes at the grocer's.

Isn't it remarkable that most of the words that rhyme with Lavatory are names of places where serious scientific research is held, where ideas are born, theories expounded and rigorously tested and science makes progress? Observatory, Laboratory, Conservatory...What does that tell you about our species in general?

Flyovers. So we think we are clever. We saw all that slow-moving traffic languishing at the outskirts and figured out a way to bring it into the city sooner. And built flyovers.

Try pronouncing these - Q, Qu, Que, Queu, Queue...If no matter how many u's and e's you affix after Q the pronunciation doesn't change, why stop with 4? Why not go bonkers and add as many as you please and make it the longest word in English - just for fun? Queueueueueueueueueueueueueue? Why the hell not? Whatever is wrong with having a little fun?

Why is it easier to heat than cool? I mean, think about it. To heat up the head of a match from 32 to 260 degrees C, all it takes is a flick of the wrist. But to cool it from 32 to even 25 degrees C, you need a refrigerator that works on an elaborate ammonia exchange cycle and expansion chambers and compressors which run on electricity! Newton’s laws of cooling and the laws of thermodynamics are perfectly symmetrical, so why should entropy increase faster in one direction than in the other?

They say when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Where do they go? I mean, if they get going when it becomes hard, by definition, they aren't really tough people, are they? Tough people should stay back and slug it out. (Oh yeah, I know what it really means and I don't want to sound pedantic, but when put like that it does sound like tough people go away somewhere else when the going gets tough.)

When you say someone died of heart failure, what information are you really giving me about the cause of death? I mean, is there another way of dying?

Are South Central America and Central South America different places? There is North America, South America and United States of America. But is there actually a place called America?

If a house is in one piece, would you call it Bricks or a House? Do you call a watch "united gears and mechanisms"? No. A single undivided country cannot be called united states. If your answer to the question in the previous paragraph was "No", you were right. There is no such place as America. So ask yourself this - The United States of America is neither United, nor States nor America. It can at best be one of the three, but not all.

If you say a certain mythological creature is a man with a lion's head, how can you be sure it’s not a lion with a man's body? There are experts who argue fiercely on both sides. PhD degrees have been won and lost in both camps by experts arguing for their respective cases. So what you believe to be true in this case really depends on whom you like more - the unkempt, creepy-looking, absent minded archaeologist with half-moon spectacles and ruffled hair or the unkempt, creepy-looking, absent minded archaeologist with half-moon spectacles and a bald head.

When someone has bad vision, why are they said to have "power"? If you have extremely bad vision, will you have a superpower?

This one of the famous Queen's guards at Buckingham Palace. You can do whatever you want to him, he won’t flinch. He will stand still. Hmmmm....So, what’s the idea, huh? Guards who don't move? What good are they? Would they stand still if they see a robber?

If you see Chris Tucker crying, would you say it was (an) emotional blackmale?

Do all people who look at you over their glasses act as though they are superior? Or do only grumpy know-it-alls get Hypermetropia?

The idiocy of our ways - Afterthought

2008-12-31T23:27:00.000+05:30

I mean, take this Charon chap for example. His job is to ferry dead people across a river in return for one coin...One coin! And then cross the stream back again and ferry some more people (because people always keep checking out, you see), and so on and on till the end of time! I mean, with a job like that, what are this guy's career options? If you ask me, I'd say he is already scraping the bottom. He can't even make conversation with the people on the ferry for the rather dull reason that they are not really people, just dead bodies.

(But you never know...maybe one coin is still worth a lot in the underworld. Maybe the dough makes up for the dreariness. Maybe you can, er...buy a lot of stuff with a coin. At any rate, if I had one coin for every bloke who popped off... )

But all said and done, he has pretty good job security, and thats more than you can say about most people in these times of recession... and it is not because he is a thorough professional, or because the market will never be dull. No. It's just because no one else wants that job! Maybe the chap who is in charge of the filing cabinets in my office might be interested if he hears about this...But I can't really think of anyone else who would want that job. Really.

And oh...they have a god for wine, whose job it is to make sure we never run out of booze at parties. Somebody please tell me what I should do to get that job? I won't pilfer, I swear!

The idiocy of our ways - Undisguised Ignorance

2008-12-30T19:20:00.000+05:30

When women say a man looks like a Greek God, which of the following Greek Gods do they mean?

1. Pan, a short God with the horns, legs and tail of a goat, and with a thick beard, snub nose and pointed ears.

2. Marsyas, who you will notice if you observe this picture, was old, fat, bald and looked, if truth be told, quite homosexual.

3. Aegipan, who had the head of a man and the body of a goat. Experts still argue over whether he was a goat with a man's head or a man with a goat's body.

4. Hephaestus, who was lame and disfigured and so repulsive that his mother, after taking one look at him promptly threw him off a mountain.

What is it with women, I don't understand! Most of these Greek Gods had serious anger management issues and very limited career options. I mean, look at it this way - if women are indeed attracted to men who are stuck with bad jobs and a bad attitude, then you'd have to scrape young girls off me like you'd scrape barnacles off a rusty sea anchor. Whereas I am actually like one of those shiny tungsten-coated ceramic naval anchors which no self-respecting barnacle would ever like to be found in a twelve-mile radius of, unless stunned by an electric shock first, beaten up, tied, gagged and then threatened to be killed for good measure by a large, unpleasant man called Carlos, whose 9-letter long second name wouldn't contain any vowels. No, really. I tell you, try being witty and sarcastic and see just how popular you get with the ladies. Not very, I assure you.

Other things to avoid when the ladies are around - showing off your short temper, if you have one, and hoping you'd pass off for Zeus or Thor. Because believe me, you won't. It is not amusing and you're not impressing anybody. If you don't believe me, try smashing stuff or storming off to Mt Olympus in a fit of rage, or even leaving the door open for that matter, and you will be presented with a stare so cold that you'll think Sarajevo 1992 was a rather humorous affair.

But, this greek-god-guy streaked around the desert naked, drove his father's car when he was 10, lost control of the wheel, ploughed the car into a barn and ended up setting the earth on fire .... and guess what the ladies of his time (and ours) did? They smiled and said "Awwww, dear little PH?! He does that at times...isn't he just adorable?"

Dinosaurs will come back to life before I understand women!

Bite my Bytes ;-)

2008-12-24T17:25:00.000+05:30

I really don't understand why people find it offending, insulting even to be on the bench. I work in an IT company and I was on the bench for a really long time. It was a lovely time, because besides offering the uninterrupted comfort of idling, it was also very flattering really, to know that a bunch of sharp, efficient executives running a reputed multi-billion dollar corporation deemed it necessary to pay me a large sum of money every month just so that they can retain me and have the option of using my services sometime later. What can be more flattering than that? Besides, if you are on the bench, you are always potential. And potential can't be criticised. You are never given a chance to work so there is never a risk of failure. Office is 50 km from home, and since I wasn't doing much in office, I was actually being paid merely to travel back and forth every day. I know people who pay money to travel back and forth. So I was already better off than a majority of the working population.

But these days, I am involved in a software implementation project for a huge insurance company, who have engaged the company I work for because they don't much understand software themselves. And the computer engineers working in my company do not understand the insurance business much. So the project manager looked at the situation objectively and threw me into the mix, to act as a sort of middle-man between the client and the software engineers. Now, my job is simple - to explain to each what the other says. That's a very convenient arrangement for everybody involved... except me, because...well, because I know absolutely nothing about either insurance or software. In fact my only experience with the insurance industry is that I paid some money to an LIC agent about 6 months ago and got a receipt for it. That was all. So, I know as much about the insurance industry as the average chicken knows about the balance sheet of McDonald Corp. All I know about insurance is that a lot of people regularly pay a corporation a large amount of money, because apparently it is not a good idea to not do so; and that insurance companies make really lousy TV ads. But that is 12 volumes of Encyclopaedia Galactica compared to what I know about software engineering.

But I type my documents in large, friendly letters in a cheerful-looking font and as a result, I am coping well. I also highlight random words in bold and italics and underline whole random paragraphs for no particular reason and send the document back to whoever sent it to me in the first place. Apparently they take it seriously. It also adds to the overall visual clout, as you can see for yourself in the previous paragraph. I also use words like enhance and review quite excessively. It implies that you have gone through the entire passage and know a great deal about a lot of stuff - enough to decide which terms are important enough to be highlighted and which words should be left alone. Moreover, I always end my emails with "Have a good day" or "Good job, keep it up", so as not to seem overly critical and to add a touch of gentle consideration. I think they like me.

If it weren't for the confidentiality clause, I'd have already warned you against buying an insurance policy from the company whose computer system I have been personally involved in designing. I am not allowed to name the company, but there is nothing against sharing an opinion, is there? So why don't you tell me where you plan to put your money, and I'll tell you if it’s a good idea ;-)

er...read on...

2008-12-20T20:27:00.000+05:30

Why is making out called petting? I am really worried for our species here. I mean, how did the word "petting" even come about? Is it mere coincidence that the word used to describe activities of a sexual nature is the same general term used to describe domestic animals? I sincerely hope our forefathers didn't use their cattle for ...er...recreational purposes. No, I am serious! Discovering such a word in the language is always a worrying thing for me. It is carefully hidden proof of mischief that by accident got discovered. It is one of those moments, like when you discover a stack of porn magazines under your grandfather's bed. Not that I ever did, but I can imagine what it would have been like.

We as a race have collectively been upto a lot of mischief, most of which I'm quite proud of. Like melting all that antarctic ice and drowning the penguins? That was pretty cool. Moreover, deviance is a most lovable trait, especially in one's ancestors. I for one prefer ancestors who set fire to buildings and climbed mountains and ran away to forests, chasing rainbows to ancestors who sat around reading newspaper and sipping tea. I like that sense of adventure. Like in a grandfather of mine who fought in the second world war, got bored of it, quit the Air Force and ran away to Burma to grow cotton. I really do like that in a man.

But "petting"! You've got to draw a line there! That's just kinkiness. You know how old people always keep reminiscing how much better things were when they were young? I swear to god, if one of these days I catch an old man watching a young couple making out, and wondering out loud " Girls, for godssake! How thing have changed... What do they teach young boys in schools these days?! I remember when I was young, it used to be goats...", I'm really going to give him a piece of my mind.

And that is why I am ever so wary of learning about the origin and evolution of words. You never know what shameful secrets you might accidentally uncover.

The idiocy of our ways - Blindness

2008-12-09T21:30:00.000+05:30

Which of the following is a dentist?

A -

B -

Wrong. The man in picture A is Hugo Sanchez, a qualified dentist who also played football for the Mexican national team. Since he has a degree in dentistry, he can evaluate, diagnose, operate on and treat conditions of the oral cavity and the maxillofacial area.

In picture B is some random-ass fat guy in an oversized white labcoat. He doesn't have a degree in dentistry and he doesn't know anything about cavities and surgery. Infact, the only thing he has in common with a real dentist is that he has a poster of a tooth in his rented room.

Allow me shatter your little dream thoroughly. In real life, this "dentist" is probably an unemployed moron who normally plays uncredited two-bit roles in cheap TV serials. He got the break of his life when CP's ad agency rang him up and asked him to don the labcoat for what would be his Magnum-Opus. He cannot perform a dental implant nor does he have a clue about Gingivitis. However, he can tap two sea-shells together and show us that the one labelled Colgate doesn't break whereas the one with a blanked out name shatters to pieces. He has perfect 20/20 vision, but wears glasses just so that he can look mature, caring and wise. He tells impressionable little children that a bacterium is a little green animated gremlin which wears a maniacal grin on its face and carries a sharp trident. But you can't blame him for that, because probably he himself truly believes that bacteria are actually spooky little animated creatures with bulging eyes and sharp spikes on their backs, who wear a look of ghastly shock on their faces while their arms flail about helplessly as they drown in a white wave of flouride foam.

