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.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
For whatever it is worth, I offer my soul…
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?
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?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Serendipity! Part 2
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.
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.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Serendipity! Part 1 of 2
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.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Beauty or Brains?
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?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Try this
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.
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!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Genesis of a Revolution
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.
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.
V
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
On Piercings
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....
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....
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