Look at him. I am sure in real life he is a drunkard who gets into arguments with his neighbours and beats up his kids. In fact, I am sure he drinks so much that his trembling hands can never steadily hold a tooth-drill, because he'd be shaking like a duck on a rainy day. He can't hold on to a steady job either, and is upto his neck in debt. And whatever little money he made from this ad film was spent buying more bottles of black rum. He is probably lying in a dazed stupor on his filthy sofa in his 1-bhk Borivili studio apartment right now, with a 6 day old stubble, sprawled amidst empty bottles and cigarette ash, cradling a bottle of cheap rum, with empty cigarette packets strewn all over the floor.

And you take dental advice from this monkey.

Go away. Feel good about it.

More randomness

2008-12-05T21:50:00.000+05:30

Has it ever occured to you that all the billboards and posters that you see along the road are designed to be read at a certain pace? And that that depends on the speed of the vehicle you are in, which in turn depends on the traffic density? Which depends in turn, on the time of the day. So, if you are breezing down Mount Road at 4 in the morning as I was today, none of the road signs and posters will make any sense to you. For instance a bald man in a three-piece suit seemed to be asking me if I wanted to speak better English and before I could find out what scheme he had in mind for me, the view was replaced by a poster inviting me to attend a play called The World Is..something or the other, someday sometime...I couldn't really finish reading. Barrelling down the road, I also saw the LED display on the traffic light advising me that "...shifting saves upto 20%...", and the number 22 was blinking atop the red light, which as I sped past it suddenly became 21 for no apparent reason.

Madras doesn't make sense at 80 kmph.

I saw a dead dog on the road. From a distance, it seemed like someone had dropped a doormat in the middle of the road but when I went closer, it was obvious that it was a dog. At least, it once had been. Now it was a doormat in the middle of the road. A stinking doormat in the middle of the road. Then I realised the stench might carry deadly viruses that could give me some lethal disease. Then I thought about it, and I realised since it was 4 AM and I was standing in the exact same spot on the road where just a few hours ago an agile four-legged wild carnivore had been run over by a speeding truck, maybe catching a cold was not my biggest problem.

...

You are so easily entertained, aren't you?

Strike One

2008-12-02T22:38:00.000+05:30

When I was in the first standard, I had a huge crush on a girl called Shilpa. She was in the 12th standard, so that made her 17 years old. She had beautiful green eyes and was the star athlete of the school and the class topper. Her father was a doctor and he had a Premier Padmini, I remember. I wanted to marry Shilpa. I was 5 years old and I was in hopelessly in love! There was nothing like it, please believe me! In all my five years of life I had never known such poignant suffering. It was amazing. It was heartbreaking!

She had a boyfriend, I vividly remember. And I also remember wanting to inspect the colour of his small intestine. I dont think she even noticed me ever. Or how much I cried when she had to leave school. She was truly my first love... But that was so long ago. That was in another lifetime...

Twenty years seem to have passed in a heartbeat. If she even remembers me to this day, I'm sure her memories of me would be only that of a tiny boy with broken teeth and ruffled hair staring at her from a distance, hiding behind his math notebook, pretending to read, hoping she wouldn't notice. And in my memories, she is always ravishingly beautiful and always green eyed and always walking away from me. And there is a mocking laughter even in her wake.

Sod Off !

2008-11-14T20:51:00.000+05:30

I hate you.

Every morning I make my way through corridors lined with people poring over page 3 celebrity gossip, walking in a line like little red ants, making plans to watch the movie next weekend, sending each other forwarded emails with pictures of manicured lawns and amusement parks. Ayurvedic spas and honeymoon destinations. Obedient little ants. How I wish you could see what you look like when you all line up in front of the coffee vending machine when the clock strikes 11, like monkeys in some space experiment. Globalifuckingsation. The triumph of the Mob over the Individual. The next great revolution of stupor and cerebral degradation. A world ruled by greedy swine. They are everywhere - in lobbies, in offices, in cities... At nights I see them coming out of every hole in the wall; hungry cockroaches pouring out of ventilator ducts and manhole covers, crawling out tin cans and crowding the streets, tripping and falling over one another as they try to climb up your legs, making it difficult to breathe. I wake up in a cold sweat, gasping.

Bloodshot eyes.

How many animals have to be slaughtered to keep you clothed and well fed? How much grains and starch, and animal carcasses and birds with their wings flapping, have to be flung into the furnace that is your metabolism? All to feed the enormous beast whose sole occupation is to stare dead ahead with a blank face and a mouth gaping wide open. I hope you meet them one day - the animals you tortured and murdered to appease your hunger. I hope they come back to haunt you in your afterlife. Your forwarded emails, little trinkets, junk beads and toy rifles. How your eyes light up when you see those little patterns of snakes and ladders, you sneaky little morons. Patterns that are simple and easy to remember. A mind obsessed with trivia. To me, you are the lowest form of life. A degree of survival that is lower than bacteria, rolling in slime, wading in putrefied sludge, unaware that the filth it is eating is its own. You are a slave. Of your life and your job and your career. You are nothing more than a common slave. Push a button, Get a treat and do your worthless bit for a multibillion dollar corporate cause you neither know nor understand. You are the worst kind of slave - one who doesn't even know he's a slave. And that's why no revolution can ever touch you; no act of defiance can ever ignite a spark in your catatonic mind, because you truly believe you are secure.

You disgusting, impeccable slaves!

You marry. You get a raise. You buy a house. This is your life. You will live in the one of the thousand featureless suburban colonies. This is all your sad life will ever amount to. I hope for your sake you die lying face down in a gutter somewhere, in a pool of blood and shattered teeth, choking on your own bile and vomit. I hope for your sake.

See you in hell.

(No more caffeine, I promise.)

Randomness

2008-11-10T20:24:00.000+05:30

Whenever I visit a barber, no matter where, I am told to use hair conditioner. Dozens of hair-dressers over the years have told me that my hair is brittle and it needs conditioning. But you see, no matter what you say I am not going to use cosmetics. I don’t use hair conditioner for the same reason that kangaroos don’t read newspapers. How can I explain? If trees don't wear lipstick and polar bears don't use vaseline, what in God's name do I need a conditioner for?

It’s a funny thing - if you give a monkey a typewriter and a million years, it might be able to type out a manuscript of Henry VIII. Give it a tube of hair gel and it might figure out that it will make its hair sticky and stand on end, but it can’t for the love of god work out just what is to be gained by doing that to one’s hair and why anyone in the world would want to do it! So the hair gel is the hair conditioner, the laws of statistics and probability are the same and I am a monkey… See where I am going with this?

The Highwaystar

2008-11-07T19:18:00.000+05:30

The scorching sun beats down on your shoulders and on the road, vapourising bitumen and making the road ahead and the hypnotising terrain look vaguely hazy. A blast of sand and black smoke hits your face as a truck speeds by. The blurry tarmac buzzing below the footrest is your only measure of speed. The wind blowing on your face brings tears to your eyes and dries your lips. Your head hums with the roar of the engine.

You see milestones rush past faster than you can count. Only then do you realise that the road and the terrain have entranced you so much and that you have grown so used to your bike's vibrations and noises that you are lulled into a dreamy, yet conscious sleep that your thought process has slowed down and your reactions are delayed, yet somehow strangely and deliciously in perfect harmony with the nature, the wind and the clouds.

On a subconscious plane, even when you are riding, you are sensitive to the fact that your motorcycle is your best friend, and that it will never get angry at you or shout at you or ignore you and ridicule you. You develop an almost human relationship with your motorcycle and care for it more than for yourself, at times.

Did you run out of fuel? There was definitely a momentary lapse now as the engine missed a beat, but it reassuringly surges back to life and keeps going. That was probably just the plug misfiring, or maybe a drop of condensation in the carburetor. Your mind dwells on this for a fraction of a second and then moves on... Or maybe the bike just voiced its protest in a way that only someone who truly understands his bike on a spiritual plane can comprehend.

The landscape is plain and devoid any striking features. Nothing seems to be moving in your vibrating rearview mirror, except the blurry horizon, which seems to be going further and further behind with every turn of the crankshaft. A piece of forged metal powers your bike and thoughts as you escape from the immediate past and apprehend about your distant future.

As you finally kill the engine and get off the motorcycle, the landscapes you saw are still playing again and again in your head and even if you close your eyes, you cannot shut it off. The engine isn’t running now, but your ears are ringing. This is going to take a while to wear off. The motorcycle still seems to be throbbing with life. Maybe its your imagination. But you hope its not...

The bike feels strangely peaceful and silent after hours and hours of spine shattering violence.

Your back is sore. Your hands are aching. Your palms are raw. Your eyes are red; your shirt is covered with grime and dust. So is your face. Your legs are cramped from too much riding and dehydration. Your backside is so numb you don't remember the last time you felt it alive. You are so exhausted you just want to crash and sleep for days on end. Yet, this is a feeling you would trade for nothing in the world, because you recognise it for what it is. You are filled with a feeling of tranquility and immense self satisfaction. You are filled with a sense of fulfillment that can only be compared to what you feel when you have reached a mountain top after hours of back breaking climb or when you have just finished listening to divine music. You are at peace with yourself and strangely detached from the rest of humanity.

You recognise it for what it is.

Motorcycling Nirvana.

On fishing

2008-10-31T23:24:00.000+05:30

I feel sorry for fishermen who spend years and years fishing, without knowing that it’s not the fish they are after. To call fishing an occupation or a sport would be to not understand that it is much more than just that. Fishing is not a job or a recreational activity. Fishing is not even about the fish. It represents the biggest human addiction – Hope.

A lonely angler sitting meditatively with a fishing rod on a boat in the middle of a peaceful lake, with the line in the water is not the most exciting sight. But that’s missing the point. There is a lot more going on just beneath the surface. Fishing is a mind game. It’s a marathon battle between the fish and the man. It involves great deception, guile, trickery and imagination. But you don’t see that. You only see the angler cradling a motionless line in a still lake. You don’t see the enormous living constellation swirling and swooshing under the calm surface. You don’t see the countless layers and planes and currents being worked out in the mind of the man. It is an epic battle of survival played out in a deceptively motionless environment, and it is all played out in the mind. A good fisherman reads into the mind of the victim.

I’m not talking about commercial trawling here. Taking a 70 metre trawler into the middle of the ocean and hauling aboard thirty-five tones of salmon – that’s not fishing. That is taking a bulldozer to a brain surgery.

Fishing is a game of chess. You don’t just catch fish. Novices catch fish. Real fishermen reap fish. There is no luck or chance involved in it. The catch is the reward for tough mental exertion. So is defeat. It is a reward. Only a true fisherman can see that. Fishing is not about the fish at all. It is a state of mind. It’s the attention to detail, it is instinct paired with imagination. It is a mystical game of possibilities; an enquiry into circumstances. It is chaos theory. The water is not a dull, featureless expanse, but it is a living thing. It is a delightful world full of treasures and riches. It is constantly moving and changing, like there is electricity in it. The fish too, are as fickle and transient as the magical sphere they call home.

You are the stranger. You are the one sitting outside their world, on its roof. You are the piece that doesn’t fit; the awful intrusion in what is otherwise a picture of harmony. A true fisherman never wonders about the one that got away, and knows that, in another world somewhere, a fish would have extended him the same courtesy.

All you see is line going into the water, and your reflection on its calm surface. But who knows what treasures or dangers lurk on the other side of the mirror? What is joined to the line on the other end is limited only by your imagination. It is whatever you imagine it to be, till the instant you reel in the line and make it real, and bring it out into this side of the mirror. Into your world.
It’s not about the fish. There is never a dull moment while fishing. It is a glorious drama involving two mortal beings connected to each other by a fragile thread- one weak and frail and the other strong and powerful. The weak one waits patiently with guile and cunning for the other to take the bait and thrash around for his life. It is the quintessential philosophical conflict. It is mind versus matter.

On Chopsticks

2008-10-31T23:20:00.000+05:30

One of my greatest regrets is that I’ve never quite learned to eat with chopsticks. I guess it’s because no one has ever guided me properly on the matter of chopstick handling, but I’m sure it’s because I really can’t be bothered.

In my motorcycling circle, they speak of a Japanese mechanic who once had to replace a worn camshaft on a motorcycle. Now these shafts have a pattern of grooves on them, in which oil is carried around from the galleries to lubricate and cool the valves. In the old shaft, these grooves were worn out. So this mechanic mounted the old shaft on a fast turning lathe and poured molten steel on it straight from a furnace. He then quenched it by plunging it into oil at room temperature, to relieve it of internal stresses and give it more tensile strength. He then copied the groove pattern from a new shaft by making an imprint on a sheet of translucent paper using kohl, and then cut the pattern on the old shaft, turning it back within a micrometer of its old dimension.

It is an awesome story, and the whole painstaking exercise was hard, laborious and incredibly stupid, because it cost him Rs.850. And a brand new shaft is worth Rs.800.

In a list of Japanese inventions posted on the internet, there was a device that you’d have to strap on to your hat right below your ear and when its electrodes sensed a sneeze coming, it would automatically dispense a paper napkin right in front of your nose. Although why anyone familiar with the concept of handkerchiefs and pockets would go so far as to wear a hat and strap on a heavy and embarrassing apparatus still puzzles me.

Most Japanese people want trees in their homes. Most Indians do, too. That is why most Indian homes have Neem trees growing right in the center. But the average Japanese house is only 110 sq.ft in area, and there are about a gazillion houses in Tokyo alone. There isn’t enough room for two medium sized people, leave alone a tree. Faced with such circumstances, an average Indian would have done the sensible thing – chop down all the trees in the neighbourhood and forget the matter. But the Japanese? No. They had to wire, prune and file trees down to miniature sizes, and carry them around in little pots! Looking at a giant sequoia tree, would the average Neanderthal man have ever thought “Hmmm, I’d like a pocket sized version of that on my study desk”? No. Because the average Neanderthal man did not have study desks. The average Japanese Neanderthal man on the other hand not only had a study desk, he also had a palmtop on it which was connected through Wi-Fi to Honda solar powered DNA robots which were presently mowing his lawn. And he was already trying to decide whether to name the miniature invention Bonsai or Hentai.

See, that’s the thing with the Japanese. They want a smaller version of everything. When everything has become small, they’d then want smaller versions of the smaller things. They will take the smallest and simplest task and computerize the living daylights out of it and make it unwieldy. They can go to any lengths to do that. Believe me. The entire western civilization (west of Japan that is) is founded on the basic principle of making things easier. But the Japanese want to make things more complex. They just don’t understand the concept of too much trouble. Nothing is ever too much trouble for them.

Maybe that explains why they use chopsticks to eat rice. If there is a simpler way of doing things, the Japanese will NOT accept it. I mean, how else would you explain it? It’s not like they have not seen the spoon. They have. So they can’t even pretend as though they don’t know about the spoon and plead ignorance. No. The only other logical reasons that explain the continuing use of chopsticks are a) lack of greens in Japanese food and b) a huge mafia funded chopstick production industry. One look at the technological innovations coming out of Japan is enough to throw the lack-of-greens theory out of the window (Though it is still a mystery why a nation of such keen scientists cannot spot the one blaring intellectual anomaly in an otherwise flawless topography). Sadly, we have to live with the pitiless burden of proof, and hence a mafia-funded-chopstick-industry theory doesn’t hold water, either.

So, I think my theory stands unchallenged. I have finally solved the age-old riddle. I’ve cracked the code. In evolution terms, this is the equivalent of deducing the reasons for the extinction of the Galapagos apple snail. I deserve some award for this, surely. (I don’t know if there is such a thing as a Galapagos apple snail. I made that up.)

See, you can place a chopstick next to a spoon and crack all the witty jokes you want till the cows come home, but remember, in Japan, they are making just as many jokes about you and your spoon. You will never understand it, because you don’t understand their culture, and because their jokes are in Japanese.

That brings me to the question that has been gnawing at my mind ever since I began thinking about Japanese culture. If the Japanese go to such elaborate lengths to make things as complex as possible, why do they eat fish raw? So is Sushi really an Australian invention?

On Global Warming

2008-09-30T20:02:00.000+05:30

These days I find myself worrying a lot about matters of global importance. Climate change for instance, I feel is too important an issue to be left to scientists and politicians. All that you see on the TV and hear on the news about global warming is what the politicians want you to see and hear. And the solutions that they promote may not exactly solve the problem. So, what is required here is a dry, scientific analysis of the situation.

Let us understand the phenomenon of global warming. In a nutshell, there is a layer of various gases around the earth called the "atmosphere". Carbon-dioxide is an important component of this "atmosphere" because it traps the heat from the sunlight and keeps the planet warm. But having too much Carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere is no good, because then the planet would get too hot. Consequently, the polar ice-caps and glaciers would melt, causing the sea levels to rise. This means some of the coastal places and islands would submerge in water. And polar bears would die.

This is exactly what is happening in the world today. Due to some reason, the sunlight trapped in the atmosphere is not able to escape back into space. And that is causing a lot of worry.

First, let us get a few basic things straight.
More Carbon-dioxide is bad.
Furry animals are good. We want more of those.
More water is bad.
Trees are good.
Heat is bad. We don't want any more warmth.
More land can be good or bad, depending on which side of the Norwegian Sea we are talking about.

All that remains now is to tie up the equation neatly.

The amount of carbon present in the world is more or less constant. The forms in which it is present vary greatly over time. Till a hundred years back, there was a lot of carbon trapped in the soil in the form of coal and petroleum. But over the years, it has been dug out and burnt up, and as a result it has been converted to gaseous form. It is this gaseous form which is harmful to the planet. As long as the carbon is in liquid or solid state, all is fine. But when more and more carbon is released into the atmosphere from the soil, it starts to be a nuisance.

A good plan to cool down the planet should also deal with the problem of carbon sequestration; that is conversion and storage of carbon dioxide in liquid or solid form, thus driving down the CO2 level in the atmosphere. So anything that converts the gaseous CO2 into liquid or solid form is good. Oceans, for instance. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean water to form carbonic acid. Thus oceans help to clean up the atmosphere by condensing the carbon into a liquid form. Carbon dioxide reacts with calcium oxide to form limestone deposits. Amines react with carbon dioxide to form solid ammonium salt crystals. Trees use up CO2 to make chlorophyll in a process called photosynthesis.

Fact #1. Forests are good carbon sinks. They store carbon in a solid form (trees). But trees themselves are carbon neutral. That is to say, they do NOT actively clean up the atmosphere. Whatever CO2 they use up in photosynthesis, they return to the atmosphere by means of respiration, anaerobic decomposition and forest fires. So, a tree is just about as effective at cooling down the earth as furniture made from it, because both are merely carbon sinks. Human beings too are carbon sinks. A 100 kg man is equivalent to 66 kg of sequestered CO2. So having more human beings on the planet would mean lesser equivalent CO2 in the atmosphere. (But the disadvantages of having more human beings far outweigh the benefits. So let us ignore that option for a while.) Decaying animals and plants emit methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to global warming. So why don't we seal off dead organic matter in airtight concrete blocks and bury them in the bottom of the ocean where it won't trouble anyone. More carbon sinks.

So the idea is to have less carbon floating about in the air, which means fewer solar rays would be trapped. That would cool down the earth. There are other ways of cooling the earth, too. I was about to suggest attaching huge cooling fins to the earth, but in the interest of practical science, I won't.

Then there is all this hype about having more Green buildings. Though I am not entirely opposed to the idea, I do think that green is a rather tasteless colour for a building. I prefer lighter shades of grey or beige. But then that's just me.

Our problem is not drowning baby seals or submerging coastlines. Those are just the symptoms of the problem. The actual problem is that there is too much water in the world. Again, the extra water wasn't brought by aliens from outer space. Like carbon, it has always been present on the earth for millions of years. But what is worrying is that recently, it has started moving about. That is the real problem. Too much water let loose in the wrong places. That is to say, your real problem is not the children tripping over in the balcony or the foul smell in the house. It is the dead cow in your front yard. So we need to find a place to store the extra water drained by melting glaciers. In other words, where on earth can you hide a large glacier without anyone noticing it? Think... Water tables. There is water at atmospheric pressure under the ground in most places. It is known as the water table. But in deserts and arid regions, the water table is so low that even deep rooted plants cannot reach it. So there you are. Sweep the glaciers elegantly under the carpet. What's more, it fits like a jigsaw. Fill up the desert water tables with desalinated water. Use the melting glaciers to replenish the ground water in arid areas. Use it to make deserts more fertile. Use it to solve the portable water crisis of the third world. We'd have solved the global warming and drinking water crises of the third world in one fell swoop.

Place huge silica gel slabs in the middle of the desert, which soak up humidity from the atmosphere. Or just dip silica gel cubes in the ocean and throw them in the Sahara desert. If you store enough water to compensate for a glacier's melting and flowing into the Atlantic, it would be the algebraic equivalent of depositing a glacier in the middle of the desert. The net sea level therefore remains the same.

Fact #2. Methane is 72 times more effective than CO2 in trapping solar radiation. This means that one litre of methane will have the same effect on global warming as 72 litres of CO2.

A 1.8L petrol engine with a compression ratio of around 10 running at 3000 rpm will emit 90 litres of carbon-dioxide at a temperature of 900C, which is roughly equal to 54 grams of CO2 every minute. A cow releases 500 litres of methane into the atmosphere every day. That is an equivalent of 495 grams of methane at 1013Pa. Since methane is 72 times more effective than CO2 at trapping solar heat, a car would have to run for 660 minutes a day to match a cow. At 3000 rpm that would anywhere between 330 to 935 kilometres a day, depending on the gearing ratio and traffic density. And I am talking about the crudest of internal combustion engines - not the modern DOHC VTEC units with 5 valves per cylinder and twin spark plugs, with catalytic convertors attached to the exhaust - Those would produce even lesser CO2 than a butterfly breathing, and would be embarrassingly inferior to the average water buffalo in terms of greenhouse gas production.

(Are you even paying attention?!)

So, in what way is it fair to ask car owners to pay a green-tax and expect their vehicles to clear a Pollution-Under-Control test, and give tax concessions to farmers and livestock owners? Shouldn't cattle-owners be taxed 72 times more? Shouldn't cows and sheep pass flatulence-under-control tests? It is clear that we are ruled by a government which is more concerned about appearing to be environment-friendly than actually doing something about the climate situation, and doesn't want to lose favour with the large farmer vote-bank. So, we are required to pay taxes on motor vehicles. But if you really think about it, how can you stop a glacier melting by paying money to the government? How can you solve a climate change problem by throwing money at it? It's a bit like trying to stop the phone ringing by screaming at it.

Paying green-tax only makes the government richer. And the only question it will answer is what colour the leather seats in the MP's next premium car should be. It should stop.

Methane is more dangerous than Carbon-dioxide. It also reacts with steam to form methanol, which is a hygroscopic substance. That is to say, it absorbs water. So, methane from cows can be made into methanol, which can be used in place of silica gel in the deserts to soak up the extra water. So there is less methane in the atmosphere, less water in the north seas and more water in the deserts. Three birds with one stone. I am not talking about 2p savings here. I am talking about removing huge chunks off the carbon score-sheet. The kind that will set us back 5 to 10 years in the greenhouse timeline. Polar bears are good. Plastic is bad. Plainly, what we need are genetically engineered polar bears which eat plastic. That ties up the equation perfectly. That's the kind of innovation we want to see.

The problem essentially is that there is a thick layer of carbon-dioxide covering the earth which is trapping the solar radiation. What we really need is a... "hole"... in this carbon-dioxide layer through which heat can escape to outer space.

...

er....I think we can easily manage to do that. We have accomplished something similar before.

Fact #3. Melting icebergs DO NOT increase sea levels. Icebergs are chunks of ice floating in water. The reason why ice floats in water is because it is less dense than water. One litre of ice weighs less than one litre of water. So, when floating ice melts, its density increases and it occupies lesser volume. Water is densest at 4 degrees above zero. So, the sea levels would decrease as icebergs melt.

Comments?

The idiocy of our ways - Part I of many

2008-09-25T14:34:00.000+05:30

The absolute last thing my caffeine addled mind needed to hear on a depressing Thursday morning was a pseudo-scientific tabloid article written by a two-bit Dutch researcher telling me not to use the car or light bulbs.

Now there is a point when a news item becomes less valuable than the paper it is printed on. Thanks to the cries of wolf by paranoid alarmists and attention seeking news channels, Global climate change and health warnings are rapidly becoming a shameful waste of recycled paper and ink.

We have endured two World wars, great economic depressions, millennium bugs, terrorist attacks, revolutions, floods, plagues and assassinations. The Mona Lisa was stolen, the Titanic sunk, the president of the United States of America was shot dead, trains were robbed, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, volcanoes erupted and tsunamis struck and yet we survived.

Every day we are told about new ways in which we are going to die. We'd die of credit crunch in global markets, we'd be run over by melting glaciers, asteroids falling through the ozone hole. We are told that very soon space travel will be banned because we are littering Neptune's third satellite and polluting the outer rings of the solar system with our nuclear waste. We would also die of nuclear warfare brought upon each other by countries fighting for freedom, total world dominance and advertising space on the moon.

I have played football on muddy playgrounds in pouring rain, gone swimming in rivers, played with stray cats on the road, had motorcycle accidents, not worn a helmet, chewed on tin foil, climbed trees, fallen off walls, eaten sugar and butter, been out in the moonlight, been electrocuted, had contagious tropical diseases and not eaten fruits and green leafy vegetables...yet I don't remember having died.

But if today's edition of TOI were to be believed, if I leave the light bulb on, polar ice shelves would shrivel down, causing the entire north pole to be submerged in water, and Cairo being the northernmost remaining place on earth would be inhabited by refugee polar bears, which would then die of depression when they hear about the state of the global financial markets and rising crude oil prices, and the vanishing Brazilian rainforests would expose the Amazonian Tree Frog to harmful ultraviolet radiation which would burn cloud patterns on its skin, and this would push the dejected environmentalists to commit suicide by talking on cell phones while travelling above the city speed limit in cars without seat belts and sub-standard crumple zones, which would in turn leave the loggerhead sea turtle to fend for itself in a dangerous world fraught with life threatening, hazardous chemicals like coke, fried potatoes and cholesterol, and the lucky ones that escaped the gruesome death caused by eating Asian bird meat and passive smoking would quickly die due to a large black hole produced by a tubelight in a physics lab.

I don't remember a time when the world wasn't heading towards disaster. Every day there is a new evil that will end the world, killing us all. Every day there is something new to panic about. There is danger lurking in every household on every highway in every corner. Every day the same news channels find something new to keep us glued to the screens. If the world indeed was going to end because of a breakaway comet or because of magnetic cloud storms in the sun, just what the bloody hell are we supposed to do about it? Why do news channels keep haranguing about something that we can do nothing about? The world is going to end, so what can we do now? Finish dinner quickly? Lock the doors?

It's about as useful as the announcements made by the captain on a plane.

"We are now cruising at 690 knots at an altitude of 28,000 feet above mean sea level."
("What?! Did you say 690?! Jeez, that’s slow! I know birds that can fly faster than that! Step on it, man! Come on now...chop chop! And I'm gonna take a short nap now, okay? Wake me up when we reach 31,640 feet, will you? There is something rather important I have to do...")

That's not the only amusing thing, though. People who make doomsday predictions seem to do it in all earnest. They seem solemn and serious about it. Which if you think about it, is quite fair because a statement predicting the end of the world is usually not followed by sniggering. It is a statement of impending, inevitable doom. It is not funny or heroic. It is a grave declaration. And as declarations go, it is not open to debate or discussion. And that makes the situation a little tricky because there can be no dignified exit from it. If the world does not end on the said date, there is no way they can worm their way out of the ensuing embarrassment. The only way they can make a graceful exit from the situation is if the world really does end. And that's a shame really, because there would be no one left to appreciate the face-saving act. They never get to say "I told you so" to anyone.

And that makes it the most thankless job in the world.

The Fury

2008-09-22T15:50:00.000+05:30

There are things that make me want to grab the largest and sharpest axe I can find and bury it in the head of the first smug wannabe urban techie "specialist" self-righteous idiot that I come across.

What was that again, hair gel for your eyebrows? Taking personal grooming to a whole new level, are we? What dimension are you from? Do me a favour and die.

Man has travelled to space, built machines that recreate the birth of the Universe, explained gravitation and magnetism...yet look at the sort of things excite you: The latest mobile phone ring tones, a hundred pictures of tea cups, nostrils and office desks, all clicked at different times and with subtle variations of angle, bus schedules, mindless two-bit TV serials, this-or-that celebrity gossip. You disgust me. You, with your conditioner lotions and your iPods, your shop-to-earn $2.99 referrals, your pseudo-masculine plastic motorbikes and tupperware lunchboxes, earphones, cheesy handbags, office politics, streaked hair and plastic watches, you disgust me. All you plastic dolls with the same deadpan expression on your faces every day of the week, week after week, listlessly marching in a row towards the huge pyramid of slavery to the great monotonous drumbeat of obedience and prostrating under a God who is rumoured to be. All with the same mobile phones but each with a different ringtone that somehow makes you feel clever and special, and somehow gives you a unique place in the Universe and makes you irreplaceable. And how you smugly pat yourself on the back for it, you ignorant, misinformed, servile morons! Your slavish love for forwarded emails with pretty pictures of cute babies, furry animals and exotic places, glimpses of a life you've never had but you wish you had and know you can never have. You are pathetic. Pathetic. You are all the same. Sod off, you sleazy rat-faced scumbags. You, with your delusions of adequacy; I tell you, you can never be truly liberated until you have seen failure, starvation, neglect, filth and decay. Get out of your boxes, go out and see dying things. Rotting, foul smelling, gangrenous flesh. You don't become cool by having a goatee or wearing sunglasses, you shallow dunderheads. You will live a wretched life and you will grow old and die and decay and be eaten by worms, like everybody else. Be miserable, poor, damp and wretched. Die with an abject sense of failure and purposelessness. You will all inevitably perish one day, like a hundred million fruitflies, all rotting in a huge squishy pile of garbage, decaying in a squalid, organic soup of human waste.

Get on with it, get a real life, you wretched morons. Whatever. Just go away. You make me sick.

I feel I'm plastered onto the walls of a hexagonal pyramid, and when it rains, I'll flow down the stairs like synthetic oil and seep into the ground and never be seen or heard from again. I dont like where I'm coming from, but I like where I am going. This is madness, I swear!

Madness.

Trembling fingers, utter madness.

No more caffiene. I promise.

2008-09-18T20:59:00.000+05:30

Identify the bomb from among the following pictures.

Wrong, it’s the one in the second picture. So tell me, if I had to smuggle both of them into my office, which one would more likely be retained at the security desk in the suspicious-looking-items tray?

You can safely say that these are the average security guards in an average office complex in India. Do you know what the problem is with these guys? They probably think a bomb is a cylindrical tube with red, blue and yellow wires sticking out of it, garnished with a huge beeping, Casio style countdown timer, or a clock.

Really, how prepared is he to deal with a possible terrorist attack? Can he identify and disarm a bomb if he sees one? I am sure not. That raises the question; if they cannot do a thorough job why even bother doing it? Whom are they kidding? They look like a bunch of pathetic movie extras from the 70s, and can stop a terror attack as effectively as a couple of ducks can stop a hurricane.

Terrorists are usually trained on the rugged slopes of the Hindukush Mountains in the science of weaponry. These guys can assemble and take apart the most advanced explosive devices blindfolded. These bombs would then have been smuggled carefully across the border and meticulously assembled in carefully chosen old sheds where central intelligence with their trained sniffer dogs could not locate them. If such a terrorist really made his way to one of the fancy IT buildings armed with the latest in detonative charge technology with the intention of setting it off, guess who is going to stop him? A couple of high school drop-outs loitering around in the lobby in a ridiculous costume, cradling ancient weapons from the sepoy mutiny, a bunch of clueless morons who cannot tell an alarm clock from an RDX explosive device. A couple of guys suffering from a mid-life crisis and heavy obesity while sipping tea from a styrofoam cup and gossiping about the latest Vijay movie. Just how on earth are they going to deter a terrorist mastermind? You might as well have a scarecrow and a sack of potatoes at the gate.

The security rules for entry into IT office buildings were written by singularly the dumbest bunch of blockheaded cows you can ever see. You cannot carry an empty CD past the desk without signing a dozen forms and declarations, but they would let a kangaroo through if it was wearing a badge, with its face as much as drawn on it.

I'm the first to acknowledge the ability of utter stupidity in stumbling upon things that have been overlooked by meticulous scientific examination. History is fraught with examples. The Archimedes principle, Gravitation, Pluto, Radioactivity, America – all discovered by bumbling idiots who weren’t looking for them...So, it would hardly be surprising if a security guard accidentally discovered an explosive device in a bag. But more importantly, what happens next? What can he do with it, apart from holding it like he was holding a baby which had soiled its diapers? He can only report the “find” to the chief security guard. But even the chief security guard would appear like a Neanderthal man gawking at a mobile phone. Now, the cold, professional terrorist is not going to be terribly pleased with this. So, he will now open his jacket to reveal that he is armed to the teeth and will, after careful consideration, select a weapon from the vast array on his person. Finding themselves in a completely new situation, the other security guards would freeze in their tracks, unsure of what to do next. They will then start running helter-skelter like headless chicken because it’s the most natural thing to do in the situation. Also because they have no weapons to defend themselves with, let alone protect anyone.

What is needed in a situation like this is not some half-hearted attempt at "security". What you really need are modern techniques of bomb detection and disposal. Electromagnetic digital mapping sensors and metal detectors, remote operated bomb disposal robots, trained sniffer Alsatians, electronic jamming systems, surveillance cameras, radio control units, radars and satellite links. Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts with flame and fragmentation resistant Kevlar suits and carbon-fibre helmets. Legions of black cat commandoes with AK-47 assault rifles prowling around in the campus with their semi-automatic M4 carbines, grenade launchers and sub-machine guns. Tactically placed military snipers with range-finders and night-vision goggles. Howitzers, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. Helicopter gunships with air-to-surface missiles, and fighter jets armed with thermonuclear warheads.

Either that or nothing. You cannot have a security team that is “reasonably” effective against terrorists. It’s like wearing a life jacket that can reasonably prevent you from drowning – it just doesn’t work that way.

Bet u a hundred bucks you cant carry this into your office... (its an alarm clock, check it out on e-bay)

http://cgi.ebay.com/FA071-1-6-Accessories-Suicide-Bomb_W0QQitemZ330270892101QQihZ014QQcategoryZ27294QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Why I will not forget the 2008 Italian GP...

2008-09-16T20:05:00.000+05:30

It was a sensational win in treacherous conditions for Sebastian Vettel and Scuderia Torro Rosso. But those who have been following F1 for a while will know that before the team became STR, it was known as Minardi. And it was not new to the F1 scene. In fact Minardi entered F1 in 1985, and the first Minardi racer was built as early as in 1979. F1 has, in recent days gone to deserts and Asian nightclubs. But till it was sold to Red Bull in 2005, Minardi was a relic from the past, a nostalgic reminder from a more civilised age. It was probably one of the last surviving traditional fixtures on the F1 calendar. It reminded you of Monza or Silverstone; worn down and unglamorous, but it made you feel at home. A bit like old wallpaper.

Not many would know that the first Minardi racer was evolved from a 1975 championship-winning Ferrari F1 car which was lent to them by the great Enzo Ferrari himself, or that it was a Lamborghini V12 that powered the Minardi in the 1992 season. But even a casual F1 fan would recognise some of the driving talent that Minardi has churned out over the years - Alessandro Nannini, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jarno Trulli, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Jos "the boss" Verstappen (who over the years didn't entertain us as much with his driving skills as with spectacular crashes...)

Yet they never had the multimillion dollar corporate culture. They were a bunch of grease monkeys who assembled their car with worn out spanners in an old shed and went racing week after week. For 23 years they chased success, in vain. Always at the back of the grid. Always called the minnows. They never had the funding or the manpower that even the midfield teams enjoyed, yet they raced with passion and commitment. They did not care a toss about money or sponsorship. They were happy to just be there, just performing at the pinnacle of motor racing. Such was their motivation. Nuvolari would have nodded his head in appreciation. Ferrari did. In an age where drivers and teams fight in court over the points left over from the previous race and accuse each other of spying and foul play, Minardi were the among the last of the true racers.

Perhaps it was fitting that their first ever win came with Ferrari V8 power at Monza, the spiritual home of the Italian Ferrari fans, not far from their own HQ. This may never be achieved again. This may go down in history as Minardi's first and only win. Many years down the line, old Franz Tost may look up at the lone trophy in admiration, sitting alone in his drab Italian villa, and close his eyes to relive the glory and celebrations of that memorable September noon when Vettel sprayed champagne on the podium for the first ever time for Minardi, having beat all other cars on the grid, having led and won the race from pole position on pure merit. Its a moment that will be frozen in time.

Sebastian Vettel. He is not the first "raw, natural talent" seen in the past decade. Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were all championship material, but were not exactly in the Senna/Schumacher/Gilles Villeneuve mould. It remains to be seen whether Vettel fulfils the promise.

I believe that Formula One should stick to the traditional circuits: Monza, Spa, Monaco, Silverstone, San Marino, Nurburgring, Montreal, Hockenheim and Interlagos. Maybe Estoril, too. The forest sections of Hockenheim and Nurburgring should be reopened. V12 engines and slick tyres should be allowed again. Michael Schumacher should drive for Ferrari and he should win all the races till the end of time. McLaren and Williams should fight it out for 2nd place. Lotus, Audi, Maserati, Tyrrell, Porsche and BRM should start racing again. And Minardi should win once in a while, even if the corporate prize money goes to Torro Rosso.

But none of these is the reason why I'll remember the Italian GP for a long time. Actually, it is because it was after a really long time that the German and Italian national anthems were played on the podium in succession

In defence of the dark knight

2008-08-28T19:57:00.000+05:30

This is the Altar of Zeus in Pergamon, Turkey.

It is a huge stone structure built in the 2nd century BC by Eumenes II to commemorate his father's victory over the Gauls. The sculptures on the walls of the altar depict the battle of Gods against the demons - A combat of Good and the Evil, Order versus Chaos. Light against Dark. They were meant, at that time, to represent a classic victory of righteousness over the dark forces of immorality. A heroic struggle, in whose tragic aftermath Eumenes was brutally assassinated at Delphi in 172 BCE. In that age, the Altar was a political symbol. It still is, if you have the right kind of vision, more than just a tool for political propaganda. It is a relic from a Godless age which signifies an attempt by the ancient ruling classes to reassure the people that Gods did exist and that they would protect them against the barbarians.

But look at the building itself. It is hardly awe-inspiring. It is no Taj Mahal or Great Pyramid. Some IT office-parks in India are better looking than this, you'd say. But to truly understand a symbol, you have to understand its context. Look beneath the skin. Tear down the facade and examine the skeleton.

It is so easy to miss the point if you aren't looking for it.

The Dark Knight is essentially a superhero movie. That's what it is. A superhero story told with the aid of breathtaking visual aids. And like all superhero stories, it is a conflict between good and evil. So what's different this time?

For starters, this movie deals with issues on a much higher plane. It recognises issues of varying and incredible complexity such as the importance of morality and values in society. It deals the choices people make and the consequences they suffer. The various characters could just have been voices in your head, representing courses of action available to you at any instant. The best thing about this movie for me is that it does not preach Goodness. Nor does it condemn Evil. It merely plays out a debate between the two, and lets you decide. Such are the shades of complexity. It argues that there is no right or wrong. It argues that in life there is seldom a clear victory or defeat, there are only compromises. And usually the one who wins in the end is the one who can rationalise the compromises he makes. By that yardstick, would you say Good won in this movie? The Joker died of course, but did he lose? Would you excuse Harvey Dent for believing that the only morality in a cruel world is chance? Would you blame The Joker for his circumstances?

To me the appeal of a movie lies in the kind of questions it raises. Batman was vulnerable and had no super-powers. What made him a superhero is not physical strength, but the strength he showed to make the choices he made. That's exactly why Harvey Dent failed to make the cut- because one doesn't become a superhero by trusting chance. But you don't blame Harvey Dent for his circumstances. He was only human, so you sympathise with him. You root for The Joker too, because deep down inside, you root for anarchy. Deep down inside you detest rules and refuse to recognise authority, and think that the voice of anarchy cannot be intrinsically evil. The absence of order need not be a bad thing, because it is the only way towards progress. But the question is, where does that leave Batman, the good guy? He is the conservative voice of moderation. He is the anti-change. The Status-quo. He has to be the refugee. He seems to be the piece that doesn't fit when the jigsaw is complete. So he has to be cast away.

The movie did have its share of shortcomings. Harvey Dent's character development was not emphasised, Bruce Wayne in the billionare-playboy-who-wants-to-divert-attention-from-his-secret-life role looked stiff and hardly as convincing as the plot makes him out to be. But all that is trivial compared to the otherwise exceptional quality of overall cinematic delivery. I have no complaints.

So, where would you place this movie? With the other superhero movies- Spiderman, Superman and The Fantastic Four? Or in the same league as The Matrix, Godfather or Apocalypse Now?

This is serious cinema. It is not for the casual viewer. If you liked the dark knight because Heath Ledger's character was spine-chilling or because the graphics were mind blowing, you are missing the point. You liked it for the wrong reasons then. Its a bit like admiring the Communist Manifesto because you like the gothic font.

Crime is an age-old theme. The symbols used in this movie - Batman, Two-Face and The Joker aren't new either. What this movie has managed to do is take ordinary but popular themes and create a drama of epic proportions on the subject of Morality. It is the cinematic equivalent of taking a few blocks of stone, mortar and gravel and building the Altar of Zeus, an artistic symbol of timeless beauty. But then again, its so easy to miss the point

On the deplorable state of TV advertising

2008-08-13T22:18:00.000+05:30

Have you seen the ads for BSNL and Tata broadband connections, in which Preity Zinta and Kajol try to convince us that their respective internet connections are the best? Kajol tells us that she uses Tata Indicom, and urges us to do the same. Obviously, Kajol's vast knowledge of xDSL technologies and frequency bandwidths easily qualify her as an expert on broadband internet connectivity. So naturally, she is the person to consult if you are looking to get a broadband connection at home. And, if you want to get a landline connection, who better to guide you than Preity, who after painstakingly analysing the merits and demerits of all the other available options in the market, has arrived at the conclusion that BSNL is the best.

Look at these mobile phone adverts. Pay special attention to the people who are using the phones being advertised. Is this what mobile phone companies think their customers look like? Maybe.

Whereas in reality, the people who actually use these mobile phones look like this:-

Why then, are normal ugly people not featured in these ads? Don't ugly people form images on negative photographic film, and hence cannot be used in photo shoots? Are mobile phone companies which use good looking models in their adverts eligible for generous tax concessions under The Income Tax Act, 1961? Are Good looking models cheaper than the bad looking ones, so it is cheaper to produce an ad with good looking faces? Are ugly people rare to find? Is it far easier and quicker to find a good looking girl instead?

Maybe the beautiful models look like and represent the targeted demographic segment for the mobile phones, and since companies are forever competing with each other to grab the biggest possible share of the market, it stands to reason that a vast majority of people in India are extremely pretty girls.

Or maybe it was pure happenstance that for a long time went unnoticed. ("Hey!! By the way, did you notice all our ads have had pretty models in them?" "Whoa! Yes!! It had absolutely slipped my attention!")

But I think its because the people in the ad agency figure that people who watch the ad think that because a good looking girl uses the phone, they should also use it. A pretty person is more persuasive than an ugly person. That should obviously be true, because the last time I checked, Priyanka Chopra had convinced more people to buy toilet soaps than Stephen Hawking had.

Groundbreaking Dutch study links overeating with obesity !!!

2008-07-30T20:43:00.000+05:30

How many Dutch scientists do you know, or have even heard of? I can name only one - Christian Huygens, but then he was more a speculator than a scientist. When the Europeans and the Americans were busy discovering electricity, gravitation, photons, X-rays, black holes, vaccination, solar systems and automobiles, the Dutch largely remained quiet, occasionally breaking their technological silence with an odd invention like the device to slice beetroot or the paperweight. But just after the late 1980s, when the scientific community reached a more or less stable state and new inventions became increasingly hard to come by, it appeared as though we were finally exhausted from running hard in the African jungles, and had stopped for a breather only to find ourselves surrounded by cannibals armed with spears and poison darts. And just when we were staring at each other with open mouths in deathly silence, sweating, panting and without a clue as to how to escape from the awkward situation, the Dutch arrived accompanied by a loud din, crashing in sideways in a flurry of flying test tubes and slide rules, burying everyone neck deep in a pile of reseach papers. The next thing you'd expect them to do would be stand up and look around quickly, dust their coats and announce that they were alright.

The volume and quality of research output from The Netherlands has, in recent days rattled the whole scientific machinery, with such breathtaking revelations about the myriad workings of the universe as:

Friday the 13th is not unlucky.

Customers return the products that they can't use.

Children of lesbian couples are like other children.

When people play loud music, they are aware of it.

Drugs are good.

If you eat chocolate, you will live to be 140.

Drugs are good.

Even though twins look the same, they are different people.

When people don't want to quote the exact source of a stupid and obscure scientific finding, why do they always start with "Researchers in the Netherlands have found that..."? Who are these Researchers in Netherlands, and what else have they found out? Has anyone ever bothered to investigate? Do such people really exist, or are they just a stereotype? Short bespectacled men in white labcoats and miner's helmets, holding clipboards, hunched over a mouse cage, taking notes, pretending to be interested.

Look at that picture. Why do those people need labcoats, gloves, shower caps, safety glasses and gas masks to read what's written on a clipboard? Even if it was a sinister noxious-gas emitting clipboard, why is only one person wearing that gas-mask? Doesn't the older man care about his safety? Maybe he is a seasoned old veteran who has seen it all. Even if poisonous gases are emitted, does the scientist on the left really think that the flimsy piece of cloth can save him from the resulting slow and gruesome death? Why are they wearing shower caps? Because they don't want the hazardous clipboard to catch dandruff? Even if you concede that it is a fair thought, why is the man on the LEFT wearing it? He doesn't even have any hair!

Do these chimpanzees really think they can outwit the micro-organisms by wearing silly hats? Who are these people and what exactly are they doing in the picture? Are they even real scientists?

What are those clowns discussing, anyway? The effect of Korean hip-hop music on the embryo of a platypus? The correlation of a graph that links teenage pregnancy with political turmoil in Chechnya?Why do all laboratory accessories come only in white? Won't purple labcoats work just as well?

Recently a team of researchers in Netherlands found that Fluoride in drinking water increases the risk of hip fractures in women. A few months later, another study showed that the fluoridation/hip fracture link was not gender specific between high and low fluoride areas. Barely a few months later, another team from The Netherlands found that Fluoride has nothing absolutely to do with anything at all. A team of researchers studying the polar ice caps reported decreasing ice volumes. Another team of researchers studying the polar ice caps reported increasing ice volumes. Another study established that it is both increasing and decreasing. I am not kidding. The third, ground breaking study quoted "A change in one direction must be matched by a change in the opposite direction, in order to preserve physical harmony in the universe. The predicted result is that sea levels will both rise and fall, depending, of course, upon the perspective of the observer." Those are NOT my words. A scientific study found that fish oil is very beneficial for health. A Dutch study found that fish oil is not beneficial for health.

They really are kicking up some serious scientific dust in Netherlands, aren't they? (Doesn’t nether land mean hell or something?) They advise you to eat Brussels sprouts because it prevents cancer, and then they advise you against eating it because it causes DNA damage. They invent lithium batteries and Bluetooth headsets for cell phones and then warn you against the harmful effects of cell phone radiation. It always seems that research in The Netherlands is sponsored by two rival groups of corporate giants who want to prove each other's products unworthy. In fact scientific funding is so abundant in Netherlands, and the volume of research is so staggering that around 60% of the Dutch are scientists. The other 17 are drug peddlers and prostitutes.

What kind of questions do such findings answer? Who is asking those questions? What manner of scientific or intellectual thirst does it quench? Honestly, I cannot imagine the level of sheer desperation, or boredom that would drive a man towards a line of research such as that. What could it be? The belief that every other significant thing has already been discovered, and all that remains in the world to be done is establish beyond doubt that children who grow up with noisy neighbours tend to be socially inactive in their late 40s?

Please stop taking scientific research seriously. Don't believe anyone. Not especially those tarot-card readers and fortune tellers cleverly disguised as scientists in white labcoats. They are the scum of the scientific world, the disgusting creatures that live behind hinges and in dark corners. Never buy science from a person who seems to know what he is talking about. In science is sometimes wiser to trust a person who is clueless.

Seriously, if scientists hadn't fooled around with such useless research and focussed on the really important things, we might have already cured cancer, or eradicated hunger and poverty. The downside of it is that we might also have invented bigger, more powerful bombs...So maybe its good that the most resourceful minds in the world (not necessarily Dutch) are kept occupied with inventing ceramic cheese graters and talking coat-hangers. Maybe we can put off annihilation by a few more years.

Crude Oil crisis - What the US should do.

2008-07-24T22:19:00.000+05:30

Here are a few pointers for the policy-makers in the US govt on how to deal with the oil crisis. As I see it, the US Govt has the following options to bring down the crude-oil prices back to sustainable levels.

1) Mount a covert operation to hide away all your motor vehicles for a month. Don't allow any cars or trucks on the roads. Plant false media reports that Toyota and Honda have independently invented teleportation, and the days of the automobile are past. Plant media reports that the Japanese car manufacturing giants have patented two designs of the teleportation machine and are undercutting each other's prices. Convince the world that internal combustion engines have been declared illegal and anyone found in possession with intent to use is being shot on sight. Make sure that TV reports show empty roads and airstrips for an entire month. Since the economy of the Arab nations and a large part of the former Soviet Union and Venezuela depends on Oil exports, and with no scope for export revenue, they will soon begin to panic. In a desperate attempt to save the motorcar (and hence their economy) they will be forced to approach your Government. They will be on their knees, begging you to take away all their oil reserves in return for few sandwiches. Take ownership of their oil fields, without seeming to be too keen. When its done, bring back your cars and airplanes, and resume your normal life.

2) All this fuss is over crude oil, which is essentially fossil fuel. Buried old carcasses of animals. So, logically the only reason Middle Eastern Asia is rich in oil reserves is because at one point of time, that region was the most populated in the world. It is too late to do anything about it now, but there is still hope. You can secure energy independence for your future generations. Start by encouraging immigration. Increase your population. Promote promiscuous inbreeding. Lift job curbs on migrant workers, promote immigration. Take in refugees. Adopt the biggest refugee camps in Africa, and bring them home. Encourage obesity in schools. Lift the ban on lard. Ban exercise instead. So, finally when the world plunges into a dark ice age, 3 billion overweight people will be buried under 5 miles of snow. Maybe a million years later, you might have a slight edge over the Middle Eastern countries. It may not be much of a chance, but under given circumstances, its the best you've got. Some economists I have spoken to seem to be of opinion that for world dominance, giving yourself 1 million years may be a tad pessimistic, which brings me to my next point.

3) Invade Saudi Arabia.

And Russia. And while you are at it, annex Iran, The United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait. Bomb the living daylights out of Canada and Mexico, and kill all refugees. Kill every man, woman and child in Venezuela, Norway and China. Simultaneously, using your air strike capabilities, capture Peru, Brazil and Siberia. Alaska is already yours but bomb it anyway, just to be sure. Bomb the hell out of Bering Sea, South China Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and carpet-bomb most of the Pacific Ocean, just to mark your territory. Seeing the trail of death and destruction, Algeria and Nigeria will throw up their arms in the air and surrender without a fight. You will then have undisputed control over 59 million barrels per day of supply and over 1189 billion barrels of oil reserves, besides a lot of cheap real estate.

4) Next, confiscate all automobiles in China, UK, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Russia and India. With no cars left in the 7 largest oil importers and with no human beings left to drive them anyway, the demand for crude oil would fall to near zero levels. Finish off the steel and fertilizer plants to do a thorough job. When oil suddenly becomes so cheap, nothing will stand in the way of your economic growth. More thermal power plants will flourish, cars will become bigger and faster, more space stations will be launched, more factories will be opened, clean energy projects will become prohibitively expensive and hence will be justifiably abandoned. Forests and polar ice caps will vanish and so will the sun - behind a screen of thick black smoke, which will give the earth perfect camouflage in outer space, so wandering alien space-settlements will accidentally crash into it, and the alien spectators will think its a black hole and will dutifully follow suit, doing what is expected of them, careful not to annoy the laws of physics; thus destroying whatever is left on earth. But what is buried under an ocean of rubble is a hundred billion tonnes of decaying human carcass, which would one day form the reason for another fine political engagement, thus setting it up nicely for a sequel.

On a lighter note, my grand-uncle recently told me that he drove from Kottayam, Kerala to Madras - a distance of 700km on a tankful of diesel in his Ambassador. It cost him Rs.45 in 1971. For Rs.45 these days, you cannot even crank an engine one revolution. I wish I could tell kids 30 years later that I travelled 700 km for Rs.45, but I don't want to. I love my planet too much to let petrol remain cheap.

If there is indeed a solution to the oil crisis, it's got to be one of these. Anything else is just a compromise. You have nuclear reactors and multi billion dollar auto industry backed researches into ceramic superconductors and ultra efficient electric-hybrid-DNA cars that run on love and sunshine. Those Sheikhs have nothing, just a few pipes stuck into the ground. What chance do they have? If with all the might of your atomic energy and nuclear science you couldn't put a few camel jockeys out of business, well you're pretty much screwed.

And that's all I have to say on that.

Some more things about the universe that don't make any sense to me...

2008-07-23T21:04:00.000+05:30

1) Why do they say "the ball is in your court"? The players are not playing on different courts, are they? Shouldn't they say "the ball is in your SIDE of the court"?

2) What do they mean when they say "3 different times"? Isn't "3 times" enough to convey the message? "I lost my pen 3 different times that day", as opposed to what, 3 same times?

3) Just because you make vernacular motion pictures in a certain town in India doesn't mean you have to name it after the biggest movie industry town in the world. The name of a movie town doesn't HAVE to rhyme with Hollywood. Bollywood! Its OKAY to just call it Hindi film industry. Same goes for Tollywood and Kollywood. The Bombay stock exchange is not called BASDAQ.

4) "Walking distance" is NOT a measure of distance. How the hell long is walking distance anyway? I could walk to the north pole if I had the time.

5) If you pay Rs.100 for this -

would you pay Rs.50 for this...?

Then can butchers just point at leghorn hens in the bushes and collect 50 bucks for each?

Oxygen!! I need Oxygen!!!!

If you want Boeing to manufacture airliners with ceramic plumbing fixtures, stay off cereal.

2008-07-23T19:04:00.000+05:30

Hunger Strikes. I could never really get a handle on the whole concept. It seems there is nothing these days that you cannot protest against by staying hungry. Two powerful nations make a deal to exchange atomic technology in a multi-billion dollar deal that can secure the energy-independence of a large part of the third world; Eastern European refugees are mercilessly slaughtered by soldiers armed with AK-47 assault rifles; Arch gravity dams are built by geotechnical engineers aided by the Government and secretly backed by major power corporations. You read about all this in the news and conclude that the world is upto no good, and decide to do something about it.

What do you do? Do you mobilize the power hungry masses of a deprived communist nation and start a revolution to overthrow the dictatorship? Do you mastermind a secret plot to assassinate the president of the United States of America? Do you thrust anti-aircraft guns and pepper spray into the hands of crane operators and paper mill workers and lead an invasion of the solar system? No. Instead you decide to skip lunch. And assure the media that you are not on a weight-loss diet.

I fail to understand how people can think that they can bring about a change by not eating. How do you combat persuasive political will and corporate greed? Quite literally by skipping lunch! It's a bit like hoping to ward off the Spanish armada, armed with a watermelon.

What do you think is going on behind those thick boardroom walls?

Politician 1: "Gentlemen, we have managed to secure the Government's approval for construction of the nuclear power plant. The project will be sanctioned in a couple of weeks. The reaction chambers are being assembled in Volgograd and the enriched Uranium ore is being loaded into an Ukrainian vessel in Shanghai even as we speak. Phase II of the project will go live in exactly 90 days from now, and within 6 months, our newly installed power plant would produce 11500 MW of power."

Politician 2: "That's great news! We are well on our way to becoming a nuclear superpower. Nothing can stop us now!"

Politician 2's sidekick (in a small voice): "Umm...there could be one small problem..."

(at this point deathly silence suddenly descends upon the room. There is a collective holding of breaths in the room, and the tension mounts)

Politician 2's sidekick nervously continues, "Well, uhh...umm... some environmentalist from Nagpur has not eaten since morning..."

(Everyone in the room gasps in horror, looks of disbelief all around.)

Corporate Mogul: " Oh No! Not THAT! Politician 1! How could you let this happen?! Our plan was supposed to be airtight! How could you let this happen?! What are we going to do now?! Our entire nuclear strategy is compromised now!"

Politician 1: "Honestly gentlemen, we didn't see this one coming. Since we, the Government and the corporate giants care deeply for the gastronomical well being of our social activists, this new and unforeseeable development leaves us with no alternative but to pull out of the deal. Delegates of the press, representatives of our corporate sponsors and representatives of the UN and the G5 nations, we apologize for the inconvenience. Bhel-puri is served in the stalls in the lobby, thank you for your time."

Seriously protesters, do you imagine boardroom conversations to be like that? Look at the situation objectively. In my rational opinion, no one would be hassled if you stop eating, unless they want to sell you popcorn. On the other hand, all considered, few things are more convincing and persuasive than the unfastened end of the barrel of a 5.56mm M4 carbine staring at your temple like a Nazi pit-bull. Hunger of course, is a mute statue compared with the persuasive eloquence of the immediate possibility of 30 rounds of a semiautomatic burst jostling for space with your larynx.

No one has ever died while fasting. It's a fact. Place that large heavy machine gun order before they find out.

The Men Are Back with a lot less

2008-07-22T19:06:00.000+05:30

No Anti roll bars
No Limited Slip Differential
No twin-Garett Turbochargers
No Pirelli P-Zero semi slicks
No sodium-cooled titanium valves
No Dihedro-synchrohelic actuation gullwing doors
No Traction Control
No Active Suspension
No Seven-speed Sequential paddle shift gearbox
No Brembo high-performance discs
No carbon-fibre monocoque
No Electronic Launch Control
No rear spoilers, no Venturi ducts
No variable geometry engine intake
No Afterburners

Who Killed the Dodo?!

2008-06-23T20:12:00.000+05:30

In the unimaginably dark and distant past, ancient fish crawled out of the oceans on their fins, gasping for breath, often getting stuck in slosh and being washed back into the oceans by the tides. The searing heat of the still young sun penetrating through a toxic, light atmosphere would desiccate their eyes and soak up their lives. Countless fish lay dead on the sea shore with that open-mouthed dead look that somehow only fish can manage. Yet they persevered, they never gave up...with their flimsy fins and fragile semi-formed vertebrae, they dragged their bodies across the sea shore. It took hundreds of thousands of years of painstaking effort, groveling on their sides, lugging themselves forward with their weak, undeveloped fins. Filling their embryonic semi-formed lungs with short gasps of noxious air and choking helplessly, sucking fluids from ancient pinecones using their toothless mouths, their desperate bodies lunging and writhing in the cancerous heat of an alien environment, rubbing against the sand to shed scales. These were our ancient fore-fathers, creatures we owe our existence to. But for the courage and determination shown by these daring primordial beings, life would have been much different. And you'd think they'd be remembered more often...

Anyway, fish eventually became reptiles, some of which became lizards and later, birds.

After this relatively humble beginning, Life gained momentum. Newer and bolder skeletal structures emerged, some terrifying and some downright comical. There was a brief time when large lizards were fashionable, but for some reason, it didn’t stick. When the ground became clear of these huge reptiles, the apes slowly began to wonder whether it would be a good idea to venture down. Gradually as they gained courage, they sent the first ape down, to experiment. Unfortunately as it was closing time, it failed to notice its tail and tripped and landed on its head with much force, causing considerable damage. It later went on to breed and populate Australia. However the other apes descended without incident and in what is widely regarded as a bad move, quickly got rid of their tails and became Man, and would later chase down and trap the other apes who didn't descend from the trees and teach them how to juggle eleven burning chainsaws while balancing three Campari bottles on the nose and walking on a tightrope over a deep ravine with hungry crocodiles, while giving a discourse about the history of Palestine in Japanese. They would also go on to be the first species to try and kill other members of the same species for no good reason.

Somewhere along the line, Tigers made a brief cameo appearance too. With their feline charms and swashbuckling stripes they streaked through history like a comet, radiating raw sexual energy, making old girls happy and young girls even happier. They were the original Casanovas. They bred profusely and unashamedly, their desire for Food, Sex and The Good Life overcoming all objections of modesty and virtue. Their numbers were growing at an alarming rate, when some idiot had to discover cordite and ruin it for them. They had a good thing going though, before it was an abrupt Game-Over. They are still remembered in bed these days. (In bedtime stories, obviously!)

Given how surprisingly fair and unbiased a process evolution is, some occurrences are simply astonishing.

The extinction of the Dodo, for one. They were massive birds with incredibly strong pectoral muscles. They descended from the great flighted dinosaurs. They could kill their prey by thrashing it with their wings alone. For hundreds of thousands of years, they inhabited the wild islands off the African coast, and were the unchallenged masters of the ecosystem. They were at the apex of the food chain. They were on a roll, they were at the top of their game.

The Gouldian Finch on the other hand is one of world's most delicate and fragile birds. It requires of all things, fire for its food. It feeds mainly on the seeds of one plant - speargrass. It is only after forest fires - started by accident or by man - have cleared the undergrowth that the birds can reach the seeds on the ground. With a handicap like that, you'd think the first Gouldian Finch would have been lucky to see off a few seasons, but No. That bird has survived 60 million years.

The emperor penguin lives and breeds in temperatures less than -45C. The Ivory Gull breeds further north than any other bird, and it perfectly adapted to the conditions which defeat most other life forms. The Bar-headed goose lives on the Tibetian plateau, on the coldest desert on the roof of the world. The Oilbird lives in the pitch blackness of Venezuelan caves. The Rufous Hummingbird survives and breeds at altitudes of 9000ft and at temperatures well below freezing by making a nest of the highest insulate qualities, a network of lichen and spiders web.

Or you'd think the case of the Bermuda Petrel would be a sure bet. It lives in burrows on the side of cliffs just above the sea-line. Minuscule amounts of Chlorofluorocarbons spewed into the atmosphere, a tiny hole in the ozone layer, a wee bit of global warming followed by a small increase in sea levels, and there you are. The Bermuda Petrel, gone. History. Bummer. Sitting Duck. No-brainer. Checkmated by the giant evolution machinery!

And of all these, guess who had to go? The mighty Dodo! And why, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, after having survived the long and cold ice age? Because a bunch of hungry Dutchmen arrived in Africa.

The Dinosaurs.
Earth trembled when they walked. They impacted biological history like nothing before or after them, they roamed around with such an other-worldly eminence that in the 200-odd million years that they lasted, they reigned with unchallenged supremacy. Their dominance over other life forms was total, their might unparallelled. They were evolution's greatest triumph, a showcase of extreme biological adaptation. It took a shower of heavenly bodies to put them to rest and end their era. Their total dominance of the food chain would be unmatched in degree and extent till 65 million years after they were annihilated. Their influence was so great, so profound that many species spun off their biologcal pedigree - Birds, crocodiles, lizards, Komobo dragons, even turtles inhabit the earth to this day. Why did they have to go?

The Cockroach
It is the unassuming insect that defeated the mighty Dinosaur in the evolution race, and is all poised to outlast Man, too. Its epidermis is stronger than an elephant's, it is resistant to bacterial infection, its hard, strong exoskeleton can withstand G-forces at which human beings would pass out, they have an incredibly co-ordinated group emergency behaviour, they are cold blooded and are resistant to cell division under nuclear radiation, they don't mutate, they can feed on practically anything. They have been around for 240 million years, they have survived meteor showers, the ice age, the bronze age, and the Liberace age. They are currently doing a very good job of survival in the tele-shopping age. So they can no doubt survive nuclear attacks. The next time you see a cockroach running around, remember that in the long evolutionary race, it will outrun you. After the brief moment of reflection, give it a mighty whack on the head.

Take the case of the Penguin. Here is another evolutionary anomaly. Here is evidence that someone somewhere has seriously messed up. When this kind of mistake shows up, it means someone screwed up seriously at a very early stage, and the anomaly is the symptom merely, of a more deep rooted cause.

How can you explain that appearance? What excuse does evolution have to produce something like that and still be in business? Whatever its ancestor was, just what was it thinking as it began evolving? What strategic roadmap and goals did it lay before itself as it started rolling or stretching or listening to rap music or doing whatever it is that one does to initiate evolution? To what end has a concatenation of geographic, climactic and chemical changes resulted in such a hideous life form? Since everything in the known universe is known to have been caused by something and in turn cause something else, what painstakingly calculated scheme does nature intend for this...thing to play a pivotal role in? What exactly is that Penguin-shaped hole in the expanse of the grand evolutionary blueprint that this creature is supposed to plug? What appalling life form is this bird supposed to give rise to? What can be more unsightly than this? How can Mother Nature create such a being and still keep a straight face?

And finally, here is a drastically simplified evolution chart.

If those primitive invertebrates knew that their revolutionary, world changing act of leaving the oceans and settling down on land would eventually, after countless millions of years result in that thing on the right, I wonder whether they would have bothered at all.

(I had to plug in the tiger bit...it was a contractual obligation)

Do Sumo wrestlers use chopsticks?

2008-06-09T19:51:00.000+05:30

In Japan, unlike in the southern part of India, the focus while eating is clearly not on quantity or volume. Take the chopstick, for example. What purpose does the chopstick serve? Why would anyone in their right mind use a stick to eat rice with? What were these people thinking? They estimated the effort it took to wash their hands after a meal and said "that seems like a lot of work. I would rather invent something which would involve no washing afterwards. It doesnt matter if it takes me an hour working at full speed, to eat a handful of rice. It doesnt matter if on many occasions I lose the patience to eat halfway through a meal. It doesnt matter if I am eating a bowlful of rice one grain at a time, doesn't matter that I am working the chopsticks at such a tremendous speed that they have their own magnetic field. (that probably explains why the Japanese take off their shoes and watches before eating)."

Do they discard the chopsticks after eating or do they wash them and reuse them? I read somewhere that they usually wash and reuse the chopsticks, but that defeats the purpose for which they were invented, doesn't it?

Maybe they like playing with their food before eating it. But what joy can be derived from watching three grains of rice writhe in pain and agony as you chew on them and crush them between your enormous moss-covered molars? That theory obviously doesn't hold water.

Anyway, at the same time, Japan had its share of smart people, too. There was a smart but elite group of tree-hugging environmentalists who boycotted the whole chopstick movement. They were highly intelligent people who knew that one would exert more energy eating the food than one would gain by digesting it. In Japan, you would lose more weight if you ate food than if you didn't. So, they wisely followed the eating techniques prevalent at that time in the southern part of India. They never used chopsticks. Even to this day, you will never find a Sumo wrestler eating with a chopstick.

I would have given anything to see the look on the chopstick-inventor's face when someone came up with the idea of a spoon. It’s easy to imagine a defeated, yet proud Japanese face. It is easy to imagine any Japanese face for that matter.

Chopsticks are made by chopping down trees. So shouldn't they technically be called choptrees?

Never mention Nefertiti to a Necrophile

2008-06-09T19:22:00.000+05:30

I have a caffeine buzz. I feel dizzy and disorientated. I’m sitting ramrod straight in a straight chair, but i feel like a warped polyhedron. I feel dizzy, my head is spinning, my palms are sweating and my fingers are trembling. There is static electricity in my gut, like charged butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I don't know if it’s the caffeine. It could be the caffeine, but I'm not sure. I hope its the caffeine. Something is pulling me, trying to align me towards the magnetic lines of flux. I am sitting up, but I feel gravity is acting on my body in the wrong direction. I feel the blood rushing to my head, like im hung upside down. I've been nodding my head for sometime now. I don't know why. I should stop. I make a mental note of it. I nod my head. I don't stop. I hope it’s the caffeine. I am looking at the computer screen, and I'm blank. My hands are working independent of the rest of my body, working on commands that my mind doesn’t remember giving, furiously typing away, dancing across the keyboard like supercharged spiders on redbull. My mind is far away, thinking something else. My eyes read what my hands are typing. It is strange...I don’t know who is typing what i'm reading. My hands are performing, and my eyes are the audience. It is all new to me. I am being told a story by a being which has possessed my fingers alone. Every word I type is a revelation. It is all heartbreakingly obvious. Damn, why didn’t I think of that before? Someone is trying to communicate to me. There is an alien chick in distress somewhere, in some parallel universe in an unknown dimension and she needs my help! I have to rescue her from the evil goblin who has captured and imprisoned her in the tallest tower of a castle. He has violently murdered the two brave adventurers who set out before me to rescue the princess and ripped open their guts. I follow the trail of intestines and lungs leading up to the topmost tower. I sight the goblin. I see him playing with a gleaming ruby-studded sword, which I realize is the instrument that I am supposed to slay him with. Seeing him use it to pick his nose is discouraging. I realize I have to sneak up behind him, snatch the sword from his disgusting hands and plunge it deep into his throat and then extract it and stab him again and again and again and again and finally bury the sword to the hilt in his left eye. Somehow I suspect that it would disappoint him. I wonder what I'll do with the other hand while I'm thrusting the blade inside his body and tearing it open. I would put it in my pocket, I guess. I could stroke the goblin's head, but they wouldn’t make awfully nice pets but then again not everyone gets to stroke a goblin's head, because they would bite your hands right off, so the best time to do it would be when there is a huge sword buried between its eyebrows. Since I don’t have anything else to do today, I think I'll kill an evil goblin. But no, wait... I realize I'm actually in the mood for a murder scene. I like gore. That's just what I want right now. So, in an unexpected show of grit and valour, I sit back on the bean bag with a coke and wait see the bit where the princess gets raped by the goblin and then gets eaten up.

I am fading away. Thank god it's wearing off. I don't know how I got here, but I'm going away now. The next time I feel sleepy, I will not be tempted. I will stick to my principles. I will NOT drink coffee. I will do the right thing. I will not chicken out. I will not give in. I will be brave and do the dignified thing, uncomfortable though it may be. I will sleep.

I make a mental note...

Absurd Inventions - part 1 of many

2008-06-02T22:43:00.000+05:30

Before toilet paper was invented, people were using corncobs and squirrels for the purpose. But the face tissue was already in use even BEFORE the toilet paper was patented, so why didn't they just use the face tissue instead? Hygiene could not have been an issue. If its clean enough to wipe your face with, its clean enough for pretty much everything else. And besides, its definitely an improvement over a dead squirrel's tail.

The guy who patented the rolled, pre-moistened toilet tissue called it "Medicated paper", and he insisted that his name be printed on every ply. Medicated, hmm...

btw, Here is a list of things that people used before TP was invented.

Newsprint
Hayballs
wool
Corncobs
Mussel shell
Sand
Coconut shells
Lace (guess who used lace - the French!)
This one walks away with the cake...Sponge soaked in brine, attached to the end of a long stick (The ancient Romans)
Wool and rosewater
Hemp (!!!!)
Snow and moss (the Eskies)

Hmmmm....

2008-06-02T20:09:00.000+05:30

Business. Enhance. Strategy. Improve. Long-Term. Delivery. Integrated. Management. Approach. Assessment. Process. Competency. Convergence. Efficiency. Value Chain. Dynamic. Solution. Value Proposition.

I have no idea what these words mean. But I can throw in a few adjuncts and string them together to describe what I do for a living. Guess what I do for a living. Yours will be as good as mine.

Delivery of long-term business strategy, coupled with an Integrated management approach towards process competency and Delivery convergence, together with a strategic approach towards knowledge management and improvement of inherent value chain inefficiencies.

In more civilized times, a man was either a farmer, a cobbler, a carpenter, a soldier or a baker. More often than not, you could tell what he did for a living just by looking at him. But these days, people no longer mend shoes or grow paddy or dispense justice. No. Instead, they model process flows, they map converging strategic competencies and work out integrated dynamic solutions that enhance the business value. So if you don't keep up with the changing times, you'd never be able to guess a person's profession by looking at him.

I once met a guy on a train. He was carrying a laptop, so I asked him if he was an IT consultant. He seemed genuinely hurt by that. After I told him how sorry I was, he told me that he was in fact a Change management agent dealing with post-production implementation discrepancies. I was then in the business of selling trucks, and if someone asked me what I did, I'd first ask them if they are in the business of selling trucks. If they said yes, I would say "I sell trucks, too". And if they said no, i would patiently explain to them saying "I sell trucks."

Gone are those days. I now deal with Business Process Management, and I model process flows and harvest business policies, enabling organisations to deal more efficiently with long term strategy by enhancing the value proposition of service offerings. Yeah. That's what you'd think if you looked at me.

Why my TV has a large hole in the centre

2008-06-02T19:45:00.000+05:30

In the IPL match a few days back, I heard these dazzling quotes:

"Chennai is different from Kolkatta, geographically speaking." No shit? if chennai was georgaphically the same as kolkatta, it would be called kolkta and not chennai, you loser. What the hell is geographically speaking, anyway? Who the hell speaks geographically?

"After having had a look at their winning streak in the past few games, they wouldn't want to lose this match." So it took them a long look at their winning streak to realise that they don't want to lose this one? What dipshits! I wonder what would have happened if they hadn't seen the newspapers that morning - would they have wanted to lose?

Here is what a buffoon with a french beard managed to convey in 180 seconds: "Yeah, absolutely! Exactly! That's what I've been saying all along. You are right. There is no doubt about it. No doubt in my mind at all. The actual trouble is, if you really think about it, if he was asked to bat any other way, I am sure he cannot do it, because this is the only way he knows how to bat. It would be a great loss to the Indian team, and the spectators, and the sponsors and everyone else that we know if he was forced to bat any other way, because as I said earlier this is the only way he can bat. Yes, absolutely. I think we should also consider the fact that he has been an opener and has been in situations where he has had to bat like this, and he did...thats what I'm saying. Absolutely."

aaaarrrrggghhhhh! Somebody show me that Life insurance commercial, quick!!!

After the toss: "Captain, that was a nice toss to win. What are u going to do?"
Captain:"I guess we'll bat"
Commentator: "Great."
(What he should have said instead to boost the TRP ratings:"You GUESS? Make up your mind first, you clumsy baboon!"
Continues..."So, er... you'd like to get a good total on the board and defend it when the other team comes out to bat?"
Captain: "Yeah...the pitch seems dry blah blah blah"
(What he should have said instead to boost the TRP ratings:"Oh no no no! I think you've got it all wrong. What we would like to do is get out as soon as possible after making very few runs, and then when the opposition comes out to bat, we'd all like to dress up like the Limpopo tribals on a full moon night and come out here and do a nekkid mexican wave." That would have been refreshing.

During the match, one of the commentators says "The match has reached a stage where victory can go to either Punjab or Kolkotta. Wow. Now THAT was real deep, you shithead. So either Punjab or Kolkotta it is, eh?! Thanks for pointing that one out... I would never have figured it out on my own! If you hadn't reminded me, I would have probably thought Uzbekistan would have won the match! But hey, wait... you spoiled the surprise for me!

Madame Bovary

2008-05-27T21:11:00.000+05:30

The Hen was being chased by an intercontinental ballistic missile with a thermonuclear warhead, and she had run through narrow alleys and subways and traffic intersections in a futile bid to escape. She had ducked, weaved and changed lanes and tried everything else that occurred to her powerful intellect, but to no avail, as the multimegaton thermonuclear warhead had relentlessly powered its way across the atlantic at hypersonic speeds crossing arctic peaks, sub-saharan tropical forests and also cruising in outer space for a while, because its homing device had locked itself onto the GPS transmitter embedded in The Hen's neck by the evil Dr.Merkwürdigeliebe. So she was running along this highway, with a million computations and escape routes and back-up plans all worked out in her mind and ready to execute in a fraction of a second when she saw this huge oil tanker approaching...and she thought to herself that if she crossed over at the right moment from under the tanker, the nuclear warhead would hit it instead and everything in a 20 mile radius would go up in flames, and the entire town would be annihilated, burnt beyond recognition, which was fine because The Hen was really a Soviet spy who wanted to destroy the town in the first place, and it was all part of an elaborate communist plot to conquer the Moon and establish a monopoly in the Calciate alabaster market... so all The Hen had to do was just roll under the chassis of the oil tanker as it sped past. But the warhead was fast approaching, gaining on The Hen at hypersonic speed, its tip glowing red hot and its explosive power causing the entire shank to shudder in deathly vibration. Cars and trucks were overturned in its wake and glass panes shattered in the sonic boom, and as the moment of impact approached The Hen turned back in slow motion and the missile was reflected in the black of its deep eyes, and it knew in its bones that all it had to do was just cross over.... to just get to the other side of the road. And it did it in classic, unforgettable style.

And that honeybum, is why the chicken crossed the road.

PS: That also explains why its such a bad idea to eat chicken.

Some things about the universe I've never been able to comprehend...

2008-05-27T20:30:00.000+05:30

If the dog in the manger is asleep, would you complain?

Why do they call an easy target a sitting duck? Its not as if standing ducks can easily out-manoeuvre cheetas. They are not even brisk swimmers. Can ducks sit?

Why doesnt our moon have a name?

When people say "Can I ask you something?", is that a trick question?

Why dont we ever see obese lions or tigers?

Isn't agriculture the worst ever thing to happen to us? Imagine how long the lunch hour would be if we'd had to go out and hunt down zebras for food!

If dinosaurs hadn't become extinct, would they have made good pets? Would we have seen dino-food commercials?

Would temples in Kerala have had Mastodons? Would we have seen Butter-Dodo, Dodo-65 and Tandoori Dodo on menus?

Why do cats fight with dogs but play games with mice? Whom then, will the mice play with if the cat is away?

What would you call a person living in Andaman & Nicobar? An Andamanan and Nicobaran?

Aaaaarrrggghhh!!!

2008-05-26T18:56:00.000+05:30

And here it comes again... A perfectly good day with nothing wrong about it, except that its a monday!

On how to survive in Madras

2008-05-20T19:42:00.000+05:30

If you are living in Madras and are finding it difficult to cope, you might find these pointers very helpful.

1. If you don't like Sambar, just close your eyes and gulp it down. There is no way you can avoid it here. Thinking of it as Dal tadka with tamarind juice spilt in it might help.

2. If you don't like south indian food, search for alternatives instead of cribbing about it.

3. If you do like south indian food, the next time you eat that mountain of rice remember that you have ingested enough energy to power a medium sized industrial cement mixer for a whole day. And in the time it takes your body to burn it all off, you would have eaten four more meals and would have put on enough weight to look like a prehistoric dinosaur with flesh hanging like curtains from its neck and arms. Go home. Feel good about it.

4. It is too hot. Yeah. 40C is hot. What are you, a fucking polar bear? Stop whining and put up with the heat.

5. Humidity. Yes, it is very humid. So use a deodrant.

6. There are no pretty girls. What can I do about it? There are some things for which even I don't have an answer.

7. Don't make fun of the Tamil accent, you shallow fuck. Know that "they" are making just as much fun of you as you are of them.

8. When a guy says, "Vaves begave likea mattre vonly ven they are in the prezence aaf yae graavitationala field-uh.", stop sniggering and listen to what he is saying instead of how he is saying it, you disgusting dirtbag. The guy could have just described the general theory of relativity. He could have been Ramanujam for all you know, but No. His accent is more important. You shallow pieces of shit.

8. I have heard so many people complaining that house rents are skyrocketing, auto-wallahs demand ridiculous fares, books are no longer cheap in Moore market etc. You obviously hold me responsible for all that. And because I was told at a very young age never to start a sentence with And and since you were obviously born yesterday, let me explain something to you.

There is a popular theory.

If in a forest there are 10 chimpanzees selling books and 100 gorillas who want to buy books, then the highest price quoted by the most gullible gorilla prevails in the forest. The 10 chimpanzees don't care how street smart the other 99 gorillas are or how attractive their backsides look, they just dont want to bargain. They want to find that one dumbass gorilla and sell him all their stuff.

It is called free market capitalism. If you don't like it, go and live in Cuba. You may find www.havana-rentals.com very helpful.

If you don't mind capitalism, there is some dipshit going around fixing rents and thrusting wads of cash into autowallahs' pockets. Find him and kill him. It will at lease keep the rents in check.

As long as there are people like you who keep giving the autowallahs what they ask for, prices will continue to remain high. Next time the autowallah asks you for 50 bucks for a two kilometre ride, walk. Don't go to Saravana bhavan and pay 40 bucks for a dosa. Eat at home. The next time the landlord quotes Rs.15000 for a 1bhk in Ponneri, dont bow your head. Don't look away. Dont mumble. Walk away. Don't give him the pleasure. Tell him you would rather live in a sewage pipe.

If enough people follow this, there will soon be a reversal of tide. Autowallas will be begging with us, fighting and clawing and undercutting each other's prices. Rents will come down. Dosas will be priced at 7 rupees, like they should be. Make yourself more scarce, you airheads! Make them seek you. Turn the system against itself. Use free market capitalism against the chimpanzees and cockroaches of the world.

Make my vision come true, you clones.

Undefuckingcipherables - Part 1 of many

2008-05-20T19:23:00.000+05:30

I am going to make a list of all the words and phrases that I find ridiculous, funny, irritating or just plain dumb. There is so much dumb shit that I hear everyday that it is impossible for me to remember everything right now, so I am going to call this list "undefuckingcipherables", and I'll add more words and phrases to it later. You can contribute, too.

I hear this one very often: "You can't even mention Bachchan and SRK in the same breath" What shit? ~breathes in~ "Bachchan SRK" ~breathes out. There, dumbshits, I just did it.

There is a variation to this one. "Bachchan is so much better than SRK that you cannot even mention them both in the same sentence.

Appearances I dont care about. Accents I can forgive, but when someone talks dumbfucking nonsense like this, I do tend to blow my lid off. Now, I dont give two pellets of rat droppings about Bachchan, and I'd sooner die a slow and painful death after sawing off my arms and legs than watch another SRK publicity stunt.

There. Same sentence.

I just proved you wrong, numbnuts! Die in shame.